Kevin W. McCarthy

The Professor of On-Purpose

Strategy

Chief Leadership Officer: Now!

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CLO 6.1.16 book cover

WINTER PARK, FL, 6.1.16 at 6:28 am (sunrise) the dawn of a new day and way for being in business officially launched with the pre-order campaign of the book: Chief Leadership Officer.

This sunrise officially ushers in the era of the Chief Leadership Officer™ (CLO™); the person who is ultimately responsible to position both the organization and people to be leaders in their chosen field and lives, respectively. The Industrial Age rise to power and prominence of the CEO as the top officer in companies is increasingly out-of-sync with serving society. Relative to the narrow focus of the CEO, CLOs are more complete leaders who take profit-making to heart.

At On-Purpose Partners, we’re committed to educating and training CLOs and helping CEOs become CLOs.

Pre-Order Your Book Today And Be Rewarded

During the month of June, 2016, Author Kevin W. McCarthy is offering readers the opportunity to participate in the CLO™ movement and book development by pre-ordering Chief Leadership Officer for as low as $20 for a single book and up to a $100,000 year-long coaching and consulting relationship. Learn More & Please Pre-Order Here.

Preview the Book: Chief Leadership Officer

Download a PDF preview of The Prologue and the first 4 chapters by clicking here: CLO Sample Chapters

 

CLO Circle Both

 

 

 

In The Year 2020 This Is What Business Leaders Will Be Called

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CLO cover 1
Pre-Orders are being taken through June 1- 30, 2016. Click the cover to learn more.

Update: As of 6.1.16 you may Pre-Order the book today at: http://www.clonow.com.

Every business book you’ve read and every class, seminar or workshop you’ve taken over the past 25 years or more was built on the basis of a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) being in charge. What if the effectiveness of that foundation is crumbling beneath you at an alarming rate? What will be different in the management and development of organizations? What is the impact on employees? What has to change for you?

In the future, expect your CEO to grow into or be replaced by a person known as a Chief Leadership Officer™ (CLO). This top leader in your organization will have two primary missions:

  1. Position the organization to be a leader in its chosen field;
  2. Position the people within the company (and beyond) to be leaders of their lives and work

All the business disciplines you’re accustomed to seeing, such as finance, marketing, operations, etc., will still need to happen.  CLOs, however, have a more complete orientation as to the roles and responsibilities of leading enterprise. Whereas CEOs focus on management and administration of the business for shareholder gain, CLOs focus on leading and navigating the company to be a profit-maker true to its purpose.

People in this present Digital Age and the coming Age of Purpose deserve and expect meaningful work, fair compensation, positive working conditions, and respect for their person. CLOs understand that cultivating these measures begins with a clear articulation of organizational purpose and the sincere desire to be positive difference making or contributors to societal improvement.

The Conviction of CEOs

Business leaders have a real problem: they profess innovation but they’re the last to innovate. The financial and human costs are mounting.

Something is wrong, seriously wrong in the state of practical affairs in for-profit and not-for-profit organizations alike. During my decades in business I’ve found the overwhelming majority of my client CEOs, C-Suite teams, managers and employees are good people with a desire to serve the customer while putting in an honest day’s work and then some.

In 2015 Gallup Consulting reported that only 32% of the employees in the U.S. are engaged in their work. This isn’t necessarily an indictment of the employees. One might argue, very rightfully, that when 68% of the workers are disengaged the blame falls at the feet of the executives or employers.

This is only partially accurate. Each shares a measure of the responsibility.  If the employee is disengaged then it behooves them to go find work where it is engaging. If the employee base isn’t engaged, then management better look at their On-Purpose Business Plan for deep answers. Normally, however, they’ll take an expedient, more shallow approach and address the obvious points of “blame” such as hiring practices, on-boarding, training and such.  When in doubt, blame HR! Sadly, HR is dealing with the symptoms of an under-leading C-Suite.  To learn more watch this 9-minute video called: The On-Purpose Business Plan.

