LIFE & LEADERSHIP SUCCESS

IS ALL ABOUT TIMING!

I am a business and professional practice development specialist –many years, thousands of problems, projects, and people– proof beyond the shadow of a doubt that life and leadership success catapult out of having a highly defined sense of TIMING. Period. Yes, PASSION and ATTITUDE. Yes, INTEGRITY. But without TIMING, there’s no success! None.

This doesn’t mean running around like a headless chicken trying to squeeze twenty-five hours out of every day. It means having enough experience, instinct and sense of direction to know exactly when it’s the right time to say and do, when it’s the right time to back off, when it’s the right time to charge forward, and the right time to take steady steps toward target goals.

Think baseball here, imagine you have the world’s greatest bat swing. But if your bat is too early or too late or at the wrong height to meet the pitch, it means nothing. Wrong words–even right words–at the wrong times cost sales, cost relationships, cost court cases, cost lives. The best, most well-intentioned offers and behaviors made at the wrong times can spell disaster.

So doing and saying the right things may get us through life and look like leadership to others, but if the timing is off, even the best words and behaviors will not produce success. The world’s most successful leaders are those who possess a keenly developed sense of timing–knowing WHEN to speak and WHEN to listen, knowing WHEN to act and WHEN to wait.

Okay, so how do we develop this skill, this sense of awareness about WHEN to do and WHEN to say? Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be any quick-fix approach beyond practice, practice, practice. But being aware of the distinctions between having a full arsenal of life and leadership tools, and knowing when to use them, is half the battle.

The thing is are we truly serious about making a difference with our lives? Are we truly serious about building a track-record for effective leadership that teaches by example and that rallies and inspires others to get things done? Then we need to be realistic enough to recognize that gaining the skills and tools is like getting great medical training. It just sets the stage.

Knowing how to say and use what we have at the time that it’s needed to be said and used is what separates leaders from followers. It is what separates those whose lives make a difference, from those who plod aimlessly along the path of least resistance and accomplish little of value in their families, friend and spiritual circles, or the communities they draw from.

Is it time to reassess where we’re headed, and to 

work harder at cultivating our sense of timing?

Good timing is not an accident.   

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STOP

“Thinking

   Like A Leader”!

“Thinking like a leader” may get you some pats on the back. Perhaps a few “Hey, Man, he really thinks like a leader!” comments. But leaders who are serious about the pursuit of their missions and the exercising of leadership to motivate others to get where they’re going, are those who are completely invested in BEING leaders.

BEING a leader means getting results through others instead of thinking or talking about getting results.

Of course leaders need to plan. But having a plan is like getting your foot in the door. Worrying about which way to go once you’re inside, doesn’t make the mission happen. Taking steps does. And as a true entrepreneur would respond, if the first few steps aren’t working, take steps in a different direction . . . and then again.

You will almost always get where you’re going faster by moving than if you were to sit still and analyze each direction because the momentum alone will fuel your pursuit. Not happy with that, huh? You don’t like thrashing your way through the jungle just to find out you missed the path? You need your analytical fix?

Okay, go for it, but limit it and target it to make the most of where you’ve been. After all:

HOW ARE YOU GOING

TO GET WHERE YOU’RE GOING

IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE YOU’VE BEEN? 

Make it a quick review (not analysis paralysis!). The relevant past is useful to every leader because it can be an invaluable tool for learning from past mistakes and past success, true? So do it. Review it. Then take it –like a football game handoff– and run! The past is over and will not change. And dwelling on the past is a waste of the present.

What’s the rush? Motivating others takes momentum which requires timely and accurate communications. Timely and accurate communications dissolve rapidly when too much time and attention is devoted to past and future thinking. But both gather speed as the leader sparks and ignites. BEING an effective leader means taking action and teaching by example.

“Thoughts” I am told by psychologist friends, are “Things.” But “Things” are not “Actions.”

Leaders Act.

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So, you think you know

who you are, huh? Really?

Entrepreneurial Leaders are responsive (instead of reactive). They take reasonable risks (which means they don’t bet the farm, or even buy lottery tickets!). They are goal-driven, but focus more on the steps to reach the goal. When something doesn’t work, they make adjustments and try again (vs. corporate/government thinking that produces analysis paralysis!)

