The Global CEO

Overseas experience is becoming a must on top executives’ résumés, according to this year’s Route to the Top.
JUSTIN MARTIN

When Henry McKinnell was 28 years old, Pfizer sent him to Iran to serve as a country manager. McKinnell arrived in 1973—wife and three small children in tow—for one of the company’s grittier international gigs, one that promised culture shock aplenty and required travel into the country’s lawless tribal regions.

During his assignment, McKinnell became acquainted with an army general who owned a large turkey farm. (At the time, Pfizer’s Iranian operations did a larger business in animal health products than human pharmaceuticals.) When a disease outbreak threatened the farm, the general called McKinnell directly, appealing for help. McKinnell dispatched a veterinarian who saved the general’s flock. To repay the kindness, the general promised McKinnell two fresh-killed turkeys each year.

McKinnell eventually lost track of the general, and the turkeys stopped coming following the Iranian revolution. But he has not forgotten the lessons he learned from his 14 years overseas while stationed in Iran, Japan and Hong Kong. Each assignment helped build his understanding of other cultures, while at the same time preparing him to become CEO of Pfizer, a $45-billion company with operations in 60 countries. His experience in Iran, for example, gave him a flavor for the emphasis many Middle Eastern cultures place on customer relations. And his time in Japan taught him about the importance of building consensus. “I’ve had hundreds of experiences I’ll never forget,” says McKinnell. “They were invaluable in shaping me into the manager of a global company.”

It is a small world after all—whether your company is Disney, Pfizer or Merrill Lynch. For CEOs, international experience is not only recommended nowadays, it’s fast becoming requisite. This is the 7th year that Chief Executive and the executive search firm Spencer Stuart have teamed up for the annual Route to the Top survey, and this time the big finding is that an increasing number of CEOs assume the post having garnered international experience. Survey results are drawn from the CEOs of the 700 largest U.S. companies and their answers to a lengthy questionnaire. A variety of other themes were also evident this year, for example, an increasing number of CEOs have experience in multiple functional areas, as opposed to just one.
But this year’s billboard finding—put it in big, bright lights—is the need for some global seasoning. For the 2003 survey, the percentage of top 700 CEOs with international experience rose to 30 percent, from 21 percent the previous year. “The value is clear: For CEOs, an experience overseas can provide a real competitive edge,” says Tom Neff, U.S. chairman of Spencer Stuart.

To be sure, going abroad continues to carry potential career hazards, even in this globe-trotting age. Off of site can still mean out of mind: Executives in foreign postings still have to worry about becoming isolated, no longer privy to the corporate scuttlebutt, their home office contacts fast winnowing. And executives contemplating overseas gigs continue to face the very real possibility that their job will have evaporated upon return to the U.S. The plain truth is that these risks have not disappeared, though they are somewhat mitigated by more enlightened companies, improved telecommunications and faster international transit.

An overseas assignment remains a gamble, in other words, but one with rapidly improving odds. Increasingly, international experience is coming to be seen as a real career booster. It provides managers with broader responsibilities than would have been available at the home office. It’s an opportunity to make key contacts, a chance to get a flavor for the business customs of other cultures. Maybe most importantly, the very foreign-ness of an overseas posting prepares executives for another job with nonstop culture shock: becoming a CEO. After all, the modern day chief executive has to communicate with a vast array of constituents, make sense of a slew of bewildering regulations and assess the competitive climate on a moment-by-moment basis—all tasks that are strangely similar to negotiating a foreign culture. The bottom line? An overseas posting broadens one’s perspective, something that’s vital for chief executives. “The hallmark of a great CEO is the ability to see an issue through a variety of lenses,” says Roselinde Torres, president of the U.S. operations of Mercer Delta Consulting. “International experience is one of the surest ways to add some new lenses.”

Not all international experience is equal. According to Torres and other experts interviewed for this article, it is not enough for an executive to simply jet from the U.S. to various overseas destinations. To have a truly career-altering experience, it is necessary to be stationed abroad. And not only for a brief stint; a true international assignment should last at least a year. Done properly, it can really broaden one’s management skills. McKinnell refers to the overseas units he ran as “mini-Pfizers.” Ideally, an overseas gig will give one far greater responsibility than would a similar position in the U.S., at a far younger age. “This can be a real résumé builder,” says Mike Kelly, chairman of the search firm Highland Partners, “provided you’re not merely managing some piece of the global portfolio from Franklin Lakes, New Jersey.”

Bill Zollars is CEO of Yellow Roadway, a transportation services company headquartered in Overland Park, Kan., with 50,000 employees and $6 billion in revenues. The earlier part of his career was spent with Kodak, and he had foreign postings in Canada, Japan and Europe. He found these experiences invaluable preparation. By the time he assumed the top job at Yellow in 1999, Zollars already had ample experience running businesses. “From a career-development standpoint, working overseas was probably my best experience,” says Zollars, “especially at a big company like Kodak. I got my hands on the wheels and levers at a younger age. I got to be a general manager while I was lower down in the organization.”

The best overseas assignments, according to the CEOs and experts we interviewed, feature what might be termed full-cultural immersion. Certainly, it is important to learn as much of the local language as possible. While stationed in Paris, Zollars took a three-month crash course in French. A highlight of his visit: Two French executives were discussing who would drive him to the airport. Zollars cut in to tell them—in French—that he would take a cab. This was a small episode, but according to Zollars it worked wonders in earning him the respect of his hosts. Similarly, McKinnell picked up a fair amount of Farsi during his time in Iran. “I have found that language is a great window into culture,” says McKinnell. “Most expatriates aren’t in a country long enough to become fluent, but it’s certainly worthwhile to make an effort to learn the language. It becomes a way to understand a country’s customs and gain some insight into how things work.”

Beyond learning at least some rudimentary foreign phrases, it is crucial to avoid becoming insulated. Upon arrival in a foreign city, there’s a tendency to take up residence in a section favored by visitors from the U.S. Many executives also travel everywhere by chauffeured limo with an English-speaking driver. As well, foreign cities frequently have no shortage of stores, restaurants and bars that cater to Americans. As a result, some executives end up becoming what might be termed “Teflon expatriates”: They are living abroad, but nothing sticks.

Tackling the Teflon Challenge
Kathleen Ligocki is CEO of Tower Automotive, a $2.8-billion automotive supplier headquartered in Novi, Mich. She has done several overseas assignments, has visited some 180 countries (Cuba and Afghanistan remain on her wish list), and has scrupulously avoided becoming a Teflon expat. At the outset of many of her various foreign postings, she has made a point of visiting museums to get a sense of the host country’s culture. She was also careful to live in “normal” neighborhoods as opposed to those favored by U.S. expats. While working for United Technologies, for example, Ligocki was sent to Paris to serve as director of manufacturing for the European operations of Carrier air conditioners. “I moved into a very French area near the Sorbonne,” recalls Ligocki. “I think it’s imperative to get outside your comfort zone. CEO-type personalities are seldom self-reflective. One thing that international experience does is it forces introspection and self-analysis because everything is so foreign.”

Prior to joining Tower Automotive as CEO in 2003, Ligocki also did a stint as CEO of Ford Mexico, a business that at the time had $6 billion in revenues. She was the first woman ever to head up an auto company in Mexico and was one of the most senior female executives in Latin America. Ligocki speaks fluent Spanish. During her assignment, once again, she made an effort to take things a step further and become truly immersed in local culture. Ligocki volunteered at a children’s hospital in Mexico City, for example, and was involved in a program that built schools in rural areas. “I wanted to make sure I was involved with the people of Mexico,” she says. “This wound up being far more than a strict work experience, which made it far more valuable as an international experience.”

So what are the best countries in which to be posted? Among the choicest gigs nowadays is China, with its gargantuan population and torrid 10-percent GDP growth. Certainly Europe remains a lure for expats. Economic growth is a bit slower in Europe (more like 1.5 percent), but there’s the advantage of being exposed to a variety of distinct cultures bunched tightly together geographically. There’s also a familiarity factor in Europe that’s lacking in more adventurous postings such as Africa or the Middle East. Japan is coming off a drab decade, but lately showing signs of recovery. As the world’s second largest economy, it remains an attractive place to do business. “I think we’re beginning to see a better economic picture,” says McKinnell, whose company has been the fastest-growing pharmaceutical firm in Japan for the past 10 years, outpacing local rivals such as Takeda and Daiichi.

Even foreign assignments with very low exoticism quotients can prove worthwhile. In other words, don’t turn up your nose at the chance to work in Great Britain or even Canada. “This is going to sound crazy,” says Zollars. “The thing I learned from doing a tour in Canada is that it’s a completely different country. Americans tend to think of Canada as an appendage to the U.S. and that really pisses off Canadians. Living in Canada, you realize the arrogance of most U.S. companies that have operations in Canada.”

Here’s another caveat, offered by Nariman Behravesh, chief economist of Global Insight, a forecasting firm located in Lexington, Mass. When considering a foreign assignment, think hard about whether your company has legitimate business prospects. For example, China may have a tantalizing population of 1.3 billion, but there are only 120 million people in the country who could be deemed middle class. Japan, by contrast, has a population roughly one-tenth the size of China’s, but its middle class is almost exactly the same size. If you’re selling soda in China, this might be a non-issue. For a more upscale item—a camera, for example—you’d have to work a lot harder to crack the Chinese market than the Japanese one.

