After recording our interview, it became clear to me that there were two or three important articles emerging.

This first one, a profile of Dan and his work - discusses two of the many important subjects in his upcoming work, partnering and branding.

Additional stories, presented as articles in the newsletter, will explore additional elements and benefits of his roadmap for family companies interested in continuing their previous successes - in the 21st Century.

“The upcoming work is designed to be more than the tired old self help book.

It’s really a learning system, designed to help leaders acquire the skills and tools that they'll need to take their organizations to new levels of performance and productivity in changing markets.

It is packed with ideas and tools that can be applied by a thoughtful and considered leadership approach.

It does not require companies to spend additional dollars in order to apply these lessons and tools successfully. Going forward, it is clear that the leader will not have all the answers. S/he may not know the whole solution by themselves. This learning system will prepare leaders to get the answers they need.

It will enable them to lead their organizations not only effectively, but to lead them to extraordinary results."

Every business has an idea about how it’s going to use its resources and knowledge to create a product or service that is sought by the people in its marketplace. That’s what Dan Elash refers to as their "Business Idea."

"So many businesses, started each year, fail. Some of these business ideas are ill conceived or mis-timed. Some catch on initially, often sustained by the reserves of the entrepreneur, but they never really take off.

Others are good ideas that limp along inadequately resourced or half-tended. I see one of the benefits of the Toolkit of business resources we are developing is that it gives family owned companies a way of keeping their good business ideas well tuned and well targeted for ever evolving markets."

“The business idea enters the market place in the form of a story; one which you tell, but also one that gets told by those who hear your message or sample your offerings.

The Tools allow you to clarify and refine the story you take to the marketplace, to assure customers what you can do for them; to broadcast it to the people you want to have as customers; to intrigue them by showing what they’re missing by not partnering with you, or by not being your customer.”

“What I’m expecting is, that as people go through this learning system, they’re going to understand how they can take their business idea and use that to focus people in their companies on the priorities needed to fulfill the promise inherent in your idea; to learn how to capture the attention of new customers; and how to respect an implicit contract with customers.

The Toolkit enables you to focus your people on delivering on the promise of your business idea: ‘Here’s what you can expect from us. You can count on us. This is our brand and our promise. Here’s what we’ll deliver.’”

“My work is strongly concerned with communicating the idea that leading people into an uncertain environment involves a great deal of personal discipline and focus. It isn’t just being the boss.

In the Leadership Positioning Toolkit I chose to discuss the emerging requirements of leadership by presenting a system for leaders to develop their ‘Warrior Spirit.’ I deliberately chose that term because of the overlap between leading people in combat and in highly competitive and demanding business environments. I’ve mixed ideas from leadership development in the military and in business.

“It became clear during my research that every society has an approach for inculcating the spirit of the warrior in their people. It’s not easy to go to war---acting against your own ingrained self-interest.

Business is not trivial and its processes should not be frivolous or sloppy. Leaders need to inspire the best in their people, challenge the strong, help those who need to improve and focus on results.

“One thing that societies do to inculcate their warriors is to focus on building group cohesion. The more the group in the trenches are bonded together, the more successful they are in accomplishing their mission and surviving.

A lot of these factors struck me as being very similar to what business leaders needed to do to promote a common purpose: To put their own personal fears or pride aside in service of the enterprise, its purpose.”

I’ve read a lot about partnering recently, and in the past, I’ve always thought of it in terms of strategic partnering, working with other people or c ompanies providing products that compliment yours. But you frequently talk of partnering with your customers. Can you tell me how that works?

“I’ll give you an example of a family business in the vending industry. Their vending machines were in various corporate settings: businesses, small manufacturers, etc.

They often had a fairly anonymous relationship with their customers: ‘There are plenty of other people who can put vending machines in our facilities, so if you don’t give us the best percentage of the sales, or if you don’t do enough business, we’ll go to someone else. And while you’re at it, lower your prices!’ They were seen as commodity suppliers.

“The business owners were pretty frustrated by how they were treated and how little the customers really understood the value they could provide. The business owners went out to talk to some of the owners of the customer companies.

They wanted to find out about the business ideas their customer companies were working and to learn how they wanted to use their workforce, what were their strategies for supporting and retaining their employees.

Simply stated, ‘If people have a 15 minute break, for instance, having someplace close where they can grab a cup of coffee and a hot sandwich without leaving the building saves time and helps efficiency.’ If people’s time is precious, why not treat it as such?”

