High Performing Organizations

Recently I was having a phone call with one of my clients who lives in another state. We were discussing some of his key managers and he was concerned that they were not as productive as he thought they should be and was wondering if he should look for some new employees.

I asked him a few key questions to see if I could determine what might be going on.

• Are they hard working and He replied yes they were.
• Were they honest and he replied that they were.
• Do they come to work on time everyday and stay the entire time and he again replied that they did.
• Does he feel that they were of high integrity and he though they did possess high integrity.
• Do they have written job descriptions and there were no job descriptions.
• Does he conduct regular performance reviews with them and he did not.
• Were there any written expectations of their roles and responsibilities and there were not.
• I then asked if they had been trained to perform the functions that he expected them to perform and they had not been trained.

I believe that one of the most important things we should hire for is honesty, a good work ethic, positive attitude and integrity. Those traits are extremely difficult or impossible to train. The individual must come possessing these traits. The other aspects of the job we can train for, but often that is not the case.

Many times employers hire individuals with little to no onboarding process to help them learn the current culture, their roles and responsibilities and the expectations of their performance. They are not being trained.

Employees generally show up wanting to work and be engaged. They want to be valued and taken seriously. But often they are left to their own and soon become dissatisfied or disengaged.

Without a proper on-boarding process, clear definition of roles and responsibilities as well as expectations, employees are left to figure things out for themselves, and then we become dissatisfied with their performance when in reality the responsibility for poor performance often lays upon our own shoulders.

Many organizations fail to make the connection between proper onboarding, defining roles and responsibilities, clear expectation and regular performance meetings and high performing employees. There is a very real and direct connection.

Don’t let this happen in your organization. Allow us to help you create a high performing organization that can out perform your competition. We are experts in organizational development.

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At the Summit Consulting Group’s Million Dollar Convention in Atlanta where I had the opportunity to hear Dr. Martin Seligman author of Authentic Happiness and Learned Optimism discuss The Practice of Positive Psychology.

 

 

Dr. Seligman discussed the five elements of well being.

• Positive Emotion
• Engagement
• Relationships
• Meaning and Purpose
• Achievement

The acronym for these five elements of wellbeing is PERMA

Dr. Seligman said that the key to living well is not about being happy, but it’s about being able to measure and build well being, all the elements of PERMA. He says that these are the five elements that people and businesses with wellbeing choose to pursue.

Positive Emotion: Look for the good stuff not the bad. Every night before we go to sleep we should write down 3 things that went well that day. He says people who do this are less depressed and much happier.

Engagement: Optimism and optimal performance. When we are so absorbed that time stops. Engagement is critical to our business success as well.

Relationships: This is the key to wellbeing. Working on having healthy and mutually beneficial relationships.

Meaning and Purpose: Belonging to and serving something that is bigger than ourselves. Meaning comes from altruism rather than pleasure.

Achievement: The grit to stick with it until it is accomplished.

The interesting thing about PERMA for our personal wellbeing is that the same principles apply to the corporate world a well. Corporations and small business can use PERMA to improve morale and increase productivity by doing exercises to increase PERMA. In fact the military is using these PERMA techniques.

The goal is to measure and build each aspect of PERMA in your personal life and in our business.

You can learn more in Dr. Seligman’s books; Authentic Happiness, and Learned Optimism.

You can also get a free public domain assessment at: http://www.possitivepsychology.org

And you can take his signature strengths assessment at: http://www.authentichappiness.org

If you would like to dramatically improve your individual and organizational effectiveness and take you business to the next level. Call us now.

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In my last post I discussed my experience at the Summit Consulting Group’s Million Dollar Convention in Atlanta where I had the opportunity to hear Dr. Martin Seligman author of Authentic Happiness and Learned Optimism discuss The Practice of Positive Psychology. I mentioned in that post that one of the things that struck me the most was when he said: “Resilience is twice as important as talent and IQ.” I’ve become fascinated with this topic of resilience.

In Eric Greitens book Resilience we learned that resilience is a virtue that enables us to move through our hardships and become better. None of us can escape pain, fear or suffering. Yet from pain can come wisdom, from fear can come courage, and from suffering can come strength, if we have the virtue of resilience.

In my good friend Sandra Suran’s recent book The DNA of the Resilient Organization she describes how resilience and sustainable growth within an organization are built from the core. With each problem that we solve or new opportunity that is seized and accomplished, the organization’s core will become stronger.

In Dr. Seligman’s words, Sandra Suran’s book and in Eric Greitens book on resilience, the message is unanimous: The problems and struggles we encounter if dealt with correctly make us not only stronger individuals but stronger organizations. We must learn to honor the struggle because it is part of our journey as individuals and organizations that are necessary for real growth. We have all struggled at times both individuals and organizations. When we look at our struggles as opportunities to learn and grow and not fight it but embrace it, then we can get the most out of the journey. Resilience is the key to our success. It is not that which happens to us that has the greatest impact on us, and those around us, but our response to what happens.

Resilience seems to be the key to having a well-lived life and a successful business. The more resilient we are the stronger we become. The stronger we become the greater our ability to weather the storms that come our way. We weren’t born with resilience. Resilience is something we build over time. After enough practice, resilience becomes a part of who we are.

Would you like to develop resilience in your organization? We can help you become stronger and more resilient on a daily basis. Give us a call. We are here to help.

