The rapid pace of change in business, and the need for speed and agility in managing change, requires grit and resilience. A good way to marshal that grit and resilience is to mirror how top salespeople operate.

In order to influence the changes needed within your organization to meet the needs of the markets you serve in the face of supply chain disruptions, inflation, labor shortages, global macro market trends and environmental, social and governance compliance, consider developing a growth mindset based on the behaviors and techniques of the best salespeople.  

We often think of salespeople as being slick, cunning and unwilling to take “no” for an answer in their quest to close the deal. But in reality the opposite is true. Top salespeople score high in modesty and humility. They’re team oriented and have high levels of attentiveness, a strong sense of duty and are extremely reliable — all of which enable them to build credibility with customers. They’re focused on achievement and continuously measure performance in comparison to their goals. Further, they’re curious and ask questions to get the information they need in order to match capabilities to customer needs. True, they may not be easily discouraged, yet they can handle emotional disappointments, bounce back from losses and mentally prepare for the next opportunity.  

Such agility and resilience are important behaviors for all business leaders responding to a fast-changing world.  

Early in my career I was trained in a consultative style of selling, called “Need Satisfaction Selling.” It’s an approach based on the notion of engaging customers to find out their needs, and then providing a differentiated solution to satisfy them. Alongside my need to master this selling style, I also needed to influence change internally within the company. This approach helped me to lead cross functional teams in defining needs and finding solutions that we could then propose to managers — and all the way up to the board of directors.  

Utilizing the strategies of Need Satisfaction Selling, I was able to not only hone my salesmanship abilities, but also contribute value-adding system changes that led to promotions, and eventually landed me in the C-suite. Since serving as CEO in different companies, I’ve made Need Satisfaction Selling and the behaviors that underpin it a core part of the business culture within the companies I’ve run.  

The theory of Need Satisfaction Selling is so powerful because it’s a simple and thoughtful process with three stages — need development, need identification and need satisfaction. The trick is learning and practicing the behaviors involved at each stage so that they become second nature.  

To acquire the agility and resilience needed as an effective business leader, refine these separate, yet complementary skills that drive the three stages of Need Satisfaction Selling:  

1. Engage in active listening to assist with need development. By asking open-ended questions and attentively listening to the customer’s (or team members’) responses, the salesperson or business leader is able to uncover the needs and potential roadblocks or limitations in the way. Open ended questions allow those being questioned to feel duly heard and enable them to air their anxieties, concerns and tensions that are getting in the way of their goals. By carefully listening and asking probing questions you gain insights. Using questions such as, “What is it that you’re trying to achieve?” or “I read your annual report and you discuss your sustainability goals; can you help us understand your strategy?” or “From what you know about us, how do you think we could best help you?” With these answers you can then follow up with more specific questions to narrow down and identify specific needs. 

2. Find agreement to facilitate need identification. In this stage, salespeople or leaders summarize what they heard to ensure agreement on the specific needs and why they’re important to address. This summing up is important in ascertaining mutual understanding. 

3. Influence solutions to arrive at need satisfaction. Influencing others is an art form. Sharpen it by applying active listening and agreement on needs to provide a meaningful solution that addresses the needs. Use facts and figures, as well as the overall benefits of the proposed solution. Be prepared to respond to any objections raised.  

Learning these skills increases the probability of successfully selling innovative solutions to customers or improved business processes to internal teams. The ability to make positive changes requires influencing outcomes. By knowing how to sell, leaders can influence the changes required to remain innovative and competitive. 

One of the greatest tactics a business can employ to ensure sustained success is to crack the mystery of choosing strong leaders. Strong leaders make the difference in many measures of success, such as financial results, employee recruitment and retention, development of talent, and consistent execution, among others.

Conversely, poor leaders have a toxic impact on people and results. The financial, strategic, and human costs of poor leadership are frankly staggering. Consider just the amount of money spent on helping leaders be better is somewhere in the neighborhood of $366 billion. The kicker is that those costs are unnecessary because much of that money is being spent on developing the wrong people!

