“The journey to discovery

is not

in having new landscapes,

but in having new eyes.”

—PROUST

     SO…creating a positive attitude climate for your employees doesn’t mean you have to relocate operations to the islands. It’s all a matter of how people choose to look at things, not the vantage point they commandeer. Here is a six-point approach you can start to use tomorrow morning to create a more positive climate for your business:

     1. GROW YOUR PEOPLE. Know the capabilities and weaknesses of each employee. Determine the fundamental goals of your business, and match those goals against the talents available. Encourage employees to be (as Thoreau once urged) forever on the alert…alert to new opportunities to acquire useful knowledge about the business, about your customers, and about their own individual areas of responsibility.

     2. SHARE THE VISIONS you have of your business goals. Encourage employees to participate in reaching those goals. Share the problems…tell your people what’s going on, but in positive terms and by presenting problems as opportunities…then, listen to their ideas!

     3. DETERMINE WHAT “POSITIVE CLIMATE” CHANGES NEED TO BE MADE. Should changes be made in job descriptions or physical layout to improve working conditions? Be very specific. And take the time and trouble to write it all down on paper with a pen in your hand instead of a keyboard (Yes, it makes a difference!).

     4. SET AN EXAMPLE. If you want to see others act more positively, YOU must act more positively…in bad times as well as good! You will not be fostering teamwork if you rule by threats and intimidation. Praise in public and criticize in private. Be consistent with the goals you’ve established.

     5. REASSESS WHAT IT IS THAT YOU DO EACH DAY, and the ways that you do what you do. Make adjustments to be more consistent with the changes you are making. For example, if you want to encourage better communications, you’ll need to establish a more “open door” policy…and do more listening! 

     6. DEVISE NEW METHODS AND SYSTEMS for developing a more positive climate–such as short weekly meetings to evaluate progress, and a reward system for improved performance.

IN AN OPTIMUM POSITIVE WORK CLIMATE, people know exactly what is expected of them, and where they fit in. Everyone shares the same goals. Employees know how they can be effective, and what kinds of behavior will be rewarded.

What kinds of behavior are you rewarding? Remember that what you reward, is what you get more of! 

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals. God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

The Business of Healthcare

Reality is that doctors are no longer” just” examiners, diagnosticians, and healers. In fact, the way things have been going, odds are that something about the healthcare profession will be vastly different by the time we wake up tomorrow morning.

And today, doctors are routinely expected to be insurance experts; banking, investment and financial wizards; administrative hot-shots; marketing, patient relations and community relations gurus; human resource management directors; professional buyers; government compliance champions; shrinks (even if they’re not psychiatrists or psychologists); oh, yes, and family icons.

Does this all add up to patients not getting as much quality care and attention? Of course. How can ANY human being whose existence is devoted to providing professional healthcare be expected to give patients full attention with so many other commitments and expectations tugging at her or his stethoscope? There is a way. Read on.

Thankfully, doctors share many of the same hallmark characteristics as entrepreneurs — from managing diverse cases, juggling breakneck schedules, being able and willing to work long hours and turn on the proverbial dime (if FDR ever knew!), to being self-empowering, quick decision makers with fairly strong delegation skills…and commanding (commandeering?) egos.

     Both–doctors and entrepreneurs–are motivated by the desire for personal achievement and financial gain, as well as a deep sense of things spiritual. Both take reasonable risks. Hence the name I created many years ago: “Doctorpreneurs.”

The differences of course are equally important. Human (and animal) healing, relief, care, wellness, and hope are certainly not software, electronics, transportation…or beer, hot dogs, tobacco, and french fries!

Two telling characteristics common to savvy doctors and true-blooded entrepreneurs is that both will only take reasonable risks, and both are smart enough to recognize that:

A) They don’t know and don’t want to know everything outside their realm of expertise, nor do they want to sacrifice the time it takes to learn because it detracts from their specialized skills and interests, and

B) They need to find and surround themselves with people who are experts in their own fields because in the long run it’s easier and less expensive to pay professional fees than to waste time and energy learning by trial and error.

     These are not traits of government or corporate leaders.

