What are you waiting for?

Happy Christmas

Recovery Time!

     SO … Answer these 10 questions for yourself about your SELF, and then answer the same 10 for your BUSINESS.

     If you are totally honest with yourself about your SELF and with yourself about your BUSINESS, you will positively gain some important insight!

•      What didn’t work this past year? (Not “why?” which may take another year to answer)

•      And what, pray-tell, is working NOW? 

•      What needs to be eliminated? 

•      What will work going forward? 

•      What needs to be reevaluated?  

•      What needs to be fixed?  Adjusted?  

•      Completely overhauled? 

•      What needs to be attempted? 

•      What needs to be planned? 

     Remember, this is YOUR business and YOUR self we’re talking about here, so ONLY YOU can decide where to go next and ONLY YOU can choose how to get there. ONLY YOU know the real answers to all the questions about growing your self and your business! 

     And you can take hours researching and surveying, but the bottom line is –dear entrepreneur, dear business owner and manager– that in the end, YOU must charge forward by experience, instinct, and informed subjective judgement. 

     YOU must take REASONABLE risks to improve your SELF and your BUSINESS!

     What you choose as a course of action may be wrong, but:

A. SOME action is always better than no action, and

B. YOU are the captain of your ship, and YOU can adjust the course you’re taking at any hour of the day or night. Or, simply put into port for a short lay-over to get yourself more focused. Just choose what you want  (since all behavior is a choice!). 

     No excuses here. You need to be your own consultant. Step back. Take some deep breaths (For your SELF, for your BUSINESS, for your SPORTS performance, for your SALESMANSHIP, for your LIFE!) Oh, and after you breathe, get hopping! 

     The New Year’s bell is ready to ring. Are you ready to run? Have a Happy! 

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Holiday Gloom and Other

Economic Bushes To Beat

     There comes for many business owners and managers a point in time — that inevitably seems to fall in the middle of holiday season — where you can no longer cut back business staffing or compensation, and other overhead expenses loom ominously over your head, like a guillotine, ready to drop.

      Uh, sorry for such a merciless graphic thought, but there ARE still options to exercise, and you ARE still reading, right? Use this “SQUEAKSMANSHIP”© checklist to prompt your brain to more closely consider your circumstances and determine some alternatives that can work for you now.

• Strategic Alliances. Even with or without exchanges of commissions or time, there are many ways to work together with allied businesses that can save money for all involved. Explore.
• Cooperative Advertsing and Marketing. Many manufacturers provide matching dollar and similar programs for retailers that represent their products. Many trade and professional associations and membership organizations provide discounted rate arrangements. Ask.    
• Shared PR. Jointly-issued news releases and cooperative events that promote participant businesses equally strengthen impact and minimize expenses. Poke around. 
• Barter. ANY combination of goods and / or services represent mutual benefit when traded. Local radio stations will often trade commercial air-time for products they can give away in listener contests. Make some calls.
• Shared Employees. Receptionists? Clerical? Contractors? IT? Programmers? Retail? Think. 
• Shared Services. Delivery? Maintenance? Bookkeeping? Look for what’s accessible.
• Shared Vehicles. Cars? Trucks? Construction equipment? Plows? Planes? If it moves…
• Shared Expenses. Mortgage? Rent? Insurance? Purchasing? Memberships? Hmmm…

YOU CAN ALSO…

     Put more marketing reliance on (less expensive than traditional media) Websites, Social Media, Email Campaigns (which don’t have to be spam, btw), News Releases, Captioned Photo Releases, Postcards, Business Card Distribution Displays, Newsletters.

     Put more sales reliance on commission + expenses and/or + advances (vs. salaries) … virtual sales force use … retail street performers.

     Put more emphasis on minimizing travel expense with less exotic, fewer frills regional and centralized meetings … minimizing energy use (Some major outlet stores are cutting back on lighting with customer explanations of fuel and community savings affected.

     Make this holiday season a half-full glass for YOUR business! Oh, and remind your people to NOT cut back on wishing customers and suppliers “Merry Christmas!” Merry Christmas!  

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Pity all you want, but

nothing happens ’til you’ve

put yourself in other’s shoes.

