“People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Have you created your vision for your company and life? A Strategic Business Owner must be an effective leader. Vision creation is a critical leadership issue. Once it’s been created, you must then ARTICULATE the vision, passionately OWN the vision, and relentlessly DRIVE IT to completion!

Once you establish a vivid image of your desired future business, you then must share continually and passionately this dream with your team. A vision without execution is a hallucination! You must now effectively sell the direction of your company.

Don’t be afraid to sell emotionally. Again, you must win hearts, minds and wills. People change when their feelings change, not when their thoughts change. Make them feel differently. Help them feel w
hat you feel – your passion, hope and optimism. Help them want what you want. You must translate the vision into real terms and achievable steps. Going forward, it’s not only what you say; it’s how you say it that matters. Be dramatic and be memorable with your talks on the vision.

Don’t worry; you cannot over-communicate your vision. Your employees deserve and crave to know your heart’s desires. Keep them informed, involved and inspired. Be a persuasive storyteller. Let employees know specifically what you see in the future. For example, let them know what you see regarding sales and profit trends, market share penetration, number of employees, number of locations, dominant niches, product/service innovations, sales and marketing processes, structure, business systems, work flow, strategic alliances, office environment, etc. Continue to let them know they are part of the team!

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“Biggest question: Isn’t it really ‘customer helping’ rather than customer service? And wouldn’t you deliver better service if you thought of it that way?”-Jeffrey Gitomer

 A business leader is responsible for establishing the VISION and the FOCUS of the organization.As a business leader we need to focus on  satisfying customers and clients.

 Your company’s primary focus should be squarely on exceeding the expectations of your customers/clients. Begin to establish a culture whereby your team falls in love with your customers and their needs/wants and not your own company’s products or services. You are in business to attract, delight and retain customers in a profitable manner – period. The real value of your business is tied directly to the future, predictable cash flow from your highly satisfied and loyal customers. Without customers, you do not have a business.

Again, your focus should be on your customers and solving their needs and wants. It should not be about your company or your services and products. Teach your employees to value your customers, serve them well, and sniff out any customer problems or complaints. Keep your customers delighted and coming back for more! As a leader, have the courage to create an environment in which the customer is your companies primary focus.

As CEO, set the tone by visiting regularly the top 20% of your customers and keeping them satisfied. Find out what is on their minds. Aside from creating clarity of direction for your business, there is no better use of your time and talents.

 How are you doing keeping yourself and employees focused on satisfying your customers/clients? Never lose sight of the fact that your primary responsibility as a Strategic Business Owner is LEADING!

If you need help with your leadership skills, we can help.

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“Creative ideas flourish best in a shop which preserves some spirit of fun. Nobody is in business for fun, but that does not mean there cannot be fun in business.”-Leo Burnett

 A business leader is responsible for establishing the VISION and the FOCUS of the organization. HAVING FUN is a critical focus area. Focus on making business fun. Celebrate worthwhile progress toward your goals. Celebrate your company’s successes often and reward your employees for superior performance.

Come up with excuses to praise your team and recognize success. Share the joy. Make coming to work a meaningful and fulfilling event. In fact, appoint a CFO (Chief Fun Officer). Empower this person to come up with clever ideas, based on employee feedback, which will put some excitement and fun into the work environment.

Never forget, often as important as a paycheck, good employees want to learn and grow, be challenged and rewarded, and fulfill their cravings to be social beings. Make your culture an enjoyable place to work! How are you doing keeping yourself and employees focused on having fun?

Never lose sight of the fact that your primary responsibility as a Strategic Business Owner is LEADING!

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“If you allow staff to own a project, you must trust in their capacity and avoid micromanagement. Be there to provide support when needed, but don’t force yourself into the picture.”-Barbara Moses

Are you still battling the temptation to micromanage?

Real leadership is rare; micro-management is all too common. We need to stop trying to play every instrument ourselves and start conducting the orchestra. If we don’t conduct, who will?

Let’s review some key concepts regarding a Strategic Business Owner: As a Strategic Business Owner, our primary aim should be to develop a self-managing and systems-oriented business that still runs consistently, predictably, smoothly, and profitably while we are not there. We should shape and own the business system and employ competent and caring employees to operate the system. We should document the work of our business so that we can effectively train others to execute the work. We must make ourselves replaceable in the technical trenches of our business. To repeat, define and document the specific work to be done and then train and delegate.

Stop the “I’ll do it myself” and “No one does it as well as I do” attitudes. Learn to delegate. If someone else can do something 80-90% as well as you, give it up! Do not spend a dollar’s worth of time on a dime task. Know your areas of brilliance and delegate most everything else. Do those things that only you can do as CEO and delegate the rest. You need to free up time to do CEO activities that make the vision a reality.

