CEOtoCEO participant awarded National SBA Young Entrepreneur of the Year

I recognized that confident smile immediately.  It was CEOtoCEO Breakfast participant Dan Price, Co-founder of Gravity Payments.  Dan was recerntly recognized as the National SBA Young Entrepreneur of the Year.  Dan's company works as an intermediary between merchants and credicard companies, has 50 employees and more than 5,000 customers.

I asked Dan to share his experience with the rest of us.  Congratulations and thanks for your thoughts Dan

"It was awesome," said Price of his meeting with Obama. "It was the coolest thing I've ever done."

I am just very proud to be a part of the Gravity team. Even though it is technically an individual award, it was clearly presented because of the accomplishments we have made supporting small businesses as a team. I was afforded 45 minutes in the Rose Garden with President Obama, two Governors, and members of congress. I found everyone engaging, open to my ideas, and appreciative of our work. The President emphasized that he sees small business leading out of the recession and recognized that 2 out of 3 new jobs created come from entrepreneurs like me.

In the meantime, not a lot changes…we still need to focus on providing merchant processing at half the cost of competitors, keep our focus on transparency and honesty, and continue to provide world class customer service. It was a great award, but full steam ahead…we haven’t quite arrived yet!

Congratulations Dan.  Look forward to seeing you at the CEOtoCEO.

Corporate Citizenship: From the inside out

As business leaders we are approached by a number of community organizations to help support their cause.  Most provide worthwhile services that benefit the communities we do business and the needs have escalated over the past few years.  The “asks” are made from members of numerous charitable organizations, our employees, clients and trade partners. 

You can’t say yes to everybody and it doesn’t feel good to say no to anybody.  Scott Harrison, CEO of Barclay Dean Environments shared his company’s corporate citizenship strategy at the May CEOtoCEO Breakfast Rather than reacting to every request made for assistance Barclay Dean uses proactive approach by incorporating corporate citizenship into the company's strategic thinking and planning.  The company corporate citizenship focus is children, health and education.

The results of Barclay Deans approach speak for themselves.  The company has been selected as the 2009 Corporate Citizenship of the Year Award for consistently supporting over 20 non-profit organizations each year.  In addition being actively involved in corporate citizenship allows Barclay Dean to build valuable relationships with other businesses in the community.

CEOtoCEO provides helpful advice from peer leaders

Jeanne Wintz of Gilmore Research Group is a regular at the CEOtoCEO BreakfastCEOtoCEO Breakfast in large part because of the valued input she gives and receives from other participating business leaders. 

A few months back Jeanne arrived at a  with a heavy heart and looking for advise and support from other business leaders. After a rigorous budgeting process evaluating the impact of the economic turndown, the decision was just made to layoff a number of employees throughout the organization. The decision had been made carefully and seemed to be the best move to make for the long-term viability of the company, but it wasn’t a comfortable choice for a company with a 60-year history and a strong reputation for loyalty to its workforce.

As with other business leaders she was concerned about how the layoffs were going to impact productivity and morale of the surviving staff. Sharing her situation with other leaders seated at her table she received great advice from these empathetic and experienced colleagues on how to go about implementing the layoffs and keeping remaining employees engaged. In a meeting with Jeanne last week she commented that the input she received at the breakfast enabled her to carry out the plan with confidence and be more effective while leading the organization through this difficult time.

To help solve your problems with solutions from other leadership peers plan to participate at one of our CEOtoCEO Breakfasts soon.

Improving Employee Engagement and Productivity Using Social Media

An old-timer once told me that there is only one way to kill a rumor….make it a fact. Easier said than done in this period of uncertainty and anxiety in today's workplace. As leaders we have all know that harmful rumors become "facts" if we do not communicate with employees on a regular basis to keep them engaged and productive.

At the March CEOtoCEO Breakfast speaker Richard Law, CEO of Allysis, shared the following examples of how he keeps employees informed and involved in whats going on in the company using social media tools.

“You Ask, We Answer” Forum Hosted on Intranet
• Anonymous Post Option
• 24 Hour Turn Around Commitment
• Ask Anything … Management Has to Answer
• Deeper Understanding of Company Direction
• Shared Decision Making
• Two Way Conversation

Kudos Program
• Clients & Employees Encouraged to Call Out Exceptional Performance
• All Kudos Posted Monthly; Top 3 Get Awards Quarterly.

Employee Blogs
• All Topics Allowed
• Encourage Sharing of Knowledge
• Quick Insight into Departments, Leadership, Employee Development Opportunities

Benefits of being a 'Best Company to Work For'

Eric Overton, President and CEO of Sparling Electrical Engineers, the largest specialty electrical engineering firm in the country headquartered in Seattle. I asked Eric what does Sparling do to be selected and recognized as being a 'Best Company to Work For', and what benefits does his organization realize from this effort? Read on for Eric's response.