     Okay, you’re a leader. You own and/or operate and/or manage a business, or part of one (or you’re a sales professional, which is essentially the same thing!). You need to wear many hats, day to day, and probably one of the most difficult of these to keep balanced on your head (and for most leaders) is the one that dictates your role when serious, draining emotional problems arise.

     Odds are you have no training as a shrink or you would be one, and it’s bad enough being constantly looked upon by others who think of you (and sometimes openly treat you) as a surrogate parent … then along comes tragedy, or calamity, or personal, or family, or community, or even a company upset or grief period.

     And it’s often hard to know how to respond.

     First of all, respond. When you can respond instead of react, you can never over-react, and you will more likely than not help others to also respond instead of react too. That’s a good thing. HOW do you make that happen? First recognize that responding instead of reacting (like all behavior) is a choice! Next, try:  http://bit.ly/Bb1Tw 

     When you can focus your response energy on empathy and being empathetic (which the dictionary defines as “understanding and sharing the feelings of others”), you can help yourself and others to be immensely relieved, productive, positive, and motivating.

     When you focus instead on sympathy and being sympathetic (which the dictionary defines as “feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune”), it’s rare to experience an outcome that’s anything more than one that has simply piled on more pity and sorrow.

     We need only to turn to what’s probably the greatest exampleof our lifetimes — in the defining behavior, for example, exercised by “America’s Mayor” Rudy Giuliani after the infamous terrorist attacks of “9/11” — for inspiration and a lesson in the values of using empathy in leadership. His ability to put himself in other’s shoes, and to help a panicked nation be there with him by virtue of his acts and words, sprouted calm and order and honor and harmony from the chaos.

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Get your fingers out

 of other people’s pies!

You may be the boss. But don’t stick your nose into the creative process that’s being strategized or implemented by the writer(s) and/or designer(s) YOU hire. When you’re paying an individual or team to create your branding message, advertising, packaging, promotion, public relations, website, or Internet marketing: Back Off The Process!

If you’ve done your job up front by hiring top talent to begin with, leave it be. You risk losing personal respect, leadership control (including the ability to motivate), sales, and even market and industry stature by interfering in his, her, or their work in progress.

I’m NOT suggesting you don’t VERY carefully explain the perspective and posture you want to see be used in representing your business at the very beginning of the creative process. You need also to insist on a “How Goes It?” review / inventory / status or progress report half-way through the creative process.

And you positively must review every word and every graphic treatment BEFORE it’s released or launched or distributed, and offer an honest critique … which, btw, is usually better accomplished with questions than with judgement statements.

It’s your company and YOU are ultimately responsible for every verbal and every visual message conveyed. [And ad agencies and marketing groups — even in-house — love to walk the thin line of public acceptability and appropriateness; it wins them awards!]

But just because you think you’re a “creative whiz” and know how to write a nice email or drum up some sizzling topic for your kid’s science fair entry, or can draw cute pictures that always amuse people, do NOT think that you can match those you’ve entrusted to do the job!

If you were that talented at design or writing, you’d be a designer or writer. It’s just another way of expressing the old management theorem: Stick To Your Knitting! Creative people are not likely to be able to match your entrepreneurial drive and management / organizational and financial know-how. Tech people are, incidentally, the least creative.

Get the best people you can find to do the job, give them your input, take their pulse at the fifty-yard line, double-check their final product, but let them do the job.

I have seen countless great marketing, sales, and advertising campaigns be ruthlessly and unwittingly aborted by well-intentioned top management who haven’t a clue about how to connect their messages to their target markets.

No time to do all that creative process management stuff? Lacking the sensitivity to deal with the writers and designers? Not sure how to best direct or coach them? Call me. If I can’t do it for you, in a consulting role, I’ll find someone who can. [302.933.0116]

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Leaders who fail to sell

fail as leaders.   

     No, not everyone is out there selling, every minute of every day … just those who are leaders!

     Leaders of the world, and of every nation, region, state, county, city, town, neighborhood, household, and business, department, institution, team, crew, organization, task force, office, store, studio, construction site, laboratory, factory floor, and professional practice are the ones who are out there selling with every waking breath. 

     Well, now, that certainly includes most everyone, doesn’t it? Not really, there are armies of followers (in the military and in Twitter, to name just two), and there are hermits. Okay, that’s being evasive for the sake of prompting a smile. Truth is we are ALL leaders of SOMEthing. It it’s not a rock group, classroom project, family, or community group, it’s SOMEthing. What are you a leader of? What do others think you’re a leader of?