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Recently I was interviewing a successful businessman for a book I am writing and we were discussing his path to success. As we were talking I realized that he had been amazingly resilient throughout this entire process and the struggles he encountered along the way.

Then while attending the Summit Consulting Groups Million Dollar Convention in Atlanta in March, where I was surrounded by some incredible individuals, I had the opportunity to listen to Dr. Martin Seligman discuss The Practice of Positive Psychology. Dr. Seligman discussed a number of things such as:

-One of the most profound ways to increase your happiness is to at the end of your day to write down three positive things about your day and why they were positive.

-Research has shown that Twitter is predicting heart attacks better than the ten   standard indicators of heart attacks as tweets are posted immediately and analyzed in real time.

-He also discussed PERMA, which I will discuss in future post.

One of the things that struck me the most that Dr. Seligman said was:

“Resilience is twice as important as talent and IQ.”

After interviewing the successful businessman and realizing that he had been incredibly resilient, this was a profound statement. I recently picked up a book at Powell’s Books entitled: Resilience by Eric Greitens a former Navy Seal. The title obviously caught me attention.

In his book he says: Resilience is a virtue that enables us to move through our hardships and become better. None of us can escape pain, fear or suffering. Yet from pain can come wisdom, from fear can come courage, and from suffering can come strength, if we have the virtue of resilience.

Pain can break us or make us wiser. Suffering can destroy us or make us stronger. Fear can cripple us or make us more courageous. It is resilience that makes the difference.

Resilience is the key to a well-lived life. If we want to be happy, we need resilience. If we want to be successful in business we need resilience. Just like the successful businessman that I interviewed recently.

If you want to be more resilient in your business and achieve greater success, we can help you to dramatically improve your individual and organizational success.

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In my last blog post I discussed a problem I had while flying back from eastern Oregon in bad weather and how we need to be willing to call a problem what it is, a problem, and not an opportunity.

In that instance I made an emergency landing at Cascade Locks. Many of you probably didn’t even know there was a landing strip at Cascade Locks along the Columbia River. A good friend of mine, and fellow consultant commented: “Go into situations with a strong foundation to assess the situation and react effectively when problems arise”. This is excellent advice.

I had another incident similar to this one, again coming back from eastern Oregon in sub-par weather. I had passed Cascade Locks this time and again the weather had deteriorated to below minimums. I was monitoring the Troutdale Tower on my radio listening for other aircraft that might be in the area. The ceiling was at 400’ well below legal limits. I looked back and could see that there was no tuning back to land at Cascade Locks this time.

Suddenly the radio came to life, and it was the Troutdale Tower asking me what my intentions were. They had been monitoring my transponder signal on their radar and knew that I had to make a decision. Turn back or land, there was nowhere else to go. I had a big problem. I requested a special VFR clearance in order to land in weather conditions that are below legal limits. This is a necessary requirement and not looked on favorably by the FAA

I decided that day, that I would no longer fly in marginal conditions. It was just too dangerous and I was not just risking my life, but those of the passengers that I was carrying. It was time to make a change. From that point on, I became a fair weather pilot, only flying when the conditions were excellent.

People and businesses are the same in many regards. We don’t change until the pain to remain the same is greater than the pain to change. Often it takes crises in someone’s life or in their business before they will make a change. And many times, it’s too late to recover from these crises.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t have to wait for a personal crises or a business disaster to make the necessary changes for a better future. We can be monitoring the weather and continually evaluating our path and direction, making constant adjustments to a better future. This is called continuous improvement.

Don’t wait for crises in your business to change. We can help you navigate to a prosperous and better future.

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    Small Business Owners Face some Big Challenges

 “If we want something done right, we have to do it ourselves.” We’ve all heard that statement – especially from people who are micromanaging a situation or trying to do everything all alone. That might have worked in college when we were assigned a group project and we ended up doing it all by ourselves, but it’s not how we should run our business!

Many business owners are great technicians. They know how to paint a house, they can make awesome chicken parmesan, they understand how to prepare perfect taxes… and that makes it extremely difficult to let go and let the staff take care of those parts of the business. We are business owners because we wanted to own a business – not because we wanted to work seven days a week and run every aspect of the business. If we’re spending every day in the field running our businesses, how can we be focused on building our business?

As we head into this new year, we might want to consider challenging ourselves to hang up that tool belt or take off the apron and spend the next few months trusting our staff to run the day to day aspects of the business. We don’t need to step in and make every pan of lasagna and, if we don’t think our staff can handle it, then we need to train them to do the job at the level we expect. We can be available for guidance, but we can’t step in to make every decision and run every job.

Once we’re able to step back from the daily technical needs of our business, we can turn our attention to training our company leaders, building and implementing systems so the business can run without us, marketing and promoting the great products or services we provide, etc.

Take time to clarify where your business and you want to be at the end of this year, then set goals to make it happen. One of those goals could be to spend more time working on our business rather then in the business. . If we spend the amount of time we would normally spend in the business working toward that goal, we will be amazed at what we can accomplish.

Every business owner understands how difficult it can be to delegate the daily operations of our businesses and take on the role of a CEO, but that’s the only way to grow a successful business without burning the candle at both ends. If you find that your business can’t run without you or you can’t seem to delegate as needed, then give me a call. I can help you to develop systems and processes so that you can learn to work on your business rather than always in it.

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