Put this on your wall…

     Effective communication is commonly attributed 80% to listening and 20% to speaking. Experts report that as much as 87% of communication is nonverbal. So where does that leave us, besides all tangled up with sign language?

     Martin Yates, in his best-selling, well-on-the-way-to-becoming-a-classic business book (KEEPING THE BEST…And Other Thoughts On Building A Super Competitive Workforce; published 1991 by Bob Adams, Inc., Holbrook, MA) says essentially–among many other A-1 working management concepts–that your effectiveness as a communicator is as heavily dependent on the follow-up actions you take, as it is on what you say and don’t say, and how you move or don’t move.

     Yates advises, for example, that after soliciting input, the boss needs to “make a visible effort to act on it and credit its source. It is counterproductive,” he says, “to solicit good input from team members, then put it into action with no accredidation (or worse still, with incorrect accreditation).”

     Yates proceeds to suggest (to owners/operators/managers) to praise creative ideas whenever they surface. This, he says, “encourages innovation and success-oriented thinking.” Yates paraphrases the old standby message to praise in public; criticize (when it’s absolutely necessary) in private.

     His emphasis on “accentuating the positive” [See also my Prentice-Hall Action Report article, “Theory A” (for “Attitude”)  published a decade earlier on the same topic] “build(s) positive behavior. It cannot be repeated enough: whatever behavior you recognize [positive, negative or ambivalent] will be reinforced” [and will produce more of the same]!

     So, the bottom line here is that if you are managing others and not getting what you want out of them, you must look first to your self. Ask yourself if you are paying more attention to scolding, belittling, and taking people to task than you are focusing on searching out the good behaviors and publicly rewarding those?

     I know a highly skilled healthcare practitioner and prominent researcher who maintains a “Wall of Shame” where he posts representations of every manner of employee screw-up, from dumb memos and emails to photos of his people caught in embarassing moments or doing the wrong things with patients. He laughs about it, and says his people all laugh at it too, that it’s become a “company culture kind of joke.”  

     Well guess what? The wall that started with 2-3 isolated pieces of incriminating paper is now covered with the evidence of a steady stream of bad behavior. And not only does that “company culture wall” speak for itself, so to speak, but so does this organization’s employee rate of turnover.

     People leave there–rapidly and happily–for lower paying jobs. Is he successful? His research is successful. As a businessman, and a professional, he’s earning just a small fraction of his potential… because his reputation for emphasizing the negative now precedes him.

     It’s a much easier, more enjoyable, and more productive thing to reward positive behavior than negative, and if you don’t agree, I’ll print out your comments and paste them on my wall!     

God Bless You and Good Night!  halalpiar  

Special thanks to my friend Doyle Slayton www.salesblogcast.com for the indirect inspiration   

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HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL.

OH?

…time to examine both the cause of business failures and the solution.

The cause is something like a one-two punch:

1) For the past 18 months, mainstream media have been delivering a staggering succession of doom and gloom jabs to keep professional practices and businesses off balance by focusing one of every three headlines on how bad things are, and then beating the economic woes into the ground. 

[And guess what, mainstream media? — Professional practice and business owners and  operators and managers, are sick of your negativity! We have stopped buying your poor excuses for print and broadcast news, and many of us have withdrawn our advertising dollars. And so now you are starting to suffer. Time magazine’s list of top ten newspapers that are about to go under is startling to say the least, but, unfortunately, well deserved.]

2) The federal government‘s pitifully naive and sorely misdirected “bailouts” and “stimulous package” reactions (note “reactions” not “responses”) that actually fail to bail out or stimulate anything of any consequence in the direction of economic revitalization, have done their damnedest to deliver the knockout punch!

     Only trouble is that the entrepreneurial spirit lives on, and will never be destroyed wherever free-thinking people exist. Small business people know that it’s small business people who produce the vast majority of jobs in America. And small business people know that the ONLY way the economy gets stimulated is with incentives for small business to create jobs. And small business people know that there’s not a single penny allocated for this purpose in government’s (almost laughable were it not for the fact it’s our taxes being fed to those who choose not to work!) stimulus guise.