Fear of Rocky Repatriation
Location, location, location. For an overseas posting, it is a legitimate issue. You certainly don’t want to be set up for failure. But experts and CEOs alike urge people to dismiss a second common concern: fear of a rocky repatriation. With regular flights to most any destination and the advent of email, it’s certainly easier than ever before to stay tethered to the home office. There are additional steps that can be taken by an executive stationed overseas.
Before departure, insist that your company spell out the terms of the assignment in a formal letter. What will your responsibilities be? What metrics will constitute success or failure? How might benefits such as your pension be altered? Crucially, when can you expect to return? Generally, a posting of one to three years is considered ideal, but there’s no set rule. It’s a matter of the assignment, your company’s culture and your personal preferences. The letter should also have wording that guarantees that a job will be available upon your return, commensurate with the experience gained on the international assignment. Ask a lawyer to review the letter. “Even before you leave, you need to be thinking about the day you return,” says Robin Pascoe, an expert on expatriates, who consults regularly with the human resources departments of companies such as Citigroup, Ford and Shell Oil.

Once overseas, you might think about selecting someone to act in the informal capacity as home-office confidante. This person can keep you up to date on changes to policy or alterations to the org chart. Keep your contacts fresh by dropping into the home office whenever you’re stateside. Should any company personnel visit your country, even if it’s for vacation, encourage them to visit. It’s a great way to keep up with corporate gossip. But don’t limit yourself only to staying current with your company. Maintain your membership in various professional societies; keep getting various trade newsletters because you will also want to stay on top of changes in your industry.

Taking these steps should improve your chances of successful repatriation. Nevertheless, many companies remain remarkably ambivalent toward expats. But there’s an upside. This may be a global era; however, it’s also a post-paternalistic era in which people are encouraged to manage their own careers. It’s also worth noting that many CEOs have cut their international teeth at companies other than the ones they’ve gone on to lead. There’s something to be said for treating an overseas assignment as career development in an exciting new setting, all expenses paid. If you’re able to successfully repatriate, great. If not, the assignment will have made you vastly more marketable. “I would encourage people to dive in,” says Ligocki. “From my experience working at several different companies, people who have taken the risks are often the people who wind up successful.”

As a CEO, an overseas assignment can be a kind of career touchstone, returned to again and again. It’s been a couple of decades since Pfizer’s McKinnell had his last overseas posting. But he continues to draw on the experiences. “These were lessons in diversity,” he says. “If there’s one thing that’s valued at Pfizer, it’s people from diverse backgrounds bringing diverse perspectives.”

The exposure to diverse cultures has helped McKinnell introduce and incorporate into Pfizer best business practices from all over the world. In the early 1970s in Japan, McKinnell observed a consensus-building management style that allowed ideas to flow from the bottom up. “That became the basis for our emphasis on teamwork at Pfizer,” he says, adding that employees are encouraged to openly debate their ideas to develop concepts that are mutually acceptable. “As I like to put it, ‘All of us are smarter than any of us.’”

McKinnell says he learned a lot about relationship marketing in the Middle East, where he spent time traveling around, visiting customers, having dinner with them. There, he says, “you do business with people you trust.”

A Variety of Disciplines Helps
There are other ways to build a diverse résumé, without even leaving the good old U.S. of A. For example, a person can get exposure to a variety of corporate disciplines. This year’s survey found that the percentage of top 700 CEOs who remained in one functional path for an entire career has dropped from 20 percent to 18 percent. The modern CEO job is simply too complex for narrow casting.

Because CEOs have to sign off on financial reports nowadays and cannot simply delegate to the CFO, some experience in finance—a classic functional line—is valuable. Given the spate of recent business scandals, some legal experience can’t hurt. More than one-tenth of the top 700 CEOs have law degrees. With the economy recovering, many companies are shifting from cost-cutting mode to growing the top line. Here it helps to have marketing experience.
“Think of the variety of issues that come up in a company within a day,” says Wayne
Murdy, CEO of Newmont Mining. “There’s no perfect way to prepare for a CEO’s job. It spans everything. I was fortunate to have a variety of different functional experiences during my career.” Prior to becoming CEO of Newmont, a $2.75-billion metal mining company headquartered in Denver, Murdy got experience in finance, marketing, production and strategic planning.

Murdy gained this experience while working for a variety of companies including Getty Oil and Arthur Andersen. And that’s another finding of this year’s survey: CEOs who have worked their entire career at the same company are becoming increasingly rare. For the latest survey, the percentage of top 700 CEOs with a single employer on their résumé dropped from 25 to 23 percent. “To gain the kind of varied experience necessary for today’s CEO, our clients often prefer someone who has worked at more than one company,” says Dayton Ogden, chairman of Spencer Stuart.

One final survey finding worth highlighting is that the percentage of CEOs with Ivy League educations continues to decline. The number fell from 11 to 10 percent in the latest survey, part of a long-term trend. In 1999, the percentage was 13.

This finding is particularly interesting because it also has everything to do with the diverse experiential background demanded of today’s CEO. No longer is it sufficient to rise through the ranks in one function for one company in one country. By the same token, the preference for Ivy League-educated executives—once a genuine corporate bias—is coming to be seen as a vestige of an earlier era.

The best way to look at it: The world of work is getting more complex and this demands CEOs who are comfortable with complexity. The most effective leaders are able to relate to a variety of different constituents. Yellow CEO Bill Zollars, for example, is a graduate of the University of Minnesota. He sees an advantage in having gone to a state university with a broad mix of students, where once upon a time he might have rued his lack of Ivy League connections. “The CEO job today is one where you have to be able to relate to people from all different walks of life,” says Zollars. “In a job like this, you’ve got to be able to relate to teamsters on the dock as well as members of the board. You’ve got to be able to talk to individual investors and you’ve got to be able to go on CNBC, talk with Kudlow & Cramer.”

Ode to Wisdom
WHEN TROUBLE HITS, WE BRING IN THE VETERANS TO CLEAN UP THE MESS.
One of the findings for this year’s Route to the Top took us by surprise. Among the top 100 companies, the percentage of CEOs aged 60 or older rose to 35 percent in 2003 from 28 percent in 2002—returning the number to 1998 levels (see chart). The recent headlines support this trend; troubled companies are calling in retired leaders to lead them back to relative safety. Boeing’s appointment of Harry Stonecipher, 67, and Delta Air Lines’ pick of Gerald Grinstein, 71, are the most recent examples.

True, it could be something of an anomaly; no one would argue that 2003 wasn’t an especially tough year for American business. Right now, it pays to be risk averse. But the current attitude is a far cry from the go-go days, when investors and analysts spent the better part of three years enamored with younger and younger go-getters, cheering them to lead the companies they started in their basements to ever greater heights. In the youth-obsessed dot-com era, media pundits regularly fawned over 20-something “gurus” while breathing down the necks of older CEOs, wondering loudly when they’d let go the reins and shuffle off to the golf course. Their insights and advice—particularly when they warned of an inevitable implosion—sounded irritatingly rational and grandfatherly. Youth was rewarded, in America’s boardrooms and in its markets, causing some older veterans of business, like Frank Lanza, then 68 and CEO of aerospace and defense company L-3 Communications, to bemoan the mandatory retirement of talented executives, as a “uniquely American tragedy.”

That changed, of course, with the market, with the crash of the dot-coms, with the exposure of illegal goings-on inspired by an era of excess. When the proverbial excrement hit the fan at some of the biggest companies, investors clamored not for fresh-faced, fast-talking software salesmen nor for technology whiz kids from the West Coast. Instead, they sought out the kind of wisdom and integrity, and certainly credibility, that can only come from years of hard won experience.

So do these numbers mean that in coming years, age and experience will trump youth and the dynamism and fresh thinking that often come with it? Probably not. And, of course, they shouldn’t. With all the challenges U.S. companies face keeping up with global competitors, the latest technology and the demand for fresh, new ideas, they can’t afford to hang on to the past. As the economy stabilizes, board members will again let younger executives take their shots at the top, agree CEO headhunters Tom Neff of Spencer Stuart and Peter Crist of Crist Partners.
“A lot of this is generated by external pressures, the market grasping for credibility,” says Crist. “If the markets were stronger, you would see boards being more comfortable taking risk and saying, ‘We have a 45-year-old COO who’s never been in the chair, but we have great confidence in him. Let’s do it.’” At the moment, however, the gap is still too wide at many companies between where their ponies are and where they need to be. To be sure, one of the biggest lessons of 2003 is the lack of succession planning and frightening dearth of bench strength in U.S. companies (see Thought Leader, page 14).

But another lesson emerges as well: If it’s true that we cannot live in the past, then neither can we afford to ignore it. Those who have weathered the storms—including this most recent one—have a unique perspective that has no expiration date. The bearers of history’s lessons have much to teach current and future CEOs—who might just want to write it down in their PDAs before they forget it.
— C.J. Prince.

Leading Abroad
Henry McKinnell is CEO of Pfizer, a $45-billion pharmaceutical company. His 14 years overseas included posts in Iran, Japan and China. These days, he maintains a vigorous international schedule, but contributing editor Justin Martin caught up with McKinnell at Pfizer’s New York headquarters.

How does international experience help with career progress?
Overseas, you tend to get more multifunctional experience at a younger age. You have much more latitude. If you’re a product manager in the U.S., it’s very hard to do anything other than product management. But overseas organizations tend to be smaller, so you get a chance to work in different areas.

