September 19th, 2008 by admin in Business News Suggestions, Uncategorized
Each week as business owners we have a lot of priorities and seldom do we consciously plan to get updates on what’s new in business. As the leader of your team I admire you if you are currently proactive each week and perhaps even each day to keep up on the country and global economy, if you subscribe to any number of the options available for business magazines and receive feeds and newsletters from sources you respect.
If you are looking for help with keeping yourself updated on trends and learning what other small and medium sized business are doing to compete and keep up to date I urge you to subscribe to Verne Harnish’s newsletter. Verne is the author of
Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, has been voted one of the top ten minds for Small Business by
Fortune Small Business Magazine and does an exceptional job in these newsletters of breaking down trends, revealing key insights and offering terrific articles to read. You can get a quick update each week in about ten minutes or less, the length it requires to read his newsletter.
You can simply go to ahttp://www.gazelles.com/executive_ceo_newsletters.html and input your information.
In the past week I learned from Verne’s Newsletter what some of the best small businesses in America are providing for their employees in terms of training, health care benefits and pension, got an update on what the global economy is doing and how it affects us here in the US and how we affect the world, plus a document that offered one successful companies daily basics that help them keep the company’s core values at the forefront of their employees, instilling pride, dedication and a sense of esprit de corps.
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August 26th, 2008 by admin in Uncategorized
How you and your people react to a stressful situation or emergency in your business can be very unpredictable and disarming. Yesterday one of my clients had their vendor change their software programs which is the link between their customers and their business. Being in the business of handling stock transactions this was a critical issue for them and they spent months preparing for it to make sure it went smoothly.
Unfortunately through no part of my clients’ neglect or care the system didn’t measure up to the expectations. On Monday my client offered that on a scale of one to ten, with one being a disastrous melt down of apocalyptic proportions to ten being flawless, the transition was about a three.
Needless to say there were lots of unhappy clients and stress rained down on my client’s staff which had done everything they could to prepare and in many cases alerted their vendor to the possible obstacles they were going to face on the day they made the transition.
While it was an extremely difficult and tiring day for my client’s people, the next day bright and early at 7:30 AM they were back at it holding their daily huddle and immediately discussing the issues that were still unresolved, those that had been resolved and what steps they could take to diminish the damages for any issues that had occurred and possibly might still affect performance with their customers.
Scott, the business owner, had been impressed with his team’s performance the day before and how resilient they were during the events. What he realized as he watched his group interact in their daily huddle this morning was how well they communicated and how quickly they got down to business, solving the issues rather than pointing fingers and venting about their frustrations. They were all business focused on resolving and mediating the problems.
Six months ago Scott feels he would have seen a whole different scenario. After just a couple of months of doing daily huddles he feels it was the biggest difference maker in helping his staff focus on issues, communicate best and develop a plan quickly to take to customers to inform and mediate any issues that had caused them concern. They immediately sent out a memo to their clients dealing with the 6-7 issues that gave notice to their clients the steps that were being taken or had been completed to prevent the lingering effects of the previous day.
Scott offered that it’s not dissimilar to someone discovering they have car problems and they have to run or walk a mile to the nearest relief location. If you’ve spent the past year or six months running or walking, training to be in shape, the mile you are facing will not be an obstacle. You will be prepared.
The daily huddle provides the discipline for better communication. It offers many benefits to helping you operate your business better, however most of us don’t know when an emergency or challenging situation will emerge in our business. At those times, wouldn’t it be a comfort to know that your people will not only rise to the occasion, but perform at a very high level, communicating efficiently so that even in the worst circumstances you have confidence you can emerge successfully?
Douglas Wick
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August 7th, 2008 by admin in Uncategorized
A couple of my clients are having issues with their employees right now. One of them a copy sales company has had issues with performance with his sales people and has been continually working to find the right balance of stress and nurturing to get production. More on that in the next blog.