But poor leadership is a rampant problem. Look around. We’re surrounded by inept, self-focused, under-skilled people in leadership roles. Even many HR practitioners have it wrong when they assert that their organizations are strong in choosing employees with the potential to be strong leaders. The results and people’s experiences simply don’t support this assertion.

The bottom line is organizations place too many leaders in roles that aren’t a fit. Fixing the issue of poor leaders requires that we solve the root cause. In essence, those in the position of determining strong potential leaders are inept at identifying the right people to become strong leaders. The process is widely treated as an imprecise art and processes are inconsistently applied. Tremendous variation exists in the way it’s done — even within the same organization, and in the same team! How can we develop a consistent, reliable, and robust pipeline of leaders that acquire important proficiencies at each leadership turn if everyone is using a different criterion? We can’t, and that’s a core piece of the problem. Not only are we looking for the wrong criteria, but the tremendous amount of variation further complicates the process.

How can we be better at identifying and cultivating potential leaders? How can organizational leaders ensure that those they are developing have the raw ingredients that will make them strong leaders?

A recommended difference-maker is to have a clear framework that drives the thinking and action steps for accurately determining leadership potential. One highly endorsed framework is the Leadership Blueprint developed by Alan Church and Rob Silzer (2014). This resource was constructed through a unique set of work that combined extensive academic research and compelling pragmatic experience. The Leadership Blueprint has three dimensions. The first considers leadership qualities that are largely unchangeable — intelligence and personality. In terms of intelligence, we can become more knowledgeable, but we can’t increase our cognitive skills. It’s essential to choose smart people to become leaders because the world only becomes more complex the more responsibilities they assume in an organization.

The second quality in this dimension, personality, is also largely considered fixed. Think about someone who is maniacal about details. That largely isn’t going to change. But that person will struggle as a leader to operate at the appropriate level. Other core derailing qualities are extreme selfishness, lack of focus, condescension, ineffective communicators, narcissism and other personality traits that cause employees’ frustration or harm. Yet many with traits such as these are placed in leadership roles.

If leadership candidates pass the blueprint’s first threshold, the next dimension considers their motivational levels and learning agility. These are two quintessential factors for leader success, but in both, the individual controls them. If the candidates don’t already possess motivation and learning agility, no amount of cajoling will improve them.

Essentially, the third dimension of the Leadership Blueprint highlights the criticality of being a functional expert and/or having deep leadership acumen. The difference with this dimension is that the components here are teachable if the person already has high intelligence, motivation, learning agility, and no major derailing personality traits. For example, we shouldn’t select someone who is malicious to be a leader just because they know how to delegate. We can teach someone who fulfills the four critical criteria how to delegate.

The root cause of our current leadership crisis is that we’re choosing the wrong candidate profile from the start. The proven guidance provided in the Leadership Blueprint can help provide predictable criteria and greatly elevate the leadership talent game.

Does this sound familiar?

• You have a “B” manager trying to hire “A” players.
• Managers make their hiring decision based on the first impression.
• Manager and candidate bond because of similar likes (i.e., sports, college football, etc.), rather than the candidate’s qualifications.
• Manager says: “Please sit down while I read your resume.”
• Manager hires based on “I’m a good judge of character.”

This happens every day – even in the best companies. Too often, well intentioned managers are the weak link in your hiring process. And the cost is enormous – lost sales, poor customer service, safety issues, lower employee engagement, etc.

Training, while important, may not be the solution because most managers resort back to their old habits.  How to help hiring managers:

1. Job descriptions are sooo yesterday! Essential, but not strategic. They provide only basic info – work history, education and the job’s duties and responsibilities, etc. Have the manager complete a Job Outlook form. Prior to starting the hiring process, capture the hiring managers’ strategic thoughts about the open position in writing and with their signature.
2. Review your pre-hire assessments. Are you using yesterday’s tools for a vastly different business model (i.e., remote workers, Zoom meetings, work/life balance issues, etc)
3. There are two types of onboarding. The formal one is where the candidate learns about the company’s’ vision, mission, procedures, benefits, and products. The informal onboarding is where the current employees teach the new person “the ropes.” If not aligned, it will directly affect the new employee’s success with the company.