In the end, they are the traits that will hold our embattled healthcare programs and services together in much the same fashion that entrepreneurs (ala Jobs and Gates) will be the true agents of change as captains of small business that will turn the economy’s tide to productivity, prosperity, and growth.

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Input welcome anytime: Hal@TheWriterWorks.com (”Businessworks” in the subject line) or comment below. Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals, good night and God bless you! halalpiar  # # # 

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You’re boss for the day,

in charge of the zoo.

Whaddaya say?

Whaddaya do?

     Even when you think no one’s around or paying attention, everyone IS. It’s hard to run your own business on stage in the spotlights (especially in some of the larger more public theatres), but “on stage” is where you and every other boss perform every day.

     You may even need to drop the curtain (or close your door) every once in awhile for a few minutes privacy just to sniffle, pick, scratch or gargle without an audience. But–even then–remember you are still the chief muckity-muck and (like it or not) you’re a parental figure to those who work for you.

     You probably don’t think that your employees are anywhere near being neurotic. You may be astounded to learn that many of them (if not all) measure your every move. They all watch TV. So they all know how to observe, scope things out, size things up, and “case the joint.” It’s rare that anything you say isn’t repeated over and again both on the job, and at home, as well as to neighbors, friends, teammates and bar buddies. Your community and industry exposure is as public as a professional athlete’s is to her or his sport.

     Odds are pretty good that your people want to butter you up, or do you in, or simply not make waves. An exclusive small handful are self-actualized enough in the work they do to enjoy doing the work they do with no greater agenda. But this is a very small fraction of the total. None of them will do their jobs with the conviction and commitment that you have. None will do things exactly the same way that you would.

     But this is why you get the big bucks. It’s not your job to get things done. It’s your job to get others to get things done. Bottom line is that bosses who treat employees as underlings produce underlings. Underlings don’t sell. Underlings don’t innovate. Underlings don’t take initiative. Underlings hate their jobs.

     Bosses who treat employees like partners produce partnerships and employee teams that believe in what they are doing. These are the people who will strengthen the organization because they are granted the respect that renders them not afraid to step up to the plate, nor to challenge the status quo.  

     As Boss, the best, most productive and motivating thing you can do is to take the time and trouble to learn a little bit more than you presently know about what makes each employee who works with you “tick”…what kinds of dreams, desires, wants and needs does each have.

     You needn’t be a shrink to do this. Simply open your eyes and ears more. Tune in to the kinds of things people do and say. When you can reward behavior with rewards that really matter to each individual, you are cultivating long-term commitment, ongoing loyalty, and exemplary performance. 

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 Hal@Businessworks.US or comment below.

Thanks for visiting. 

Go for your goals, good night and God bless you!

“I’m Sick of Worrying!”

     An important followup note on last night’s blog post topic: “Worry” as noted comes from being too over-focused on the FUTURE, which ignites weapons of self-destruction fuses and pulls the pin out of expectation grenades that inevitably breed disappointment, followed by negativity, depression, stress…

     This is all true, but as I re-read the post, I see that I failed to include being too overly-focused on the PAST as a worry trigger as well. Consider getting caught up in giving either too much attention to future plans and expectations, or in over-and-done-with past events, as “partners in crime.”

     These “bad guy partners” are out to get you, and you can stop them short, before either one ever gets close to delivering harmful effects to you, your family or your business. Success means simply that you need to exercise more of your brain power to deliver increased personal awareness and increased self-control to your SELF! (Considering Einstein reportedly only ever used 10% of his brain power, just imagine what’s possible.)

     Thinking about the past can be productive, relaxing, and instructional, but not once it reaches the point of dwelling on past events. As with allowing future thoughts to become worrisome, our balance and stability as humans is equally threatened by dwelling on the past. 

     The past is over and cannot be changed. Worrying about and dwelling on it is a nonproductive (actually counter-productive) waste of time and energy. Conscious or unconscious, the fact remains that paying over-the-top attention to either the past OR the future—instead of the (much-healthier) present—is a choice.