When discussing this with another client who was looking at possibly dismissing one of their employees we applied the rules from Good to Great, Practical Discipline #2: When you know you need to make a people change, act. Two key questions from that are:
- If it were a hiring decision (rather than a “should this person get off the bus?” decision), would you hire the person again?
- If the person came to tell you that he or she is leaving to pursue an exciting new opportunity, would you feel terribly disappointed or secretly relieved?
Making a decision to eliminate someone is extremely difficult for most small business owners. Indeed, many times the very reason many business owners feel they are in business is to provide for the welfare of their employees. They feel an obligation to support them and provide a good income. So it is not difficult to understand why letting someone go can often be the most gut-wrenching and challenging aspect of their job.
As businesses get larger, often times the decision making seems to get more callous and objective. I’m not sure this is true, especially for the person having to make that decision, however I can offer that being objective is a critical aspect of making good decisions on keeping or eliminating employees.
One client recently did his semi annual evaluations with his staff. At these particular evaluations they review compensation and award pay raises. One of his managers indicated he was grossly underpaid and that his pay should equal or exceed several of the other executive team based on his contribution to the company. My client was taken aback. He realized his manager probably deserved a raise, however the request this manager was making was close to a 40% increase. We discussed this employee’s contributions. Part of the feedback was that this manager had only recently[last six to 8 months] begun to fully meet the job description. He was younger and very aggressive and perhaps to add insult to the situation he had asked what he might receive if he was able to bring in a new customer. He had no humility in requesting for this accomplishment an annual residual income if the prospect converted.
I asked my client what it would take to replace this person. Had he done any research to discover what comparable managers in his position were making. What would it take to train a new person and how long would it take to get the new person up to speed if he did hire someone new. Would he expect a new person to do the same level of work? Would he be able to hire a capable replacement that could do the same job, with the same skill level at a comparable price? My client indicated he would research these questions before making a decision.
He did. The result? He offered this manager a $14K a year raise. He discovered that his manager was much more aware of his circumstances and the contribution he was making to the firm than he was. He realized upon reviewing his work and track record that he was contributing as much if not more than his other manager and that a considerable increase was in order.
The lesson from this? Good to great companies show the following bipolar pattern at the top management level: People either stay on the bus for a long time or got off the bus in a hurry. In other words, the good-to-great companies did not churn more, they churned better.
My office copy company owner has discovered that in his sales department he needs to make decisions quicker. Performance levels in sales can be determined quickly, if the right monitoring and key performance indicators are in place. This business owner has been honing his skills to determine what the key indicators for his sales team are, and the results, have immediately given him key information so he can make decisions on which sales people are contributing and which he should churn.
Some of the lessons he’s learned in his business to business practice can be helpful possibly with your sales department. One item is a litmus test he performs each month with his sales team. We will discuss that in my next blog.
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July 22nd, 2008 by admin in Improve Staff Performance 40%?
Can you really improve staff performance? What leads to superior performance, higher employee retention, and a better aligned organization?
Many business owners feel the place to start building their business is with systems, metrics or accountability. I’m not going to argue that these are important criteria, however if you follow the lead that Jim Collins provides in Good to Great the answer is “first who than what!” That is your people system. And a people system starts with your Core Ideologies which consists of Core Values and Core Purpose.
It’s a vastly ignored principle in most small businesses and frequently ignored in large and mid sized companies. To get as much as a 40% improvement in performance you have to reach your people at their heart and not just in their heads, or their pocket books for that matter. What makes someone work harder, more diligently or more determined? Your Core Ideologies – what your company stands for.
In a meeting with a prospect just this week he argued that he had never worked for a company that had gotten this right, and didn’t feel it held up based on his experience. Frankly, his answer confirmed the reality. The truth is few businesses get it right; just as few businesses make the leap from good to great.
When your people are aligned with your Core Values it brings simplicity and clarity to your organization. Imagine if all your people were aligned with your core values and beliefs? One question we ask when we invite our clients to write down the people they have in their organizational boxes is; would you enthusiastically re-hire the people you have?