So here’s the 2-way solution:

1) Mainstream media pulls itself up and starts pounding our ears and eyes with positive, inspirational, motivational messages, and

2) The federal government hires a team of independent small business management consultants and proven entrepreneurs to show the corporate giants how it’s done (economic survival) with no cash and no bailouts and no stimulus, and how to take that survive mode into a thrive mode with 6-7 days-a-week of hard “lean and mean” work, networking, some reasonable risk-taking, some tough ROI due-dated venture capital, and the rallying support of familiy and friends.

Yeah, right. And how sick is it that reality renders this solution not even worthy of dreaming about? Oh, right, I almost forgot, times have changed.

Besides, who needs dreams now that we’re up to our ears in “hope”?       

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Patriotism Before Personal Ambition!

Coo-kook-a-choo,

Mrs. Robinson,

where has

Ronald Reagan gone . . .?

     Regardless of your politics, there’s no escaping true wisdom. Here are two quotes from one of America’s most inspirational leaders, words worthy of at least one minute of your think-time over this coming weekend: 

“Those who say that we’re in a time when there are no heroes just don’t know where to look. You can see heroes every day going in and out of factory gates. Others, a handful in number, produce enough food to feed all of us and then the world beyond… There are entrepreneurs…who create new jobs, new wealth and opportunity… Their patriotism is quiet but deep. Their values sustain our national life.”  1981

“The most fertile and rapidly growing sector of any economy is that part that exists right now only as a dream in someone’s head or an inspiration in his heart.”  1987

     If you are an entrepreneur, if you own or run a business, if you are invested in a business startup, if you are part of a family business . . . and you have not been speaking up about the national economic stimulus package that is about to put a chokehold on entrepreneurial pursuits, speak now!

     The “stimulus” plan, on top of the “bailouts” has yet to show one single penny directed to small business incentives to create jobs, not one cent! It sees your half-full glass as three-quarters empty!  

     The bottom line: NOW is the time to pick up your phone and call your senate and congressional representatives to tell them that the only way this nation’s economy can turn positive is with job creation programs and that virtually all job creation comes from small business. Send letters and emails.

     If you believe as most entrepreneurs do that you are on Earth to make a difference, to make your mark, then this is the best step forward in that direction you can possibly take right now.

     In the spirit of Ronald Reagan’s perceptions and comments, make your entrepreneurial patriotism and your business count for something important. Act now and recruit others to act with you to influence the only kind of economic change that’s truly meaningful. Insist on substantial stimulus funding for small business job creation incentives!

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Not much between SOME ears!

     Motivational guru Zig Ziglar says business problems are not “out there” but that they are only between your two ears! Trouble is SOME folks don’t have enough going on at that second location to even know when they are creating their own problems.

     I saw four (4!!!!) “OUT TO LUNCH” signs this past week, and two (2!!) “OFFICE CLOSED FOR LUNCH. RETURN AT 1PM” signs. I really hope someone is driving around ahead of me and quickly putting these signs up just before I get there as a joke, because if not, I’m troubled by what they represent.

     First of all, if you have one of these signs (or anything that even remotely resembles the messages noted), THROW THEM AWAY. NOW! They are costing you business!

     We are in a tough economic period and that requires — more than ever– to be catering to customers, clients and patients (2 of the 6 signs mentioned above were seen at doctors’ offices; 1 was at a veterInarian hospital if you can believe it). What makes me so crazy about this?

     OUT TO LUNCH signs are advertisements that the business or professional practice displaying them simply doesn’t care about their customers or clients or patients. Signs like this say to someone who may only be able to get to your store, office, or worksite at lunchtime, that you have no regard for that person’s time, and that you really don’t care if that person hops on down the road to see your competitor!

     A bit over the top? Nope! In the past three years, and without making any effort because the field of vision was aligned with my windows, I watched a minimum of a hundred people drive up to a CLOSED FOR LUNCH signed sales office, run by a nationally prominent neighboring real estate developer, and drive away shaking their heads.

     The company just went bankrupt. Was this the only reason? No, but the attitude it represented was!

     If you’re a one-man or one-woman band business and you need to be away from your business or practice location for lunch or meetings or whatever, AT LEAST post a phone number where you can be reached in emergency or where someone can schedule an appointment. And AT LEAST make the sign a little friendlier looking and sounding than NO TRESPASSING and KEEP OFF THE GRASS.

