Do Managers Truly Understand How to Measure Critical Success Factors (CSFs)?

Earlier this month, I spoke with James H. Dobbins about his latest book, Critical Success Factors: How to Effectively Identify, Measure, and Apply CSFs, which equips managers with a practical framework to accurately identify, measure, and apply their critical success factors (CSFs). Unlike previous efforts that relied on broad surveys and statistical analyses intended to generate generalized lists of CSFs, this approach honors the foundational definition of CSFs and provides actionable guidance tailored to each manager’s unique context.

During our conversation, I asked James, "What are the biggest mistakes managers make when trying to measure critical success factors (CSFs)?" Here is his complete answer:

The biggest mistake managers make when trying to measure critical success factors (CSFs) is failing to understand what CSFs are in the first place. Managers turn to the results of research by others, projects often done by academics in the pursuit of an advanced degree. The research objective is to produce a list of generalized CSFs.  Once the list is published, the research is completed, the degree is granted, and the researcher goes on with their life. No measures are suggested. Many researchers worldwide, all with the same objective, have published different sets of CSFs. There is no guidance on which list to use. The biggest problem is that all the research was conducted using surveys of large numbers of managers, and there has never been a valid list of CSFs produced from surveys. Using surveys to identify CSFs has several fundamental flaws.  Some, noted in the Introduction to the book, are:

• The assumption that project managers know how to identify their CSFs,
• The failure to recognize that CSFs are contextually relevant to the manager, and therefore, the elimination of anything not generalizable, is contrary to the definition of CSF.
• The failure to understand that Critical Success Factors are, in fact, critical for a specific manager, and that all must be done well.  CSFs are not something you pick from a menu, like a survey result, hoping you chose the right ones.
• The absence of any longitudinal studies. There was no follow-up with any of the managers surveyed to validate the study's results or to determine whether and how they utilized the CSFs identified in the survey.
• There was no attempt to identify measures for the identified CSFs to help managers track their success in meeting the CSFs.  

Does your company actively use and apply critical success factors (CSFs) in its operations? Does your organization rely on surveys to determine which CSFs to prioritize? And do you agree with the mistakes James H. Dobbins identifies in this area?

Mentorship Programs Within Organizations -- What Are the Benefits?

In December, Matthew Aslett published a book entitled Fundamentals of Effective Mentorship: How to Develop Intellectual Capacity and Healthy Workplace Culture, which discusses the facilitation of mentorship programs and the development of mentorship relationships based on experiences from a practitioner lens. The ability to encourage two-way learning relationships through mentorship can help organizations to improve effectiveness. A mentorship program can empower mentors, mentees, and program leaders to share best practices. The mentorship process is integral for promoting the professional and personal growth of stakeholders within an organization. 

When I spoke with Matthew this month, I asked him, “What are the prime benefits of mentorship and how can managers start mentorship programs within their companies?”  Here is his detailed answer:

The prime benefits of mentorship can be considered from three perspectives. First, mentees can establish new relationships with diverse individuals who may provide opportunities to accumulate knowledge, skills, and experiences. Mentees can increase self-belief with encouragement and personalized guidance from counterparts. Mentees can enhance goal-setting abilities with the exploration of priorities, specification of action plans, and co-construction of success strategies.

Second, mentors can develop communication skills in verbal and written domains to convey critical perspectives in understandable terms based on counterpart needs. Mentors can delve deeper into introspection with an awareness of novel viewpoints and personalized philosophies for decision-making. Mentors can engage in talent identification of candidates for prospective positions and opportunities through knowledge of unique abilities. Mentors can achieve self-actualization or personal fulfillment through participation in the vocation and bidirectional exchange of diverse best practices.

Third, communities can proceed with lifelong learning as individuals, teams, and organizations may explore perspectives in collaborative inquiry activities. Communities can improve equity and inclusivity, which represent fairness and belongingness, through active listening, examination of taken-for-granted assumptions, and recognition of improvements. Communities can cultivate intellectual abilities for engagement, productivity, and creativity when members participate in dialogue and pinpoint actionable recommendations.

