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Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Are You a Strategic Partner or a Bureaucrat?

What are some of the important indicators that would suggest you are a strategic partner versus a bureaucrat?

1) Do you know what your businesses key performance indicators are, and more importantly, how to influence them?

2) To what degree have you developed your business and financial acumen skills?

3) Can you articulate what your organization's point of sustainable competitive advantage is?

4) Are you able to demonstrate how your efforts are directly or indirectly linked to driving increased profitability, market share or decrease operating costs?

5) Do you know, study or have competitive intelligence that outlines how and in what way your competitors out-perform your business?

6) Are your opinions or insights sought out by business leaders within your organization?

If you are able to positively answer the majority of these six indicators, then you are most likely a strategic partner who is able to demonstrate how you add value to your organization.  Conversely, if you struggle with most of these questions, then you may be a bureaucrat and you need to question the value your organization derives from your efforts!

1 comment:

  1. If you are a Strategic Partner, you walk into an interview with a 90-day plan that demonstrates your knowledge of KPIs in the business, how you have improved them and how you plan to improve those of this particular business. You come in knowing the competition and you can show you already operate comfortably within a network of business professionals.

    I like the way you lay this out. Makes it pretty easy to go to the next step: articulating behaviour descriptive interview questions to tease out the candidate's experience.

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