Blogs

Chris Boue
SoapBlog 3 - Keeping the Faith and Leading Through Tough Times
Negotiating the Terrain and Trusting Your Strength While Running at Top Speed

As a leader, how do you square your personal faith when you make necessary, critical professional decisions? As someone who feels faith is major, I believe we're put into a specific place in time for a reason – stewardship. Stewardship means you are called to be the best you can be. You practice it and call others to it, as well. As a steward making tough choices, you do your best in critical decision-making. You're not responsible for the current economic recession or downturn in the marketplace, but you are responsible for your reactions—reactions based on your mind, heart and soul.

On a daily basis I hold myself to a high standard of creativity, passion and commitment in protecting our business and ensuring the value we give our customers. In other words, we steward our stakeholders, investors' capital, employees' careers and our customer partnerships by executing a strong offense. Speaking of offense, it's especially important to defend your base and position your company to be a thriving operation when the upturn comes.

On a personal note, two of my five children have been cross country runners. I've seen that success demands taking advantage of the terrain. Running down hills creates even more momentum when you lengthen your stride. Likewise, during uphill climbs, runners stay in front by shortening their stride and moving their arms faster to power themselves up the hill.

As business leaders and managers, we can't shy from making critical decisions. In thriving markets with easy-to-please customers, anyone can succeed. In fact, many do. But true tests happen in tough times as leaders re-evaluate, add value and determine the best use of staff and resources.

Here's a question I ask: Are all staff members working to ten times the value of their salaries? By evaluating on that basis, it's easier to filter personnel decisions. In better economies, lackadaisical managers let people slide. Tough times force business managers and leaders to make tough calls and invest in things that make the highest-leverage difference. Today's decisions have immediate consequences and need to be constantly evaluated and re-evaluated.

Who are the best stewards on your staff? Have you challenged them to rise to the occasion? Today's business environment is more about harnessing character and creativity to produce value than about defending and trying to stay afloat. While survival is a must, leaders are paid to lead in uncertain times as well.

During a downturn, all business leaders should absolutely re-assess their strategic and business plans, re-evaluating that the initial strategy projected is not only still valid, but can also be modified to greater advantage. Company assets must be driven to the highest possible returns, ensuring that highest-value resources guarantee overall success.

The effect of these activities may look and feel like Business 101 cost-cutting without reconciling real value, determining strategy, or assessing risks. Conversely, our company is conducting a bottom-up approach to ensure that everything we are doing resonates with long-term market leadership. In this way, the company is not only protected, but positioned to thrive in the future. To do otherwise is a mistake of critical proportion – an example of bad stewardship and the epitome of poor leadership.

Although it may be easier to avoid asking the tough questions and making the difficult calls, doing so positions leaders as business stewards and ensures their companies' successes in the future.