Tough question, but most of us know where are weak spots are in our organization. Some people outgrow their positions, some people never were right, and others simply are putting in time. As Cavett Robert, a popular business speaker and author of The Principles of Human Engineering once stated, “I don’t want a man who has a job, a want a man whom a job has, who wants to rise up every morning and fight for what he believes in.” Many of us have employees who claim to have 10, 15 or 20 years experience, when really they have one years experience 20 times.
So what are your values? What do you believe in? Do you feel if you really nailed these, posted them for everyone to read, see and live, no one would want to work for you? Are you afraid of putting your heart on the line to get what you want from who you want it? If my prospect was right this week, then if you do it and do it right you will be one of the few, and I can guarantee if you follow through and make it a integrated part of your business to live these values then your business will succeed, because your people will make darn sure of it because they are so committed.
Good to Great, and Built to Last offered proof business that create core values and live them building this into the DNA of their companies sustain long term growth. Old fashion? Perhaps it is. However Reed Hastings of Netflix doesn’t think so and offered the following as his Company Values: Judgment, Passion, Selflessness, Honesty, Courage, Communication, Curiosity, Impact, and Innovation.
That’s a pretty good list. We recommend you have six or less. Just as importantly as choosing core values, you must offer what they mean to your business and explain it in words your employees use and understand. Then drive them into your business by everyday management practices. Tell stories, reward employees who practice them. Make sure they have an impact in the daily lives of your employees and their performance will go up. It’s hard work, but it is rewarding work. Building a business and a life that is meaningful is always harder than sitting back and waiting or hoping things will happen. Want to improve your staff’s performance 40%. Get started on determining your values and putting a stake in the ground that they will mean something.
Doug Wick is a former E-Myth Coach and currently is teaching the Rockefeller Habits to his clients,
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July 15th, 2008 by admin in Success Forces
From my recent blog, someone asked me about Joseph Sugarman’s book Success Forces and what the six success forces are. The book was written in 1980, yet like most books that have valuable information, the information is timeless. One of the things I like so much about this book is its simplicity. In Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, Tom Meredith, former CFO of Dell who helped transform their financial structure and helped Dell survive in the early 90’s by dramatically improving Dells cash conversion cycle offered the keys to running a good company are very similar to being a good parent,
1. Have a handful of rules
2. Repeat yourself a lot
3. Act consistently with those rules [which is why you better have only a few rules].
Joseph Sugarman’s six success forces are:
1. Always be honest
2. Cherish your failures
3. Relish your problems
4. Concentrate your powers
5. Do it differently
6. Clean Your Desk
Joe went so far as to suggest that by following these simple rules you will set yourself up for dynamics that result in the law of attraction. Any time you stray from these you set yourself up to get hit by the boomerang that inevitably follows doing the wrong thing, and consequently any time you follow them the boomerang returns to you with a positive effect.
These six success forces could easily be seen as Joe Sugarman’s Core Values, and in his book he provides an excellent description of what each of them mean. I’ve seen the value of these, and must admit that I personally have not always followed them to the extent I should have.
Examining each of these we can see where they can contribute to the success or failure with our small business. Here are just a few ideas about the first three rules.
Always Be Honest
How many of us truly believes in this and yet faced with a situation where we can choose to be honest or realize that the party that we might be deceiving would never know the difference, do we decide to be dishonest. A company I work with recently got a check for $92,000 that was incorrect. They had been overpaid. They could have easily held on to the check, deposited it and never advised the company that they’d been overpaid. In fact some of the company’s they work with indicate they have done that with overpayments. Instead they told the company immediately that they had been overpaid, this despite the company insisting that had not. Finally two weeks later after they had returned the check the company finally determined they had indeed over paid them. Accepting what is not yours, or lying sets up a boomerang effect that eventually hurts us.