     To get past the “points of destruction” in your mind, you need to be a detective about yourSELF. Figure out what it is that trips your circuit-breaker, that gets you “lost” in past or future thoughts and issues. Once you know what your “trigger” is, then every time you are aware of it coming to the surface, let it serve as a reminder to pinch yourself or feel your pulse or heartbeat, or take a deep breath…and return yourself to what’s going on right in front of your face.

     Oh, but that’s hard and I don’t know how to do it! It’s hard if you CHOOSE for it to be hard. You can just as easily CHOOSE for it to be easy. As for how to do it, just start paying closer attention to your own behaviors…how you respond and react to others, to situations.

     Keep track of your words and actions. Write your observations down someplace and review your notes every few days. Keep asking yourself what you are learning about yourself right this minute.

     You’ll surprise yourself. And odds are you’ll far exceed your own expectations of what you believed to be possible for your own physical, mental, and emotional health and happiness. Try it. You’ll like it! But don’t wait too long. There’s no time like the present!      

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Input welcome anytime: Hal@TheWriterWorks.com (”Businessworks” in the subject line) or comment below. Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals, good night and God bless you! halalpiar              # # # 

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The Six Ghosts of Fear

In his 1937 classic book (over 15 million copies sold), THINK and GROW RICH, Napoleon Hill set the stage for today’s motivational thinking, and offers specifics on “How to Outwit the Six Ghosts of Fear” that successful leaders in every walk of life continue to use even now as you are reading this.

What ARE the “Six Ghosts”?

1. The Fear of Poverty

2. The Fear of Criticism

3. The Fear of Ill Health

4. The Fear of Loss of Love

5. The Fear of Old Age

6. The Fear of Death

Worry is what unites and strengthens these negative emotions and, left unchecked, will ultimately cause them to materialize. Worry paralyzes reasoning and destroys self-confidence and initiative. It’s easy to say –as the calypso song encourages us–“Don’t worry!” but truth is our minds often work harder at making it a difficult choice instead of a simple  one.

Worry accomplishes NOTHING. It comes from being overly-focused on the future…on events that haven’t come yet and that may never come. It happens when we slip past “planning” and head toward expectations. It starts with disappointment and leads quickly to the most wasteful and harmful thinking that humans engage in.

It evolves from fantasy, not reality. It leads to businesses going under, negative thinking and neurosis taking over. It leads to illness, accidents and depression. It leads all too often to premature death.

The greatest single weapon against worry is to work tenaciously to keep your mind in the present here and now moment as often as you can possibly think of it during every hour of every day. Staying here and now, like a baby, like a puppy dog, like a naturalist in the wilds, like a mountain climber, opens the pathway for you to good health and happiness.

No one can be living in the present moment every single moment. (Just imagine an air traffic controller without a break.) But all of us are capable of maximizing our present moment attentiveness. Deep breathing helps. Regular exercise helps. Taking breaks helps. Eating right and sleeping right as much as possible helps.

You want to think and feel healthier? Have a happier existence? A stronger business? Start paying closer attention to keeping your mind from wandering too far astray from what’s right in front of your face right now at any given moment throughout the day, every day. It’s a choice, you know. Choose to set yourself up to not worry as much and you’ll be well on the way to defeating the six ghosts of fear!

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Input welcome anytime:

Hal@BusinessWorks.US  or comment below.

Thanks for visiting. 

Go for your goals, good night and God bless you! 

ARE YOU

BREATHING?

1-Minute private technique kills business stress

This 4-step, on-the-spot stress management technique is being used—right this minute, as you are reading this—by millions of healthcare, business, sports, entertainment, teaching, and homemaker professionals.  It works for every age and level of health.  

It will work for you too!

# # #

Hal@BusinessWorks.US 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You!

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

Gonna Chunk It? Then Chew It!

     If your current state of existence fits the last (“Discombobulated?”) post, and you’ve decided to try managing your time in chunks instead of clock ticks, be aware that you can’t just wolf down the chunks like my Golden Retriever. She rarely bothers to chew when she’s excited.

     You however are not a dog. At least, I must assume that you’re not. But just in case you ARE some blog-reading canine phenom, please call me immediately; we’ll make lots of money together. So the bottom line is that your digestive system simply doesn’t work well with chunks.