Sparling being rated as a best company to work for is a recruiting edge as potential recruits want to work at companies that are progressive, have happy employees, opportunities and so on. I think it demonstrates that a company is progressive and cares about its people.

I believe my employees find Sparling a great workplace for many reasons. We offer a great environment that supports collaboration, team work, progressive office space design, the firm’s graphic image and brand is all over the offices, we utilize technology a lot as a part of our culture. We offer very competitive benefits and compensation, based on performance based incentives and we are delivering. We aspire to be a fun place to work, a very strong culture of open communications, risk taking is celebrating when the focus is on innovation or client satisfaction.

As CEO I preach honest, open and transparent communications. We publish our KPI's monthly in a dashboard environment so everyone can see firm performance, right down to each design studio and practice area of the firm, and we talk about it regularly. We do a lot of the same things other companies do, hold quarterly company update meetings and serve food and drinks, we engage in outside activities and encourage our staff to get involved. We have a very strong Corporate Social Responsibility program and actually pay every employee an extra day of leave when they go volunteer at a charity. We make our CSR program a big deal because I realize that people really desire to give back, not just monetarily but with their time. Our younger staff don't always have the money but they have the desire to contribute and have the time to give, the young Gen Y's want to change the world, money isn't as important in many ways.

In the end, we do what we say. We are a business centered practice and we return firm profits to our staff in the form of performance bonuses, leadership bonuses for our shareholders (when we do really well) pay a dividend to our shareholders and fund our 401K, annually. We have done this for 25+ years and I am committed to this as part of our commitment to our staff. We watch our business very closely.

Sometimes I think it isn't that difficult, but it is hard work. One of the very unique benefits of our culture and being a Best Company is that it attracts great talent, Sparling is considered one of the premier engineering and consulting firms to work for on the West Coast, and we attract talent from all across the US and even abroad. I guess it works.

My "Journey" continues...

As many of you know by now, I have thrown myself into the "social media fray" and have become fully engaged in learning, understanding and using this revolutionary new media.  It has been an eye-opener to say the least.

When I first met Blaine Millet and Clay Loges, my consultants and coaches, I realized the world was changing for me and for every business out there.  If you haven't been to one of their presentations, I would highly recommend it.  You can get more information out about them and what they do at WOM¹⁰ .  They will open your eyes to an entirely new way of thinking about your business.

What I am realizing as I get more and more involved is this is a huge "mind shift" for me to make - away from "promotion" and more toward "sharing useful information in real-time".  Everyone wants something of value and fast - exactly what social media offers.  Because of this, one change you will see me making is away from the larger, more formal Breakfast "e-mail newsletter" to shorter, summarized e-mails you can read in less than 30 seconds and decide if you want to know more.  If you do, there will be links to a brief story.  This will "help" my audience get more without having to sift through information that might not be as relevant to them right now.

Let me know what you think when I send some of these out to you over the next several weeks.  The beauty of social media is I can react to your comments and make changes immediately - how cool is that!

Social Media - Inside and Outside

We all know Social Media is one of, if not the hottest topics of conversation today.  So what?  Why should we, as business owners and leaders, care?  Great questions and EXACTLY what we are lively presentations and discussion are going to be in the next CEOtoCEO Breakfast Series.

As a business owner, there are some questions you might want to be asking yourself in regard to social media.  How is this going to help me increase sales?  How is it going to bring in more of the "right" customers instead of wasting our time with the "wrong" customers.  How is it going to replace my expensive traditional media I have used for years - even though the results are going down?  How can I use it to increase employee loyalty?  How can I use it to create a better "teamwork" environment inside my company?  How can I use it to attract the "right" employees?  These are just a few of the questions that are being asked and will be answered in March.

If  you have thought about social media at all for your business - whether it is thinking "outside" the organization to increase your sales and build more business or whether it is thinking "inside" the organization on how we can use it to improve internal communications and teamwork, we will have some great discussions about BOTH these topics.  Blaine Millet and Clay Loges of WOM¹⁰ will talk about how this will "change your business" in regard to sales and Richard Law of Allyis will talk about "changing your business" on the inside. 

Increased employee engagement a key to improved team performance

One of the keys to the improved performance of the Mariners that Jack shared is the focus on building a roster of engaged team members.  Engaged employees are those that exert discretionary effort, are enthusiastic about their jobs, and their intend to stay with the organization.   