The pandemic of the past two years has reset many things in the world, but the concept of leadership and what success means has never been adequately defined for all people.

By this, I mean that a dominant group of people on the planet have decided what leadership looks like — it was never designed for diversity, for belonging to all.

Women’s movements over the past few years have urged us to “empower ourselves,” “have confidence and rise,” “attend inclusive male training exercises,” and a myriad of other encouragements. But we need to redefine what leadership means. We should instead be asking ourselves what we, as human beings, are contributing to the world and how we’re showing up in our leadership.

An increasing number of CEOs want to create social impact, solve the world’s problems, and form collaborations. To do so, we first need to build initiatives, cultures, and systems that will be inclusive of all. Ask yourself, “Who is contributing to this collaboration?” and then think about how you can make it more effective by adding underrepresented voices.

The old leadership definition was money, power, and influence. The new definition is purpose, inclusion, and well-being. Remember, too, that your behavior can create as much impact as any of these things.
I believe that equity and leadership begin at home. Look at the broken political, social, and economic systems around us today — they are products of the family. We are all the sum of previous generations, and unless we teach our kids diversity of thought and a more responsible way of looking at life on Earth, we are destined to repeat our mistakes.

We should build businesses, families, and the world on a firm foundation. Right now, this foundation has so many cracks, yet we continue to build on it. Xerox developed the world’s first women’s employee resource group in the 1960s, yet women only make up 5% of Fortune 500 CEOs today. We keep adding Band-aids to a broken branch while the real problem lies deeper at the roots.

Think about how you lead yourself, your family, and your team in the workplace. In Whole-life leadership, the first concern is your mental health, the second is your family, and the third is your work, followed by your community. Within your marriage, it’s about your partner first and then your kids. So many negative issues I see in society today are because people are triggered by their story — the way they were brought up and the narratives and belief systems that were instilled in us. Work on elevating how you show up for those around you by becoming more aware of opportunities and new ways of thinking. Many of us think that because we’ve done something the same way for 20 years, that’s how it should always be done. A shift in focus may unlock the solution you’ve been seeking.

We transform culture when we transform people. If you want to create a thriving, social impact company, you’ll find it in your employees and those living in your home. When there’s an economic downturn, many business leaders cut creative activities first, such as keynote speakers, team-building exercises, or family outings to focus instead on quarterly results. But if you prioritize humanity before productivity, you’ll find greater success.

In the past month, it’s been back to school time again. For many of us that last happened many, many years ago. That’s a shame because business leaders should never stop “going to back school”.

Why? Well, for the simplest of reasons…so they can continue to learn. And as a CEO, entrepreneur, founder or manager gets older and assumes leadership roles, they are seven ways they should keep learning and teaching to be able to successfully grow and scale a business.

1. Study your “Best” Teacher

Many of us can readily recall our favorite teachers. I can. They taught us lessons that resonate to this day. Perhaps it was because of who they were, or maybe it was what they said, but we learned something, that gave us a sense of achievement then, and that maybe today still helps us navigate life’s challenges. Take a minute to think about who was your favorite teacher, and why?

2. Become a Successful Learner 

To teach your employees, you must first know how to be a successful learner. This holds true for business managers and leaders. The best leaders are in part “the best” because they’re excellent teachers. And they are excellent teachers because they are accomplished learners. They know how to learn, what to learn, and where to learn it from. It is these skills that entrepreneurs trying to scale a business on a rapidly changing playing field must develop. I know this to be true, because we’ve all experienced what can go wrong when leaders assume what they know is most important, or when they have the wrong information, or worse, when they over-rely on management scorecards and reports. These are learning mistakes that can cripple a young company making the leap from startup to managed enterprise. You always want to be open to learning more.