In my case, I was a country manager at 28 years of age. It was a small operation and it happened to be in Iran. But I had manufacturing, I had sales, marketing and clinical development and was running a business. I was running a mini Pfizer. That experience was very helpful for later in my career.

What advice would you give a manager considering a global assignment?
I don’t think people should hesitate. Your foreign experience is pretty much what you make of it, both personally and professionally. I would also seize the opportunity to expand your job responsibilities. You tend to paint on a blank canvas overseas. When I joined Pfizer in Japan, it was officially as an assistant to the president, but the job involved a variety of responsibilities. Titles aren’t terribly important overseas.

I would also suggest that you spend sufficient time in the job. Some people look at these as six-month assignments. That’s really not enough. To get the benefits, you need to stay long enough to make some mistakes and correct those mistakes.

You were gone a long time, 14 years. How was it readjusting to the U.S.?

The most difficult move I made was from Hong Kong back to America in 1984. I’d never lived in New York City before. I met with one of the people in human resources, who handed me a copy of The New York Times and said, ‘Now find a home.’ There was no support at all. It was by far the most difficult move I’d ever made.

How has your overseas experience helped you to confront anti-American sentiment?
It’s probably helped me to understand it better. Because I have lived abroad, I understand that people look at things differently. Last year, I was co-chairman of the World Economic Forum at Davos. Many of my fellow CEOs and American government officials sensed a very strong anti-Americanism. On one level, that was true. But I viewed it more as disagreement with American policy.

Rather than react defensively, I feel it’s much better to engage and reach a common understanding on what we are trying to accomplish in terms of global economic policy. We’re going to have to just keep doing what we’re doing and do it well. This is the surest way to demonstrate that belief in open markets and representative government really is the way to create wealth and prosperity and freedom.

Is brand strategy overrated?

One commentator says it is. Marcia Hoeck, writing in B2B Marketing Trends, says companies ought to just try to be themselves:

Most companies don't stand out in the marketplace "sea of sameness." And because they don't stand out, they are not connecting with potential customers.

What's the solution? Be yourself. Be unique.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? Maybe more companies should be themselves.

One reason I like dealing with small businesses is that many small business owners revel in their uniqueness. Small business owners are often quirky and memorable – some might call them characters. Most are not afraid to let their marketing approaches sound different and be different.

More large companies — especially technology companies — should try harder to be unique.

Those small business owners they are selling to just might appreciate it.

The Incalculable Value Of Building Brands

CEOs say it's not just about advertising, but about everyday operations too.
Fred Mackerodt

United Technologies and FedEx have profoundly different approaches to developing and maintaining their brands. As a multiindustry conglomerate, UTC has a portfolio that includes Otis elevators, Carrier air conditioners, Sikorsky helicopters and Pratt & Whitney jet engines. In most cases, the brands are the names of people who created their companies decades or even a century ago. Those names have more power in the marketplace than “United Technologies” does. So Chief Executive George David says United Technologies’ advertises the parent brand just to small-but influential audiences in New York and Washington.

“A lot of our corporate advertising has been the association of subsidiaries with the parent because the parent’s trademark, which is only 1972 in origin, is worthless outside the financial community and the opinion leader population,” David explained. “It’s not a go-to-market strategy.” And although UTC’s employees like the idea of being part of a large company, many are more loyal to the operating units, David acknowledges. “They tend to think of themselves as part of Otis, Pratt or Carrier,” he said. “So it’s a delicate balance” between maintaining the UTC brand versus those of its operating units. “I think my philosophy has always been to use the power of the trademarks of the subsidiaries to improve the recognition and brand acceptance, awareness and respect for the parent company itself,” said David.

To Rebrand or Not

It’s precisely the opposite in many ways for FedEx. The Memphis-based company also has multiple lines of business such as its well-known FedEx express delivery service, but also a ground transportation division, a freight operation and, most recently, FedEx Kinko’s. But there’s no ambiguity—they all carry the FedEx name. “Our situation is different than UTC’s because we didn’t buy a company that had an inventor, with the exception of Kinko’s,” FedEx founder and Chief Executive Fred Smith said. “We knew that our brand had a lot of attributes and that if we could extend that brand, it would be helpful and, in fact, it was. It was like a turbocharger for the ground and freight businesses.”

The branding decision was trickier when FedEx acquired Kinko’s, so named because founder Paul Orfalea had a headful of curly red hair and was nicknamed Kinko. “We decided there was enough brand equity in Kinko’s that we didn’t want to throw it away,” Smith explained. “We did a lot of focus groups and so forth. We decided to co-brand the product.” Hence, the name FedEx Kinko’s.

David and Smith made their remarks at a roundtable discussion in New York in February titled “The Power of Brands: Best Practices for CEOs,” sponsored by Lippincott Mercer, the brand consultancy.

The discussion revealed that a company’s brand image is the result of far more than just advertising and marketing. It is the result of nearly everything the company does that touches the customer. A company’s brand has to have a “brand promise” that customers readily grasp. That means branding is central to the company’s overall strategy, and has to be communicated and established throughout the organization. “A lot of people think about brand as advertising,” said Kenneth Roberts, CEO of Lippincott. “But we look at it much more as changing behavior.” A strong brand name helps persuade customers to buy a company’s goods or services at a premium, but it’s also important in shaping the opinions of investors and in attracting and retaining the right kind of employees.

The term “brand equity” is far more than another mar keting buzzword, said Lippincott’s chief operating officer, Suzanne Hogan. “In a sense, there has to be brand equity—otherwise everything would be a commodity,” Hogan said. “That’s why certain brands are able to command a premium in their P/E ratios. There are certain products that can command a premium on the market. Those are the ways you benefit by having a strong brand.”
Two other CEOs at the roundtable, Steve Loranger of ITT Industries and Richard Vie of Unitrin, faced similar “brand architecture” challenges as George David does. ITT, a famous conglomerate dating back to the days of Harold Geneen, still exists as an $8 billion company, with operations mostly in water and defense-related businesses. Unitrin is a Chicago-based insurance company put together from insurance and finance companies from the old Teledyne. For both Loranger and Vie, their individual lines of business have more brand recognition than their parent companies.

But other CEOs faced challenges more similar to those of FedEx, where their parent company brands must have instant credibility. For Steinway & Sons, for example, branding occurs every time a concert pianist sits down at a Steinway piano. If the sounds don’t create wonderful music, the brand is immediately at risk, said Steinway CEO Bruce Stevens. The pianists “are not going to be fooled for more than two minutes after they start to play,” Stevens said.

The fact that Steinway, now 153 years old, has been able to maintain concert-like quality in all its pianos has helped it survive the competitive onslaught from Chinese manufacturers. “It’s deflation with a big D that’s been happening for the past six or seven years,” Stevens said. “The average grand piano that’s sold in America today is about 22 percent less costly than it was six years ago,” he explained. “Every company has given in to that price deterioration with the exception of one, and it’s Steinway & Sons. Our prices have gone up on the average of 3 or 4 percent a year. A big part of that is our brand equity.”

Protecting brand equity isn’t merely the function of advertising or marketing. It requires a company-wide commitment. “Most of the people at Steinway & Sons really have a passion for this,” Stevens said. “It’s an icon around the world and people take it seriously. People like myself, people in the factory who are crafting these instruments, their passion becomes a very great part” of the company’s overall brand promise.

The OnStar division of General Motors faced a unique challenge in launching its combination of emergency services, remote diagnostics and navigation assistance 10 years ago, one that is also revealing about how parent companies engage with the brand names of subsidiaries. When OnStar started out, President Chet Huber said it didn’t mention GM in any of its advertising. “People didn’t expect a car company—any car company, frankly—to be in the kind of services business that we were in,” Huber explained. “People thought of car companies as building cars, not as being emergency service providers. It just didn’t resonate. It was a tough thing to sell against.” The key brand promise of OnStar was “peace of mind” for drivers.

Over the years, however, OnStar has established itself so well that GM CEO Rick Wagoner decided about a year and a half ago that GM could benefit by being associated with OnStar. So Wagoner redesigned the OnStar logo and placed a small “by GM” line on it. “It’s become a powerful vehicle differentiator,” Huber argued. “OnStar stands for a lot in the world of marketing clutter. Do people know where to go to get OnStar? Are they clear that they can get it on a Buick but not on a Toyota? And so every opportunity we get to link now to the vehicle will hopefully help differentiate the parent products as well as draw people to the OnStar brand.”
Branding is particularly crucial in fields where consumers may not recognize a difference in the quality of the goods or services being sold to them, such as in the airline or banking sectors. So Peyton Patterson has concentrated on trying to develop the brand of her NewAlliance Bancshares, based in New Haven, Conn. “Our challenge in branding is somewhat different because we were not taking different companies that had different brands,” she explained. “We were putting five banks together. All had different names. In fact, we had the luxury of starting from the beginning. We were a new name, a new tag line.”

In launching the merged entity, she and her colleagues conducted research with institutional investors, as well as with customers, to understand what the bank’s point of differentiation should be. As a result of that research, the bank developed the tag line “Capital ideas, human values” to communicate how it would be different from other banks. “We’re clearly trying to talk about performance on the one hand and then how we approach customers on the other,” Patterson said.

The strategy seems to have worked. “We all have sort of living, tangible examples of how a brand works for us,” she told her fellow discussants. “It is always reminding the customer why you’re different. We all have very specific examples of Steinway and FedEx, and what resonates. If we were all to ask each other what our brands signify, the important thing is that it resonates and it’s different.”

