An Interview with Bob Prosen, Author of “Kiss Theory Good Bye”
Bob Prosen
A worldwide travel industry leader closed more than $100 million in sales within 24 months. A global telecom reduced overtime by 50% while improving on-time service delivery by 33%. Productivity skyrocketed to 130% with no increase in staff for global communications provider. Sales improved by 38% and exceeded profit plan by 47% for major U.S. technology service company.
What’s the common denominator? Bob Prosen and his five proven ways to get extraordinary results. The results mentioned above are documented outcomes from executives who acted on Bob’s advice. Bob shares his wisdom and execution models in his new book, Kiss Theory Good Bye: Five Proven Ways to Get Extraordinary Results in Any Company, making his knowledge accessible to knowledge workers, middle managers, and C-levels.
Always wanting to make a contribution to others, Bob shares insightful advice with the Smart Lemming that compliments Kiss Theory Good Bye. Committed to teaching, Bob hopes you’ll derived value from my interview with him. He’s provided Smart Lemming readers a free download of “The Five Crippling Habits” chapter from his book and additional resources for further reading.
SMART LEMMING: What is the single biggest management mistake a person and/or company can make?
BOB PROSEN: Not hiring and surrounding oneself with people who are smarter. Almost everyone I speak with agrees with hiring smart. The issue isn’t understanding. It’s know how. Because its’ so important I devote a lot to time to the subject in Kiss Theory Good Bye, explaining how to know if people who work for you today are in fact smarter and how to hire smarter people in the future. One of the keys in knowing if you’re hiring smarter than you is that you should be surprised with their new ideas and solutions. You should be constantly learning from them. The other thing I recommend and talk about in the book as well is when the field is narrowed down in regard to the hire, you ask the potential candidate to come up with a one-page action plan describing what he or she will do in the first sixty days of the job. I then ask for a three-month plan. Both of these techniques are described in detail on pages 31-34 and are guaranteed to help you hire the right people.
SL: You place an importance on hiring people smarter than you. I’m curious if younger people are more threatened by hiring people smarter than they are, because of their limited experience. Have you seen this happen?
BP: In general, I would say yes. However, there are many who understand the importance and know they need to “hire smarter” to help the company. I once worked for a 27-year old CEO who was brilliant. He also knew that he needed someone to rely on who had been where he wanted to go and that’s why he hired me. I hope those reading this interview take a moment to think about this important issue. Why increase your level of risk unnecessarily when you can surround yourself with people who have the right blend of wisdom and risk taking? Remember this, A players hire A players, and B players hire C players. Which one are you?
SL: You’ve written that companies that spend too much time planning and not enough time executing. How has this changed over the years?
BP: It’s interesting to see this issue go through its cycles. In the late 90s when everyone jumped on the Internet bandwagon, most of the start-ups spent more time planning in order to raise capital and then fell woefully short of results, which ultimately led to their demise. Today, with the renewed interest on results, companies either get rewarded or penalized based on how they perform compared to plan. Frankly, I prefer the latter and so do investors, employees, and customers. An effective plan is imperative but without results, the plan is useless. My preference is to develop a well, thought-out plan, then get busy making it a reality. If the landscape dictates change along the way, so be it. Make the necessary changes and get back to execution.
SL: In many industries, the average age of CEOs is getting younger. How is this affecting the planning-to-execution ratio?
BP: Being a younger CEO is both exciting and challenging. I love their drive, energy level, optimism, and commitment. The one thing young leaders need to understand is that they don’t know what they don’t know. In addition, the best way to deal with this is to surround themselves with smarter people who have experience and wisdom in areas they have yet to experience.
Another important element for young leaders is to recognize they don’t have all the answers and therefore, have to keep an open mind. They should be careful not to shut out or disregard other’s ideas and opinions. Because of their desire to make things happen quickly, they need someone close to them to provide balance and sufficient time to think and plan before reacting.
SL: What do you think of the role of meetings today? Are they used too often?
BP: The simple answer is yes. There are two types of meetings, information sharing, and ones for getting things done. It’s important not to confuse them. Having worked with thousands of CEOs and business owners, many complain about the amount of wasted time spent in unproductive meetings. They key to having a productive meeting is to capture action items and begin each subsequent meeting with a review of what was accomplished. There a free resource at our site that has a blueprint for running effect meetings at http://www.kisstheorygoodbye.com/media/bybob.php, which is detailed in a Municipal World Magazine article.