3. Learn to shift into a Leadership Role

When we started our company, in a short period of time, we went from launch pad to earth orbit ready to strike out for the moon. Things happened very fast. As a result, my role changed dramatically. As a consultant for many years, I conceptually knew this shift was necessary, but doing it “for real” was a very different animal than talking about it. I went from making tactical departmental decisions to making company-wide strategic investment decisions. In short, I went from the sales guy to a leadership guy.

4. Start “Walking the Factory Floor”

As a result of this shift to a leadership role, I spent much more time with product development, client service, and finance. I needed to learn about these things to keep us all on the same page and executing effectively and efficiently. One of the things I did was to employ a decidedly low-tech approach in a high-tech business, that as a consultant I called, “walking the factory floor”. 

As a consultant, I consistently found that many company’s problems were rooted in the decisions that were made based on faulty or incomplete information by executives who rarely left the corner office to walk the production line or go out on sales calls (walking the factory floor). They instead relied on what subordinates told them, their own assumptions, or PowerPoint presentations. All of these are good sources of information, but they provide little first-hand knowledge of what employees and customers are really experiencing doing their jobs or using the product.  

As we hired more people and improved the product, I made it part of my daily duties to drop in on people, say hello, and talk. I’d ask questions and listen. During one such visit, I asked an engineer who was writing code for our software if he would screenshot a picture of the code he was working on and email it to me. He looked at me funny, and I said, I want to show my wife what we do every day and where we spend all that capital we raised. He thought that was “cool”. By walking the factory floor, I learned a lot about how we actually made and delivered our product. I got to see real-life details that never showed up on management reports or were voiced in group meetings (more on this later).

5. Learn directly from Customers

I did something similar to learn from our customers. I’d pick up the phone and call them. Yes, as a co-founder, I reviewed NPS (net promoter scores) reports. I also drilled down to the remarks and complaints associated with the NPS scores. And just as I did with our employees, I learned a lot about our customer’s experience using our product. Ultimately, I began to integrate these learnings from our employees and customers to form a big picture snapshot of our weaknesses and opportunities.  

This direct contact was valuable, but I also noticed that our employees and customers not only appreciated the visits, they learned a lot about our vision, values and strategies first hand. So, while leadership retreats to develop vision and values are useful, behaviors like walking the factory floor demonstrates more forcefully core values like the pursuit of knowledge, and how that led to new methods and innovation in production, service and product development. It also reinforced the kind of character we hoped our people would aspire too.  

Identifying and defining values is an essential process, and doing it thoughtfully really matters. For example, it’s not uncommon for a company to state “innovation” as a core value. This is good. But when there’s little demonstration of learning and teaching on the job, innovation just feels like another vague concept…. Like how do we know we’re doing it? In my mind, innovation isn’t really a value. It’s a condition that exists when certain behaviors are practiced consistently. Specifically, practices like learning and teaching are behaviors one can actually see and reinforce.

6. Develop and teach Real Teamwork

Another common value is teamwork. In my business book titled “One Hit Wonder”, I share several stories about teamwork and what can happen when leaders aren’t clear on the definition…often to the detriment of real teamwork itself. Developing teamwork is especially important for young companies as roles are often blurred, systems are absent and deep relationships have yet to be established. As a result, there are often many disagreements among people and departments, where many are inadequately resolved. And since small companies don’t have the luxury of talking things to death, rapid decisions often result in someone not being happy. Like innovation, I believe that teamwork isn’t a value. It’s a condition that exists when certain behaviors are routinely practiced (and taught) by leaders.  

7. Learn to facilitate Constructive Conflict 

One definition of teamwork involves the idea of harmony, and the other involves the concept of synergy. When teamwork is defined as (the search for) harmony, being nice and avoiding arguments become the valued behaviors. So much so that those who offer a different opinion can be accused of not being nice, argumentative, or worse, as being poor team players. This exact wording will even show up on performance evaluations. Worse, these people can be shunned and, in frustration, self-censor simply to go along to get along (and keep their jobs). The overall result is that deadliest of diseases, “group think”.  