CEO-to-CLO

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is fast becoming the symbol of an antiquated title, mindset, and role that is increasingly missing the mark for profiting business and society … and getting worse by the day. This relic of the Industrial Age in the highest corporate office is the final holdout from innovation.

Our system of doing business, not the people, is broken and out-of-sync with our times. The Industrial Age ways and days of a CEO-run company are coming to a close.

Government intervention in business too often chains the self-correcting mechanism of the free enterprise system making matters only worse. The evidence mounts that more than a technical correction is needed. Such a reformation must come from within business.

What we face is a systemic problem—all of us are affected!

CLOs, Right For People and Society

The opportunity is remarkable. Business funds nearly every facet of modern society. The role of commerce and industry in society has never been as powerful and far-reaching.  It has also never been as short-sighted and squandering of the available talent and resources.

Those in the workforce are increasingly burned out, bummed out, or checked out. Such a widespread sell-off of dreams and hopes in exchange for a paycheck is killing our souls, all in the name of shareholder value and a flawed understanding of profit.

CLOs get that when The On-Purpose Principle is at work there’s an release of human potential and an unforced pace, productivity and commitment.  When a person’s heart is in their work, everything else is so much easier.

The Title Fight

Where are the leaders, the pioneering CLOs? Who will arise to lead in the Age of Purpose? On-Purpose Partners is leading this call to be about business differently.CLO Business Differently

Chief Leadership Officer is a future-facing story making the call for CEOs to replace themselves and become CLOs as the top officer in the company. CLO-led organizations actively elevate the prosperity of society to create win-wins.

Like it or not, being a Chief Leadership Officer (CLO) is what’s next in the career path of the forward-thinking CEO or start-up entrepreneur. Business leaders of tomorrow will operate decidedly different.

Chief Leadership Officer: The Book

This new book is a fast-reading narrative of a sage 100-year-old great-grandfather and his unsettled Millennial great-grandchild, the CEO of a 5-year-old tech firm. Together they launch a hero’s journey to discover a better way to be in business. First they must discover the precepts, promise, and purpose of a new manner and mindset for being in business. Chief Leadership Officer is the embodiment of their work.

Chief Leadership Officer respectfully enters the corner office of CEOs, challenges widely held norms, and calls for self-interested reflection.

  • Aspiring and current business leaders will be faced with making a decision: Will I be a Chief Leadership Officer?
  • Every employee will ask, do I work for a CEO or with a CLO?

Business persons, especially entrepreneurs to CEOs, are invited to embark on their own hero’s journey to take part in a CLO-led reformation. It is a team effort. Every reader has a chance to join the movement, to embrace an emerging manner of being in business today in order to profit tomorrow.

Join The CLO Cause

The CLO message is bigger than me. It needs a bigger platform than I can provide on my own. Chief Leadership Officer will also be a seminal work impacting generations to come. Be a part of breaking new ground and setting a healthier, more wholesome course for people and companies for decades to come.

Starting June 1 and running to June 30, 2016 you can pre-order the book at Publishizer.com, a crowd-funding platform for authors. Funds will go toward production and promotion. There you can download the first few chapters and get a read on the story line.

Write to me. Give me your feedback. This will be a collaborative writing project. Advanced readers will be able to offer insights and ideas that may work their way into the book.  Visit www.ChiefLeadershipOfficer.com.

I can readily self-publish this book on my own; but the message is too big for me to handle alone. The book needs the clout, resources, and reach of a traditional publishing house partner. Therefore, I’m seeking a capable and committed publisher who is as visionary and excited as I am about what we can do together. Pre-orders are a form of proof that readers are interested.

Please join me in this cause to positively reform business for this and future generations by pre-ordering the book for future delivery.

Be On-Purpose!
Kevin

To-Do Lists and the 24-Hour Day

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This article called Why Creating A To-Do List is Derailing Your Success highlights the importance of time blocking as we do in the 24-Hour Day found on page 50 in The On-Purpose Person.

I found the article interesting reading because it says To-Do Lists actually create more stress. I admit that I use To-Do Lists irregularly within a day as a way to allow me to focus on the matter at hand. When a fleeting thought or action item comes across my brain — (shiny new object or squirrel), I find that if I capture the idea on a running list for the day, I tend to be able to get back to the matter at hand.