An increasing number of business leaders that I work with are taking note of employee engagement because of the growing evidence that an engaged workforce shapes more traditional business outcomes like retention, client satisfaction, sales, costs, and profit. 

In a three year study involving the winners of Best Companies To Work For initiatives across the United States, we assessed the impact of high engagement on business success. Among winning companies:

• 87% reported increases in sales

• 86% reported an increased market share

• 57% reported improving employee turnover

• 90% reported higher stock prices (among publicly traded companies)

Leaders of some of the Best Companies to Work For in Washington shared ideas on how they improve their team’s performance at our recent CEOtoCEO Breakfast.  Best Workplace CEOs participating at the breakfast include Mike Mayes of Mayes Testing, Tim Gibbons of Pharmacy One Source,  Jeff Lyon of GVA Kidder Matthews, Eric Overton of Sparling, Brian Paulen of the Madrona Solutions Group and Richard Law of Allysis.

I welcome your thoughts and questions on employee engagement.

Business Tools??? - Executive View of Social Media"

Social Media is on just about everyone’s mind these days. It has been on mine for a while and I've been busy pioneering and learning the art of social media with my own blog. In fact, it just happens to be the topic for our March meeting.

Last year I had the privilege and opportunity to get my first real meaningful introduction to Social Media at a seminar led by Blaine and Clay of WOM10. It was an exciting and very revealing 2 hours for me. I decided it was a new direction that this old dog should take. So I committed myself to learning some new tricks for both me and the CEOtoCEO Breakfast Series. In the past four months I've already learned how game changing social media can be – and I'm slowly becoming a master of the new "social media speak".

Enough about me - here's the GOOD NEWS FOR YOU! Blaine and Clay have compiled an executive introduction to social media in an e-Book called, “Business Tools??? - Executive View of Social Media”. It's a great executive overview of the driving force behind this new form of marketing and communications. The book is short, to-the-point, and practical. It offers a business view of social media. 

Because of my relationship with them, I've arranged for a limited number of copies to be given to our CEOtoCEO group for FREE. If you are one of the lucky few who can act quickly, you too can get your own copy of their powerful e-book, courtesy of CEOtoCEO. Just CLICK HERE and you will be on a page where you can simply enter your name and e-mail address and it’s yours! Doesn’t get any easier than that. I hope you will take advantage of their generous offer and get your own copy today.

Strategic Map is a great tool for teaching leadership

I had the privilege of getting to meet and talk with Randy Gardner, CEO of Red Dot Corporation a while back and he shared with me a great story. He attended one of our CEOtoCEO Breakfast meetings and saw David Katri from Clark Nuber present their Strategic Map. He really grabbed onto that idea and felt he could use a tool like this in his own company. Below is a recent letter he sent me that I wanted to share with you because it is applicable to just about every CEO and business. Thanks Randy...

Over the past several years Red Dot had identified its Core Values, and established its Mission and Vision Statements; which have been placed on placards throughout the business. Red Dot has also gone to great lengths to communicate these strategic company choices, but as they stand alone, it isn’t entirely clear to the average employee or often managers how they fit into an over company strategy (the big picture).

When I saw the Strategic Map developed by Clark Nuber at the CEOtoCEO Breakfast, I immediately thought it might be a tool to help me communicate the place that Mission, Vision and Values have in Red Dot’s “bigger strategic plan or thinking.” I found it relatively easy to put our thoughts in to Clark Number’s Strategic Map structure, and our Graphic Design Manager worked his magic with regard to the final visual.

In the end, It helped me more easily put the pieces of our strategic thinking in to a succinct, easy to understand graphic that I could use to explain the associations, intent, and roles of Red Dot’s Strategic choices. Even then, strategic thinking is a very conceptual domain, and isn’t grasped by everyone who sees it. However, it is a great teaching tool for Red Dot’s leadership, and a solid reference for up and coming management prospects who will need to do this type of conceptual planning as they progress.

I hope this helps!

Randy Gardiner
President & CEO

RED DOT CORPORTATION
direct line (206) 394-3553
http://www.reddotcorp.com/

Mariners secret to retaining top talent Felix Hernandez

At our recent CEOtoCEO Breakfast speaker Jack Zduriencik, GM of the Mariners, was asked to share the secret to retaining Felix Hernandez the team's Ace pitcher for the next five years. Jack modestly told us it was easy …. "What's not to like about being paid $78 M for 5 years when you're 23 years old?" Baseball pundits say Felix's performance was worth significantly more money than what he agreed to with the Mariners.

A secret to keeping top talent? Jack told the executives in attendance that when the Mariners shared the organizations values, vision and mission of the future, and strategies to develop and retain top talent with Felix his response was "I'm in."