Incalculable Value
If developed and managed correctly, brands have almost incalculable value. “There are huge assets that each of our companies have that don’t appear on the balance sheet and don’t run through profit and loss statements,” said FedEx’s Smith. “Sikorsky, for all intents and purposes, is a synonym for helicopter. It has a connotation to people in the aerospace business that means something. I don’t know how they value Sikorsky on their books at UTC, but I guarantee the name is worth a lot.”

As the CEO with arguably the strongest brand in the room, Smith was pressed for more detail on how FedEx manages its brand. “First of all, you’ve got to protect the brand,” he explained. “You’ve got to guard it, the way it’s presented. We have extensive rules inside the company as to how you can use it, what it’s got to look like, the metrics of the signs, and on down the line. But I think, more important than that, it’s tying together what you do for the customers with what the brand symbolizes. That’s where brands that go bad really have their problems. I mean, the worst thing in the world you can do for a bad product is to advertise it.
“So our brand stands for something and we work every day to get just a little bit better on delivering against that promise,” Smith continued. “It is making sure that we protect and promote the brand appropriately but most of all making sure that the products and services that we deliver are consistent with the brand. That’s the twin fulcrum on which our enterprise rests.”

In the final analysis, a CEO manages the brand by managing the company’s business. The two tasks can’t really be separated. “Once you have a positioning strategy, how do you drive it through the organization?” Lippincott’ Hogan asked. “We’ve decided what we’re going to stand for. Now how do we drive it through all elements of the organization? Through our employees’ behavior, through what we deliver to the client, through to the financial community, to our investments, our development investments and our contributions to society. And how do all of those things link?”

She said it’s essential to persuade the different arms of a company to commit to a branding vision. “That’s a tremendous challenge for our clients because sometimes the various teams aren’t working at single purposes—they’re working at cross purposes. Or a client may have a great positioning strategy, but there’s something about the operations side of the business that’s hurting the behavior of the employees,” Hogan said. “There’s a misalignment and the operations folks don’t want to work with the marketing folks.” All of which explains why the branding challenge is so important— and so difficult.

WHO'S WHO
George David is chairman and CEO of United Technologies, in Hartford, Conn.

Suzanne Hogan is chief operating officer of Lippincott Mercer, the brand consultancy,based in New York.

William J. Holstein is editor in chief, Chief Executive magazine, based in Montvale, N.J.

Chet Huber is president of OnStar Corp., a unit of General Motors, in Detroit.

Edward M. Kopko is chief executive, Butler International and Chief Executive Group, based in Montvale, N.J.

Steven R. Loranger is chairman and CEO of ITT Industries, a manufacturer of water and defense-related equipment in White Plains, N.Y.

Peyton Patterson is chairman and CEO of NewAlliance Bancshares, a new bank created from the merger of five banks, in New Haven, Co

Kenneth J. Roberts is chairman and CEO of Lippincott Mercer.

Frederick W. Smith is chairman and CEO of FedEx, based in Memphis.

Bruce Stevens is president of Steinway & Sons pianos, in Long Island City, N.Y

Richard C. Vie is chairman and CEO of Unitrin insurance company, based in Chicago.

Sanford Weill is chairman of Citigroup, based in New York

Defending a Brand Isn’t Easy.
When Bruce Stevens moved from Polaroid to become president and chief executive of Steinway & Sons in 1985, the 40-year-old Iowa native took charge of an iconic American brand that had been in existence for 132 years. From Manhattan to Moscow, the name Steinway triggered thoughts of “top quality piano” and “concert hall quality.” And there was a good reason. Virtually every top pianist in the world performed on a Steinway piano.

But the decade before Stevens took over had not been stellar for Steinway. The company had been acquired from the Steinway family by CBS in 1972. Henry Z. Steinway, the fourth generation of family members who had run the company, remained president through the mid-’70s but after he retired, there was a succession of CBS executives at the helm. By 1984, CBS had, according to Stevens, “seen the light” and decided to divest the musical instrument manufacturing businesses it had acquired.

The fact that Steinway was on the market put the company in limbo for a full year. Not knowing who was going to acquire the company or when, Steinway dealers put orders on hold and inventories mounted. The 1,100 employees, from skilled craftsmen to office workers in the Long Island City, N.Y., and Hamburg, Germany, facilities, began to sense a drift. Stevens, upon his arrival after a leveraged buyout, found swelling inventories, stagnant cash flow, dealer inertia, quality questions and pressure to move the merchandise as quickly as possible to get the cash flowing.

But instead of focusing on short-term solutions, Stevens began to lead the company on a slow, methodical climb back to stability. He ordered every piano in stock unboxed and inspected. He carefully examined the sales structure and eventually trimmed dealer ranks by two-thirds. With the exclusive Steinway dealers in key cities remaining, he began a process of orchestrating the sales process, providing written guidelines covering everything from opening the door in the morning to turning off the lights at night. Reorchestrating Steinway’s marketing took five years.
Another major challenge, however, began to emerge—Steinwaylacked entry-level and mid-level pianos, so its dealers would stock less expensive pianos from other manufacturers to satisfy lower price points. It would have been suicide to slap the Steinway name on an entry-level piano, the company concluded. “There is no such thing as a cheaper Steinway,” Stevens says.
To fill this need, the company agonized about how to create new lower-priced brands that would leverage some of the strength of the Steinway brand, but not tarnish it. The result was “Boston, designed by Steinway.” “The angst that we went through when we came out with the Boston brand in 1991, it was the damndest thing I’ve ever seen,”’ Stevens recalls. “We came so close to not doing it for fear of hurting the golden success of the Steinway brand.”

But it worked so well for the mid-level Boston brand that the company also created an entry-level “Essex, designed by Steinway” brand in 2000, with an even lower price point. Both the Boston and Essex pianos are manufactured in Japan for customers who can’t afford $40,000 to $100,000 for one of the 4,500 “real” Steinway pianos produced each year. “‘Designed by Steinway’ has provided tremendous value in selling these instruments through our exclusive channels against the Asian product onslaught over the past five to 10 years,” Stevens says.
And the future? Steinway & Sons opened a Shanghai operation two years ago, and Stevens sees markets in Asia as the major area of future growth, especially China. With the present sales breakdown of 65 percent in the U.S. and 35 percent in the rest of the world, he sees these statistics flipping in the next 10 years, driven by Chinese demand.

He will develop the new Chinese business the same way he presently runs Steinway & Sons—slowly and carefully. Stevens sees the most important parts of brand stewardship and maintaining brand equity as resisting the pressure to do things quickly. “Every day we concentrate on keeping a steady hand on the tiller and not doing anything stupid,” he says. “And we always take the long-term view. Short-term solutions usually breed more short-term solutions. It’s like a drug. With a brand like Steinway, long-term strategy is the only way to go.”

Plan Today for an Unexpected Tomorrow

You need people ready to lead. But in an era of continual job hopping and constant change, how do you approach succession planning? Successful companies don't view it as a matter of executive replacement—it's one of leadership development.