“The vending company explained how they can also collaborate in building corporate identity (brand) among the workers, through the products in the vending machine.

If that company is sponsoring team-building competitions or other incentive programs and promotions, the vending company could be the supply source for those reward products or logo products within the company as part of their overall service.”

“Once they had those conversations, showing their customers how they could literally support their customers’ business ideas, the people in the customer companies began to look at what the vendors could do, beyond just having machines with candy bars and chips at the plants.

What could they do that would help the customer get their point across to the workforce, to accomplish what they wanted to accomplish. This totally redefined the supplier in the mind of the customer and made them more valuable.”

“They found many effective ways to add value—some were by adding comfort foods like a hot food machine, a more ethnically diverse selection of foods, or a considered selection of the kind of products that fit the work styles of their workforces.

“The key to partnering with your customers is to find a way to tailor what you’re offering so that it fits with the goals of your customer. It really makes you more than just a commodity you become a partner. Partners get treated better.”

When I think of a brand, my first thought is a branded product, like Coca-Cola. Even local brands stick out in my mind, like Tommy’s Pizza (the best pizza I've ever eaten). The second thing I think of is that phrase “You are your brand.” You speak about "Brand Equity" as part of growing and developing the Business Idea from one phase to the next - can you tell me a little what you mean by that?

“We don’t know the people behind Pepsi or Coke, but the brand has a valuable cache. A “brand” is nothing more than a symbolic identity a company creates to reflect itself and the mission of the company. Any company can enhance the value of their name by paying attention to the reputation of the company and its products in the marketplace."

“What do people think when they hear about Tommy’s Pizza or Vic’s Vending? Do they think at all? If they don’t, perhaps they should. What is Tommy’s business idea? ‘I make pizzas, and people like pizzas, no one sells pizzas around here, so I’ll set up a store.’

But if Tommy refines the idea by thinking ‘There are a lot of people in the area at lunch time who could really enjoy pizza by the slice and I can build their loyalty by giving them great pizza, fast, fresh and hot, for lunch.’ His task then, is to fulfill that idea in an outstanding manner.”

“Tommy really wants people to associate his name with quality, so he uses the finest ingredients and he’s generous with the size and with the toppings, and he offers a variety of pizzas always ready to go.

All of those are ways that Tommy is trying to increase the attractiveness of his name when people think of pizza. The more value he can add to his product, and the more excited he can make his customers about his product, the more valuable his brand name becomes. People become more loyal to it, more dedicated to it.”

“Now, let’s pretend that Tommy gets more successful and has a couple of stores and a bunch of teenagers and college kids working in them. These kids have the power to add to the value of Tommy’s name in the minds of customers by carrying out the standards, by being helpful and polite and always upholding the value that Tommy feels is the key to his business.”

“Those same employees, however, if they don’t “get it,” if they feel like they’re just making pizza instead of being a destination point for dining, they’ll be a major drain on the worth of Tommy’s name. On the other hand, Tommy is entrusting them(in remote locations) to represent his name, and the brand identity of his company.

“That may be a simple-minded way to illustrate this point, but I think it’s an accurate way of showing how the business idea tries to communicate a value and a promise to customers, and then how communicating that to the workforce really can enhance the value of your company’s identity in the marketplace.”

“There’s one other thing in this area that I think is really critical. And that is the brand promise itself. In the learning system, we talk about partnering with customers and having conversations with the marketplace, what we’re really talking about is a personal exchange of information that allows you to get a real feel for the whys and wherefores of your customers’ interests.

“The fact of the matter is that’s not the customer’s problem, that’s the company’s problem. For the company to build a powerful brand with a meaningful identity, really means that the value you build in has to be aligned with the value your customer base seeks. The value you’re promising has to be in synch with the value that the marketplace is seeking.

“And it isn’t just what they used to want, it isn’t simply that your products are technically solid… Those things are a given. It’s what else, and more to the point, what unique addition can you make to keep that value a step ahead of what the competition offers that really allows you to have a powerful brand.”

“The Toolkit is really a leadership positioning system, a guide for leading your people to extraordinary results. I use this metaphor because in the 21st Century we all have heard of GPS, or Global Position System, a system designed to help people find their way in unfamiliar territory. The GPS helps us to find our location in reference to our goals, to our destinations and it enables us to chart a path to get there.

“Our Leadership Positioning System (LPS) is designed to help you find your way to your goals in an unknown and sometimes hostile business ecosystem.