http://www.impacttechnologyadvisors.com/blog/rss/feedsHere at Impact Technology Advisors, we are dedicated to helping technology and industrial B2B companies grow their revenue.Tue, 05 May 2026 20:33:24 -0700http://www.impacttechnologyadvisors.com/blog/post/adaptive-leadership-part-two--principles-for-leading-adaptive-changehttp://www.impacttechnologyadvisors.com/blog/post/adaptive-leadership-part-two--principles-for-leading-adaptive-changeIn a prior blog, I discussed the ever increasing and complex challenges we face in our industry, which, Dr. Ronald Heifetz notes, require advanced methods of adaptive leadership to solve. Heifetz offers six principles for leaders dealing with adaptive challenges, and the first two of those are now discussed in more detail:Get on the Balcony.Athletes in fast moving team sports concentrate on their assignments and can easily get caught up in the frenzy of the game. But some have an uncanny ability to pay attention to everything happening on the field of play. Whether it was Joe Montana seeing a missed defensive assignment to throw a touchdown pass, or Magic Johnson blindly throwing the ball where he new his teammate would be, for an assist, these all-time greats could be in the midst of the action and still rise above it to know exactly what the whole game situation looked like.Similarly, business leaders must pay attention to their environment, as if they were on a balcony overlooking the situation, without getting swept away by the action below. They need to give this big picture view to their team, see what’s coming, notice how the team is reacting, and interject as needed. Today’s challenges are too complex to solve if leaders are too engaged on the field, and not spending time on the balcony. This is a prerequisite for the other principles.Getting on the balcony is the reflective and diagnostic part of leadership. It requires keen self and situational awareness, attributes than can be built by practicing mindfulness, as discussed in the my Blog entitled: Mindfulness to Fine Tune Your leadership Inner Game.Identify the Adaptive Challenge.Adaptive challenges are difficult to identify, but from up on the balcony, the leader is better able to see the situation and recognize that the challenge faced is not clear cut. Unlike technical problems, to be solved, adaptive challenges will require new approaches, likely requiring substantial changes to established behaviors and beliefs. This is important work of leaders; recognizing an adaptive challenge, understanding the root cause of the issue, identifying the various contradictions at play, and viewing the problem from multiple perspectives. These adaptive challenges often present a clash of values and require leaders to help organizations evolve their values to solve these tough problems. It is the ability to take a major business disrupter and turn it to an advantage.For example, IoT devices have been a key growth area for electronics, yet the breakneck pace of innovation for smart homes and smart factories has shifted the emphasis from hardware to data and software. The value to customers is less about the electronics component and increasingly about the data insights from the collection of these IoT devices. An adaptive challenge to device manufacturers is the third parties that have inserted themselves between the devices and the users, taking over that relationship. Many devices manufacturers are increasingly expanding their hardware offerings to include software and cloud services.The additional principles of adaptive leadership will be discussed in future blog posts.Tue, 05 Nov 2019 12:14:00 -0700http://www.impacttechnologyadvisors.com/blog/post/adaptive-leadership-to-navigate-todays-environmenthttp://www.impacttechnologyadvisors.com/blog/post/adaptive-leadership-to-navigate-todays-environmentThe electronic component industry, like our world, is constantly facing never-before-seen complications. The components themselves are increasingly technical, integrating nanoscopic physics with complex software. The internet continues to alter the way people and companies buy and sell. Geopolitical issues such as tariffs, regulations, and national security concerns impact our business. The tight labor market and generational shifts have strained the ability to hire and retain talent. This new era of complexity requires more sophisticated forms of leadership. Noted Harvard leadership guru, Dr. Ronald Heifetz, in his seminal book, Leadership without Easy Answers, differentiates between technical challenges and adaptive challenges. While first published in 1994, its message is more pertinent today than ever. A technical challenge has a clear problem that can be solved by knowledgeable experts, whereas an adaptive challenge is not clear cut and often requires an entirely new approach and systemic change. Adaptive challenges call for new learning, required to close the gap between people’s historical values and present-day realities. An example of a technical challenge is revising the code in an ERP system to change inventory target levels, while an adaptive challenge may be the implementation of a revolutionary new ERP system, that requires an overhaul of processes and