Guess what the number one ingredient is in entrepreneurial leadership — any kind, any level (from running a company to running a work crew or department, to running a family or sports team)? It’s knowing yourself. Your SELF. Because unless you know what makes YOU tick, you can never know what makes others tick.

When you don’t know what makes others tick, you’ll never be able to communicate clearly with them . . . because they do NOT think like you think even if you think they do. They don’t. You are unique. No one else has your brain. No one else can reach inside your brain and control it because every one of your behaviors is your choice!

So, are you still with me? If that little bit of awareness is true for you, it is equally true for each person who follows you. To be truly effective as an entrepreneurial leader (as opposed to a robotic leader!), doesn’t mean you have to be a shrink. It means you have to accept that everyone does not think like you, and you need to do your best to figure out what makes them tick.

Just because you may think you’ve “been around the block a few times,” that you’ve “been there, done that and got the t-shirt” doesn’t mean you can dismiss the need to keep learning about yourself and others because these are different times. What worked for you before is not likely to work again for you without some kind of adjustment.

The place to start adjusting, then, is with how, when, and where you absorb new information. Just as you and your life are constantly changing (even, and usually, when you least expect it or are aware of it), so too are the lives of those who look to you for guidance. I’m not suggesting you become a Google-aholic psych student. Just keep yourself alert. Observe. Listen.

Keeping up with all of that is challenging. But isn’t that why you took the job or accepted the responsibility in the first place?

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Business and Professional Practice

Collaborations, Partnerships,

and Marriage . . .

When two people in business or professional practice agree all of the time, one of them is not necessary.

Things that function —from engines to entrepreneurial (doctors included) ventures– need friction. But it appears that just as many people seem not to distinguish clearly between assertiveness and aggressiveness, as those who fail to keep friction and arguing or temper tantrums separate. (Yes, I once worked with a short-fused surgeon who threw scalpels!)

This collaborative partnership subject emerged during an invigorating get-acquainted discussion I had this week with fellow LinkedIn contact, Robin Standlee, an organizational transformation specialist whose company, C-Level Consultants, LLC. is a collaborative partnership organization that works with entrepreneurs and nonprofits.

She pointed out that the strength of collaborative partnerships has a great deal to do with the care and attention given to defining relationship parameters. Clearly defining role responsibilities encourages partners to feel freer and function more productively. Leadership is the ultimate product.

Working with many partnership entities over time (and actually being one for 25 years) has allowed me a unique perspective on these kinds of work arrangements. I have seen partners scream, threaten and throw things at one another — even a fistfight once between two brothers! From surgical group practices and hospitals to IT, foodservice, transportation, and HVAC companies, no enterprise is immune.

The bottom line is that partnering courtships and honeymoons may flutter hearts and become engulfed in bird tweets and floating flower petals, but the realities that test every marriage will surely come to the surface once a relationship settles in. Defining clearly what to expect and who will do what and what will be jointly agreed to —the marriage contract— is critical to ensure business and professional growth.

When you’re serious about joining forces with another person or entity, the only way to make certain that everyone involved will stay involved, that healthy assessments are met with healthy counter-assessments (in other words, that honest and straightforward critiquing and constructive alternative thinking is encouraged) is to agree on a strong operating platform.

COLLABORATION ARTICULATION = Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. When the glitter goes away, will your partners still stand tall?

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Fired? Laid Off? Graduating?

It’s All The Same Thing:

CONGRATULATIONS!

“Huh? How can being fired compare to graduating?”

Both set the stage for life change.

“But one is negative and one is positive.”

Yup! Congratulations!

“You can’t be serious.”

Why not? Both situations put great opportunities in your hands. You are finally in complete control of your own destiny. And whatever you decide is 100% your choice!

If you’ve ever dreamed of making your mark on this planet, these are the kinds of circumstances (being fired, being laid off, graduating) that can open the door for you. None of them is problematic unless you choose for it to be.