By Shari Caudron

On April 3, a U.S. delegation of business executives led by Commerce Secretary Ron Brown was en route to Dubrovnik, Croatia, when its storm-lashed plane crashed into a hillside killing all aboard. On that plane was Barry Conrad, chairman and chief executive officer of the Barrington Group, a seven-month-old international resort management firm based in Miami. His company had no executive succession plan. "Barry was the brains of the company, and his death was devastating to us," explains Natalie Conrad, who is not only advertising manager of the fledgling company, but also Conrad's daughter. Twenty-four hours after employees confirmed Conrad was on the plane, the company lawyer was named acting president. "We had to name someone to run the company because the company would continue to run," Natalie explains. "People have jobs, projects are under way, the press was calling. We had to put someone in charge." Although the Barrington Group is now involved in a painful search for Conrad's replacement, "it will probably take three or four people to fill his shoes," she says.
Twelve other companies lost high-ranking executives on that plane, including AT&T, Bechtel, Asea Brown & Boveri and Parsons Corp. to name a few. Although larger and more established than the Barrington Group, these companies faced similar leadership issues—namely, how to reassure shareholders that the company's finances won't suffer and how to keep the business running smoothly.
While the plane crash on its own should serve as a wake-up call to businesses that are operating with out-dated or nonexistent executive-succession plans, death and disaster are not the only reasons HR professionals need to be concerned. A whole host of events—organizational restructuring, downsizing, acquisitions and management turnover—are having a profound effect on the way companies fill senior-executive positions. HR professionals have a major role here: They must act as guides and consultants to their organizations as they head into a new era of succession planning. The future of their companies depend on this.
As Corporate America has changed, so must its succession planning.Despite the vital importance of succession planning, few companies today do it well, according to William J. Rothwell, author of "Effective Succession Planning" ((c) 1994, AMACOM Books, New York, New York). "Succession planning has become very complex in today's ever-changing environment, and most companies don't want to spend the time to do it right." A 1996 survey on succession planning by Chicago-based Foresight Survey Systems International underscores the problem: Only 22% of more than 500 participants responded favorably to the statement, "My organization has a well-developed management succession system." (See "Succession Planning Suffers From Inattention.")
In the old days—say, before 1985—succession plans were nothing more than simple replacement plans. If an executive died or resigned unexpectedly, companies could easily look below that person's name on the organizational chart and come up with a list of potential successors. In the days of structured career ladders, stable workforces and unchanging corporate goals, replacing an executive was relatively easy.
But today, companies are being continually reinvented to stay alive. Not knowing what type of business an organization will be in five years from now makes it impossible to determine who its best leaders will be. Even if executives could determine their potential successors, downsizing makes it impossible to predict whether those employees will still be around in the future.
Add to this the fact that companies are hesitant to do anything implying long-term employment, and you begin to understand why succession planning has become so complex. "Companies that have gone through downsizing tend to eliminate their succession and career-development plans because they don't want to send mixed messages to employees," says Rothwell.
Because of all this, succession planning has evolved into an ongoing process of finding and developing a pool of leaders who can meet both the organization's current and future success needs—regardless of what those needs might be. According to a 1994 Conference Board report on succession planning, the three most important objectives of the succession-planning process today are:
Ensuring leadership continuity
Identifying gaps in capabilities, future skills and management development processes
Maximizing and diversifying the pool of executive candidates.
American Greetings Corp. models modern succession planning.American Greetings Corp., based in Cleveland, Ohio, has a succession process that exemplifies what more companies should be doing—its strategy meets all three of the Conference Board objectives. As Harvey Levin, senior vice president of HR, explains: "Our succession-planning process is more about executive development about looking at the competencies we need to develop to make people effective in both their future and current jobs."
At American Greetings, a four-person team that includes Levin, the CEO, the president and the staff director of development comprises the executive-development committee. "We don't even call it succession planning anymore," Levin explains. This committee is charged with identifying high-potential candidates for the company's top three levels of management. This includes approximately 125 senior vice presidents, vice presidents and executive directors.
Informally, and on an ongoing basis, each of these officers recommends to the committee four or five lower-level employees who show good leadership potential. The recommendations aren't taken at face value, however. Officers are challenged to provide evidence that the individuals have high potential in the organization. Under the direction of HR, the committee then reviews each individual's set of competencies, determined by multisource assessments and other performance reviews. The employees' competencies are then compared against the competencies HR has determined are necessary for company leaders.
Any weaknesses or gaps are then addressed through developmental tasks created by the committee. For example, if a high-potential employee is shown to lack decisiveness, HR will design a project that forces the employee to develop better decision-making skills. The employee must then give a presentation to the executive-development committee about the results of the special project. "This also helps to increase that person's visibility among top managers," Levin says.
Does the company take into account individual goals? "Yes," Levin says. "We interview every high-potential employee to determine what they like and dislike about their jobs and what their individual goals are." But even if the employee claims to have no interest in advancement, the developmental plan is put into place. "You never know how the person might feel in the future," Levin says. "The lack of ambition could be temporary. For instance, maybe the [employee] has kids in school. Besides, our most important objective is to make these high-potential employees more effective in the jobs they already have."
The talent-pool strategy works on several levels.The succession-planning approach used by American Greetings provides the kind of flexibility necessary to meet changing business needs. Why? Because instead of naming just one or two potential successors for each executive position, the company is more concerned with developing a pool of qualified leaders. According to Helen Axel, author of the Conference Board report, this is called the "talent-pool" approach to succession planning.
"Because companies don't know what positions will exist in the future, it makes more sense to develop a number of high-potential candidates who can take over a broad range of roles," she says. This not only creates a larger pool of employees who are prepared to step into leadership positions at a moment's notice, but also gives employees a sense there are greater opportunities ahead. "Although companies can't promise lifetime employment anymore, it's still important that they develop employees," Axel says. "Competition for leadership talent is so great that high-potential employees must be given a reason to stick around."
Talent pools also help companies avoid the sticky issue of whether to tell employees they have been designated as potential successors. According to the Conference Board report, although a relatively large number of companies appear willing to allow informal communications with successors about their prospects in an organization, very few think it's a good idea to openly discuss designated succession plans with candidates. C. Richard Coffey, senior vice president of HR at New York City-based Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, argues in the report that discretion is appropriate to avoid disappointments. Because employees who are part of talent pools are being groomed for a variety of leadership positions, not just one or two jobs, it's easy to avoid the issue altogether.
Talent pools based on leadership competencies have one other advantage: They help companies endure, and possibly even thrive, during constant restructuring. For instance, American Greetings recently purchased an Australian company that has $100 million in annual sales. The parent company is in need of an executive who can immediately relocate to Australia and handle such a large enterprise. Because the company constantly is surveying and developing high-potential candidates, the task will be relatively easy. "Jobs may change constantly, but leadership characteristics don't change much," explains Levin.
HR is crucial in the new succession planning.As American Greetings' process indicates, HR executives have several key roles to play in developing succession plans. Chief among them is providing the methods and tools by which companies can identify, assess and develop high-potential leaders. "HR should be the facilitator, coach and consultant for the succession process," says Dennis Levengood, director of executive development at K-Mart Corp., based in Troy, Michigan. But, he stresses, "the process needs to be owned by line management." In other words, line managers are the ones ultimately responsible for identifying and developing high-potential candidates, using tools provided by HR.
Despite the need for ownership by line management, succession planning represents yet another opportunity for HR executives to become strategic bottom-line partners with management. After all, what's more important, from a human resources standpoint, than ensuring leadership quality and continuity in an organization?
HR professionals should not only advocate succession planning in companies that have neglected such plans, but also lead the process by integrating succession planning with the entire HR strategy. How? Rothwell suggests the following in his book "Effective Succession Planning":
Examine existing HR programs such as selection, training, compensation and benefits against succession-planning needs.
Ensure managers give specific consideration to the long-term retention and development of high-potential employees.
Identify HR practices that could encourage or that presently discourage effective succession planning.
Identify any disincentives that exist to dissuade employees from wanting to accept promotions or assume leadership roles.
After thoroughly reviewing HR practices—including compensation, recruitment and performance reviews—Rothwell suggests taking active steps to ensure these practices do not impede, but rather facilitate, long-term efforts to groom internal leadership talent.
As you may have already detected, executive succession planning is really no different than employee development at any other level in the company. Most employees work with their supervisors to determine annual growth objectives and have some idea of the positions they may be groomed for. What makes executive succession planning more challenging is that some upper-level employees think once they've achieved a certain position, development no longer is necessary. "It's important to have a culture in which everybody is encouraged to keep growing—even the vice presidents," says Levin from American Greetings. "Even the members of our executive-development team pursue developmental tasks."
When done right, succession planning is a process, not an event. Succession plans are living documents that take into account unexpected and constantly changing business needs, whether they result from the acquisition of a new company, the retirement of a key vice president, the extension of an existing product line or the death of an executive.
As Barry Conrad's daughter Natalie explains: "After what we've gone through, I recommend that every company take the time to develop a structured succession plan. Those first few weeks after Barry's death were extremely difficult to get through. We never knew what would come flying through the window at us." If any good came out of the crash in Croatia, it's that it underscores the importance of planning ahead. The unexpected can—and does—occur at all companies throughout Corporate America, but organizations that are prepared can rise above it.

Personnel Journal, September 1996, Vol. 75, No. 9, pp. 40-45.

Shari Caudron is a contributor to Workforce Management and author of What Really Happened, a collection of stories about the lessons life teaches you when you least expect it. Her Web site is www.sharicaudron.com. To comment on Workforce Management articles, e-mail editors@workforce.com

A Good Leader Inspires Followers
by Harvey Mackay

Every election year we have a remarkable opportunity to make things better. And those of us who take the time to vote help make some serious decisions in this country. Now stick with me here, I know this isn't an election year, but with all of the political unrest in our country and the world, it gives you pause to stop and think. Right now the word we hear over and over again is leadership - who is better at it; who has the better plans; and who can assemble the masses and try to reach some agreement on how to progress.

Leadership is critical at every level of business as well as government. John Brock, who teaches leadership classes at the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University, shared a list of thirteen principles of leadership he adapted from the United States Military Academy, and I think he's dead on. Can you identify these traits in your management? Could your management team win a re-election if business was structured that way?

1. Know yourself and seek self-improvement.
2. Be technically and tactically proficient.
3. Seek responsibility and take responsibility for your actions.
4. Make sound and timely decisions.
5. Set the example.
6. Know your employees and look out for their well-being.
7. Keep your employees well informed.
8. Develop a sense of responsibility in your subordinates. 9. Insure that the task is understood, supervised and accomplished.
10. Train your employees as a team.
11. Employ your team in accordance with its capabilities.
12. Set your priorities.
13. Take the initiative.

What I like most about this list is its simplicity. It cuts through the doubletalk that so often disguises incompetence. It leaves little room for misinterpretation. You are either following the rules or you're failing as a leader. Case closed.

Brock maintains that all great leaders have four common characteristics:
bedrock principles,
a moral compass,
vision and
the ability to form a consensus.

I couldn't agree more.

The minute you compromise your principles, you lose respect. That goes hand-in-hand with the moral compass, I think. Knowing and doing what is correct even when it may be unpopular or perhaps unprofitable requires a strong character. Keep your moral compass pointed straight ahead and you will never have to apologize for your actions.

General Robert E. Lee, widely respected for his military and personal leadership, summed it up: "You have only always to do what is right. It will become easier by practice, and you enjoy in the midst of your trials the pleasure of an approving conscience."

Vision is a little harder to acquire. I firmly believe it is an acquired skill. You can train yourself to see what's ahead and determine an appropriate response and plan of action.