A manager can start a mentorship program within the company using seven steps. First, initiative goals based on the values, vision, and assembled data can guide the focus. Second, selection criteria about mandatory or voluntary participation and manual or automated matching can influence planning. Third, resource strategy considers financial, human, intellectual, physical, and technological elements for implementation. Fourth, data collection mechanisms can capture quantitative and qualitative insights for decision-making. Fifth, an opening message can specify formal expectations and announce an orientation meeting. Sixth, an ideation session can explore aspirations and success factors. Seventh, interaction norms about frequency, relationship length, and modality can clarify learning preferences.

What do you think of Matthew's views on organizational mentorship programs? Does your company have one? Has it been effective in improving employee engagement and workplace culture? 

Can Business Leaders Learn to See the "Invisible"?

In October, Michael Bremer published a new book entitled Learn to See the Invisible: How to Unlock Your Potential as a Leader, which describes four key foundations and 25 different actions leaders can practice to become more effective in training their eyes to see things tomorrow that are currently invisible. It helps leaders and managers to become better observers of their current reality by practicing getting better at getting better. 

When I spoke with Michael this month, I asked him directly: “What does ‘learning to see the invisible’ mean regarding leadership, and how does it actually benefit leaders and their abilities?” Here is his complete answer:

Let me begin answering your question with a short story.  

You and your spouse go to a big box shopping center with a large parking lot.  Right after you exit your car, you trip over one of those concrete blocks intended to block car tires. Your spouse looks at you and asks, “Are you OK?”

What is your response?  If you are like me and the 1000s of other people with whom I’ve asked this question, you respond, “I’m OK!”  Even though your toe is killing you.  Why?  You feel like an idiot, and you are embarrassed.  Plus, a host of other emotions.

It’s a very similar challenge inside an organization when a leader asks, “How are things going?”  Even when our intentions are good, there are a variety of reasons that people do not openly share their thoughts.  If a leader truly wishes to better understand the actual reality of what is happening, it requires some effort.

"Learning to see the invisible" in leadership means developing the awareness and skills to recognize factors, patterns, and dynamics that are not immediately obvious but that profoundly influence team performance, organizational culture, and decision-making. These "invisible" aspects lay hidden due to assumptions, biases, unspoken issues, underlying motivations, and systemic inefficiencies that might be overlooked in the daily flow of work. Leaders can make more informed, empathetic, and effective choices by learning to see these hidden elements.

How Does "Seeing the Invisible" Benefit Leaders and Enhance Their Abilities?

1. Improved Decision-Making: Leaders who can see beyond the surface make more informed and nuanced decisions. They understand the broader context and implications of their choices, which leads to better outcomes for the organization and their team.

2. Greater Empathy and Connection: Leaders build stronger relationships by recognizing their team's true needs and motivations. Empathy fosters trust, increases engagement, and enhances collaboration, as team members feel understood and valued.

3. Increased Agility and Adaptability: Leaders who are aware of invisible factors are better prepared to adapt to change. They are attuned to internal and external shifting dynamics and can pivot strategies or approaches in response to new information or challenges.

4. Empowering and Developing Others: Leaders who understand the hidden potential in their team members can provide targeted support, coaching, and growth opportunities. This empowerment leads to a more capable, engaged workforce, with team members who are better equipped to take the initiative and contribute in a more meaningful way.

How Do You Unlock this Potential to Become a Better Leader?

When you look at professional athletes who become champions in their sport, how do they get there?  They get there through hours of practice and constantly strive to improve the way they play their sport.  If your profession is leadership, shouldn’t you also consciously practice getting better at what you do?  

Learning to See the Invisible lays out four foundational elements for leaders to practice:

Step 1: Reflection – Understand how you currently lead and identify your starting point. 

Step 2: Unifying Purpose – Create a meaningful purpose that motivates and guides change. 