Some of the world’s greatest success stories have come from those who are in, or returning from, the depths of trauma. Great riches historically land on the shoulders of those who decide in favor of moving forward with themselves instead of choosing to dwell on or wallow in the circumstances that led them into darkness.

Strength of character comes from inside you. And it has more to do with what you decide to do with your life than from outside influences telling you what’s best. No one else can ever know more about you than you know about you. So don’t rely on the judgments of others to make up your mind about what’s best for your present and future.

In sports, when someone screws up, teammates yell: “Shake it off!” because the game continues. And standing around feeling miserable about letting down your team accomplishes nothing except perhaps serves to prompt another screw-up and compound the first incident even further. It’s no different in careers or business or life.

Aaaah, and there is also of course a divine presence that deserves mention here as well because –if you believe in a supreme being– surely every major shift in life status represents the chance to re-examine and re-explore whether the ways you are moving are indeed forward, sideways or backwards . . . and this relates to attitude, not career status.

Do the steps you take today serve the best purposes of your own ambitions? Do they serve or lead you to better serve others? Are you taking steps? Any steps? What’s the roadblock? Have you convinced yourself that any steps are too difficult right now? When will that change? Can you simply choose to change it now? Are you choosing to be resistant?

More often than not, forward progress gets stalled when we get ourselves caught up in our own self-sorrow. The world keeps turning. The clock keeps ticking. Your heart keeps beating. Don’t choose to waste your precious time on earth feeling sorry for yourself. A friend of mine once admonished: “There’s plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead!”

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HOW LONG

CAN YOU HOLD ON?

Maybe a year? Y’think? Six months? Hmmm? Three or four weeks? Whew! Hours perhaps? Ack! First of all, if your answer is “forever” or “a lifetime” or “long enough,” you may want to revisit your brain because if you’re not living IN it, you’re dangerously close to fantasyland.

One thing I’ve learned in this blessed long life I continue to have is that NOTHING on Planet Earth is permanent. Nothing! That may be no surprise to scholars who know that circa 2600 years ago, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said “Nothing is permanent except change!” (Pretty heady stuff for a guy that old, eh?)

Q. 

What are we talking about here?

Businesses? Families? Friendships?

Entrepreneurial ventures?

Professional practices? Our minds?  

A. 

All of the above!

We “hold on” in five different (yet mostly intertwined) ways:  financially, emotionally, intellectually, physically, and spiritually. And most of the reasons we hold on are anchored in shifting sands. We have numbed ourselves with fear of failure. We have built artificial (and, admittedly, often flimsy) protective walls around our endeavors, pursuits, and ourselves.

So what am I saying? We should all run out and be more carefree? Take bigger risks? Throw away everything we’ve worked hard to earn? Change horses in mid-stream? Stop paying taxes? Buckle under to competitive pressures? Cut off shaky relationships instead of working them through? I’m saying it may be time to reassess what we’re holding onto, and why.

What’s the worst thing can happen by taking a couple of minutes out tonight and thinking through what is and isn’t worth it in your life —  your business or practice, your family, your relationships, your finances, your emotional stability, your intellectual pursuits and development, your body, your sense of spirituality and religious commitments.

Give yourself the benefit of doubt. Just dabble in this arena of yours for a few minutes. Think hard about what it’s all worth, and what you can and are free to choose to do right this minute by making a decision to change things for yourself for the better . . . and then choose it, and do it. It’s really not so hard –and can be fun– once you put yourself on the path.

Letting go may seem –and even feel– hard, but it’s a piece of cake compared with the stress and strain of hanging on to a piece of fantasyland. In the end, for all humans everywhere, reality wins. So why not grab it now and ride it to the finish line? — Your business. Your relationships. Your self. Old song lyrics:

“We may never pass this way again.”

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 CUTTING EXPENSES

DOESN’T MAKE SALES!

To paraphrase an old presidential quote, “It’s the government, stupid!” America’s entrepreneurial leaders are grasping for a lifeline to avoid being swept out to sea by the daily onslaught of misdirected government speak and arrogant government attitude — a trickle-down mindset — harbingers of total economic collapse. And it could be just around the corner.