Consensus building used to be simpler, when competition wasn't as cutthroat and civility ruled. That's not the world we live in now, and the gauntlet has been thrown down. You need only look at the hostile political climate for a prime example of the difficulty in reaching agreement. But this trait, possibly more than the others, is what defines a leader. Dwight Eisenhower, who led our army and the country, advised, "You do not lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership."

Through example and information, finding common ground is a very rewarding accomplishment - a win-win situation for all. Consider the story of Christopher Columbus.

His crew became discouraged and threatened rebellion as they searched for the New World. They wanted to turn back, citing their voyage a "fool's errand." Columbus was undeterred, but attempted to reach a compromise: If they would be patient and faithful for just three more days, he would agree to abandon the search unless they had discovered land.

From history, you know how that story ended. I'm adding one more trait that I find central to leadership, the ability to maintain your perspective. I remember hearing the story of how the Roman emperors handled Roman generals returning victorious from battles. The generals were welcomed in grand parades that featured their soldiers, all the wealth they acquired, and the prisoners they captured. Accompanying the generals in their golden chariots was a slave, who in the midst of the celebrations would whisper in the generals' ear, "Remember, you are a mortal man, all glory is fleeting."

Mackay's Moral: True leadership must exist for the benefit of the followers, not the enrichment of the leaders.

Harvey Mackay is the author of the New York Times #1 bestsellers Swim With The Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive and Beware the Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt. Both books are among the top 15 inspirational business books of all time, according to the New York Times. T

"The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it."

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

DREAM:

“A dream is a complete moment in the life of a client. Important experiences that tempt the client to commit substantial resources. The essence of the desires of the consumer. The opportunity to help clients become what they want to be.”

—Gian Luigi Longinotti-Buitoni

Quote du jour"

Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil; our great hope lies in developing what is good."
--Calvin Coolidge

Growth is not steady, forward, upward progression. It is instead a switchback trail; three steps forward, two back, one around the bushes, and a few simply standing, before another forward leap.
--- Dorothy Corkville Briggs

Are You a Sales Leader or a Sales Chaser?
by Jeffrey Gitomer

I grew up in Haddonfield, New Jersey. We lived at the corner of the busiest intersection in town. I was 15 years old when we got a puppy named "Thing-a-majig." The cutest, friendliest puppy you ever saw.

One morning, about a week later, I opened the front door to get the paper -- and the puppy got loose. She started running as fast as she could -- right for the traffic. I started chasing her -- hopelessly for five blocks, across busy streets -- my little dog was gone -- I was panicked (and out of breath). I decided to run back home, and ask my dad to use the car and find the dog. I ran straight to my parents bedroom. "Dad -- dad," I panted, "The -- dog's -- run -- away -- car -- chase -- it!" "OK son," he said," "Let's jump in the car and find your puppy."

I turned to run out the door -- and I tripped over the dog. As soon as I started to run the other way, the dog chased me!Chasing your prospect too hard? Try running the other way -- let the prospect chase you. It's the best follow up technique I've ever experienced.

Here's three ways to get them to follow you...

1. Create a sense of urgency by telling a compelling story. A story about achievement lost because of delay. Hint at a solution. Let them think about it.

2. Give just a little information (one potato chip) about how they benefit. Things the prospect can put into his life that he's currently without. Ask them to take some action to get the reward or answer.

3. Give information about their "why" -- or what you believe to be their hottest reason for purchasing. Offer a solution. Something better than they have now. Something that makes them slightly uncomfortable about their present situation - that makes you look like a blessing.

WARNING SIGNAL:
If prospects are not returning your call -- whose fault is that? You're chasing too hard. They're running away. You couldn't get their interest -- you couldn't get them to chase you.Other tell-tale symptoms that the chase is going the wrong way:

• You've followed up a few times, and now you're searching for a reason to call them -- but you can't think of one.

• You're uncomfortable about calling. You are unprepared, or you have not established the needs of the prospect and are unsure of their status, or you don't have much rapport with the prospect, or some of each.

• The prospect is giving you a bunch of lame excuses. And worse than that, is you accepting them.If chasing people too hard makes them run away, why are you continuing to do it? The way I got my puppy-dog to come home was -- I led the dog home.Your challenge is to lead your prospects so they will follow you -- and turn into customers.

Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Knock Your Socks off Selling and Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless.

The Secret Life
by Stephen R. Covey

The secret life is the key to a quality life and that in turn is the key to a quality culture, products, and services. Once in New York City, I attended the Broadway play, The Secret Garden.

The play was particularly poignant for me that evening because my mother had just died. The Tony Award winning musical is the story of a young girl whose mother and father die of cholera in India as the play begins. She is sent to live with her uncle in a large British manor. The old house is filled with romantic spirits. As the restless girl explores the grounds of the estate, she discovers the entrance to the magical secret garden, a place where anything is possible. When she first enters the garden, she finds that it appears to be dead, much like her cousin, a bedridden boy, and her uncle, still haunted by memories of his lovely wife who died giving birth to the boy.

In harmony with natural laws and principles, the girl faithfully plants seeds and brings new life to the garden. As the roots are warmed and the garden cultivated, she brings about a dramatic transformation of her entire culture within one season.

In my many years of teaching and training, I have seen several such transformations brought about by proactive people who exercise principle-centered leadership and the Seven Habits in their secret, private, and public lives.

When I returned home to Salt Lake City the next day to speak at my mother's funeral, I referred to the Secret Garden, because for me and many others, my mother's home was a secret garden where we could escape and be nurtured by positive affirmation. In her eyes, all about us was good, and all that was good was possible.

Our Three Lives

We all live three lives: public, private and secret.

In our public lives, we are seen and heard by colleagues, associates, and others within our circle of influence.

In our private lives, we interact more intimately with spouses, family members, and close friends.

The secret life is where your heart is, where your real motives are the ultimate desires of your life.

Many executives never visit the secret life. Their public and private lives are essentially scripted by who and what precedes and surrounds them or by the pressures of the environment. And so they never exercise that unique endowment of self-awareness the key to the secret life where you can stand apart from yourself and observe your own involvement.

Courage is required to explore our secret life because we must first withdraw from the social mirror, where we are fed positive and negative feedback continuously. As we get used to this social feedback, it becomes a comfort zone.

And we may opt to avoid self-examination and idle away our time in a vacuum of reverie and rationalization. In that frame of mind, we have little sense of identity, safety, or security.

Examine Your Motives

The most critical junctures in my life take place when I visit my secret life and ask,
"What do I think?
What do I believe is right?
What should my motives be?"

These are times when I choose my motives. One such time occurred when I first heard Dag Hammarskjold say, "It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual, than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses."

That statement had such a profound effect on me that I started to say to myself in regard to my relationships with other people, "Wait a minute it's my life. I can choose whether I want to make reconciliation with this person or not. I can choose my own motives."

One of the exciting fruits of the "secret garden" is an ability to consciously choose your own motives. Until you choose your own motives, you really can't choose to live your own life. Everything flows out of motive and motivation that is the root of our deepest desires.

Now, when I get into a frustrating or perplexing situation, I enter into my secret life. That's where I find not only motives but also correct principles; that's where the inner wisdom is. As I learn to be proactive in exploring the secret life, I tap into self-awareness, imagination, conscience, and into the exercise of free will to choose another motive.

People who regularly explore their secret life and examine their motives are better able to see into the hearts of others, practice real empathy, bestow real empowerment and affirm worth and identity.

A healthy secret life will benefit your private and public lives in many ways. For example, when I'm preparing to give a speech, I read aloud a favorite discourse on faith hope and charity because it helps me to purify my motive. I lose all desire to impress. My only desire is to bless.

And when I go to a public setting with that motive, I have great confidence and inner peace. I feel more love for the people and feel much more authentic myself. Executives who attend our leadership training in the mountain setting of Sundance often tell me, "This is the first time in many years that I've done any soul searching. I've seen myself as if for the first time, and I've resolved that my life is going to be different. I'm going to be true to what I really believe."

Recently, many people have written me to say, "Your habits and principles have made the difference. I'd never really thought about some of them before, but I resonate with them." That's because these principles are found in people's secret life. And yet most of us spend our busy days privately doing our thing, never pausing long enough to enter the secret life, the secret garden, where we can create masterpieces, discover great truths and enhance very aspect of our public and private lives. Having a healthy secret life is the key to having a quality private and public life, as well as a quality culture, product or service.

Dr. Covey is the author of several acclaimed books, including the international bestseller, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It has sold more than 15 million copies in 38 languages throughout the world. His most recent release, The 8th Habit, has also been an instant best-seller. To order Dr. Covey's New Release, "The 8th Habit" as an Individual Set (contains one DVD and one CD of the speakers 'live' performance) at a special offer of only $39, or to view and learn more about The Complete Ultimate Collection for Entrepreneurs and Sales Professionals -- including Jim Rohn, Jeffrey Gitomer, Brian Tracy, John Gray, Connie Podesta, Stephen Covey, Les Brown, Harvey Mackay, Tom Peters and More! (all 10 Sets of DVD/CD packages) scroll down to #4 or go to http://dvdset.yoursuccessstore.com or call 877-929-0439. Copyright 1996, 2005 Covey Leadership Center and FranklinCovey. All rights reserved.
"Nothing needs reforming so much as other people's habits." Mark Twain

3M's Seven Pillars of Innovation
It may be 104 years old, but the company churns out cutting-edge products like a brash new startup. Here are the secrets of its success


After more than a century in business, it would be understandable for a company to run out of fresh ideas. But 3M (MMM ) is still at it, at age 104. The manufacturing conglomerate -- an abrasives maker that broke out by inventing masking tape in 1925 -- is introducing new products as if it were a startup. The latest: Post-it Picture Paper. Rolled out nationally this spring, the product marries the adhesives of 3M's iconic sticky notes with photo paper so consumers can print digital snapshots at home and slap them up on the fridge or any other flat surface. Moreover, the company already is testing its next Post-it extension: stickable index cards. "The innovation machine remains strong," observes analyst Mark Gulley of Soleil Securities Group in New Canaan, Conn. Indeed, 3M is third in this year's BusinessWeek ranking of the world's most innovative companies, based on a global survey of top executives. It finished second in 2005.

