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Integrated Broadband Services (IBBS) recently had me speak at their 2008 User Advisory Council meeting of their top clients.  They also asked me to facilitate a very candid and poignant Q&A session with their top executives.  Below is a kind note via LinkedIn® from one of their new customers, Steve Sizemore, Director of Advanced Services at CMA Communications.

Wonder,

At Relationship Economics®, we believe whether in a turbulent economy or otherwise, it’s our investments in the “favor economy” which will benefit all of us the most!  Check out Relationship Economics (Wiley, September 2008) for more actionable examples of quantifiable and strategic investment ideas in your most valuable business relationships.

what does your agenda says about your company meeting?

There are three types of relationships:

• Personal – These are your friends (golf buddies, neighbors, parents at kid’s school, etc.); they like your warts and all and you choose them, making them rather safe.
• Functional – These are people you work with to perform your job or realm of responsibilities.  You build relationships with them, often because you have to (colleagues, customers, suppliers, etc.). You don’t necessarily choose all of them, but because of the context of your relationship, likewise they feel fairly safe.

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Increasingly, I find myself working on various speaking, training and consulting engagements in Canada. During a recent dialogue with some colleagues and clients there, I asked about the health of their economy. One of the most interesting responses I heard was, “Unlike in the U.S., our media is not trying to drive us into a recession.”

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By Neal Gorenflo & David Nour

Many B2B sales organizations create separate roles for winning new accounts (hunting) and winning additional business from existing accounts (farming).  This can lead to little to no coordination between sales people.  This is a colossal blunder.  Why?

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Q - IT decision makers and project managers, CTOs, CEOs and CIOs complain that they can’t find enough candidates who understand business. Headhunters and HR people echo the same thoughts. But what exactly does that mean? It’s never defined. Does it have to mean an MBA, or are there certain cardinal business commandments the IT people ought to know?

A - Our team works with a number of professional service groups who recruit for technical skills and attempt to develop business acumen capabilities and competencies.  I also referenced this topic at my keynote to the National Association of State CIOs (NASCIO) recently.

Here are the top 5 aspects of “business acumen”:

1. Business Impact – all the technical skills in the world, won’t help you gauge the business impact of implementing that technology; how much will it cost, how long will it take, how to effectively prioritize limited resources, what-if scenarios, decision trees are all in this area; do you need an MBA – not necessarily – the school of hard knocks or really good mentors over a period of time will do; does an MBA help – absolutely!
2. Risk Mitigation – every decision has up and downside; how savvy are you in taking calculated risk while you mitigate the downside; how well do you anticipate worst case scenarios and contingency plans; how prepared are you in quickly addressing challenging situations – this is casually referred to as “being ahead of the ball.”
3. Credibility Dilution – every individual, team and organization begins their internal and external presence with a certain level of credibility; from there you have two options – you can build & nurture it, or you can dilute it; most managers are looking for, first and foremost, the latter; the former is a nice to have and very characteristic of high performers.
4. Engage & Influence – communication, presentation and business networking / relationship building skills are a means to an end – to engage and influence others, often without authority; as a project or program manager, how can you get that VP to listen to and prioritize that which is critical to your success?
5. X-Factor – I’ve been at this for a while and although we’ve been able to assess a great deal in individuals and teams, there is still a certain “x-factor” that some technical – even business folks have that others simply don’t!  You can’t teach professional pride; you can’t teach life-long learning mindset; you can’t teach “relationship intelligence.”  This is the single biggest differentiator between high performers and high potentials.

What do you think?  Any others to add?

Have you ever heard of the company Threadless? They’re the classic case of applying key principals in my upcoming book: Relationship Economics (Wiley, 2008).  When it comes to building business relationships, Threadless is the epitome of the intentional, strategic, and thus quantifiable value of social networks.  Forget LinkedIn® for handshakes and introductions - this is Adaptive Innovation™ at work!

Threadless manages to solve business problems by consistently producing highly creative, profitable products month after month with no advertising, no professional designers, no sales force, and no retail distribution. They have been able to dramatically rethink and reposition their long-term relationship with their customers by blurring the line between producers and consumers.

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