[The bankrupted developer, by the way, had a phone message machine answer saying that the sales office was closed for lunch, with no accommodation for messages. And of course, adding insult to injury, the “take-one” information box was always empty!]

     How about: “WE’RE OPEN FOR LUNCHTIME VISITORS” as a radical departure that might actually help increase business at a time when customers, clients, and patients are being much more selective with both their available time and the user-friendliness of businesses and professional practices they choose?                

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Having grown up a mailman’s

son, maybe I’m just sentimental

(or simply as stupid as the PO?) 

     On top of their idiotic, money-wasting, survey last December [Click on December Archives in right column and go to DEC 15 “NO MORE ROOM FOR “SNAIL MAIL – Gutless, Incompetent, Greedy, The US Postal Service” for the ugly details], the amazing U.S. Postal Service management team has been making some astonishingly whacko business decisions.

     Since revenues are off, they’ve cut back hours, increased postage prices, increased their elaborate sample mailing campaign to entice more small businesses to do more mailings with (you guessed it) stuff that’s prohibitively expensive to the typical small business to even think about mailing anyway.

     I’ve received two personalized t-shirts, a metal hinged and color-labeled box filled with expensive die-cut printing samples, and the list goes on. And now. Now they’re pulling the blue drop boxes off the sidewalks!

     How utterly brilliant! Hey, nobody’s using them, so take them away. How many things can you think of that those boxes could be used for if YOU had them for YOUR business? I’ll bet there are at least 10,000 ideas.

     Okay, here’s where I’m stupid. I’m going to give away my consulting expertise for free to the U.S. Postal Service. Right here. Right now. Think they’ll take it? Not a chance, but I’m going to put it out there anyway just because they are chewing off their own arms and legs and I hate to just stand around watching them self-destruct.

SO… Here’s what the U.S.P.S. needs to do:

1. Stop wasting time and money and effort on useless dumb surveys. Just listen to your customers!
2. Stop with the radical cost-cutting methods and ideas that only serve to prevent future sales and revenue streams. You can’t make money by turning off lights! Only sales make money!
3. Stop throwing good money after bad with products and services no one wants. Stick to your knitting, and remember innovation is taking an idea all the way to completion! 
4. Take some pages from FedEx and other competitors who train their drivers to go beyond being just drivers and to become account managers– as responsible for promoting and selling and customer servicing as for driving and delivering.
5. Start an Email delivery service (Call me for details!).
6. Learn how to use and promote via social media options. Visit Twitter for two hours!
7. Initiate customer service training at ALL levels. When was the last time anyone got a thank you note from the U.S.P.S. when it wasn’t a thinly-veiled give-me-a-tip-for-Christmas card?
8. Put a P.O. Box in every P.O. Box (Call me on this one too!).
9. Recruit community groups to garden and landscape your ugly buildings (inside and out).
10. SPONSOR community events; get out there and mix with your customers! They don’t bite! Show them you’re (like State Farm) a good neighbor! 
11. SELL AD SPACE ON THE INSIDE OF EVERY P.O.BOX DOOR!!!! 
12. SELL AD SPACE ON STAMPS!!!!
13. Provide shelves for the poor souls with heavy packages standing on lines waiting for the incompetent counter clerks to finish their coffee. 
14. PIPE IN SOME MUSIC!!!
15. Make it “A POSITIVE EXPERIENCE” to go to the post office!
16. How about an occasional (NON-Christmastime) slip in empty mailboxes that the carriers sign that says: “I noticed you didn’t get any mail today, but I wanted you to know I was thinking of you anyway. Have a great week!” 
17. Barter some direct mail advertising for media time and space… other services! 
18. Run direct mail training sessions for small businesses in P.O. lobbies – serve coffee for free! 
19. START A REAL BLOG that actually addresses real customer situations on a daily basis! (If you actually read this far, definitely call me on this one!)
20. Teach small business owners/operators how to tie direct mail to website and other ad and promotion programs.
21. Offer (Put in all business P.O. Boxes) detailed info on direct mail programs with package rates for use of postcards and self-mailers, with sizes and deals and discounts and coupons!
22. Offer quantity discounts!
23. Offer and arrange shared delivery discounts (to same office or building, for example).