BREAKING IT DOWN. So how does an old company stay so inventive? Larry Wendling, vice-president of 3M's corporate research labs at its St. Paul (Minn.) campus, thinks he knows. In fact, Wendling, an engineer who joined 3M right out of graduate school in 1977, has boiled it down to a seven-point list.

You might call it
The Seven Habits of Highly Innovative Corporations

1. From the chief executive on down, the company must be committed to innovation. One sure way to show that is with money. In 2005, 3M spent $1.24 billion on research and development, or 6% of its $21.2 billion in revenue. That's an unusually high amount for an industrial manufacturer. And of that R&D outlay, a fifth went to basic research or pursuits that have no immediate practicality. "If you're going to be an innovative company," Wendling says, "organic growth and new products have to be what drives the company."

2. The corporate culture must be actively maintained. Though 3M has had a new CEO every five years on average over the past 40 years, the philosophy of William L. McKnight, its inspirational leader from 1929 to 1966, is passed along by old-timers like Wendling to every new scientist or engineer. In a nutshell: "Hire good people and let them do their job in their own ways. And tolerate mistakes." Newcomers also quickly learn the stories of how 3M developed the first audio tapes, for instance, or Scotchgard. Tribes and peoples keep their cultures alive through oral histories; so does 3M.

3. Innovation is impossible without a broad base of technology. For instance, 3M claims to have leading know-how in 42 diverse technologies. That allows researchers to take an idea from one realm and apply it to another. For example, 3M scientists have used a technology behind layered plastic lenses to make more durable abrasives, more reflective highway signs, and golf gloves that allow you to get a tighter grip without squeezing as hard. Companies that remained "unidimensional," as Wendling puts it, typically run out of ideas after their first success.

4. Talk, talk, talk. Management at 3M has long encouraged networking -- formal and informal -- among its researchers. Wendling calls this 3M's secret weapon. The scientists themselves formed an organization called the Technical Forum in 1951. It invites all of the company's 9,700 R&D personnel to an annual symposium, where everyone can see what everyone else is working on. Labs also host their own conferences and Webcasts and elect representatives to a governing body to set policy. The formal structure enables researchers to get to know one another informally, as well, so they know whom to call for advice or to team up with on a project.

5. Set individual expectations and reward employees for outstanding work. The folks who call themselves 3Mers take pride in discoveries that lead to real-world products. Management reinforces this by fostering a dual-career ladder so veteran researchers can continue to move up without becoming managers. It also honors hundreds of employees -- nominated and selected by their peers -- for scientific achievements every year. And it gives the top 20 overachievers and their spouses a four-day holiday at 3M's corporate retreat in Grand Rapids, Minn.

6. Quantify efforts. 3M tallies how much of its revenue comes from products introduced in the past four years to judge whether its R&D money is being spent wisely. That way management can assess which lab is hitting its mark and which may be falling short. After reviewing its data, the company centralized basic research from 14 centers around the world to its headquarters campus in 2003.

7. Research must be tied to the customer. Employees spend a lot of time with customers to understand what their needs are so they can go back to the labs to come up with valuable products. The Post-it Photo Paper came out of such research. While digital photography is easy, 3M researchers learned that most people store their images on a computer, which means they might have to scroll through them all to find a particular shot. And if consumers do print out their favorites, they often stuff them in a drawer, where they're just as hard to find. The solution: Photos that are as easy to display as a Post-it note. Of course, results will vary. Still, Wendling says his points have made the difference at 3M. "We do think innovation is more than an accident," he says, "and that you can create the environment for innovation by paying attention to these seven things."

Change Management - 6 Steps to Success

Change management is not a process that is mastered easily. We have found these six items the most important steps on the road to successful change management.
By Dennis Sommer, PMP



1. Involve Business Users
IT employees should be physically located in the same are as the business users. The IT employee will learn as much about the business as the business users themselves.

2. Align IT and Business Users
Business users should be involved in the project from the first discussions of a new system or product. They should remain involved throughout until project closure.

3. Make Everyone Accountable
Everyone has a role in the change management process. Make sure these roles are defined, accountability is assigned, and the action items are monitored and managed.

4. Think Like a User
IT employees think like engineers, technical and structured. They need to start thinking like the business user as they work on new system designs and processes together.

5. Provide Tools and Best Practices
Minor issues and mistakes will become major problems at the end of a project. Give your organization the methods, approaches, best practices, and templates, that are proven and easy to use. These tools will lower the risk of major problems occurring and improve quality.

6. Advertise Successes
Business users willing to spend long hours and assume a lot of risk being part of a new system or product should be rewarded. Promote these employees in newsletters, industry articles, and post project parties

Issue 339 - May 9, 2006


"Where you start in the marketplace is not where you have to stay." Jim Rohn

Today's issue includes:
1. Let It Be You by Jim Rohn
2. Vitamins for the Mind - Values by Jim Rohn
3. Persistence by Bob Proctor
4. 10 Great Graduation and/or Mother's/Father's Day Gift-Giving Ideas (and for yourself)!
5. Jim Rohn Testimonials - May 2 - May 8, 20066. More Information

1. Let It Be You by Jim Rohn
Each and every day, there are people all around the country and world who are living their dreams. Millionaires are made every day. Families are experiencing tremendous relationships. People are becoming more and more healthy. Life-long learners are growing intellectually and improving their chances for success.
The fact is that living the life of your dreams is possible. People prove that every day. Someone somewhere is going to get rich, get healthy and improve their life. My recommendation is this: Let it be you!

Have you ever wanted to make more money?
Have you ever looked at someone who has money and wished that it could be you?

People think about getting wealthy all of the time, when only a small percentage actually does. But any of the masses could.
Someone is going to start a business.
Someone is going to make a great investment.
Someone is going to begin the journey to great wealth.
So why not let it be you?

Someone is going to decide to improve their relationships.
Someone is going to enjoy love with their family.
Someone is going to schedule some meaningful time with their friends.
So why not let it be you?

Someone is going to go back to school to improve their life.
Someone is going to become a life-long learner.
Someone is going to set a goal to read a book or listen to a CD each week for the next year.
So why not let it be you?

Someone is going to look in the mirror and see that they need to lose a little weight and they will make the decision to become healthy.
Someone will run their first marathon.
Someone will join an aerobics class and improve their health.
Why not let it be you?

I think that by now you get the point:
Everyday people are improving their lives. Whether you do or not doesn't matter to those who do. They are going to do it, regardless. It is simply a matter of a decision being made. Let that person be you!

You may be asking, "Okay Jim, but how?" Well, let's cover the very simple actions.

The first and most important is to make a commitment to work on yourself.
Are you going to improve or stay the same?
No matter what you have achieved, you are at a certain point right now.
What you have achieved in the past is fine, but it doesn't make a difference for the future. The decision about what you will become is made each day and every day. Each day someone is making the decision to better him or herself. Let that person be you!

The second is to make a plan. Once you have decided to become better you will have to have a plan. It doesn't have to be a long, intricate plan. It can be simple.
Save a dollar a day.
Walk a mile a day.
Read an article a day.
That is a simple plan with achievable goals.
Someone is going to develop a plan that will take them into the future of their dreams.
Let it be you!

The third is to begin to act. All of the great ideas, without action, become stale and useless. The key to turning dreams into reality is action. People who have great ideas are a dime a dozen. People who act on their dreams and ideas are the select few, but they are the ones who gain the wealth, wealth and wisdom that is available. Someone will act today. Let it be you.My encouragement to you is to stop looking at others who live the good life, wishing that you were as well, and instead begin to commit to your improvement, develop a plan and act on it. Someone is going to.
Let it be you!

To Your Success,Jim Rohn
This article is by Jim Rohn, author The Art of Exceptional Living and Leading an Inspired Life, two of ten of our 10 Great Graduation and/or Mother's/Father's Day Gift-Giving Ideas (and for yourself)!

2. Vitamins for the Mind by Jim Rohn

Values
The major value in life is not what you get. The major value in life is what you become. That is why I wish to pay fair price for every value. If I have to pay for it or earn it, that makes something of me. If I get it for free, that makes nothing of me.All values must be won by contest, and after they have been won, they must be defended.Don't sell out your virtue and your value for something you think you want. Judas got the money, but he threw it all away and hung himself because he was so unhappy with himself.Values were meant to be costly. If it doesn't cost much, we probably wouldn't appreciate the value.Count the cost first. Don't pay too big a price for pursuing minor values.