Writing books or client business plans, for example, are intense efforts demanding minimal interruption or distraction, yet my brain is always running with seemingly random thoughts popping in and out. If I give one an audience, then I’m an hour down the road on something else when what was really important gets put off.

Time blocking works when I work it. If I know I have 90 minutes to write something and then there’s a next time block coming for exercise, another project, a client video conference, etc. then I value that time and attention better. I’m less apt to interrupt myself because I know what the rest of my day looks like.

So what works for you? 

Be On-Purpose!
Kevin

Facing A Decision? Got A Decision Making Process?

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Facing a DecisionAs a person or an organization matures, decisions need to be distributed across the team to those closest to the choice. In the absence of clearly articulated and communicated values (and a 2-word purpose) even the most well-intended person makes ungoverned decisions — typically on emotion rather than values.

Where is the root responsibility for such “ungoverned decisions?” If values are not “articulated and communicated” plus reinforced regularly, then leadership, not the person, has failed.

Consider the sheer number and importance of decisions made every day by every person associated with your organization. Every line item on your income statement reflects a decision. Ask: Do we have a specific decision making process in place that is introduced at orientation and is a regular part of our corporate conversation and storytelling?

The highly likely answer is, “No. In fact, with everything else I need to get done, this hasn’t even been on my radar.” The problem is you’re too busy making decisions that could be better done by someone who is closer to the problem who is trained, tested, and trusted.

Experience tells us that this leadership “oversight” undermines sales and profits by 25% annually. Run the numbers — now you know the price of poor leadership!

Better Decisions = Better Business

Values seem well below the surface of the daily waves of activity. In fact they are on the surface of every decision made by every team member. Coming to terms with this hard reality in the busyness of the day can be a daunting, humbling, task for the leader.

On-Purpose Partners helps clients to define, share, and activate their purpose, vision, mission, and values (PVMV) so better decisions are more consistently made across the company.

Follow our 3-step ACE decision making process to align and improve the decision making quality, speed, and effectiveness:

  1. Articulate: Purpose, Vision, Mission, and Values (PVMV). These “On-Purpose Statements” can typically be identified, refined, and written in less than a week for most organizations. For smaller businesses they can be completed in less than a day.
  2. Communicate: Find authentic stories within the organization that reflect the values. Create an open dialogue to introduce them to the larger team so ownership of them spreads into the hearts, minds, and guts of those who engage.
  3. Exercise: Put your On-Purpose Statements to work by creating decision matrices across the organization. Here are just a few places decision-making is improved using On-Purpose Statements:
    1. Strategy & Planning – It is easy to get mechanical and analytical about strategy and planning but your PVMV keep it real on a human level.
    2. People – Employment, engagement, and retention of team members are profoundly influenced by PVMV. This is where “The Tingle Factor” comes from. See The On-Purpose Business Person to learn more about The Tingle Factor.
    3. Financial management – Complement the ROI, NPV, or IRR analysis with your PVMV analysis.
    4. Vendor/sub-contractor selection – Does the vendor demonstrate similar PVMV? Have you shared what you value as a part of right business performance?
    5. Operations – Are the people and processes informed and aligned with the PVMV to create the performance needed to grow the business? If not, then you’re producing a flawed product.
    6. Marketing & Branding – Truth in advertising matters. What, however, determines “truth”? Your PVMV keep the company true to what matters most.

The power of On-Purpose® is profoundly relevant to execution and profitability — but only when the CEO or leader decides it is. Otherwise, it is business as usual.

Business as usual or business on-purpose? Now you’re facing a decision!

What Do You Do Best?

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As A New Year Rolls Around: What Will You Do Best in 2016?

The On-Purpose Business Person
Here’s the new cover to The On-Purpose Business Person since this classic OP Business Minute was recorded

This simple, yet highly clarifying question from this Classic On-Purpose Business Minute carries strategic value and importance to every aspect of your business and life. Your answer matters. Don’t get hung up on the perfect answer. Have a written answer that is in the ballpark. That alone will powerfully direct and clarify many decisions you face today and will face in the New Year.