procedures and significant stakeholder buy-in and adaption. An executive relying on authoritative expertise alone to offer solutions will likely not successfully navigate the organization through adaptive challenges. These challenges must be solved by the collective intelligence of people throughout the organization. Further, they will likely be distressing for employees, requiring attention to corporate culture and support systems. Heifetz offers six principles for leading adaptive change: Get on the Balcony – ability for leaders to detach and see the big picture Identify the Adaptive Change – know when a challenge can not be solved by traditional methods Regulate Distress – pace learning to balance the employee tension between maintaining a sense of urgency and being overwhelmed Maintain Disciplined Attention – do the tough work of addressing divisive issues and use conflict to drive creativity Give Work Back to People – empower others to assume responsibility and own the change Protect Voices of Leadership from Below – Enable and encourage constructive dissent from those closest to the problem These adaptive leadership principles will be broken open and discussed in more detail in future blogs.Thu, 11 Jul 2019 16:28:00 -0700http://www.impacttechnologyadvisors.com/blog/post/2019-challengeshttp://www.impacttechnologyadvisors.com/blog/post/2019-challenges2018 was a banner year for electronic components, with semiconductor sales crossing the trillion-unit threshold. (That’s a one followed by twelve zeros and four commas!). If you built a factory capable of producing one part every second, it would take almost 32 thousand years for your factory to produce a trillion units. With this market growth comes multiple challenges and questions for 2019: Is the current growth cycle over or are we just experiencing a two-quarter inventory correction? Will the trade talks with China resolve the rising tensions over tariffs? Will the slowdown in China’s economy effect the rest of the electronic component supply chain? As is often the case in this cyclical industry, the future is hazy and difficult to predict. What most executives do agree on is the need to attract the necessary talent and build the creative leadership capacity to deal with the uncertainty and accelerating complexity. In Vistage International’s CEO Confidence Survey, 65% of CEO’s say they plan to increase their workforce in 2019, and 71% said they will act to develop their existing workforce. According to Gartner’s 2019 HR Executive Priorities Survey, HR leaders are prioritizing the building of critical skills and competencies, and strengthening their leadership bench. With unemployment at less than 4%, we continue to be in a candidate driven job market, making it difficult for many organizations to hire the talent they need, particularly in the technology fields. As a result, executives are increasing efforts to develop and retain their existing workforce. The two go hand-in-hand. According to the Linkedin 2018 Workplace Learning Report, getting employees to make time for learning was the top talent development challenge, and yet 94% of employees say the would remain longer with a company that invested in their career development. This seems counterintuitive: employees want their employers to provide career development opportunities but won’t invest their time when they do. And yet according to the Ceridian’s 2018 Pulse of Talent Report, 39% of employees say the reason they look for a new job is to grow and take on new challenges. By investing in employee development, companies can increase the skills of their workers, while at the same, improving their employee retention.Fri, 05 Jul 2019 10:11:00 -0700http://www.impacttechnologyadvisors.com/blog/post/mindfulness-to-fine-tune-your-leadership-inner-gamehttp://www.impacttechnologyadvisors.com/blog/post/mindfulness-to-fine-tune-your-leadership-inner-gameLeadership effectiveness is a primary factor in business performance. Leaders in the 90th percentile on 360 degree competency assessments produce twice the results of those in the 10th to 89th percentile, according to a heavily researched book The Extraordinary Leader, by Zenger and Folkman (2009). And yet leadership challenges continue to grow. According to an IBM survey of 1500 CEOs, the top two challenges for business are 1) escalating complexity 2) building creative capacity to deal with it. From the 2015 book Mastering Leadership, Anderson and Adams describe leadership as being concerned with the transactional: setting direction, keeping the organization on track, executing with efficiency, and producing results; as well as the transformational: setting the vision to capture employee imagination and inspiring them to engage. They go on to say that many managers and executives take their leadership development seriously, focusing on their “outer game” (OG): leadership competencies such as management skills, processes and business rhythms. Much leverage can come, however, by focusing on the sometimes-overlooked “inner game” (IG): leadership consciousness, self-awareness, sense making, mental models of reality, and decision making. The IG is like the internal operating system (IOS) which runs the