Forget all that stuff your grandparents used to preach about turning out lights and closing doors to save money. You might save electricity and keep out drafts, but in small business, that kind of save money mentality has been the ruin of many startup ventures. In reality this government-style thinking process accomplishes nothing on the road to survival and growth.

NO ONE EVER MADE MONEY FOR

A BUSINESS BY SAVING MONEY!

Biting into economical practices does not make sales. Only sales make money! “Ouch!” you proclaim, “but I’m not a sales type!” Well, then, become one. Or find one. Or give up your business and go to work for the government. Or show some guts and stick it out. You can make your idea work if you stop taking government advice about how to make it work.

This is not suggesting you do an entrepreneurs gone wild act. A mainstay of our current government, though it may be, this post is not about spending. It’s about what you can do now to turn your business around and stand up to the sleazy, ramrod, phony compassion-soaked policies of the current administration that is desperately trying to control small business.

Just because you have an exciting idea and some startup funding doesn’t mean you can let your enthusiasm run rampant. Business success is about extraordinary customer service and relationship-building. It is about channeling energy and making the most of opportunities that present themselves within your realm of pursuit.

Chase one rainbow at a time! And remember that the best leaders are those who make leaders of their followers.

Running recklessly in too many directions at once will simply produce frustration, exhaustion, and distress — especially in this bare-bones economy. But you CAN run a bare-bones business. After all, small business is based on TRUST. Got some?

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Beware GEEKSPEAK!

GEEKSPEAK. It’s another name for Tech Talk. Too many tech people are talking to too many tech people in too much tech-eeze and the real world of small business owners, professional practice principals, and even top corporate management is passing them by. If you are looking to make sales and grow your business, think twice about GEEKSPEAK overload.

In other words, don’t let website designers write words for your content. They haven’t a clue about effective marketing writing. Don’t let IT people decide on what and how to communicate with clients and customers and prospects. They know not where they come from . . . nor, it often seems, where they’re going when it comes to clarifying issues for non-IT people!

Don’t let your business messages get caught up in branding lines, site content, collateral/promotional material copy or news release text that contains language your grandmother wouldn’t understand. Nothing is so complicated that it can’t be simplified. Nothing is too technical to be communicated in easy-to-understand language.

When I ask you what time it is,

don’t tell me how to make a clock!

It simply takes more time and is harder work. But it’s often the difference between an enthusiastic buyer and a puzzled, overwhelmed one. Suffice it to say that all communication — interpersonal, impersonal, and otherwise, takes more time and is more work. Decide on what you want as a result, and if the extra effort is worth it.

Promoting and presenting complicated diagrams and examples only serves to underscore an oblivious, uncaring attitude to the markets you’re trying to reach. What’s the old axiom? Keep it simple, stupid! And don’t make the excuse that the prospects you seek understand tech talk because odds are pretty good that their bosses who need to approve purchase decisions don’t.

Sourcing people ultimately report to financial and/or operations people who hold the purse-strings. If those folks don’t understand a GEEKSPEAK message, they simply shut down their budgets. And why not? Would you buy something for your home or car that you have no sense of value about, can’t relate to, or fail to understand what you’re getting for your money?

Bite the bullet and give your business communications — especially to your customers, clients, and prospects — the extra effort that will make what you have to say clear from the git go. Not sure if what you’re saying comes across? Ask your grandmother.

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Hal@Businessworks.US 

Just What Americans Need:

Less Healthcare. More Politics.

Shame on you, AARP, and tsk-tsk to Marsha Mercer, “freelance journalist who lives in the Washington, DC area.” Neither of you appear to offer much in the way of common sense, or even the hint of a realistic viewpoint, when it comes to your manipulative and politically-charged-below-the-surface feature story that appears in the AARP March Bulletin.

Your front page hype,”Fixing The Doctor Shortage – Big Changes For Patients” (and guts of the story) deceptively suggests that the evolving physician shortage is one that’s the product of an aging doctor marketplace and by private insurers undercutting Medicare reimbursement rates. Simply not true.

Relentlessly increasing

government control is the culprit.