To help with delegation, you must have the work to be done well defined. You cannot delegate non-specifics. Next, you must adopt the attitude that your time is valuable and learn to discriminate between various activities. Before doing a task, ask, “Does this task lead directly to increased profits, significantly reduced costs, improved customer satisfaction, or to me building a better business?” If it doesn’t, dismiss the task or delegate it. Or ask, “Is this task worth $200 per hour?” If not, find someone else internally or externally to do this task at a cheaper rate. You must realize that your CEO thoughts and actions (building systems, leading, planning, holding people accountable, coaching other leaders, etc.) are worth at least $200 per hour. If not, you will never learn to be effective at delegation.

By all means, get out of the way of your managers and workers.   Don’t meddle. Instead of doing their jobs, help them to clarify their roles, responsibilities, goals, and tasks and then simply hold them accountable for getting things done. Be sure to monitor your employees’ performance but don’t try to control them. Coach more and play less in the game.

Once they demonstrate competency and character, give your employees the authority to make things happen. Let them do their jobs. Let them tackle stuff on their own and come to you only when they need further guidance. Instead of micro-managing the process, manage by results. If you set up your systems correctly and train properly, you will be able to manage by numbers and on an exception-only basis.

Leadership is less about doing, more about thinking, planning, and overseeing what others do. You are to create jobs, not work a job!

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“The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” – Teddy Roosevelt

At times it is wise and profitable to revisit the basics and the obvious. There is a huge difference between knowing what to do and actually doing what we know. So let’s look at some basics regarding People Management.

You cannot reach your vision and goals without the help of others. Your greatest asset is people – the “right” people. People that share your company’s values, ethics, personality, culture and vision. Our primary objective is to get the right people on our bus, those people in the right seats on the bus and the wrong people off, and then direct the course of the bus yourself. Therefore, recruiting, training/coaching, developing and retaining your competent employees are critical success factors for your company and some of your primary responsibilities as a leader. Our focus should be to develop others and create the right conditions for their success. In short, unleash the full human potential of your organization.

We should challenge our employees and then hold them accountable. Without adequate accountability, we are making a deadly mistake. Countless times business owners, executives, managers, etc. hold meetings, have great interaction and conversation, decisions are made, and then there is no follow through. Everyone gets up and walks out of the meeting and things just don’t get done.

In addition, we should be very careful about letting your employees become your social friends. We need to remain objective to make decisions in the best interest of the company. Trying to please or be liked by everyone is a sure bet for disaster. Instead, strive to be respected.

Our leadership and other strengths are not worth much if we are not able to achieve leverage and results through other people. Keep reminding yourself and your management team that the greatest assets of your business are your people!

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Effective Leadership helps to strengthen the links in the organizational chain

Leadership and People Management

Recently I conducted a workshop on people management. In preparing for the workshop I came across a diagram of how our employees affect our business results. Basically it described how employee beliefs will affect employee attitudes and actions. Those employee attitudes and actions then have a significant effect on every interaction said employee’s have with our customers and clients, which leads to our customer/clients beliefs about our company. These customer/client beliefs intern lead to customer/client actions and in the end to our actual business results.

When you think about it this way, we can really see how important our employee beliefs about our company’s effects our business results. Negative beliefs can have a dramatic effect on the organizations results.

If we step back from this equation and take a hard look, we can see that our employee beliefs are most often the result of leadership within our organizations.

 When good things happen in a business it is because of good leadership and when bad things happen it’s usually due to poor leadership.

Our leadership ability for better or worse, always determines our effectiveness and potential impact on or organization.

In order to effectively manage other people, we must first effectively manage ourselves.

 I like to describe business as links of chain all linked together.

Each link represents an important function within the business. Strategy, finance and accounting, marketing, sales, HR, production, operations, inventory control, etc. A weak link in any one of the major functions makes the entire chain weak. And a weak chain cannot perform at its optimum capacity without problems.

Effective leadership helps to ensure each link is as strong as possible and working together in unison.

How strong are the links in your organization?

If you are in need of leadership training and development as an owner or CEO, or some of your team members are in need of coaching and training, don’t wait until one of the links in the chain weakens and eventually breaks, give me a call. I can help.

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               It’s Thanksgiving, Give Yourself a Break

Every year when Thanksgiving rolls around, we’re inspired to look within and consider the things we should be thankful for in life and in business. But it’s also important to take the time this season as a way to consider all your hard work this year and celebrate the strides you’ve made, both large and small – to look back and recognize the achievements you’ve made, especially over the last year. Remember it’s about progress, not perfection, give yourself a break.  This year, as you celebrate Thanksgiving with your family and friends, remember to celebrate yourself as well and take a few days off!

If you can’t leave your business unattended or you don’t have someone who can fill in and you don’t want to close up shop, then it’s time to look at your systems and processes. Lets dedicate 2016 to putting strategies and plans in place to become the business owner you’re meant to be, one that works on their business rather then always in it.

In the meantime, if you can’t take a full-fledged break from the business, at least give yourself some small reprieves. Commit to planning time to spend with family and friends. Understand what you need to be happy and take breaks when you need them! Time is a precious resource and we only have so much of it. We can always make another dollar, but we can’t make another minute of time. Give yourself a break.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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