     Most of us mix it up: leaders of some things, followers of others. The point is that whenever we are actively leading ANYthing, we are selling. And whenever we are NOT actively leading something, we are — at the least — a hair trigger away from selling, and will pounce into a sales mode at the mere mention of anything that even suggests the focus, issues, or activities of the thing(s) we lead, stand for, and believe in. 

     So, now that that’s all cleared up, let’s examine the flipside:

     Short of threats to perpetrate physical harm, how can anyone expect others to “buy into” ideas, directions, and recommendations that the leader has not enthusiastically endorsed and demonstrated value for? If we as followers see no benefits to the leader’s plans, do we suffer through the process or seek new horizons? Does it depend on circumstances?

     Without getting into all the side issues of parental control, HOW do we choose to provide inadequate leadership and expect others to follow? (Remember that selling is helping others solve problems, and it is 80% listening!)

     Unlike the tokenism we see in politics, truly effective salesmanship ushers in substance. It does that by proving performance, by instilling trust through demonstration, and by acting from a posture of authenticity.

     You are most certainly a leader of something, perhaps many things, and your effectiveness can only be measured in terms of results. Results only happen when others are motivated to prompt or get them.

     Others are only motivated when you have been effective in selling them the benefits they will realize by their efforts. And this applies to volunteer and charitable organizations as well as entrepreneurial ventures, “Mom and Pop” bricks and mortar stores,  virtual online enterprises, and global corporate entities.

     It applies to households, classrooms, scouting groups, and sports teams. Notre Dame University’s most famous football coach, Knute Rockne, was a worldclass professional salesman.

How and what are YOU selling? The answer defines your leadership skills.

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You’re going to work for a

living SOME where, right?

Recommended: Print & pass to a business hopeful attending or considering college

     So you’ve earned a PhD, an MBA, LLB, MD, MS, MA, and all kinds of bachelor and associate degrees. You are Mr. or Mrs. (maybe “Dr.” ?) Joe (Josephine?) College, in the flesh. And the academic credentials got you a decent job. Now what? Do you seriously believe your 4.0 grade average means you’ve got what it takes to thrive … even survive?

     After your punishing (and expensive!) labs, coursework, exams, thesis papers and consulting with so-called “Academic Advisors,” if you have learned anything less than HOW to put ALL of the following to work, you’re in big-time trouble, and college put you there.

     Can you honestly say you have learned how to practice (and hopefully excel at) ALL of these attributes?:

• Making Decisions
• Managing Stress
• Managing Time
• Managing Customers
• Communicating Clearly
• Being a Leader
• SELLING
• Delegating
• Innovating
• Being a Team Player
• Listening and Giving Feedback
• Organizing
• Empathizing
• Respecting Others
• Being Genuine, Honest and Transparent
• Valuing Experience
• Accepting Criticism
• Setting and Pursuing Goals
• Being Accountable and Cultivating Trust
• Avoiding Political and Psychological “Games”

     Give or take perhaps a couple of the above items, these are the attributes that add up to being effective in business or professional practice (ANY business or professional practice) and without which, your road to success will be a long one indeed, especially if you aspire to a forward-moving or productive management position.

     Good leaders do all of these things well. So do good salespeople. All good leaders are also, not incidentally, good salespeople [SEE TOMORROW’S POST ON THIS SUBJECT!]  

     What’s sad about all this is that institutions of higher learning (other than a very small handful that do in fact address a number of these subjects as part of academic platforms on, for example, nursing and entrepreneurship and some behavioral sciences like human development) not only scoot around these issues; they outright reject them.

     Colleges and universities (again with rare exception) fail to value reality. They are invested in fantasizing on the past which will never come again, or the future which hasn’t yet arrived, and may never. They refuse to acknowledge their hands in front of their faces.

     So YOU end up losing out to an arcane system of learning that fails to deal with preparing students for life in the real world. It’s true.

How do I know? I’ve worked extensively in creative roles with Fortune 500 companies, as a consultant with entrepreneurial businesses and professional practices, as a management trainer for over 20,000 business and healthcare executives, and as “Professor of the Year” at a major university and two colleges. I’ve been in the thick of it.