Cherish your failures
Can anyone really feel this way? As Joe points out are failures have a way of teaching us valuable lessons. What we need to do when we fail is to learn the lesson it provides. We all know the story of Thomas Edison’s many failures to discovering the incandescent light bulb and how he responded when asked why he kept experimenting when he had failed so many times, “ I haven’t failed, I’ve simply discovered a thousand ways it will not work.” I believe I would be much more successful if I had simply had the courage to fail more often. May you be so fortunate as to not make that same mistake?
Relish your problems
Joe points out that problems have a hidden ingredient that makes them very effective in creating a Success Force. You may recognize it as “opportunity.” Earl Nightingale was quoted as saying, “In every problem lies and equal or greater opportunity.” Joe recommends that the next time you face a problem ask yourself where the opportunity is. In many cases it is simply a matter of changing our language. You can have a problem with your service you’re providing and say to yourself, “providing service to our customer is really becoming a problem. Or you could reverse this and think differently about the problem by saying, “what would our customers appreciate about our servicing the problems are customers are having?” Simply restating the problem you get a total different perspective.
Is it a good idea to copy or innovate? Why is focus so important, and finally what’s the hidden secret behind the success force of cleaning your desk? I’ll cover those in my next blog.
Douglas Wick<BR>
Former Certified E-Myth Coach<BR>
Presently a Rockefeller Coach<BR>
319-462-4545<BR>
mzbarnes@gmail.com<BR>
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July 9th, 2008 by admin in Leadership
What are the barriers to growth in the leadership level of our businesses? At small, mid size and even large businesses the two critical abilities for leaders is their ability to delegate and predict.
How does one learn to delegate? We offer an excellent process through our coaching program that will help, and I recommend a great book on the subject, If You Want It Done Right You Don’t Have to Do It Yourself by Donna Genett, PHD. It shares in a short story the pitfalls that most of us have made at one time or another with ineffective delegation. Our process shortens this and adds a few elements we’ve learned from coaching business owners.
Delegation may be the easy part, at least the how to do it, however it takes a new point of view to master it. You need to recognize that if you want your business to grow you have to rely on others and allow them to fail occasionally. Being a good leader is coaching and mentoring others. Often the best way for them to learn is doing work you can delegate. You’ll be surprised to find how frequently others can do tasks better than we can. Of course that’s another reason why some don’t like to delegate, they have an inferiority complex that refuses to allow them to let go for fear they can be replaced.
Predicting is more complex and requires experience in addition to certain disciplines many of us are unaware of or are failing to practice.
How do we become good predictors or forecasters? If you’ve done budgeting you know that the more you do it the better you get at it. Experience is a great teacher. There are other ways to become good at prediction. One of the best is simply to invest in yourself. Read books on best practices and the best thought leaders. Go to seminars, keep a business journal, stay tuned to the markets and watch your competitors. Another good tool for becoming a better forecaster is meetings. Yes, that’s right, meetings. Not the traditional type of meetings we all dread, but the type of meetings Patrick Lencioni in Death by Meetings and Verne Harnish describe in Mastering the Rockefeller Habits. The human mind is best at…. Pattern Recognition. Did you ever hear that history repeats itself. It does, continually. One of the thought leaders I respect, Roy Williams [Wizard of Ads] suggests a pattern is repeating itself right now that he heralds as a recycling effort that we currently our in the midst of.
The value of meetings lies in your ability to digest what is happening, recognize the patterns emerging from your people, your customers, and the market and then act upon them. By conducting the right type of meetings you can recognize trends before others, spot problems, and predict the future before others see it.
Are your meetings helping you to do that? Meetings with your team also offer the help of tapping into the collective intelligence of your peers. You’ve heard that one mind when linked to another provides more than double the power of two alone? It’s kind of like putting two batteries together where the sum is greater than its parts. Collective intelligence can help you make better smarter decisions. Ever wonder how some people seem to be better at taking risks and making decisions? People who make better decisions recognize the value in meetings, pattern recognition and collective intelligence.