     Still with me here?We’re talking time management. Chunks. Chunking up time and activities is better than nonstop eating of the same (physical, mental, or emotional) food for eight hours a day. After all, even casino dealers work 20 minutes on and 20 minutes off.

     The guys who clean out the winery vats are basically AA candidates after just 15 minutes of vintage fermentation fumes (although that’s not such a bad way to go) and have to take mandated breaks.

     Imagine for a minute if the chiropractoradjusted every single bone in your body all in one visit. You’d be like Gumby. It’d take you a week simply to get off the table. Ah, then there’s the dentist and doing all the fillings and extractions and crowns and all the other rotten stuff dentists do all at one time. Whew! That one hurts even to think about.

     Start by breaking up your daily “To Do” list…little pieces work better (like outline the Narrative section of the business plan,” which could take a couple of hours). Little pieces are more attainable, and achieving each will motivate you a whole lot more than having “Write Business Plan” on your list, which could take months.

     In other words, after chunking, chew. After chewing, digest. Your body wasn’t made to take a pounding 16 waking hours a day. Neither was your mind, nor your emotions. The more you push and force yourself, the longer you’ll take to complete each task, and the more likely you will be to screw up each task, not to mention the indigestion, heartburn, and ulcers that you’ll be cultivating. 

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Send your input anytime: Hal@TheWriterWorks.com (”Businessworks” in the subject line) or comment below. Thanks for visiting. Good night and God bless you! halalpiar              # # # 

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Discombobulated? 

     When overwhelm strikes, like a tsunami, and you dive under the nearest pillow or cannonball into your hot tub from the second floor deck, or run screaming down the hall that little chickens are falling from the sky, you may be on the cusp of committing to some daily psychotherapy explorations, but you’re probably normal. You may simply have spent too many years locked in your office.

     We all feed ourselves to the clock and occasionally become time-stricken. Great, you say, to hear so many others share this misery, but, you say, whassup with how to get out of the clock before it chews off my feet –or head, depending on how close it was able to get to me when the hickory-dickory docked?

     The answer, my friend, is not blowin’ in the wind. It’s in chunking up your day so you’re never in any one place mentally or physically or emotionally long enough to get gobbled up by Old Man Time. In other words, start planning your daily schedule by “CHUNKS” instead of by hours.

Motivational guru Brian Tracy suggests we ask ourselves, “What is the most valuable use of my time right now?” as many times as we are able to think of it, day after day.

He says that asking ourselves this question consistently makes us more productive and guarantees success.

     If you’re finding yourself lost in your work for days on end or corkscrewing yourself into a bottleneck of problem-solving, you may want to re-visit some of what you might have forgotten about the art of delegation, and you may want to simply start taking more breaks.

     Some of the world’s most UN-productive people are those who dedicate their efforts to their work so single-mindedly that they eat lunch at their desks, cannot relax around family or friends, injure themselves anytime they try some kind of exercise that takes them away from their jobs, and have to have it be a real effort…to smile ;<})

     When you can chunk up your work schedule, your exercise, family time, your goals, decision making, even travel, you will be happier, healthier, and more productive more often. Remind yourself that your body is not a machine, that you ARE your body.

     I mean imagine that carnivorous clock noted earlier eats your body, now what? What’s left? Don’t give me “heart and soul” stuff here. Think it through. You run a business. You know how to think. Do you know how to chunk it up? Give it a shot. What have you got to lose? More valueless time?    

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Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Many thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

You can’t control your ship

while stoking the furnace!

     What IS it that makes business owners and managers so crazy when they’re confronted with the idea of hiring someone to do a task that they know they could do themselves?  Huh? I KNOW I’m not imagining this one. So answer the question.

     Why would someone who runs a business think she or he should set up his or her own website or write her or his own blog or news release, for example? To save money? Surely saving money is not a good answer.

     As we’ve discussed here often, no one makes money by saving money. Businesses only make money by selling. If you own or operate a struggling (or ambitious) business and you decide to do tasks that are not making money by actually disengaging yourself from the sales process, you are wasting money, not saving it.

