Advice From The C-Suite: What Top Executives Are Focused On In 2016

Even though the year is already underway, it’s still early enough to get a head start on making this one of your best years yet.

I appreciate hearing from other successful executives about what they’ve learned, what they’re focusing on, and what they believe will be most important in the coming year. So with that in mind, I’ve asked a few diverse executives to share their best advice for the C-suite in 2016.

From Mark Palfreeman, CEO of Nixplay. Nixplay is a leading WiFi digital frame provider in the photo-sharing space.

When it comes to creating your company identity and setting goals, executives should focus on three very important questions:

• What can we be the best at?
• What can we be passionate about?
• What is the key performance indicator we should concentrate on?

This will allow you to tap the desire and drive to get ahead.

As for accomplishing those goals, here are important points to remember:

• Success comes in small incremental pushes toward the goals that you set by answering those two key questions.
• You have to believe in yourself before others can start believing in you.
• Thinking and acting positively are the only ways to overcome challenges.
• You are only as good as the people you bring into your environment. Be sure to surround yourself with high-quality individuals, whether they be employees, friends, or investors.
• Always keep analyzing what you do, what works, and what doesn’t work. You can learn much more from setbacks than you can from successes.

Finally, even if you’re doing all the right things, earning trust is key. That’s what gets you loyal customers, business partners, and employees who will stick with you. So always make realistic promises and over-deliver.  

From George Braun, cofounder and President of TGO Consulting. TGO Consulting provides business systems consulting, focusing on the office of the CFO.

Having consulted with CFOs and other executives for nearly 30 years, we’ve noticed two items in particular that really help drive a company’s success.

• Businesses are always changing, so forecasting on an ongoing basis is imperative. Take, for example, the US/Canadian exchange rate – it changes constantly. Forecasting can easily be done in a short period of time, is cost effective, and can help you get ahead of the curve.
• Automate your business processes. What a lot of people don’t realize is that it’s important to work on the business, and not just in the business. If you’re relying on the same manual processes for approvals, payments, etc. that you have for years, chances are your company isn’t maximizing its potential.

From Jon B. Mendelsohn, CEO of Ashar Group Secondary Market and Valuation Specialists. Ashar Group is a life settlement broker.

Social media and technology have made it faster and easier to stay in touch with our clients, especially since our business has a national footprint. However, it’s also made it easier for the competition to do the same.

And while this fast and easy communication has its perks, many companies forget that using social media is a means to an end. The goal is still to build relationships with your clients.

Some things for companies to keep in mind when it comes to their social media presence:

• Don’t tweet just for the sake of tweeting. Keep your message authentic. Without those authentic, personal touches, you can easily get lost in the social media crowd.
• Differentiate yourself by being truly social – strive for a healthy combination of both the new (social media) and the old (face-to-face meetings, ‘How are the kids?’ conversations). We maintain an active presence on social media, but also make a point to have face-to-face visits with all our key clients several times a year.
• Always remember that while certain things have changed – the speed of communication, the way we communicate with clients – trust and authenticity are still king. The foundation of any business is strong relationships based on trust. Without that, all the social media savvy in the world will do little to help you succeed.

From Chris Silva, President of KOVA Corp. KOVA Corp. provides organizations with public safety and enterprise workforce optimization technology solutions.

As software solution experts, we see daily how much of a positive impact a strong software solution can have on a business as a whole.

In the same way, a CIO’s impact on a business can be made even stronger when he or she is part of a fully integrated, cooperative executive team. Instead of operating in a silo, CIOs – as well as other executives – need to:

• Partner with each other to make sure the business’s technology goals are aligned with customer satisfaction, financial, and operational goals.
• Spend more time listening to each other and their employees than they do talking.
• Focus on doing your personal best – not just for yourself, but for your executive team as a whole.
• Embrace the need for constant learning and continuing education. In today’s technology world, organizations are facing cybersecurity challenges that change almost weekly. CIOs need to assess the cyber threats that their business is most vulnerable to, and work with their executive team to ensure that technology to protect from these threats is in place.

From Benji Coomer, VP of Business Development and Arthur Gruen, Vice President of Broker Online Exchange (BOX). BOX is a marketplace that connects retail energy brokers and suppliers in deregulated markets across North America.

Coomer says:

Try to be YOUR best, but don’t try to be THE best … try to be different. In today’s hyper-competitive business environment, lots of people are trying to be the best at something – but that rarely equates to success these days. Why?

• Once you produce the best product, someone will inevitably come behind you and produce something that is better.
• Instead, you make something that’s different by telling a better story. Your story has to be a more interesting, more compelling narrative. Take Steve Jobs: he sold the greatest MP3 player by calling it an iPod and selling it as “1000 songs in your pocket.”  Trust me, there were better MP3 players out there, but none were as different as his, and none had quite the same story to tell.

Gruen says:

Why the need for new advice for 2016? Why not just pull 2015’s advice or 2005’s advice? The reason is that today more than ever, the world changes at a pace unimaginable just a few years ago.

In fields ranging from politics to media to finance, truths that were relevant in the not-too-distant past are no longer relevant. In some cases, they’re no longer even true. So if we rely on advice from the last decade or even last year, we run the risk of losing our audience and becoming obsolete.

With that in mind, tips for 2016 are:

• Pay careful attention to the advice and societal trends of the present. Don’t take for granted that anything that was true in the past will still be true today.
• One of the most powerful trends in recent history is cultural transparency.
• In an increasingly transparent world, being open, honest and straightforward is key to success. This goes for relationships and interactions with suppliers, customers, and perhaps most of all, with co-workers and staff.
• If you don’t have something, say you don’t have it but will get it.
• If you don’t know something, say you don’t know but will learn it.
• Instead of pretending you already know, and can do, everything, recognize your strengths and weaknesses, acknowledge them, and be committed to improving and refining yourself.

There you have it: business advice from some of the top executives in their industries. What issues are you focusing on this year?

Shama Hyder is founder and CEO of the award-winning Marketing Zen Group,an integrated web marketing and digital PR firm. She is also a highly acclaimed keynote speaker, bestselling author, and a regular media correspondent. Her latest book, Momentum: How to Propel Your Marketing and Transform Your Brand in the Digital Age is now available on Amazon and across bookstores: https://amzn.to/1sqMmZs