Master your Company's 'Vital Factors'

By Steve Jagler, Small Business Times

Published April 13, 2007

Highly acclaimed business consultant and author Lee Froschheiser will kick off the Wisconsin Business & Technology Expo on Wednesday, May 2, with a custom seminar for the owners and managers of Wisconsin companies.

Using a proven corporate system, Froschheiser teaches business executives how to become more effective company leaders, and by doing so, create more free time to accomplish their personal goals.

Froschheiser, who is the chief executive officer and president of Management Action Programs (MAP) Inc. in Sherman Oaks, Calif., is the co-author of the new book, “Vital Factors: The Secret to Transforming Your Business - And Your Life.”

His corporate clients have included Kia Motors, City National Bank, Ernst & Young, ConAgra, Oracle Corp., Kinko’s, Trader Joe’s, Domino’s Pizza, Dole Foods and Yahoo.

Using MAP’s interactive techniques that are explained in the book, Froschheiser helps executives identify, measure and improve the “Vital Factors” that are either driving their company’s growth and profitability or holding their company back.

“A company that has been “MAP-itized will have broken the company’s business process into its Vital Factors and organized a set of Vital Factor Teams to monitor and manage these factors,” Froschheiser says.

Each person who attends the Expo Kickoff Breakfast will receive a copy of Froschheiser’s book, which includes several interactive tools to help them become more effective and efficient leaders, including: the MAP Management System’s Monday Morning Action Plan; the MAP Template for Developing a Life Plan; the MAP Personal Situation Analysis; and the MAP Accountability System.

Some wisdom from Froschheiser:

• His mantra is: “Focus on the Vital Few; ignore or delegate the trivial many.”

• He says successful companies don’t follow or imitate the competition. “The plain truth is that when you break new ground, there is rarely any reliable market research to guide your way. And if you’re afraid of risk and afraid to trust your gut, well, then you’d better think twice about going out on your own.”
  

• He says effective leaders don’t spend most of their time telling their people what to do. Instead, they create a system that empowers their people to understand and execute their company’s mission statement. “One cornerstone of our philosophy at MAP is this core belief: if you want to grow your business, you have to start by growing the people who run it,” Froschheier says. “The best-run companies understood, deep in their marrow, that their most important resource was not new technology, clever marketing, canny pricing strategies or astute financial planning. No. Their most important resource, what made them winners, was people. First and always and never any confusion about it … The more tightly you control your people, the more you sap their power to succeed.”
  

• Just as the founders of the United States believed in creating a Constitution that would be the country’s guiding light of freedom and prosperity, company leaders also must embrace the written word, and it must be shared with and understood by every member of the team. “At MAP, we believe that every company or organization should have three documents: a mission statement, a values statement and a business plan. And they should be clear, understandable and compelling. All three are essential to business success … Companies need to spell out – and write down – their specific goals, with target dates for achieving them, and so do people.”
  

• Effective leaders don’t wear a “Big Red S” on their shirts and try to do everything. They learn to effectively delegate and then hold other people accountable.
  

• Effective leaders set goals related to their Vital Factors, including: output (revenue, sales, profits, units or donations); cost (profit margins, expenses, labor, cost of goods, accounts receivable; quality (errors, defects, customer/employee satisfaction, returns, waste); and time (deadlines, cycle times).
  

Froschheiser’s “Vital Factors” is the featured book in this, SBT’s annual Ventures issue, which explores the wisdom of a popular business book each year.

This special report also explains how five southeastern Wisconsin companies are applying Froschheiser’s principles and are growing: S-F Analytical Laboratories Inc. in West Allis; Cousins Submarines Inc. in Menomonee Falls; Connecture Inc. in Waukesha; Gordy’s Lakefront Marine Inc. in Fontana; and El Rey Mexican Food Products Inc. in Milwaukee.

Change your ways
Lee Froschheiser says the three most common things entrepreneurs do to sabotage their businesses are:

• They hang on to the wrong person in the wrong job for too long. They place a tremendous value on loyalty, almost to a fault.

• They don’t keep their eye on the vision. They have a tendency to work for the company instead of working on the company, doing tasks rather than working on management systems.
  

• They have the tendency to be the only person to take ownership for the results of the company. They don’t hold their people responsible, and they create a country club atmosphere, in which people are measured on activity vs. results.