The subtitle to The On-Purpose Business Person provides an important strategic statement that is so simple that one might miss the power and potential to transform your career and/or business. 

Consider the centerpiece of the subtitle: Doing More Of What You Do Best More Profitably. It can transform your life, career, and business.

Have you read The On-Purpose Business Person? You’ll learn how to do more of what you do best more profitably.

 

Why Do I Need to Align & Integrate My Business?

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Within our business advisory firm, the single greatest “request” we get is about sales growth or income generation. There are lots of quick-fix remedies to tweak sales. There are marketing strategies, too, that can position the business for improved selling opportunities. Business strategy examples can only take you so far. Be specific. Worse, you’re selling your business short of specificity when you copy what others do. Your business is unique, so the business strategy and model need to capture that.

What you need is a universal tool to address your unique needs — that’s The Service Model (below). Here you have both a tool to create and build business strategy as well as analyze and improve what exists. Regardless of whether you are the CEO of a major corporation or a commissioned salesperson with a territory, you have a Service Model by either default or by design.

At On-Purpose Partners we help our clients assess the underlying strategies, structures, and systems — the foundations of an organization found at the bottom of the Service Model (Purpose and Plan). Slight misdirection here only gets amplified throughout every line item on the P&L and the corporate culture through the People, Processes, and Performance.

Service Model 1-page worksheet & instructions

Most clients call because they have a “Performance” level problem — such as not enough revenue. So they’ll do the quick fixes to performance or dig a bit deeper into the Process area (Marketing). Or, they’ll gin up the sales team with incentives to meet current objectives at the risk of sustaining the relationship.

In other words, they start where the problem appears and try to fix it there. There’s merit to this, but if there are persistent problems, then this doesn’t address the root cause. In fact, it tends to create a frenzy of latest gimmicks. It becomes almost addicting activity.

Addressing Process matters such as Marketing or Training looks at systems for solutions. This is a smart move because if the system has flaws then the Performance will suffer. I’ll venture a guess that 98% of most consulting work is hired in the Process and Performance level.

The challenge, however, is that the Purpose, Plan, and People levels are too often neglected or assumed to be properly working. Here’s why. The responsibility for these levels falls to the leadership and management of the organization. It is hard to self-assess. Much like a fish doesn’t realize it is swimming in water until it is out of the water, leaders and managers rarely have the perspective to see their own context.

What To Do:

Define your Target Audience (Customer). Then, remodel your business by starting at the bottom of the Service Model and work your way to the top one level at a time.

Call it business alignment or getting everyone pointed in the same direction; the bottom line business objective is sales growth and profits. When the people and business strategy are confused on the inside, the customer or client experience is diminished. Losses mount in profits and people. It can get ugly!

Here’s how to create a better result for your organization. Know that alignment works but it stops short. Start with your goal or a vision, pare to the core, create alignment, and continue working on the business and with your team until all are more fully integrated.

Step 1: Setting the goal or writing the vision is typically the easy part. It may take time and some thinking and noodling with your brain to clarify it in writing, but get it done in writing.

Step 2: Alignment comes in many forms. Here are a few:

  • The On-Purpose Principle: This is the purpose of the person aligned with the purpose of the organization. If this alignment doesn’t exist, then everything else is manipulation or feels like manipulation. Work must be a meaningful expression of one’s life.
  • Strategic alignment within the business means, for example, that the business strategy informs the marketing strategy which informs the sales strategy and provides for tactical direction. Social media in particular needs to align or it is just a waste of time. Use the Service Model to guide you.
  • Customer alignment means the business is highly designed, built, and oriented to serve the customer while uplifting the team.
  • Project alignment means that the team players seek a common outcome or objective.

Alignment is an important and solid step but it falls short of what is needed. Business process engineering or re-engineering efforts are directed toward business alignment. When a business is missing its core strategy then there is no cornerstone for aligning and building.

As a business advisor, I consistently see money poured into tactical execution (Performance) when the strategy is deeply flawed. The waste of money and effort is monumental. Worse, I see good money chasing bad business designs time and again.