Step 3: Build Relationships – Foster trust and open communication while empowering your team. 

Step 4: Visual Leadership – Implement visuals that inspire improvement and facilitate discussions about progress against the purpose you seek to accomplish.

The book lays out 28 different actions leaders can practice to get better at doing the above. 

Leaders who adopt this transformative mindset can improve their relationships and take decisive steps toward becoming a champions. They exhibit a vulnerability through their curiosity and willingness to learn.  That vulnerability creates space inside an organization where other people can feel more secure in responding to the questions they are asked. 

The world needs better leaders, and I genuinely hope readers embark on this journey.

What do you think of Michael's perspective on leadership awareness and its effect on decision-making and workplace culture? What is the state of leadership in your organization? Are they making choices based on assumption or "confirmation bias"? Or are they truly understanding some of the hidden aspects that might be driving the true workplace culture of their organization?  

Bioinspired Strategies -- Do They Help Companies Survive?

During this past July, Daniel J. Finkenstadt and Tojin T. Eapen published a book entitled Bioinspired Strategic Design: Nature-Inspired Principles for Dynamic Business Environments, which shows that the same three capabilities essential for the survival of living organisms in harsh environments – efficiency, resilience, and prominence – are also critical for organizations in their process of navigating through their own hostile environments.

I spoke with both authors shortly after the book's publication, and during our conversation, I asked them: "What are bioinspired strategies and how do they help companies survive?" Here is their complete answer:

The bioinspired strategies described in the book draw inspiration from adaptations and mechanisms found in living organisms to solve complex problems. These strategies can be analogically applied to identify survival strategies applicable to human organizations, including companies.

This approach of analogically associating nature with business problems also encourages viewing business operations and challenges as part of an interconnected system.

Bioinspired strategies help companies survive by improving their efficiency, resilience, and prominence (we call it "ERP" capabilities) in challenging environments.

The key lesson in the book can be described as follows:

"The effect of any action on survivability cannot be understood by merely looking at its impact on one of the three ERP factors, efficiency, resilience or prominence that it seeks to modify, but requires looking at indirect effects mediated by the other two factors."

This means that a company’s actions don't exist in isolation – they can have ripple effects across all three factors, which together determine the company's overall ability to survive and thrive.

Firstly, companies can optimize their efficiency (E) by studying how organisms efficiently manage limited resources through principles such as resting, reduction, and reuse.

For example, consider how certain desert plants, like cacti, have adapted to conserve water in arid environments. They have developed specialized structures to store water and minimize water loss through transpiration. This natural strategy can inspire businesses to find innovative ways to conserve and efficiently use their critical resources, especially in resource-scarce operating environments.

Secondly, nature's lessons in adaptation to external forces guide business on resilience (R). Specific principles found in nature such as replacement, repair, and reinforcement can help businesses become more adaptable to market changes and crises.

For example, consider the well-known case of how camels store fat in their humps for long journeys. The camel's hump illustrates the role of reservoirs and reinforcements in survival when faced with extreme unpredictable forces. This principle is also found in business environments, such as building up buffer stocks or cash reserves to manage uncertainty.

Thirdly, the concept of prominence (P), inspired by how organisms balance their visibility towards predators, prey, and mates, can be applied to managing complex relationships that involve both attracting and avoiding attention from observers.

In nature, prominence capability is apparent in the ability of various cephalopod (squid, cuttlefish, octopi) species to alter their appearance in the presence of different observers (predators, prey, or potential mates).

In the book, we show how cephalopods' strategies for managing visibility can be applied to startups dealing with various stakeholders like investors, competitors, and customers.

Nature-inspired strategies offer design principles such as combination, removal, and segmentation. These serve as practical guidelines for generating ideas and managing trade-offs in strategic decision-making. By looking to nature for inspiration, businesses can discover innovative solutions to complex challenges and enhance their chances of long-term survival and success.

What do you think of Daniel and Tojin's ideas? Has your company implemented any methods that use nature as inspiration to solve problems?