     I have seen some very bright business owners step aside from the sales function to let the salespeople do the selling, and instead focus their energies on operational productivity or human resource management, or budget management, or manufacturing efficiency, then be astonished to see their ships go down while they are busily rearranging the deck chairs.

     FACT: No one (NO ONE) is better at selling what your business produces or provides than you are! If your business is struggling (or steaming “Full Ahead”), and you are not with one hand at the controls, actively selling, you may want to re-think your investment in survival (or growth) and see the role you’re playing for what it really is: an anchor!

     If you need a new or upgraded website or a punchy blog, or news releases that get printed and broadcast, and you can find a professional website developer you can trust who has a track-record for reliability…or a professional marketing writer who knows how to “storytell” your business messages and who has a track-record for sales results, for heaven’s sake: HIRE THEM and get on with selling!

     So what if you think you could design your own site or write your own content or marketing materials? It’s not worth you taking the time to do those things when you need to be selling because selling is the only way to make money and move your ship forward.

     Pay the professionals to do what they do best. It’s a cost of doing business. Trying to tackle non-sales projects yourself diverts your time, energy and money into non-productive directions and doesn’t make the best use of your knowledge, talents, and enthusiasm. Besides, if you do-it-yourself, and screw it up, it’ll cost you twice as much to get the same professionals to do emergency surgery at sea!

     One last thought: You can control your ship and sell at the same time. You can’t control your ship while you’re stoking the furnace or working below decks. Best wishes for smoothe sailing!  

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Send your input anytime: Hal@TheWriterWorks.com (”Businessworks” in the subject line) or comment below. Thanks for visiting. Good night and God bless you! halalpiar              # # # 

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Shut Your Business Down!

     Can the service your business provides be better? Are you in a position to MAKE it better? I would hope so, or you wouldn’t be likely to be visiting this blog for business owners and managers. But perhaps you think you need to live with what you’ve got?

     Maybe you feel like you just shouldn’t rock the boat? Or could it be that you might be stepping on someone else’s toes, or that service improvements wouldn’t work, or may create havoc in your industry or –let’s see– you could never get your dollar value back for the time invested?

     Anything like any of those reasons serve you as a quick answer so now you can move along to some other site? Do yourself a favor. Shut your business down tomorrow. You’re likely to have more success selling off your office or site supplies and equipment than you will staying where you are, doing what you’re doing. You find that insulting? Good! Maybe there’s hope yet.

     If the suggestion to hang up your spikes makes you angry, maybe you need to look in the mirror and shake yourself by the shoulders and breathe some new life into the services you’re providing. Making your services better is more likely, FYI, to INCREASE your business than decrease it.

     Why? Because people talk. People who get better quality services tell others, and this works much quicker and much deeper than any advertising can produce. A couple of years back, some shrewd entrepreneurs even invented the word BUZZ as the modern day equivalent of “Word of Mouth”– except that word of mouth is genuine; BUZZ is contrived.

     The point is that THIS– this economy, this time in history, this year, this month, this week– is in fact the time to start making better what you already have. Don’t let the biased mainstream news media, the zero business-experienced government, the monster union-dominated automakers, the moronic 37 trillion bank VP’s who all know less than one another convince you to sit back and take it on the chin!

     You didn’t start and grow your business to shut it down. Don’t let others lead you down the path of status quo. Now is the time to rise, to innovate, to take a fresh look at what you have, and who you have…associates, employees, customers, vendors, affiliates, neighbors, industry, community.

     How can you make more of all that now? What new ways can you pull your assets together to put yourself and your service business in a leadership position? What’s holding you back? It’s a choice. It’s your choice. 

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Send your input anytime: Hal@TheWriterWorks.com (”Businessworks” in the subject line) or comment below. Thanks for visiting. Good night and God bless you! halalpiar              # # # 

FREE BLOG SUBSCRIPTION? Click on ”Posts RSS Feed” (Center Column). FEELING CREATIVE? Visit the daily growing 7-Word Story (That’s now 239 days in the making) and add your own 7 words: http://halalpiar.com/?page_id=157