Another thing that is truly fundamental to reducing “meeting mania” is to reduce the number of people in every meeting by half. The only people who should attend any meeting are those directly involved in the achieving goal that is the subject of the meeting. I also firmly believe in creating a “results-oriented” agenda that is followed closely. In my training outreach, I can’t tell you how many employees I’ve met who feel swamped by meetings and feel like they don’t have enough time just to do their job. Every single meeting should have an agenda and as a leader you should pop into meetings occasionally and ask for the agenda to make sure that everyone knows what is expected and that, you value their time and don’t want it wasted in meeting after meeting.
SL: Does the increased transparency of compensation make it harder for managers to talk to their employees? Because employees can get salary data online from multiple sources, does that make it more imperative to have direct communication about compensation?
BP: I believe compensation is a highly personal issue that should only be spoken about with the person involved. However, for senior leaders of public companies, compensation is disclosed as part of their public filings and is therefore open to scrutiny.
Compensation is less of an issue when it’s tied to measurable results. The rub generally comes into play when leaders don’t delivery results commensurate with their compensation. I also recommend leaders of all size companies, whether public or privately held, deal with the myth that they are making all the money when the “workers” are doing all the heavy lifting. My suggestion is to add up all the investment owners and leaders make in the business and share the results with employees so they have a true understanding of why it’s important for companies to make a lot of profit, so they can reinvest in people, equipment, technology, training, bonuses, etc. Few companies do this and it can make a huge difference!
SL: How are internet companies doing in executing the five attributes of highly profitable companies?
BP: Results vary. Internet companies that understand how to sell, attract, and retain customers do well. And like any other business that fails at managing costs, meeting their revenue plan and retaining customers ultimately go out of business. Striking the proper balance between frequency and relevance of every customer touch point compared to the opportunity to increase sales and gain additional share of customer is difficult to achieve.
Companies that provide lots of valuable content specific to their customers needs and who use technology in innovative ways such as auto-responders and free added value that can be downloaded easily will win in the marketplace. Speed, efficiency, ease of use, relevance, and personalization are important points of distinction.
SL: Has speed worsened the practice of the five habits? Can internet companies’ course correct if they have sacrificed planning and execution for speed?
BP: I believe any company can right itself if they have sufficient runway, recognize the need to alter their course and have the courage to lead change. Sometimes because of the internet, there is a misunderstanding that companies that react with speed always win the gain, and if you look at some of the major players on the internet, like AOL and others—they still have problems internally that are challenging or can be crippling and need to be solved in order for them to continue leading.
SL: What has the response been to your book? Anything about the response that has surprised you?
BP: The response has been outstanding. I’m humbled and amazed with emails I receive from people around the world on the impact Kiss Theory Good Bye has had on their business and personal lives. And I have been surprised that it’s from across industries, cultures, age groups, and gender. I’m glad people are reading it and identify with it no matter what they’re at.
When I say in the book, “I wish I’d had this kind of book when I started out,” I mean it. Kiss Theory Good Bye is being translated into Portuguese and several other foreign rights are in the works. We’ve also been picked up by almost all of the book summary companies and it is good to know that in some small way, its empowering people to work smarter not harder.
SL: What are you working now?
BP: Lori, I have a number of exciting initiatives underway. In addition to delivering training programs on how to increase performance and profit to organizations around the world, I’m also speaking a lot on leadership and accountability, reaching out to people in education, government, and the public and private sectors with the tools and techniques outlined in Kiss Theory Good Bye.
I’m also collaborating with many business bloggers to help their readers accomplish more while maintaining a healthy work-life balance. Of course, I’m writing numerous articles for magazines in addition to developing online training and teleseminars to meet the growing demand of people who want the blue print for delivering better results.
Additional Bob Prosen Resources for Smart Lemming Readers
- Download the “The Five Crippling Habits” chapter that Bob has provided Smart Lemming readers: First click here . Next click on the Best Books Award Winner starburst icon. Finally, enter code: 1163.
- Free copy of The Leaders Daily Checklist & The Leader’s Role – Four Steps to Achieving Winning Results
- Survey results on how well leaders execute
- “How to manage your human resources for maximum cost control and efficiency”
- Excerpts from Kiss Theory Good Bye
- Bob’s BLOG
Related Posts
- “Bob Prosen’s Daily Checklist for Knowledge Workers, Managers, and C-levels: 7 Steps Every Day”
- The Marketing Technology Blog’s “Kiss Theory Goodbye: The Five Crippling Habits of Companies”