On the other hand, if teamwork is defined as synergy, then different ideas are not just allowed, they are encouraged, and conflict is expected. And to make this approach work, it requires the rarest of behaviors, the art of facilitation. When synergy is the behavior we want to develop, constructive conflict becomes a core value. This definition produces an entirely different kind of teamwork. One where disagreement is encouraged as the path to agreement, and where discussion is facilitated based on facts, not opinions or positions of power. In my experience the pursuit of synergy is far better than the pursuit of harmony. 

These learning and teaching tips and examples are lessons that business leaders should reflect upon as millions go back to school, and companies enter one of their busiest times of the year. In summary, here are a few more practices that leaders can hone to raise the level of their game when growing and scaling a business.

• Always be learning, but be sure to check your sources.
• Always be teaching, by demonstrating behaviors consistent with your values.
• Teach more than just methods, teach and develop for character.
• And remember just when you think you know something, consider the possibility that you don’t.

So there you have it – consider these leadership success tips during this back to school season. And if you practice some of these skills, who knows, maybe one day you become someone’s favorite teacher.

Think back to the day you first were promoted into a sales leadership role. How did you think your life would change? What did you think the job was going to be?   

When my CEO called me to inform me that my goal of running a sales organization was now becoming a reality, it was one of the most exciting accomplishments in my life. I remember the phone call. We had a small team, the VP of Worldwide Sales had just departed, and I was now in charge.  

I had no previous training. There was no leadership enablement program. And sales leadership? Another animal altogether. My schooling on leadership was from watching others and taking what I liked about the approaches from the good ones.  

But what was the job to be done? I know I had a target to hit and a team to get us there. But what did that mean? I’d always had a process and structure in sales. Where was my sales leadership process and structure?   

Gartner defines sales leadership as “the discipline of guiding the strategic direction of the sales function and managing the sales organization to achieve commercial objectives.”  

The discipline of guiding the strategic direction of the sales function? That’s intense…but with what?  

Are you building a team? Maintaining one? Growing one? Motivating one? Leading many, who are led by other leaders?  

Sales leadership structure either doesn’t exist, or it’s so convoluted through psychology and coaching science that it’s missing its responsibility — to achieve commercial objectives.  

The reality of that conundrum became apparent within 48 hours of stepping into my new role. I was immediately transformed into a dog chasing a car down the road, never knowing where it or I was headed. Left turn to a recruiting task. Right turn to a pipeline issue. Another left, but this time it’s down angry customer lane.  

It’s no way to live, and I’m far too much of a systems nerd to survive in such an environment. So I created a structure. It became my way to think through my day, to plan and to strategize. I applied it in my communication to my CEO and board, to my direct reports, and across the organization in all-hands meetings and discussions with peers. 

It’s easy. It’s alliterative. And once internalized, I stopped chasing and started growing. It made me sound smart, too. (I could use all the help I could get).  

I dubbed my framework the Five F’s of Building Revenue Capacity.  

As a revenue leader, everything you’re responsible for falls into one of five categories —initially and ongoing. It doesn’t matter if it’s your first leadership role or twentieth.  

These are the Five F’s of sales leadership: 

1. Focus: You have an initial and ongoing responsibility to ensure your team is using their most valuable resource — their time — in the most effective way possible. That means ensuring the team is working on the right opportunities in the right regions at the right time using the right firmographics, demographics, and pre-requisites. 

2. Field: You have an initial and ongoing responsibility to ensure your field organization is the right one, with the right tools and the right resources, to maximize effectiveness, efficiency and output based on your “Focus.”  

3. Fundamentals: You have to always make sure your team is doing the right things right…consistently. This includes qualification, discovery, positioning, prospecting skills, presentations, negotiations, time management, and so on. 

4. Forecast: You have a responsibility to predict the future by honing your and your organization’s ability to forecast with greater accuracy along with the KPIs (key performance indicators). 

5. Fun: It’s you who creates, cultivates, and grows the culture of your environment so that your team has fun every day and maximizes their intrinsic inspiration for what they do. In a fun culture, they show up each day, stay, do their best, and become advocates for you and your organization. 

