People are born with a burning fire; a desire to explore and learn. Exploration leads to discovery. Discovery is exciting. Excitement is motivating. Before we know it, we see things differently. We can do new things. We have new confidence. It makes us want to step up and try to discover more. Until someone we respect tells us we can’t (in words or in actions).…
Accomplishing great things in business requires great teamwork. Steve Jobs put it this way, “Great things in business are never done by one person, but rather by a team of people.” Achieving great teamwork depends on our ability to manage the team’s energy. For that, we need a compelling goal, a conducive environment, & effective systems. 1) A Compelling Goal A good goal is clear…
Setting the stage for great teamwork in the workplace is a lot like creating a new team sport, like soccer nuevo. In team sports, how the game is won is crystal clear. There’s a time limit—urgency. There’s an arena and a well-defined playing field. There are rules. There’s a way to keep score in real-time. There’s a referee and a coach. These things frame up…
Launching a small business is exhilarating… at first. But for most, the honeymoon is short-lived, replaced with long days of firefighting and diving catches. These people aspire to create a business, but what most create and take on is multiple jobs: owner, executive, marketer, sales person, operations manager, bookkeeper, and expert maker/doer. It’s no wonder so many small business owners are exhausted! To create more…
Internal forces command our attention. External forces govern success. Internal forces are loud. External forces are silent. When external forces are ignored, we use speculation, assumption, or the highest paid opinion to make decisions. Internal forces put everyone, at every level of an organization, at risk of drowning in a sea of busy-ness. External forces that govern our effectiveness are things like: Customer preferences Competitive…
It’s vacation season. Vacations are fantastic (and necessary) because they refresh our perspective—giving us fresh eyes. Fresh eyes and a clear mind allow us to conjure a hi-def picture of the future we’d like to see, and to contrast it against the present—to see what’s working, and what isn’t. Fresh eyes give us the ability to see how to get where we’d like to go. …
Success is associated with hard work. In the industrial era hard work meant putting in long, grueling hours and working to the point of physical exhaustion. Today, work is more complex and mentally taxing. Hard work means something different. It now includes self-awareness, mental clarity, and good judgement—thinking straight. It’s tough to get good results when we’re not thinking straight. But thinking straight is easier…
A few years ago I learned that complexity gives rise to surprises (and not the good kind). These surprises push planned activities aside and force us to redo previously completed work, troubleshoot problems, or otherwise set things right (again). Surprises make us reactive. It doesn't take many to utterly derail us and transform our day (or week) into a game of whack-a-mole. Moles pop up…
The best businesses seem to sense what the customer needs and immediately respond with value. In fact, they deliver a continuous flow of value. They know that customer wait time dissolves the customer's trust and feeds their doubt. Minimizing wait time delivers bottomline results, but wait time can be tough to pin down. It's sneaky. It hides in places like cars & trucks, airplanes, telephone…
To earn and keep a customer, whatever we offer has to be worth it to them. "It" is a manifested outcome at a reasonable cost, and cost is more than dollars and cents. It's the total time, effort, information, & money necessary to acquire their outcome. Time, effort, and information are part of their experience. They are the hassle factor part of what the customer…
Clinging to the known is easy and comfortable, but it’s not satisfying. In fact it’s boring. Growth and gain come from doing the things we don’t really have to do. They come from stretching ourselves—by embracing discomfort. But we don’t need to cannonball into new challenges, just dipping a toe in will do. As our toe gets comfortable, we need to put the rest of…
“I like cake. It makes my body happy!” — Zach, age 6 No one wants a slice of cake. We want how the cake makes us feel as it melts into our mouth. What do we really want when we go to out to eat? Belonging? Companionship? Status? What do we really want when we go to a hair stylist? Confidence? Self-actualization? Research has revealed…
Employees are a business owner’s largest expense, and a massive source of wasted time and money in most companies. The ability to attract and retain great people separates thriving businesses from struggling ones. Engaged people amplify business effectiveness, but according to research, most people are not engaged. That’s a tragedy, especially when we consider that everyone enjoys engaging work. When engaged, we’re at our best.…
Do you know the names of your eight great grandparents? Do you know any of their stories? How did their decisions impact your life? We all know moments become days, then months, then years. And sadly, 'someday' often becomes never. What story are you creating with your moments? Will your actions matter 50, 10, or even 5 years from now? If you could create any…
On the day I turned 16, I was all gussied up and the first person out the door—determined to land my dream job. I chose the place because everyone working there always looked like they were having fun. When I arrived, I sheepishly asked the girl behind the counter if they were hiring. She said, “I think so, fill this out” and slid a blank…
Each day brings a thousand blinking buttons screaming to be pushed. Most do nothing, but five… five will change your life. Joseph Moses Juran called this “The Law of the Vital Few.” The list of people that have used the The Law of the Vital Few to achieve extraordinary things is long. Warren Buffet owes 90% of his wealth to just ten investments. Steve Jobs…
Our core values are tied to our sense of identity. The more something aligns with our values, the more we’ll fight for it. Our values are behind the objectives we set and the actions we take. Shared values make up the bedrock of loyalty, for both customers and employees. We’re all hard wired to seek out other people “like us.” We all want to feel…
“Toxic people adhere as concrete blocks to your ankles, then push you to swim in poisoned waters.” John Mark Green Do you work with someone who leaves a trail of depleted people in their wake? Do the majority of their interactions leave people feeling badly? If so, they are poisoning the work environment. Draining everyone’s time and energy, like a vampire. They are a boat…