Leadership is about delegating and predicting. Are you and the members of your leadership team cultivating your ability to be better at these? If not isn’t it time you got started?
Douglas Wick
Certified E-Myth and Gazelles Business Coach
mebarnes@mchsi.com
Need help implementing these ideas? Best Small Business Practices helps business owners and entrepreneurs transform their business. We provide the tools and/or coaching to help you take control of your business — rather then having your business control you.
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June 29th, 2008 by admin in Growth Of Your Business, Help For Small Business
If you’re facing an uncertain period with your business, or concerned about the economy, then you’ll be interested to know that there are just four decisions in your business that you need to get right to assure you grow. To stay competitive and grow you need to keep your people smart. The best companies in the world take learning seriously. In fact they make learning a competitive advantage. Success is a moving target and the only way to make sure you are moving with it is to make sure your people are getting smarter.
So let’s look at the four decisions in your business that you need to focus on to grow.
The first decision is People. This may be a little contrary to the principles you might be familiar with if you’ve been an E-Myth fan. The bulk of entrepreneurs don’t like working with people, including their own employees. It’s the major reason why 96% of all firms have fewer then 10 employees and the vast majority have less than 3. Perhaps that’s why Michael Gerber’s mantra’s that systems were the solution resonated so well with most entrepreneurs. While systems are important, the first reason why people are so important is that it’s not much fun succeeding if you don’t have any one to share it with. The result of people is happiness. If it’s fun to come to the office for you, your employees, shareholders, customers, vendors, than you know you’ve got one thing right. The People Decision outcome is happiness. Get the right people doing the right things right and you’ve got people solved.
The second decision is Strategy. Most businesses fumble the ball here, since getting this right is not as easy as it sounds. You must be able to state your strategy in one sentence. This means your strategy must be clear and concise. The interesting thing about strategy is that you can make mistakes in the other 3 decision areas of your business, and if you have your strategy right you can still dominate your industry. So nailing your strategy is very important. You don’t need the smartest people or the greatest execution if you have a strategy that is cutting edge and people need what you have.
Execution is the third decision. Here is where the typical entrepreneur struggles. There’s a lot of discussion today about how small is the new big, small giants and the value of staying small, lean and flexible in today’s market. It’s not something to deny, yet the place execution shows up is in profit and time. If you’re growing and not making enough money you have an execution issue. You haven’t solved how to produce what you make efficiently. You may also have discovered that as you grew you had to take more time for daily activities. You simply can’t keep up with everything and slowly the business is becoming less enjoyable because you don’t have time for anything else but monitoring and making sure your business is operating right. Time and profit are always execution issues and suggest you need to work on improving your systems and structure to execute more efficiently. This takes discipline, and most entrepreneurs fail to recognize the value of discipline. Routine sets you free! Yet most entrepreneurs see routine as boredom, no matter the fact that most reached success by being absolutely disciplined and routine in their success patterns.
The final decision is Cash. You may have caught how important strategy is, but frankly every thing in your business depends on cash. Cash is oxygen to you and your business. It yields options that nothing else can. You can get by with decent people, execution and strategy, but you will never get by without cash.
These four decisions are the beginning of Rockefeller Habits 4-3-2-1 formula for results.
Here’s an invitation, if you‘d like help discovering how to get these four decisions right please consider attending the 2 Day Rockefeller Habits Workshop coming to Cedar Rapids, IA, Tuesday and Wednesday, April 8-9. You learn a lot about these decisions and how to make sure you are applying them correctly. It will be worth much more to you than the two day investment in time and money. It will change how you do business and give you confidence that you can succeed.
Douglas Wick
Certified E-Myth Coach
And Gazelle’s Rockefeller Habits
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June 18th, 2008 by admin in Uncategorized
Bookmark this site… and return soon… new articles are being created and will be posted soon!
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