While they may sound clever, once you internalize the Five F’s of Building Capacity Revenue you’ll be ahead of 98 percent of the revenue leadership who don’t have a structure. Additionally, you could quite literally create a 30/60/90-day plan using the structure. It can be your agenda for your one-on-ones with your direct reports or your boss. I used it for interviews and interviewing, as an agenda for board meetings, and even as the structure for doing due diligence on potential acquisitions. 

Over the years, I optimized each category through behavioral science, application, and practice. It was my sales and revenue leadership framework. 

You’ll see the holes before they form. You’ll have a consistent language in your organizations. You’ll stand out. 

What inspires us to follow a CEO, founder or thought leader? Certainly, there is a toughness, particularly in the face of adversity, that can encourage us to do the same and elevate our efforts.

In other words, toughness or grit can be inspirational. In this short article, I want to share how grit is essential and that it can be developed by anyone who desires to succeed as a leader whether in a small business or a start-up destined to spectacular growth. 

Eight years ago in 2014, I was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer. This happened at precisely the same time I founded a start-up software company…that we ultimately sold in 2021, and richly rewarded our investors and team. During those eight years, while we grew sales and enhanced the product, I survived seven surgeries, five courses of radiation, and months and months of chemo. I’ve been asked, “How did you do it?” Honestly, I’m not certain looking back. All I know is that I just kept showing up, and that perseverance, as one of my people once told me, “took grit.” 

Grit is an essential character trait for leaders. The question is “Are we born with grit, or is it something we can learn?” Like much else in life, the answer is, some of both. In fact, researchers and philosophers, including Angela Duckworth, William James, K.E Ericson, and Aristotle, would agree with this assessment.  

Let’s start with the word itself…grit. It’s a little hard to define precisely. In fact it’s one of those words, where you know it when you see it… as in, that person has grit.  Here’s the dictionary definition.

Grit:  noun

Indomitable spirit; stubborn courage; brave perseverance; pluck in the face of adversity.

The day I was diagnosed was a day like any other. I was scheduled to get on a flight that afternoon to meet with one of our customers. My wife told me to stay home. But I went despite the way I felt after getting that awful news. As you might imagine, I was reeling with disbelief, fear and anger. But I felt there was work to be done and promises to be kept…so I went.

That first night on the road, unable to sleep, I had time to think about the hell I was about to descend into. I was scared. And in a conversation with myself, I decided that in order to function, deal with the treatments and run the business, I would never open myself to self-pity and ask the question, “Why me?” I decided instead to focus on asking a better question, “What’s next?”…as in, what must I do next to survive?

It’s easy to indulge in “why me” thinking when adversity, especially undeserved adversity, strikes. But the only thing “why me” thinking produces is a sense of victimization that leads to unfocused action and decision-making. And that becomes contagious as people can see it and feel it. On the other hand, “what’s next” thinking promotes focus, clarity, courage, hope and action. It takes grit to deal with adversity. And leaders who respond that way encourage others to act likewise, and inspire them to challenge themselves and become part of the solution.  Specifically, many might say; “Heck if he can pull himself together and come to work, then why can’t I?” And this happens. I know it does because I watched this exact process happen in my company, with my people. We grew closer, more focused, and everyone worked harder. 

So, what can any of us do to develop grit so we can exercise when adversity strikes – especially during early and start-up stage businesses?

Best Practices for “Grit in Leadership”

I was surprised when searching online for “grit in leadership” that the topic attracted a good deal of thinking by researchers. In general, the research identified five traits that were practiced by “gritty” people. What was also clear, as I discovered, is a direct causal connection between these traits and inspirational leadership as experienced by everyone on a team. The five characteristics of grit below are based on Character Lab Founder Angela Duckworth’s findings and her book “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance,” along with others.

1. Resilience: One of the most important characteristics of grit for inspirational leaders is the ability to act and communicate with optimism, creativity, and confidence despite setbacks. This attribute helps empower others to “keep the faith” and stand up under performance pressures.

