Editor's Eye on Baltimore: The First 30 Days - A Conversation with Nigel Knowles, CEO, Logical Consulting Group, Inc.

Posted August 4, 2011

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Nigel Knowles

So what does one do during their first 30 days as the new CEO? How does one set the tone, vision and pace for an organization? And in the case of Nigel Knowles, CEO of Logical Consulting Group, how do you change course when you were part of the past leadership? Over lunch recently, Nigel explored how he handled those first 30 days and the lessons learned.

The Skinny. Earlier this summer Nigel Knowles acquired Logical Consulting Group (LCG), an organization he had been helping to lead for many years. LCG delivers technology-based software solutions that help mid-market businesses develop, integrate and align technology to improve their business results.

The Roosting Chickens. Even when you know the place, for Nigel the challenge on Day One was to reset his old habits and refocus on what LCG really needed. "I struggled with where to spend my time." In many ways, Nigel observed, "being an incumbent worked against me." Yesterday, he would have done one thing but today he would do it differently, and the rub... everyone knows Nigel has shifted. "The chickens came home to roost." The point Nigel intimates, isn't to ignore the reality that an incumbent has changed his thinking, but to be clear that change is part of the opportunity presented by the new role that comes with ownership.

Yesterday's Wish List. When you're not the lead dog, apart from the view never changing, you also find it pretty easy to identify the wish list of changes you would undertake, if you were in the front harness... "Now I have to pick my spots." Nigel quickly realized he couldn't change everything to his vision at once. "You have to turn the boat incrementally; it's not a hard turn." He found himself having to live up to "all the past conversations." By "living up" Nigel means accepting. And by "accepting", he doesn't mean doing. But the most important realization Nigel made from his old wish list was simple. "I now am seeing the little things that make a big difference." Nigel started with the tone of communications.

Communication Within. While every new CEO should spend the bulk of their effort listening, for Nigel this required not only his commitment to get around but also to sort out how to evolve LCG into a listening organization. This was a challenge given the vexing structural aspects of its business model. LCG, like many tech companies, is a highly distributed organization, its workers are both employees and independent contractors, and they are scattered around clients and the main office. So not only was input critical, for Nigel, the challenge lay in how to foster any level of communication that wasn't binary in nature - an email blast. So Nigel set out to ensure meetings, even if on line, were part information (ensuring transparency) and part conversation, realizing that such interactions "are more about culture than anything else."

Avoiding Bad Habits. So during these first 30 days, how does one avoid bad habits? "You find confidants both within and outside of the organization that will give you insight." For Nigel, this wasn't an exercise in finding enablers, but one of ensuring that he had a clear read of what the organization was thinking (the inside confidants) and that his read of the dynamics had been thought through (the outside confidants). For Nigel, when he understood both the right action and how it would be received within LCG, he calls such insight "resonance." The goal for Nigel with any action taken is to "avoid blind spots, and patterns [of behavior] that can be misunderstood."

Sensory Overload. So I was curious about what was Nigel's biggest surprise, particularly given his long tenure with LCG before taking the helm. "The sheer volume of items that occur and are occurring that I didn't anticipate." It was as if the flood gates opened, everything and everyone that wanted change or needed change saw the opportunity and arrived at his door at once. Nigel realized he had to be patient, figure out what was truly critical and execute on it, never forgetting the small things in that execution that make a big difference. Cautious urgency...

Communication Outside. The second surprise, for Nigel, was realizing the importance of opening up communications with key stakeholders, which for him were the bank and LCG's customers. Communication with customers was straightforward enough, as he had a relationship with most of them. The bank was another story. The bank spoke another language, oriented around covenants and financial reporting. Nigel realized he not only had to learn banking nomenclature but understand the underlying expectations. "As a CEO, you have to learn the language of other disciplines to effectively communicate." Equally important, Nigel suggests, is the need to understand the motivations and reasons that underlie the words, so you can "dance their dance." A 30 day crash course in learning the power of a foreign language in effectively communicating...

The Take Away. It's clearly a balancing act to cautiously execute during the first 30 days in a way that avoids a perception that nothing has changed and malaise sets in. And for a CEO who rose in the ranks, it is a challenge not to have the expectations of the team go unmet and lead to frustration. Listening, opening up safe ways to communicate and, most importantly for Nigel, "not losing sight of the team's need for little things to change," are critical to these first 30 days. In many ways, it is the little things that make a culture. Looking back on our conversation, the most interesting aspect to me was the absence of some obsession to articulate a grand vision during the first 30 days. For a guy who already knew the organization, I would have thought that such a grand vision would be the greatest temptation. For Nigel, the deceptively simple goal was to ensure the foundation was based on communication.

For more information on LCG, check out www.lcgtech.com

Nigel can be reached at: nigelk@lcgtech.com

For comments about this article or thoughts on future conversations, let me know at: nfowler@rosenbergmartin.com

With more than 25 years experience in law and business, Newt Fowler advises many of the Greater Baltimore region's entrepreneurs and technology companies, guiding them through all aspects of business planning, technology commercialization, and M&A and financing transactions.