Are Evolving Stakeholder Expectations Affecting Your Business, Its Products, and Its Leadership?

In January, Raj Aseervatham published a thought-provoking book entitled Leading Tomorrow: How Effective Leaders Change Paradigms, Build Responsible Brands, and Transform Employees, which addresses the evolving expectations of the stakeholders -- such as, customers, investors, society, governments, and employees -- regarding businesses and their products and how leadership must respond.  These stakeholders are increasingly making choices about if or how they support businesses – through the purchase of their products and services, shareholdings and financing, regulatory approvals, and even experiences working for them – based on not just what a business does, but how it does it.

Raj's book considers how the emerging generation of leaders must change paradigms and transform their employees to do more than just operate a business. It examines how to effect culture shifts that are necessary to innovate businesses so that they simultaneously meet market needs while meeting stakeholder expectations on concerns as varied as ethical business conduct, labor practices, climate change, responsible use of diminishing natural resources, and contribution to socio-economic challenges in their market catchments.

When I spoke with Raj this month, I asked him: "How are stakeholder expectations changing regarding supporting businesses? What paradigms must leaders change to meet these new expectations?" 

Here is his complete answer:

The three most significant support groups for successful businesses are customers, investors, and employees. These stakeholder groups are part of a larger ecosystem; our increasingly interconnected, increasingly knowledgeable society, and the communities of which we are a part. 

Societal awareness of the environmental, social and governance (ESG) problems that society faces grows daily. As the world’s population increases, these problems grow and exacerbate each other. Climate change, ecological breakdown, water contamination, air pollution, pandemics, corruption, infractions of human rights in the supply chain, gender and cultural discrimination, and many others take a compounding toll on society. 

Unsurprisingly, an increasing proportion of stakeholders demand to know what businesses are doing to diminish these problems. They disassociate from those businesses that worsen the problems and migrate to better-performing competitors. Their insights improve continually. Greenwashing and PR are more easily seen through. 

As this awareness extends across and deepens within society, customers, investors and employees are making more informed choices about who they will buy from, who they will invest in, and who they will purposefully work for. These trends amplify as older generations give way to younger generations and new values supersede old ones. Commodity markets, money markets, and human resource markets adapt to these inexorable trends. 

Business leaders are seeing these ESG issues as the new frontier of strategic management. Responsible businesses are more likely to sustainably prosper. 

Leaders must now understand the myriad issues and own the most important ones in the context of their business stakeholders and business strategy. Then they must authentically lead their employees to meet or exceed rapidly changing stakeholder expectations of responsible business practice. Growing and harnessing such societally attuned business cultures will increasingly define successful business leaders. 

Like any journey of authentic and transformative leadership, the first steps are taken within the leader. This book provides illumination to guide those first critical steps to leading tomorrow.

What do you think of Raj's perspective? Have you seen a shift in your customers' and stakeholders' expectations? What steps are you taking to address these new expectations? 

Why are Leadership-Development Efforts Relatively Ineffective?

Michael Couch and Richard Citrin recently published an important new book entitled Strategy-Driven Leadership:The Playbook for Developing Your Next Generation of Leaders. This book places business strategy first and maintains an emphasis on building leadership programs around what it will take to make the business successful as opposed to implementing a program in the hopes that it will benefit the strategy.

I spoke with Michael and Richard this month and asked them: “Given that most organizations spend significant resources on developing their leaders, why are most leadership-development efforts relatively ineffective in the long run?”

Here is their complete answer:

In Strategy-Driven Leadership, we cite several factors related to the ineffectiveness of most leadership development initiatives. Let’s discuss three of the most critical factors.

First of all, many approaches to leadership development ignore context. By this we mean that any development initiative must be built from a strong and clear strategic or business case. Designing effective development starts with the question, “Why exactly are we doing this?” -- so that the intended business impact of any investment in development is established at the get go. We call this “framing” the development.