     You DO have a way out. There IS hope. You need to first accept that you’ve been taught subject matter, not real life applications, not how to succeed. Second, you must commit to yourself to learn as much as you possibly can about yourself as possible.

The more you know about what makes you “tick,”

the more skilled and successful a leader you will be.

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Imagine This. Imagine That.

(Then Do It!)

     Sorry, but great ideas you fail to act on are not great. In fact, they’re actually lousy because they clog up your brain and prevent you from getting and acting on the truly great ideas you have. Am I saying that you’re holding yourself back? Yes. Aren’t you?

     I know, you’re overwhelmed right now…sucky economy, family holiday obligations, and you want to just slow down your business push (like past years), just sit back and relax with a nice glass of something warming…and relegate the whole “dreaming up new business ideas” thing to some back burner agenda.

     But guess what? (Yes, you knew this was coming, right?) There couldn’t be a better time to get your brain focused on making more of your imagination. While others are racing around trying to jam in end-of-year sales orders, and still others take vacation time, ACT BOLDLY!

DO AN “O.I.S.T.T.T.”

(Now! This Week!)

     Take 2 or 3 or 5 or 10 of your top people on an “Overnight Imagination Stimulation Think Tank Trip.” Build in a side visit or two for some gift-shopping along the way.

     Here, Try This:

1) Take your Team to breakfast and give them a pep talk. Then give them each some spending allowance or discount deals you work out for special shopping spots along the way to a special meeting destination (Cheap, good dollar-value deals are available everywhere right now!). Maybe offer an extra “Family Day” off to each for Christmas or New Year’s use? 

2) Then bus or limo the whole group to some mountain cabin hideaway, or some fantastic meeting center/resort kind of place. My personal recommendation for those in the Northeast… NY / NJ / PA / DE / CT / MA:  www.InterlakenInn.com because I’ve run dozens of “Escape” meetings there and can vouch for what a super place it is (and I just called them to check, and they assure me they’ll work with your budget).

Bottom Line: You won’t believe how much good the overnight “brainstorming” trip will do for your business (AND your Team!).

3) Imagination will flow from the first cup of coffee to the last, then you have some time left over to evaluate and assess the ideas, and determine the directions and steps to take.

4) POOF! You will start out the new year on the run, ahead of the pack, and with increased commitment and loyalty from your top Team, because they will be part of the action from the git-go.  

Assuming now that you might be serious about wanting to put some truly creative leadership to work, and you’re willing to test your mettle (and your braintrust) as to how spontaneous you can all be (because you realize that SOMETHING powerful has to happen with your business SOON), then check each of these quick blog posts on related subjects:

http://bit.ly/6VFJHL  ~~~ INNOVATING AND PROBLEM-SOLVING (“Has Your Brain Been Thunder-Struck?”)

http://bit.ly/85FlLC  ~~~ 5 WAYS TO BREED INNOVATION (“It Doesn’t Fall From The Sky … Innovation Needs Ignition!”)

http://bit.ly/5358lq ~~~ BEAT THE RECESSION WITH IMAGINATION (“Entrepreneurs Are Imagination Junkies”) 

 MY PROMISE:

THIS (PERHAPS RISKY-FEELING) SUGGESTION WILL POSITIVELY PRODUCE THE MISSING INGREDIENTS YOU NEED TO SKY-ROCKET YOUR BUSINESS INTO THE NEW YEAR!

(Or, if doubts and excuses get in the way, call me at 302.933.0116 to arrange a free how-to, same or next-day consulting session!)

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Think Big But Act Small!

     As small business owners and managers, we unfortunately have not much of a role model for success anywhere within the avalanche of daily government’s much ado about nothing, or the poor misguided mainstream media’s efforts to distort, opinionate and manipulate in order to sell advertising time and space.

     How could we expect, for example, to learn anything about decision-making from an Armed Forces Commander in Chief who takes three months to conclude what his own paid, experienced experts have told him from the outset the steps that needed to be taken with respect to troop deployment?

     And, to top it off, in addition to having put those who serve — and who are clearly committed — in harms way for that entire three months, the agonizingly slow decision and extent of unnecessarily prolonged delay now threatens to undermine the very determination that was finally and reluctantly made. This decision should have been made in one day.

     Odds are that if any of us practiced such poor (and critical) decision-making and failed to rely on those we chose to surround and advise ourselves with in our own businesses, we’d be out (or well on our way to being out) of business!