     NUTS, huh? Well, I’ll tell you what: If you continue the course you’re on, YOU’RE NUTS BECAUSE YOU WILL END UP KILLING YOURSELF and that would be a terrible waste of assets, resources, some super-nice people who work for you and bring about the demise of a still much-needed service.

     God Bless and Good Night!  halalpiar     

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No, you don’t need to move

  your business    

to the Caribbean!

(aaaah, but it might be nice to try for awhile, eh?)

Here’s a 6-Point Approach to creating a more positive climate for your business that comes partly from The Management Analysis Center and partly from my firsthand experience. it works:

1.  BUILD KNOWLEDGE. Know the capabilities of your staff as well as their weaknesses. With the understanding that Heraclitus the Greek philosopher said over 2500 years ago that “the only thing that’s permanent is change,” and that Thoreau once said “all we ever have is limited knowledge,” use what you know to determine (or update) the fundamental goals of your business.

GOAL CRITERIA REMINDER: A goal must have all four of the following criteria, or it is merely a “wishlist,” and not a goal. It must be 1) Realistic, 2) Specific, 3) Flexible, and 4) Have a deadline or due date.

2.  DEVELOP A SHARED VISION OF YOUR BUSINESS GOALS. Let employees participate in the process. Tell them the problems. Listen to their ideas. Take notes. Encourage others to take notes.

3.  DETERMINE WHAT SPECIFIC CHANGES SHOULD BE MADE. Should changes be made in job descriptions or physical layout to improve working conditions?

4.  SET THE EXAMPLE. As an owner/operator or manager, you are a role model whether you like it or not. People pay attention to everything you say and do. You will not be fostering teamwork if you rule by threats and intimidation. Praise in public; criticize in private. Act, talk, and think consistent with the goals you establish.

5.  REASSESS YOUR OWN FUNCTION to make it consistent with the changes you are making. If, for example, you want to establish better communications, you may need to establish a more open door policy, listen more, and listen more attentively! To get more good work from people, seek out and reward the things people do right, and try to overlook those they do wrong. (Remember that small, frequent, one-time-expense rewards motivate best and cost less than permanent ongoing pay raises with accompanying tax and benefit increases)

6.  DEVELOP NEW METHODS AND SYSTEMS for enhancing a more positive climate, such as instituting weekly status review meetings (with set time periods, a clear agenda circulated ahead of time and follow-up report focused only on decisions made and who will do what by when) to evaluate progress, or a reward system for improved performance.

In an optimum positive climate, people know exactly what it is that is expected of them and where they fit in. Everyone shares the same goals. They know how they can be effective and what kinds of behavior will be rewarded.    halalpiar

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What ARE you smoking,

Mr. Woodward?

     Yesterday, an Associated Press writer named Calvin Woodward naively proclaimed that “Small businesses don’t create jobs!” What are you smoking, Mr. Woodward?

     In his astonishingly unprofessional, biased, gushing diatribe, he attempted to influence readers to join him in blindly supporting the terribly misdirected, partison-political “stimulus package” that takes direct aim at entrepreneurs…that seeks to cripple America’s small business owners and operators who account for the vast majority of U.S. job creation.

     As if that wasn’t insulting enough, Woodward went on to note that there are twenty million (20,000,000!) small businesses in this country that don’t even have employees. What an utterly ridiculous and misleading statement!

10 QUESTIONS FOR YOU, MR. WOODWARD . . . 

1. What, Mr. Woodward, do you think the twenty million small business owner/operators DO if they are not “employees”?
2. Where do you think new jobs come from?
3. Where do you think new jobs come from?
4. Where do you think new jobs come from?
5. Where do you think new jobs come from?
6. Where do you think new jobs come from?
7. Where do you think new jobs come from?
8. Where do you think new jobs come from?
9. Where do you think new jobs come from?
10. Didn’t Apple and Microsoft, as just two quick examples) come from one-person businesses that started in garages? 

     The United States of America would not even EXIST without entrepreneurs and small business growth to create jobs.