Related to context, a second factor that is important to the effectiveness of leadership development is to have learners understand and focus on leadership competencies that are directly linked to the strategy of the business.  Strategies vary across organizations and the strategy of an individual business can change over time. For development to make a difference, strategy must be translated into the unique skills required of leaders to execute the strategy.

Third, organizations often take a one-size-fits-all approach to developing their leaders by buying an off-the-shelf program and requiring all leaders to attend the training. You’ll see this kind of program something like “these 5 factors are essential for every leader to possess.” This approach is seldom effective because it ignores the fact that the development needs of individual leaders vary greatly. There’s just no way that a single program can address those diverse needs. In addition, and probably more importantly, critical leadership competencies cannot be learned in a classroom. Real leadership skill-building occurs through navigating and learning from a challenging job or assignment. Our model for developing strategy-critical leadership skills, called Intentional Leadership Development, capitalizes on learning from experience so that development is built into everyday work and not bolted on as something extra to do.

What do you think of Michael and Richard's views on leadership development? Has leadership development been successful in your company?

When 45 Business Gurus Share Their Most Important Insights

Last month, a very interesting book entitled The GuruBook: Insights from 45 Pioneering Entrepreneurs and Leaders on Business Strategy and Innovation, compiled by Jonathan Løw, was published. In it, 45 of the world’s leading entrepreneurs and leaders -- such as Salim Ismail (Singularity University), Naveen Jain (Moon Express), Jimmy Maymann (Huffington Post), Otto Scharmer (Theory U), and Blake Mycoskie (TOMS) -- plainly discuss their ideas about innovation, entrepreneurship, and authentic leadership.


I had the chance to speak with Jonathan Løw about this book, and one of the main questions I asked was: "What inspired you to compile the thoughts of these particular entrepreneurs, innovators, and leaders?" Here is his complete response:  

The GuruBook is first and foremost about listening. Although I have been a serial entrepreneur and have tried to start a number of businesses, have worked with innovation in both large and small organizations, and have been a leader in several organizations, I do not imagine in any way that I have all the answers in these exciting but also complex areas.

I believe that the ability to listen is one of the most important characteristics for future entrepreneurs, innovators, and leaders. This ability to listen, and the curiosity that is inherent in it, may be the factor that gives you an advantage over the competition. Consider, for example, the English mathematician and physicist Isaac Newton, who, like millions of others, saw an apple fall from a tree. The difference was that Newton asked "why."

As a result of my own curiosity and desire to listen more, it was obvious that I should invite the people who, in my eyes, have generated inspiring and pioneering ideas, organizations, and results, to share their thoughts and knowledge with the readers in The GuruBook.

This book’s gurus have been asked to talk/write about what they’re enthusiastic about. That means that you can look forward to becoming more knowledgeable about:

• How to start a business without an idea.

• Why some ideas succeed while others fail.

• How to demystify the task of scaling up a startup as an entrepreneur.

• How you can be enterprising, no matter what phase your organization is in.

• How to create an innovative culture.

• Why simple questions lead to the greatest innovations.

Why businesses and local authorities aren't startups, and what both can learn from each other.

• How to become authentic as a leader.

• Why authentic leadership is a strength.

• Why there’s an entrepreneur in every successful leader.

• Why the ability to listen is all-important whether you’re an entrepreneur or a leader.

The contents of The GuruBook have weight and value because the articles and/or interviews are with people who, for years, have perfected their ability to listen and have consistently become better at understanding their customers, partners, and colleagues.

Through thousands of meetings, sales calls, customer service responses, innovation processes, brainstorms, mail dialogues, LinkedIn discussions, and so on, they have listened and then acted on what they heard. These are the insights that The GuruBook contains.

I fundamentally believe the future belongs to the curious. The future belongs to the entrepreneurs, innovators, leaders, and passionate souls who are not only capable of “listening more intently” to the world about them, but who are capable of “ listening more intently” to the world about them but who also have the ability to act on the input they get.

A website for the book -- https://www.thegurubook.org/ -- includes a list of the gurus participating as well as some more background on the book.