Neil Shaw has worked with The Results Centre in two different roles with two global companies. He is currently European General Manager at Milliken & Company and still partners with Alan Denton, because “The Results Centre is unique in its approach, targeted towards business goals and results. With their help, I have become the best leader I can be, stretching beyond all of my own expectations.”
One of the first experiences that Neil had with The Results Centre was through the 101 Days programme when he was the Vice President of Marketing for Armstrong Building Products (a $2 billion global organisation) covering Europe, Middle East, Africa and Russia. The 101 Days essential onboarding coaching programme is designed to help new employees get off to a flying start in a new role. Far too many people fail in a new position – not because they are not experienced enough or incapable, but because of a cultural mismatch or a general lack of understanding of what is required from them in the role. The cost of having the wrong person in a senior role is significant from a recruitment point of view. The real cost of having the right person underperform in a role is significantly higher.
Here’s what Neil said about his experience of working with The Results Centre.
“The First 101 Days is a programme that is really about supporting somebody through the process of stepping into a new role,” says Neil. “My experience of it was remarkable. Having joined the company as VP Marketing 12 months previously, I was asked to take on additional responsibility for the sales organisation.
The process started as a three way conversation between myself, my line manager and The Results Centre.
We talked about what success would look like at the end of the first 101 days. We agreed a set of measurable targets: the outcomes that we wanted to achieve. How do we get the right engagement within the organisation? How do we get people to recognise the changes that we are trying to create? There were also specific measures around sales revenue, price increase, achievement levels, cost management and profitability. We built these measures into the contract of the agreement around the coaching programme. They were central to the whole process, and at the end of the hundred and one days the three of us were able to take a look back and really measure ourselves against what was achieved.
I sat down with Alan and talked about what the challenges were that we were trying to overcome in the business. We looked at what we were trying to change, building up a vision of the sales programme and how it was going to work. We also examined aspects of my leadership approach and my leadership style, defining what it really means to be a leader, and in particular, how to get the best out of my leadership approach with a new and different set of followers.
It’s one thing to lead in a role where you can base your approach on personal experience and carry the war wounds of trial and error. It’s a different matter to lead confidently in an area where this is not the case. I wasn’t as experienced in the sales area which meant that it was important that I was clear about what I was expecting from the team. I needed to take a position of ‘being’ rather than ‘doing’.
Alan helped me to build a plan by thinking about the how as well as the what and I went to work to make the plan a reality. In the first 12 months, we had a considerable turnaround in our company performance that included a double digit growth in profitability. I’m convinced that a great deal of that success was inextricably linked with the challenge and support I received through the First 101 Days programme.
My line manager was delighted with the results that we generated. If we look at the results that followed on from the First 101 Days programme, that’s when something amazing occurred. Not only did the business continue to drive strong profitability gains, but we also started to build a new way of being in the business through a team empowered to drive profitable growth – and the First 101 Days programme was a key part of that achievement.”
If you would like to work with Alan, contact him today.