OG. Leaders can only make substantive improvements in performance by improving the way they “show up” as leaders by strengthening their IG, by practicing self-awareness and consciousness. Self-awareness is the platform on which the attitude and mindset of the leader connects to values and beliefs, which requires mindfulness. What is mindfulness? Paying attention with intention and without judgment. It helps leaders see beyond the narratives of traditional thought patterns, to reexamine assumptions and better perceive what is really going on. Regular meditation develops the IG to overcome distractions for improved focus and better creativity. To deal with ever-increasing complexity, leaders must address challenges by imaging what is possible, from different perspectives, a shift in how they may normally think. Creative solutions often are accompanied by greater risk and require the leader to be grounded in the present, more than the future. According to Business Insider, several prominent leaders have practiced mindfulness to improve productivity and creativity, including Bill Ford (Executive Chairman of Ford Motor Company), Jeff Weiner (CEO of LinkedIn) and the late Steve Jobs. A growing number of companies, including Intel and others from the electronic component industry, promote mindfulness to lower health costs, improve employee productivity and reduce stress. They also realize leadership benefits of improve creativity, communication skills, and stress reduction. An HBR article claims that mindfulness improves executive functioning and offers five suggestions for improving mindfulness: Practice 10 minutes of mindfulness training each day Avoid reading email first thing in the morning Turn off all notifications Stop multitasking Put it on your calendarFri, 05 Jul 2019 10:08:00 -0700http://www.impacttechnologyadvisors.com/blog/post/the-leverage-of-frontline-managershttp://www.impacttechnologyadvisors.com/blog/post/the-leverage-of-frontline-managersElectronic component companies range in size from less than 10 employees to over 100,000. What they all have in common is making and selling electronic components. What they all want to do is sell more electronic components! How can companies ensure that those 10 or 100,000 employees are selling as effectively as possible? On which employees should companies put their focus and investment? There is a strong argument that significant leverage exists by investing in frontline managers. Roughly 50-60% of a company’s managers are frontline managers, supervising individual contributors (or sales reps in a sales organization) and these frontline managers oversee up to 80% of a company’s workforce (HBR May 2011). Eighty percent! Companies rely on frontline managers to make sure 80% of the workforce is working effectively toward the company objectives. And further, according to Gallup (2015), managers account for 70% of employee engagement. Therefore, the greatest factor by far, of a company’s workforce engagement, is not the CEO, is not the company’s vision, is not the compelling nature of the company’s products. It is the manager. The frontline manager. For 80% of the workforce. Given that statistic, companies should be highly focused on ensuring they have the right people in these important managerial roles. In the same research, Gallup found that only 10% of people have a high level of management capability. These 10% are skilled at engaging both customers and employees, retaining top talent and sustaining high performing cultures. An additional 20% of people have some management capability, that can be bolstered by coaching and development. This is a critical area of investment, that is overlooked or under resourced by many companies, despite the ability to triple the number of effective managers in their workforces. According to Forbes (2018), engagement is the emotional attachment of the employee to the company and its goals. Effective frontline managers enhance employee engagement by providing career growth, recognition, and trust. Towers Watson (2009) indicated that recognition of employee performance by the manager can increase engagement by almost 60%. Frontline sales managers often wear two hats: “Closers” who visit customers with sales reps to advance the sale, and “Managers” who direct, coach, mentor and develop sales reps to be more effective in selling. What powerful faces of the company are they! With this high degree of influence, it is so important that they affiliate with senior management. They should be champions for the vision and goals of the executive leadership team. Many frontline managers, however, see themselves as “We” and the executive team as “They”. Only by affiliating themselves with company leadership and realizing that “We are They”, can they provide credibility of the company’s direction to their employees and their customers. By investing in and strengthening the skills of frontline managers, through coaching and developing, and working to ensure they are aligned with senior management and company strategy, companies can dramatically enhance their productivity through better leadership of the 80% of company employees that are on the frontline.Fri, 05 Jul 2019 10:06:00 -0700