Vitamins for the Mind is a weekly sampling of original quotes, on a specific topic, taken from The Treasury of Quotes by Jim Rohn (TTOQ). TTOQ, a beautiful, burgundy hardbound book with gold foil lettering, is a collection of over 365 quotes on 60 topics gathered from Jim's personal journals, seminars and books spanning over 39 years. To order the TTOQ by Jim Rohn or Excerpts from TTOQ by Jim Rohn or Brian Tracy, please go to Jim Rohn's Online Catalog

3. Persistence by Bob Proctor
If you were to choose just one part of your personality to develop that would virtually guarantee your success, I'd like to suggest that you place persistence at the top of your list. Napoleon Hill, in his classic Think and Grow Rich felt so strongly about this subject, he devoted an entire chapter to it.
Hill suggested, "There may be no heroic connotation to the word persistence but the quality is to your character what carbon is to steel."

Think about it. If you took a quick mental walk down memory lane and reviewed some of your accomplishments in the past – large and small – you would have to agree that persistence played an important role in your success.

Napoleon Hill studied many of the world's most successful people. He pointed out the only quality he could find in Henry Ford, Thomas Edison or a host of other notable greats, that he could not find in everyone else was persistence.
What I found even more intriguing was the fact that Hill made comment of the fact that these individuals were often misunderstood to be ruthless or cold-blooded and that this misconception grew out of their habit of following through in all of their plans with persistence.

It's both interesting and sadly amusing to me that, as a society, we would be quick to criticize people for realizing they had an unshakeable power within them and were capable of overcoming any obstacle outside of them.
This power would ultimately move them toward a greater chance of achieving any goal they set for themselves!Milt Campbell is a good friend of mine. He and I have shared many hours together discussing the very topic of persistence.

Milt was a Decathlete in the Olympic Games held in Helsinki, Finland in 1952. His goal was to capture gold for the US. Unfortunately, another fierce competitor who had taken home the gold four years previous in London wasn't satisfied with one gold, Bob Mathias wanted two; Milt had to settle for silver. That did not deter Milt one bit. He had formed the habit of persistence and four years later in Melbourne, Australia, Milt won the gold medal, earning him the title of the greatest athlete in the world. On numerous occasions Milt has said, "There were many guys in school who were far better athletes than me, but they quit."

I can recount story after story about individuals who overcame obstacles so great, but only did so because they dared persist. These individuals are no different than you and I.Ultimately persistence becomes a way of life, but that is not where it begins.

To develop the mental strength – persistence - you must first want something. You have to WANT something so much that it becomes a heated desire... a passion in your belly. You must fall in love with that idea. Yes, literally fall in love with the idea and magnetize yourself to every part of the idea. At that point, persistence will be virtually automatic.

Persistence is a subject I have studied all of my adult life and I can tell you one thing I know for certain: very few people ever, mentally or verbally, say to themselves... this is what I really want and I am prepared to give my life for it, and thus, they never develop the persistence to achieve it.

Persistence is a unique mental strength; a strength that is essential to combat the fierce power of the repeated rejections and numerous other obstacles that sit in waiting and are all part of winning in a fast-moving, ever-changing world. As Napoleon Hill found out, there are hundreds of highly successful men and women who have cut a path for others to follow, while leaving their mark on the scrolls of history … and every one of these great individuals was persistent. In many cases it was the only quality that separated them from everyone else.It is generally believed that a lack of persistence is a consequence of a weak willpower. That is not true. A person could have a highly evolved willpower and still lack the persistence required to keep moving forward in life. In more cases than not, if a person lacks persistence, they do not have a goal that is worthy of them, a desirable goal that excites them to their very core.Though willpower is important in moving a person toward their goal, if there is ever a war between the will and the imagination, the imagination will win every time. What that means is: you're powered by desire and fuelled by the dream you hold.

Once you start to use your imagination to help you build a bigger picture of your dream, to define and refine it until you get it just right in your mind, the emotion that is triggered by that desire far outweighs any force that may be caused by sheer will alone.

I am not suggesting the will does not have to be developed, it does. It must become highly developed in order to direct you toward the image with which you are emotionally involved.Your intellectual factors hold the potential for enormous good when they are properly employed.
However, you must remember that everything has an opposite and any of your intellectual factors can turn, without warning, into destructive lethal enemies when they are directed toward results that are not wanted. It is easy to find individuals who are persistently doing what they don't want to do and achieving results that they do not want. A lack of persistence is not their problem; that person is persisting to their own detriment.

Ignorance and paradigms are the enemy that we must defeat. Everyone is persistent. Our objective must be to put persistence to work for us rather than against us.

Vision and desire have to be the focus of your attention if you're going to develop persistence into the great ally it can become.

Another excellent example of persistence was demonstrated when, in 1953, a beekeeper from Auckland, N.Z., Edmund Hillary and his native guide, Tenzing Norguay, became the first two people to climb Mt. Everest and return, after having tried and failed the two previous years.Hillary had two obvious character strengths that took him to the very top —- vision and desire. Even despite the seemingly insurmountable challenges, he had no trouble persisting with the strenuous acts that were required because every act was hooked into the image of him standing on top of the mountain. They were expressed because of his persistence, but he was persistent because he was emotionally involved with the image.
Without persistence, all his skills would have meant nothing. Persistence is an _expression of the mental strength that is essential in almost every profession, where repeated rejection and obstacles are part of a daily routine.

In closing, let me give you four relatively simple steps that will help you to turn persistence into a habit. These steps can be followed by virtually anyone.

1. Have a clearly defined goal. The goal must be something you are emotionally involved with, something you want very much. (In the beginning, you may not even believe that you can accomplish it -- the belief will come.)

2. Have a clearly established plan that you can begin working on immediately. (Your plan will very likely only cover the first and possibly the second stage of the journey to your goal. As you begin executing your plan, other steps required to complete your journey will be revealed at the right time.)

3. Make an irrevocable decision to reject any and all negative suggestions that come from friends, relatives or neighbors. Do not give any conscious attention to conditions or circumstances that appear to indicate the goal cannot be accomplished.

4. Establish a mastermind group of one or more people who will encourage, support and assist you wherever possible.What do you dream of doing with your life? Do it. Begin right now and never quit. There is greatness in you. Let it out. Be persistent.

For 40 years, Bob Proctor has focused his entire life and agenda around helping people create lives of prosperity, rewarding relationships and spiritual awareness. To order Bob Proctor's featured product, The Born Rich Learning System, in our 10 Great Graduation and/or Mother's/Father's Day Gift-Giving Ideas (and for yourself) or for a complete listing of our great gift ideas, scroll down to #4 below or visit http://gift.jimrohn.com/ or call 800-929-0434. Copyright 2003, 2006 LifeSuccess Productions.
"Don't just let your business or your job make something for you; let it make something of you." Jim Rohn

4. 10 Great Graduation and/or Mother's/Father's Day Gift-Giving Ideas (and for yourself)!
10 Great Graduation and/or Mother's/Father's Day Gift-Giving Ideas (and for yourself)!Perfect for Mother's Day includes -Twelve Pillars by Jim Rohn & Chris Widener,The Angel Inside by Chris Widener andThe Seeds of Greatness Treasury by Denis WaitleyPerfect for that upcoming new graduate includes -Leading an Inspired Life by Jim Rohn orSafari to the Soul by Denis Waitleyand much more including a Bonus CDSpecial Pricing for a Limited Time Visit - http://gift.jimrohn.com/

"Whether you stay six weeks, six months or six years, always leave it better than you found it." Jim Rohn

5. Jim Rohn Testimonials - May 2 - May 8, 2006
Here are some of the dozens of testimonials and comments we received over the past week from E--zine subscribers. To read more recent testimonials and the over 2500 we have received from readers over the past year, please go to: http://www.jimrohn.com

Thanks for all the great information....about life!-- Dorinda Conroy
Thanks again, Crystal.
I am sure your company tells you this all the time but I simply want to say how efficient, organized and effective you have been in our dealings over the last few days. A big well done and thank you from me.-- Gary W. Harris
I have ordered most of Jim Rohn's resources in the last few years and have gone through the One Year Success Plan. I have both his 2001 and 2004 Weekend Event resources. I have also given his books to most of my staff and introduced him to many of my friends who are now eternally grateful for the introduction. Please pass this message to Jim Rohn, that I have been much blessed by his mentoring through his ezine, DVDs and CDs. I have been training my staff using these resources. I am also bringing my top 15 leaders to Malaysia to learn from him in person and be inspired. -- Albert Teo

I have learned much from Jim over the last thirty plus years. We attended his Adventures In Achievement Seminars in Los Angeles 30 years ago. I still have the original tapes. Information is still relevant, the books and the tapes are still good. I have done some amazing things since I first listened to him and continue to make it a goal to one day meet him, shake his hand and thank him for being a part of my story. He is one of God's true gifts. There were probably hundreds, if not thousands of people that listened to J. Earl Shoaff...Jim had the unique ability to hear him. Thankfully, he had the vision and the ability to put into words the basics of life. You are fortunate to be able to work for such a great organization. Thank you for your response and for providing great products and services. -- Deb Jaeggi

Thank you E-zine readers, for the sincere and kind words of encouragement and appreciation you sent us this week! -- JRI

"We get paid for bringing value to the marketplace. It takes time to bring value to the marketplace, but we get paid for the value, not the time."Jim Rohn

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"Don't bring your need to the marketplace, bring your skill. If you don't feel well, tell your doctor, but not the marketplace. If you need money, go to the bank, but not the marketplace." Jim Rohn

Make it a Great Week!