     It’s called Capitalism, Mr. Woodward. It works. It’s been proven. It’s called being careful with spending. It works. It’s been proven. Show us a Socialist agenda that works, Mr. Woodward! Show us that the doomed-to-failure stimulus plan is not a socialist tool to create deepening dependency on government. Of course it is. Every entrepreneur knows that. 

     And don’t you think the coming $13 a week more in every paycheck will be the height of disillusionment when a year down the road the unchanged tax laws will require employees to cough all that money (and more!) back up, plus re-tax small businesses to boot?

     I heard The Wall Street Journal’s Steve Moore (WSJ Editorial Board and Senior Economics Writer) comment today on WABC New York Radio that “entrepreneurs are capitalists and capitalists cannot exist without capital.”

     He explained for the public what all of us already know who run our own businesses: that entrepreneurs start new businesses and expand existing ones, and need capital investments in order to do those things. While some of these ventures fail, many (like the two examples above) succeed and create jobs as they grow.

     The so-called stimulus package does everything possible to put a chokehold on small business owners and entrepreneurs. Where does that leave us? Isn’t it jobs that ultimately stimulate the economy? Well, maybe not. Maybe jobs are not as important as many of us believe.

     Maybe we who own and run small businesses should all just throw our hands up and quit, and file for unemployment and foodstamps and welfare and other “stimulus” plan handouts. Hey, life would be easier, wouldn’t it?

     Oh, wait, I forgot, we can’t all do that because there wouldn’t be enough businesses around to pay the taxes to support these “spread the wealth” programs. And we surely wouldn’t want to prevent needy folks who choose not to work from having a chunk of change from all that wealth spreading.    Halalpiar

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RULE ONE: Be a detective!

Lots of clamor lately about MOTIVATING employees, associates, and salespeople. It’s really simple…if you work at it. Some things, it’s true, really don’tever change! Managerial motivation is one of them.

The definitive theory, first published in the early 1940’s by Abraham Maslow and still taught today in university management programs, remains “MASLOW’S HIERARCHY OF NEEDS.”

• Maslow’s theoryviews an individual’s motivation as a predetermined order of needs. PHYSIOLOGICAL NEEDS are the most basic and imperitive until they’re met. It’s hard to need more than food, water, clothing, and shelter, for example, if survival is not assured.

• Once physiological needs are met, Maslow said SAFETY NEEDS would rise to the top. So, now that you have enough to eat and drink and can keep warm and dry, your mind moves to the need for protecting those fulfillment’s. This accounts for concerns like air bags, insurance coverage, fences, alarm systems, locks, escape ladders, and investments. 

• As safety needs are satisfied,Maslow said we move up a level to SOCIAL NEEDS. Seeking acceptance from others, giving and receiving friendship and affection are key desirables.

• With social needs met, we pursue ESTEEM NEEDS: recognition with items and actions that show appreciation and enhance reputation…things like trophies, plaques, certificates, prizes, awards, special dedications, news release mentions, etc.

• Maslow said at the top of all needs is the need for SELF-ACTUALIZATION: realizing one’s own potentialities for self-fulfillment, for continued self-development, for being a successful, creative, and balanced person who is self-satisfied and has reached a point of total accomplishment. 

As we move from one level up to the next (and Maslow said we can only occupy one level at a time in any given moment), we can easily tumble back down to lower levels in an instant.

A job loss, pay loss, family death, injury, flood, fire, or hurricane are just a few of the kinds of tragic and debilitating events that can trigger someone who may be at a self-esteem level on Monday, for example, happy with being honored at a special luncheon, to suddenly find him or herself all the way back down to a physiological need level by the end of the week, or even the next morning.     

Okay, so how does this work day-to-day in practice?

To motivate people in ways that are most appreciated and most productive requires the motivator to be tuned in and aware to what need level someone is at on any particular day and reward that individual at that level!

Recognition doesn’t mean squat to someone with a broken-down car or inability to pay for a child’s braces, or someone who lives where there are frequent break-ins and who needs an alarm system.

Cash doesn’t mean anything to someone who’s inherited a family fortune and is working to gain acceptance by others, or some form of recognition to brag about. You can only know a person’s need level when you can know what’s going on with that person’s life and what makes that person tick! 