     Oh, and just imagine what kind of customer loyalty we might generate if our marketing programs and public messages were as intentionally contentious and provocative as the sensationalist “journalism” that flows from the fork-tongued mouths of mainstream media’s loose cannons. You know who and what make up this list. 

     Something about this desperate media pproach to doing business smacks of ramming a healthcare program down the throats of 63% of the population who do not want it. Could you do that with your business prospects and survive?

     We could forget about repeat sales. We could also give up our customer service pursuits (Who would ever believe in the dollar value and performance quality of our products and services when we’re fully preoccupied with putting down our competition or trying to produce sales by mental water-boarding instead of simply demonstrating the benefits of our business, our integrity, trust and authenticity?)

     And what have we in our poor excuse for a national leadership to follow? A hypocritical multimillionaire holding our feet to the fire to keep us honest while abusing tax-dollar-paid privileges? People with less business experience than your 2 year-old nephew, dictating business policy? People so entrenched in their own sense of political self-importance that they’ve lost sight of what they’re supposed to be doing and whom they’re supposed to be representing?

     You couldn’t count fast enough to guess the numbers of customers leaving your business if you started price-gouging while delivering inadequate products and services in the name of global warming scams designed to divert tax dollars to political causes, and self-aggrandizing delusional thinking about spreading wealth to those who haven’t earned it (because handouts work just fine).

     A helluva way to run a business. Any business. 

When you want to be big,

act small enough to make it clear

that your growth is not more important

than your customer.    

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Prepare to get your

socks knocked off!

     Great leadership is not always a product of war, sports, and business. Prepare to get your socks knocked off by taking 3 minutes out of your life to watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqbVbPvlDoM

     I guarantee it will make you smile. Many will laugh out loud. Some will cry. Because great leadership does that. And this, my dear entrepreneurial business owner, operator, and manager friends, is a fantastic example of great leadership. [If you’ve seen it before, watch it now from a business perspective!]

     Don’t shrug off this request if you’re serious about wanting to be a more effective leader. This is NOT your typical classroom or textbook approach to the subject. Take a quick visit to the link above, then jump back here for some insight and thought-provokers that you’ll never get from your ex-boss or your corporate gorilla brother-in-law.

     Go. Then come back…  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     Welcome back! Now, that you’ve seen it [I was right, right?], think about what it is exactly that makes this performance such an outstanding example of perfect leadership. Skip the temptation to 0ffer wisecracks for a minute, and concentrate on what it is that you just saw happen. What connection did you see with the values and concepts that are suggested by the  following words? 

• SHARED MISSION
• CONFIDENCE
• TRUST
• CONCENTRATED ENERGY
• TEAMWORK
• FUN
• MUTUAL RESPECT
• POSITIVE ATTITUDE
• HIGH SPIRITS
• COMMUNICATION AND FEEDBACK
• LOYALTY
• PRACTICE
• “HERE AND NOW” FOCUS

     Have you ever experienced a leader of any kind who hasn’t exemplified a good handful of the attributes listed above? What do YOU need to do to cultivate more of these attributes for your SELF? How can you encourage and stimulate more of these practices in your own organization? 

     And curiously worth noting, no tangible rewards were offered. Did you notice any INtangible rewards? How big a role did nonverbal communication play in achieving success?  Are you sitting there on your hands, laughing smugly to yourself that this analogy is ridiculous because you are dealing with real, live, human beings, not a golden retriever … and you are the boss, not an animal trainer? Are you thinking that? I hope not.

     If you own or run a business or part of one, the reality is — whether you like it or not — that you are seen every day of the week by those who report to you, as a surrogate parent. You are a maternal or paternal figure to your employees. That makes you a trainer.

     They will do as you tell them, to a fault, if they respect you. And you will gain and hold their respect by practicing as many of the above-itemized attributes as possible as often as possible — in person, on the phone, in emails, in meetings.

     Why does it matter? Because the sum total of what you do, or have already been doing, with what’s presented here in this blog post will determine the branding of your organization. Branding is all about conduct, credibility, integrity, trust, and authenticity.

     Is that what YOUR branding is all about? What can you cherry-pick from here (and the video) that will move your branding — through your leadership — closer to where you want it to be?        

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