2. Courage: Another chief predictor of leadership success is the ability to manage fear of failure. Inspirational leaders seem to have a clear understanding of the upside and downside risks of decisions. This calculus enables them to be decisive and act despite the risks.

3. Conscientiousness: Tenacity and the ability to work tirelessly by focusing on doing a good job and completing the tasks at hand is another hallmark of inspirational leaders. This work ethic and determination appear to be contagious in followers.

4. Perseverance: The ability to demonstrate and maintain intensity, direction, and the duration of one’s exertions in the pursuit a long-term goal is an essential element of grit, and has the effect of building team spirit, pride and fellowship. 

5. Excellence: Gritty people don’t seek perfection; they instead strive for excellence. This approach favors a bias action versus getting stuck in over-analysis. One of my favorite sayings that I often repeated to my people was…“Perfection is the enemy of the good.”

Adversity is a constant. So to help others understand how to develop grit as a leader, I’ve documented my personal and business experiences, lessons learned and success tips in my recently published book, “One Hit Wonder: The Real-Life Adventures of an Average Guy and the Lessons He Learned Along the Way.”

The way leaders respond to adversity and pressure can either be a source of inspiration that drives success, or become a breeding ground for fear and uncertainty. And while entrepreneurs and managers can’t control what happens as they start and grow a business; they can control the way they act and lead from the front. 

Whether people want more government or less government, they all want efficient government. Unfortunately, public-sector organizations are generally not known for their operational excellence. The natural question arises: By their nature, do government operations have to be inefficient?

In 2015, we became aware of a small but growing number of public-sector organizations that had dramatically improved their performance—and in a relatively short time. We were intrigued and started to visit them and look into what they were doing. This was the beginning of a six-year study that culminated in our book Practical Innovation in Government.

Throughout our careers, our work has centered on how to create high-performance organizations. Until recently, this meant we studied and worked primarily with private-sector companies. But as we identified and visited more high-performing public-sector organizations, it became clear they had developed approaches to continuous improvement that were proving astonishingly effective in a government setting. In fact, some of these organizations had attained levels of efficiency and service that rivaled the best private-sector companies anywhere.

A case study: Denver’s Department of Excise and Licensing

Consider what happened at Denver’s Department of Excise and Licensing. In 2013, it was the city’s “problem” department and a huge headache for the mayor’s office. The department had 39 employees who issued some 48,000 licenses each year. There were approximately 80 different types of licenses, most of which had to be renewed annually. These included everything from individual licenses for taxi drivers and security guards to business licenses for restaurants and liquor stores.

When a new manager, Stacie Loucks, took over, she found that average wait times were running an hour and 40 minutes, with peak wait times of five to six hours. The lobby was often jammed so full that the air conditioners couldn’t keep up and the temperature climbed into the mid-80s.

But in just two years, Stacie transformed Denver Licensing into a showcase department. Wait times dropped to seven minutes and then were all but eliminated, despite a doubling in the volume of licenses issued, due primarily to the city’s booming economy. And despite the dramatic increase in license volume, Loucks was the only department head in the city government who didn’t ask for more staff or resources in the next budgeting cycle.

A surprising study finding

We found numerous examples like these across a diverse set of government operations. After being a severe bottleneck to state patrol operations, and the subject of the largest number of trooper complaints, the Washington State Police garage went on a multiyear improvement effort. In that time, it tripled its productivity and became a national benchmark for other states’ police garages. Similarly, a K-8 school in New Brunswick, Canada, boosted the percentage of students reading at the appropriate age level from 22% to 78%.

Our study ended up taking us to 77 organizations in 5 countries and involved interviews with more than 1,000 people.

What we found was surprising. The high performers were achieving their impressive levels of efficiency and service in an unexpected way. We had expected to find most improvement being driven in a top-down fashion, perhaps by middle-level managers or professional staff, as it generally is in the business world. Although we did find plenty of examples of top-driven programs, invariably, they were all marginal or low performers.

The highest-performing improvement efforts we encountered were quite different. What stood out was that in every single one of them, the lion’s share of the improvement activity was taking place on the front lines. The primary champions of change were low-level managers and supervisors.