MEMO TO AARP: Put the premise that your article spotlights in the drawer, and start making phone calls. Ask a few hundred doctors. I have. They will tell you in so many words that relentlessly increasing government control is the culprit.

The article’s lead source, Dr. Steven Berk, is certainly a distinguished one, yet the context of his quote appears to have been quietly tucked away. Surely, Dr. Berk had more to say about the subject than thirty-six words? Could it be that the rest of his comments failed to support the sensationalist undercurrent of your story?

And how about adding the link for 2012 Physicians Foundation survey that you cited so people can check it out for themselves? Check it out here. Certainly the survey IS worth noting. Skewed, though it may be to represent the best interests of its sponsoring organizations, it seems credible enough.

So what is worth noting you ask? How about the glossed-over fact that all the alarming findings referred to have taken place since (and are compared only with) the survey of 2008? Does that strike you as worth noting?

Hmmmm! And what else happened in 2008? An increase-government-control advocate was elected president. So, are we to conclude that most of the problem we face today regarding doctor shortages and the systematic transitions in healthcare that have forced the issue are attributable to physician aging and private insurers, as the article purports? Not likely.

To Find Doctors we should be looking — instead of to state medical associations — to family, friends, neighbors, other doctors, and other healthcare professionals. After all, isn’t it TRUST we seek? Surely, it’s not more government in our lives, or politically-motivated state medical associations trying to justify their membership fees.

Let’s remember that –far and away– the single greatest reason that the vast majority of Americans seek any (even including ER) medical care is to get reassurance. Reality, even for seniors, isn’t a TV hospital show. It’s seeking reassurance.

Oh, and please: FORGET about .gov websites. They are not invested in helping you. They are invested in controlling you! Go instead to private practice websites. Go to The American Academy of Family Physicians and other non-governmental professional physician credentialing organizations. And stop believing what you read in AARP propaganda.

Unless you prefer some politician to give you a diagnostic workup, prognosis, and treatment program?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~  

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Hal@Businessworks.US     302.933.0911

“Whaddayadonfermelately?”

In today’s instant gratification world, many professional healthcare practices, B to B firms, and customer service business owners hear some version of this question with increasing regularity. Not a bad thing to be asked. Huh? Well. because there’s always room for an answer when you know what the question is.

In fact, NOT hearing some version of “Whaddayadonfermelately?” is far worse than being asked because the unasked question itself portends a “not much” answer.

Savvy proactive service business owners and managers never allow any form of this question to surface in the first place. Their secret? Regular, ongoing “How Goes It?” inventory exchanges. Meetings and discussions (note NOT text messages or emails, which are too superficial) that chunk up and evaluate workflow, deliverables, and performance.

These usually daily or weekly assessments (which generally best occur on Monday mornings to set up the week ahead) are typically followed by a call to action — adjustments in the timing, speed, quality, quantity, agility, relevance, attitude, goals, roles, responsibilities . . . whatever steps will help ensure productive forward motion from point to point.

And when you were a kid (no doubt possessing prototypical entrepreneurial characteristics such as resentment of authority in school and reluctance to follow rules), you might have thought report cards were nonsense — or perhaps unpleasant harbingers of parental lectures?

But “report card” dynamics in service businesses –especially when they’re self-imposed– have saved many client accounts and relationships from collapse. Instead, as  some family elder likely forewarned us as children when we had clearly overstepped or under-achieved, it’s a good thing to “nip it in the bud” when it comes to following a problem direction.

When you, the service provider, take the initiative to nip problems “in the bud,” by requesting regular, ongoing feedback and assessment from your client/customer/patient, you are exercising a form of positive preventive maintenance. And this is not even to mention the other values attached to the client’s impression of your commitment.

Asking for feedback is an admirable posture all by itself but, more importantly, you are opening the communication expressway to allow for more give and take, and a healthier more communicative and more rewarding relationship that operates from a position of strength and confidence, instead of one of cowering and covering your butt.

How do YOU feel about doing business with s0meone who makes assumptions instead of asks? Or someone who disappears when the going gets tough or when you have issues to discuss? Hmmm?

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Hal@Businessworks.US    931.854.0474