Websites provide a great example. So you’ve finally gotten your website launched and you’re waiting for the visitors to start finding you thanks to your investment in SEO (Search Engine Optimization and Google AdWords). It isn’t happening, so you invest even more money in your SEO and AdWords campaign. But what if the website, itself, isn’t welcoming or fails to present a call to action? Much of the investment in SEO and advertising dollars is wasted or hopelessly inefficient.

“Getting the business aligned” is often heralded as the cure for what ails the business. It is important, but it stops far short of what is really needed.

Step 3: Now that the goal is set and the strategy and structure are in place, turn to the relationships. Does your team understand the purpose of your organization? Have you clarified and communicated the purpose? Do they have a sense of call and contribution that allows them to get beyond the inevitable personality and preferential differences? Do they see their individual and collective contribution as so important that they can work as a team toward the greater good?

The higher level concept is integration. Strategically, purpose is the point of integration. Alignment deals with tangibles and direction. Integration deals with the people plus the intangibles and tangibles to create a wholeness to the organization. It provides a fabric to the culture and brand of the business that translates to the customer experience being extraordinary.

Work on alignment, yet remember to go the next step to create integration of the business beginning with the purpose, plan, people, process, and performance. Integration gets you to the gestalt of business where it works effectively and efficiently.

Do you need some one-on-one work on your business? Do you want me to help you create the path to being on-purpose? Contact the office to arrange an advisory relationship. Small Business Advisory Packages are available for one-on-one help with me (Kevin). Need more information? Call: 407.657.6000 or email us at info@on-purpose.com.

Are You Making Half-Hearted Attempts?

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What are the “benefits” of making a half-hearted attempt? There are none! It is merely an action of hedging one’s bets, a means for buying time, a time-filler, or an occupation until something better comes along.

Therein lies the problem! We’ll trade our precious lives hoping that luck will strike us with something better coming along or working out in our favor. This blind optimism is often professed as faith. In truth, it is sophomoric (wise fool) with roots in victimhood—a sure path to discouragement, disillusionment, and heartbreak. Why be half-hearted?

The alternative? Be strategic. Discern what matters and why. Trials and errors will still have their way with you; however, you’ll have a context of understanding whereby your lessons will be absorbed more readily and more fully learned. Be in growth mode. Resist the gravity of decay and lead your life from your heart—the strength of who you are. Exercise your purpose!

Yes, at first, it will probably be slow-going and awkward. But you can learn to live your life strategically, wisely, and in alignment with God’s design. Practice it and soon you’ll master the art of living by design instead of haphazardly.

If you find yourself living half-heartedly, then get a clue! Now is your time to become more strategic. Grab this free, wonderful, and simple-to-use tool called The Discovery Guide Preview that includes forms for “Want Lists and Tournaments” to help you become more clear about what matters most to you. Discover the margin and places in your life where focus and clarity will move you into a posture toward whole-heartedness. You’ll be far more prepared to commit fully into being you and to live by design—being on-purpose!

More resources:

The On-Purpose Person: Making Your Life Make Sense is a great starting point to begin the process of becoming who you are truly meant to be and become. (Kindle and Hardcover available.)

On a very limited basis, I am available for one-on-one coaching to walk with you through The On-Purpose Process. Contact me to learn more.

4 Sales and Business Growth Strategies

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Guest Star Today!

Sometimes advice is just so good that I just have to share it! With the permission of my colleague, Meridith Elliott Powell, I am delighted to both introduce you to her as well as share her wonderful insights on strategies for building relationships, business, and revenues.

Please post your comments below. Also, Meridith’s email is below; connect with her directly. She would be delighted to hear from you.

Be On-Purpose!
Kevin

Meridith

Take a moment to assess the current sales and business growth strategies you have in place, then watch this video to get the 4 new business strategies I have outlined. You can email me with any questions or comments. I’m always happy to help! Have a successful week,

Meridith

Meridith Elliott Powell

Ready to get more from Meridith? Download her free copy of
6 Key Strategies for Connecting With Clients!