Like Stacie Loucks at Denver Licensing, they had created units with strong local cultures of improvement. Bit by bit, through large numbers of small, highly targeted ideas, their units relentlessly increased performance. These front-line leaders, not their higher-level managers,were the real heroes of their organizations’ innovation stories.

Front-line–driven improvement is uniquely suited for government

The more we studied this front-line–driven improvement, the more we realized how uniquely suited it is to a government environment. Improving efficiency, it turns out, is one area where public sector leaders should definitely not follow conventional business practices.

In the private sector, changes are generally less complicated to execute. If top or middle managers want to make a change, they usually have the power to do so. But government is not a business. When government managers want to create change, they typically face a host of political, regulatory, and bureaucratic hurdles that can make the process painfully slow, inordinately time-consuming, and even professionally risky.

Although the front-line ideas implemented by the high performers in our study were generally small and inexpensive, they had a huge impact cumulatively. (Think back to Denver Licensing, which completely eliminated its long lines.) At the same time, each individualidea went largely unnoticed by customers, colleagues from other departments, and higher-level managers. In short, they were invisible to outsiders.

The leaders in these government organizations have figured out two things. First, without the countervailing forces faced by higher-level managers, front-line leaders and staff can implement large numbers of improvements with little interference. And when ideas do need to involve other functions, front-line leaders can often work directly with their counterparts in other departments to get them done.

Second, in spite of being so small that they are “under the radar,” front-line ideas are an amazingly powerful source of improvement. Research has shown that some 80% of any organization’s improvement potential lies in the creativity and initiative of its front-line staff.When it became clear to us that the dominant factor distinguishing the high performers in our study was front-line–driven improvement, we were surprised, yet not surprised. Surprised, because we were simply not expecting to see its singular importance in the government context. Not surprised, because in the rare cases of true front-line driven improvement in the private sector, it also produces extremely high rates of performance improvement. The problem in most private-sector organizations is that managers make little or no use of this potential.

The takeaway

So, the answer to our opening question is, “No, government doesn’t have to be inefficient. In fact, it can be very efficient. But it won’t get there by following traditional business practices.”

If you started your company today, would you hire everyone currently on your payroll?

Your hiring managers and supervisors are the gatekeepers to your company’s future. So, how can you give them the “keys” to be successful  — focus, ownership, accountability, and continuous improvement?

One way to help is getting everyone on the same page.   

For example: developing a list of three to five overall employee characteristics you need to fulfill your Mission Statement. Then, those characteristics are in front of every hiring manager for every interview and are included on the interview evaluation form.  Do your candidates match the characteristics you need to reach your goals?

21 Sample employee characteristics (choose 3 – 5)

Integrity	Reliable	Persistence	Passionate	Ambitious
Team player	Self-starter	Leader	Independent	Instills trust
Happy	Focused	Inspires others	Problem solver	Flexible
Effective communicator	Positive attitude	Seeks improvement	Results oriented	Strong work ethic
Achieves goals

The idea above came from the CEO of a remarkably successful construction company. Once the company had established its five characteristics, he had the list laminated and carries it in his pocket every day.  When visiting the company’s branches around the US, he talks with the managers about this list, which is always at hand.

I’m old enough to remember when resumes were virtually 100% accurate and gave the hiring manager valuable insight on a person’s qualifications. Not anymore. Consider these facts:

• Fake college diploma and transcript is a $1 Billion industry. (Source: the FBI)

• 41% of all interviews are decided on appearance alone. (Source: Investor’s Business Daily)

• 71% of all resumes contain fictitious information. (Source: SHRM)  

• Candidate can search – “Best answers to interview questions.”  (Results: Amazon – 96 books…. Google – 13.2 million hits)

• Candidates have multiple resumes – each targeted to a specific job, company, or industry.
• Resumes can be written by professionals who excel in making the person look like a sure fit to the open position.

Right now, the hiring process favors the candidate, and the pressure is on the hiring managers to upgrade their skills. Make hiring your competitive advantage.