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Ask the Experts
Tap Vendors and Consultants for New Ideas
ONE OF THE TRAITS that distinguishes a great leader from an average one is intellectual curiosity. You have to keep up with the times to be a great leader—and that means being interested in the world around you. Great leaders seek an edge; they’re constantly looking for ways to beat the competition or make the organization more efficient. That’s why one of your challenges as a leader is to be constantly looking for new ideas. It should be a near obsession—how can we do things cheaper, better, faster? Within your scope of responsibility or your functional expertise, the company is counting on you for innovation; that’s why you make the big bucks. Think about that for a second: They pay you to be curious. Not bad, huh? So how are you going to exercise this curiosity and thirst for new ideas? Well, you could sit around and ask your peers a bunch of questions, but that’s no way to learn about what is happening outside the organization.
No, you can’t just rely on your ability to be instantly brilliant; sometimes you have to do your homework. You can read or research what other companies are doing, of course—there is a lot of information out there about best practices. But do you have the time? And do you have a broad enough lens? Many leaders become obsessed with what their direct competitors, or other players in their broader industry, are doing. That’s a good strategy, but the fact is, a lot of good ideas also come from looking at industries or markets that have nothing to do with yours. You need to look high and low for best practices and new ideas—at a variety of organizations—and that requires focus and resources. If only there was an easy way to see inside these other companies . . .
Turn Your Partners into Consultants
In reality, there is an easy way to see inside other companies. And the sources are already knocking on your door; all you have to do is let them in and put them to work. Most of you probably interact with vendors or business partners in one form or another. Well guess what? They work with a lot of other companies, too. Ask them if they’d be willing to come in and talk with you and your team about the best practices they’re seeing in other companies. Most vendors will jump at the chance to strengthen their relationship with you and will be open to spending some time answering your questions. Obviously, there is some degree of confidentiality around sharing specific company information; you might learn the best practices but not get a good sense of where they are being applied. That’s OK because you’re interested mostly in the ideas. If you want to explore something specific, let them know in advance so they can tap into the right sources in their company. All it takes is a phone call with the simple question: “Could you please put together a presentation of the best practices at XYZ company?” Buy your vendors lunch, and have them brief you and the team on what they’re seeing out there—that’s more than a fair trade for some cutting edge information.
To maximize the potential impact, set up a panel discussion on a variety of topics and invite your whole team (or a group of peers) to join you. Make it a department-wide invitation, and you’ve got an employee development session (a seminar on best practices). For example, if you’re a leader in IT, there are probably dozens of vendors available to talk to you and the team about new hardware and software, the latest trends in data storage or records management, what the major developers are working on, and so on. Afterward, post the learnings and best practices on the internal Web portal and make it clear to everyone in your department when you learn something new about the outside world, you’re expected to share it with the rest of the team by writing an article and posting it to the share drive. The point is, you have valued business partners that would be happy to sit down with you and brainstorm ways to make your business better. After all, they have a vested interest in seeing you innovate and evolve. Don’t be shy about using this source to help you develop new ideas. I knew a leader who made this a quarterly event. She was a VP in Operations, and because they had several vendors that they worked with regularly, she simply rotated them through her normal all-hands meetings as development for her team. The vendors shared what they were seeing out in the marketplace and led a lively Q&A discussion. Her team looked forward to these sessions, as it gave them a chance to look outside the company and have a serious dialog about cutting-edge developments in their field.
Answer Those Consultant Calls
Another way to find out what’s going on beyond your company is to return some of those consultant calls that are stacked up in your voice mail. As a manager, you probably receive many inquiries from consultants who want a few minutes of your time. How about inviting a few of them in to talk with you? What have you got to lose? You don’t have to buy anything, you know. In the normal course of a one-hour sales meeting with a consultant, you can learn a lot about what’s going on in the industry. When I led large learning and development teams in my corporate days, I always gave time to consultants. First of all, as a former consultant, I empathized with them; I know what it can mean to get a meeting and possibly get your foot in the door. But I didn’t take all those meetings just to be nice; I did it to find out what they knew. I wanted to pick their brains. I wanted to find out who their clients were, what was selling in the marketplace. I wanted to hear their take on the best learning management systems, where they thought corporate universities were headed in the next five years, what they thought of virtual learning techniques, and so on. Invariably, we’d end up teaching each other, having a fruitful conversation, and advancing the relationship—a win for both parties.
If you need to work on your intellectual curiosity, think about sitting down with your current partners or meeting with that consultant who has been trying to get in to see you. Want to break out and take charge of your own development? Exchange a bit of your time for some valuable information and new ideas; it’s a great way to accelerate your learning curve and build some lasting relationships in the process.
Bootstrap Takeaways
Tap Vendors and Consultants for New Ideas
1. Feed your curiosity by meeting with your external business partners about “what they’re seeing out there.”
2. Take that meeting with the consultant who’s been soliciting you. Let the consultant make the pitch, then ask a LOT of questions.
3. Make this a team thing—encourage everyone on your team to explore external best practices.