You don’t have to cozy-up to every employee or spend more time than you choose with them.  You do need to pay close attention to the things they talk about and the ways they talk about them. It means…you need to be a detective!  Go motivate!

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  Open Minds Open Doors 

   Thanks for your visit and God Bless You.

  Make today a GREAT day for someone! 

DON’T FISH OFF

COMPANY DOCKS!

     This old warning from my first boss about 2,000 years ago is another of those moralistic admonitions that stands as true and tall today as it did then, maybe even more so.  It is virtually (and probably literally) impossible to conduct business as usual, when you’re dating your cubical mate, or “fellow secretary” (hmmm) or the boss’s brother or sister (actually, mother, in one example I heard of)!

     It never seems like it could possibly be a problem (HA! Have you been following this season’s “24”?) until it becomes a problem.  On-the-job sexual relationships threaten everyone on the job.  The ripples (and occasionally shock waves!) can compromise more than just participant integrity.  How about the integrity of a nation, Mr. Clinton?

     Is this advice rightfully proclaimed “sexist” in and of itself?  Well, you know, certain stereotypes, like certain examples of police profiling, exist for a reason.  “Brokeback Mountain” aside, we rarely if ever hear about tough guys getting it on.  I mean, when was the last time you saw two construction workers tongue kissing or holding hands at lunch hour?

     On the other hand (pun intended), the career environments and lifestyles of healthcare and hospitality industry professionals–particularly doctors, nurses, therapists, hotel/motel managers and housekeepers–provide the makings of a breeding ground for on-the-job sex. 

     Where else are workers surrounded by beds, working in close quarters and dealing with physical contact and physical needs?  Where else do workers take breaks in co-ed locker rooms and linen closets.  And aren’t these all people who work exceptionally long hours often under high stress? 

     With The Corporate Communicator ezine (free via www.bonmotcomms.com) telling us that “the demand for transparency is at an all-time high,” don’t we need to step back a minute and see that “TRANSPARENCY” in business means EVERYTHING in business?  

     Transparency is not a limiting concept.  Rather it suggest a notion that is all-encompassing.  Obviously, intimate relationships with people at work is as much a part of that as a business’s ability to deliver the products and services that it says it is delivering  

     Knowing where to look for what and for whom at any given moment on any given job is a wonderous thing.  And of course there are always exceptions, but at a time when jobs are at a premium, it’s not likely to be in anyone’s best interests to be looking for sex in all the wrong places, y’think?     halalpiar  

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Are you talking up

your business enough? 

     Do you carry business cards with you everywhere you go?  Two of the most successful businesspeople I know carry laminated business cards in bathing suit pockets and workout gear bags for the one time in a million it’s worth having them.  One, an active sportsman, keeps a couple inside his baseball cap. 

     Do you include mention of your website and blog as part of the signature area of every email you send?  Do you HAVE a website and blog?  I just read that 44% of new businesses do not have a website!  That statistic is beyond comprehension in this day and age.  If you’re in that 44%, stop making excuses; do it!

     Okay, sorry, so you DO have a website.  Do you have a BLOG?  Did you know that most blogs are FREE and many are packaged into websites and only require activation?  Do you have a professional blog writer so that you are not wasting valuable sales time trying to do something you’re not trained to do? 

     In most situations, a blog writer’s time is the only blog expense, and it’s an investment in the bottom line performance of your website!  (If you have questions about this, call me: 302.933.0116)  

     Did you know that blogs are the primary movers and shakers of website rankings?  (Because search engine spiders are out there 24/7 bumping the most active websites up in the search engine rankings, and it’s blogs that generally account for the most frequent activity.) 

     Have you sat down with brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors, friends, and told them about your business?  Have you brought them up to date lately?  Have you given them your cards to pass along to their associates and friends and neighbors? 

     Are you –as Thoreau once urged– “Forever on the alert”?  Do you make the most of social occasions to quietly suggest business contacts in the following week?  Do you think and act sales all of the time instead of part of the time or just 9-5? 

     If you dismiss these questions with excuses that you are above it all or you are not a salesperson or you think it’s not appropriate (because you run a “professional practice,” perhaps?), then you are missing the reality boat and you stand a good chance of this economy smothering you!   halalpiar   

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