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Industrial Supply Trends

Industrial Supply Trends

In Collaboration with ISA

Building and Keeping a Winning Culture Through Leadership

December 4, 2024 by David Gordon Leave a Comment

Leadership - Boston Celtics

The famous Peter Drucker said “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” The one thing he didn’t say, but inferred, is that culture stems from great leadership.

In a time where seemingly everyone is running faster than ever and, for much of your staff, 2024 may have been a grind, a strong culture that is reinforced by appreciative leadership, is critical.

Consider today’s environment …

  • Many channel partners do not have experienced associate depth and have to work extra hard to just do the basics or picking, packing, and delivery
  • The end customer may sympathize with you but their expectations and needs do not change.
  • Your internal expectations have increased
  • Technology implementations, “digital transformation” (aka digital anxiety), AI
  • News about layoffs
  • Concerns about consolidation
  • A slower market

And potentially more, depending upon your company.

Winners, or should I say “winning teams” have a different “fabric” within their company. It emanates from their leader, which can be at any management level of a company. It’s someone who crafts strategy, motivates their team, and gets the most from everyone.

In a word, it is exhibiting leadership.

So, what got me thinking about this?

I grew up in Boston. And if you’re from Boston, you don’t think of the Patriots as “your team”. The team for the ages has been the Celtics. They’ve consistently been good and, if they weren’t, it was short-lived. They’ve also had legendary coaches. Coaches who got the most from their players.

(In fact, 21 of the NBA’s top 100 players of all-time played for the Boston Celtics at some point during their career, and not all of them wwere first round draft choices.)

Nowadays with players making “god-awful money” it is probably difficult to tell them what to do. The key is targeting something within them (remember, the minimum player salary in the NBA is about $1.2 million!)

Today’s the coach of the Celtics coach is Joe Mazzulla. He was thrust into the job after the prior coach had “challenges.” Mazzulla had little experience and never coached for a major college or in the pros. In a sense you could say he was unproven, perhaps untested. Bur, in his second year as head coach, he led the Celtics to the NBA World Championship.

Here’s the Leadership Part

According to an article this past weekend on www.boston.com, at the end of last season Mazzulla went to each person in the organization to thank them for their role in helping the team achieve its goal … winning the championship last year.

In his words “If everybody’s not trying to be the head coach in their role, we can’t achieve a high, high level of a successful organization.”

He further stated “when you have everybody in the right seat on the bus heading in the right direction, great things can happen. I also see it’s easy for parts of the organization to feel less than or not as valued as others.”

He felt everyone “deserved a special ‘thank you’ and added ““If you walk through a player’s perspective of our building, they usually see Nate (Eckley, manager of the Celtics) first, and then they see the kitchen staff, and then they may see some of the front office … and then they see the sports science. [The coaches are] the last people that they see. And so, every interaction that is had is super important to them getting on the floor, ready to feel valued, but also ready to, like, we gotta be at our best.”

Which then gets you thinking about your customer’s perspective. Consider all of the people that touch the customer … whether you are a distributor, a rep / lighting agent, or a manufacturer. And the higher up the channel your company is, the more people your staff touches, as they are touching multiple types of customers.

What is your leadership style? Each of your management team’s leadership style?

For companies to win, it takes everyone. Too frequently only a few get recognized or are even appreciated. As companies get bigger it seemingly is harder to recognize many, but it is feasible if there is a culture to thank people and genuinely recognize and appreciate people for being part of your team … whether you are a branch / department manager or a company president.

As the year starts and people work to start the year strong, perhaps take a moment and thank each person on your team for their support, effort, and contributions to making last year a success.

Every person within your company is crucial to delivering for your customers and making the company a success.

Filed Under: Branding, Growth Strategies, Insights Tagged With: featured, insights

Portrait of the author, David Gordon, President of the Channel Marketing Group

About David Gordon

David Gordon founded Channel Marketing Group in 2001 after spending a year with an electrical industry “dot com”, five years at IMARK Group and over 10 years in the performance marketing industry where he helped companies in over 60 industries with strategies to accelerate growth and increase customer engagement. He writes for Electrical Wholesaling, TED Magazine, Progressive Distributor, Modern Distribution Management, Industrial Supply Magazine, Supply House Times and the Canadian Electrical Wholesaler.

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