Start with the answers....
A PRODUCTIVITY DECK INSPIRED BY BOB
SEELERT, CHAIRMAN, SAATCHI & SAATCHI.
VOLKER BALLUEDER
CB CONSULTING
WWW.VOLKERBALLUEDER.COM
SEELERT, BOB, (2009), START WITH THE ANSWERS: AND OTHER WISDOM FOR
ASPIRING LEADERS, JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC., HOBOKEN, NEW JERSEY

Introduction
 I read the above mentioned book by Bob Seelert and
would like to share the ideas that I found most
valuable with you.
 This is “Bob’s Wisdom” which I summarised to what
I found personally most useful.
 Bob:
 Find your own personal statement, identifying the
values, beliefs, and principles you stand for – then
live by it.
 Coaching can help you to identify those.
 Productivity can help you achieving those.

Know your Myers-Briggs type
 ENFJ
 Emotional (11%)
 Intuitive (25%)
 Feeling (12%)
 Judgemental (78%)
 Slightly expressed extravert
 Moderately expressed intuitive personality
 Slightly expressed feeling personality
 Very expressed judging personality
 Teacher Idealist:
 Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, Mikhail
Gorbachev, Oprah Winfrey, Pope John Paul II.

10 rules for leading the turnaround ....
 Start with the solution, work your way backwards.
 Get out in front of people, position yourself as the new leader.
 Bring urgency to what you are doing.
 Don’t sit around headquarters.
 Go out and listen to customers & clients.
 Listen to everyone in the organisation.
 Recognise you cannot do it alone.
 Lay out your vision, purpose, values, beliefs, objectives,
strategies and plan.
 If you don’t have the internal resource, get an external one.
 Short list the critical priorities and stick to it.
• PAGE 51

Strategic Vision
 Bob:
 Get your strategic vision for the company
down to twenty words or less and
communicate it to everyone in the
company as simply and as often as you
can.
 This could be compared to having a
Mantra.
 Get your personal mantra.
 Get a corporate mantra.
 “Visualise the Vision”

Inspirational Dream
 Bob:
 When crafting your Inspirational Dream, make sure it captures
the essence of who you are and what you are about as an
organisation, then live it every day!
 Volker:
 If there is a dream, there is reality.
 Alan Alda:
 Be brave enough to live life creatively. The creative place where
no one else has ever been.
 Volker:
 Create something unknown, inspirational – have that dream.
Then dare to live it and share it with others.

And/And
 Argument is “we need to do EITHER / OR” –
however it is about achievement.
 Argue: we need to do X AND Y.
 Best of “culture X and culture Y”
 Best of “product A and product B”
 Product development shouldn’t be either x or y but x
and y!
 A fast and practical car, not a fast or practical car.
 Move towards things not away from.

Client Services
 Quality is if the client comes back and not the
product.
 Put the client at the head of the table and deliver
everything they hired you for in the first place.
 Client Services is about:
 Understanding needs
 Listening
 Understanding KPIs
 Explaining delivery
 Be there any time
 Exceeding expectations (“what they never dreamed possible”)

Leadership
 Mike Vance:
 Leadership is the ability to establish standards and manage a
creative climate where people are self-motivated toward the
mastery of long-term constructive goals, in a participatory
environment of mutual respect, compatible with personal
value.
 Bob:
 Leadership is intangible. The first step is earning the trust of
people you work with. Everything else follows from that.

What winners learn from losing.
 Bob:
 Do not look for excuses when you underperform. Look for
underlying reasons so you can avoid doing it again.
 Success is about knowing what is wrong underneath
the service and changing it.
 You can only win if you know where you are going,
what tools you have and know how to use them.
 Having a good “toolbox”, experience & sensory
acuity/self awareness are key.

Business Relationship
 Bob:
 Build your business relationship on integrity supported by sound
principles, values, and beliefs.
 “Relationship Marketing”
 Relationship Marketing was first defined as a form
of marketing developed from direct response marketing campaigns
which emphasizes customer retention and satisfaction, rather than a
dominant focus on sales transactions.
 As a practice, relationship marketing differs from other forms of
marketing in that it recognizes the long term value of customer
relationships and extends communication beyond intrusive
advertising and sales promotional messages. (Wikipedia)

Expectations
 Bob:
 Set an expectation for your people to be the best they can be at
what they do, and ensure they have everything they need to
make it happen.
 Support, Encouragement, Principles
 Start with the end in mind.
 Manage expectations.
 Support personal development.
 “Grow a protégée – help him to grow wings”
 Coaching at the workplace.

Try to succeed
 Bob:
 Make sure that fear of failure is not keeping your organisation
from trying and succeeding.
 Corporate Environment & Culture
 People only grow by failure and learning from
mistakes.
 Google: employees can spend 20% of their work time
developing their own ideas.
 Encourage creativity, personality and “no fail”
culture.

Questions?
VOLKER BALLUEDER
VOLKER@VOLKERBALLUEDER.COM
WWW.VOLKERBALLUEDER.COM
WWW.CB-CONSULTING.CO.UK