Engage Your Employees With a Powerful Mission

12 Steps to Business Transformation – Step 2

Last week I introduced my Ebook 12 Steps to Business Transformation and I defined Vision, the first of the 12 transformational steps. This week we are going to talk about Mission.

Defining the Mission for your business is step 2 in my new free Ebook “12 Steps to Business Transformation.”

Where Vision is defined as a powerful picture of the future which creates an ideal and unique image of what your organization will become or achieve (the compelling reason WHY your business exists), the Mission defines exactly where you are going and what you are doing right now to attain the Vision.

Who Is In Your Library?

Last week I wrote about the importance of setting up your Advisors Network and I listed a number of my Advisors Council members that have really helped me over my career. This weeks post will list some of the books or references from these icons that I have leveraged over the years. In many cases I have multiple books from each of these authors but I will limit the list to the one source from that individual that made the biggest difference in my professional development.

Business

Set Yourself Up For Lifelong Success: Build Your Advisors Network

We have all heard a lot about networking over the years and how it is important for each of us to get out into the marketplace and build our network. Although I agree that building this personal network is important, it is what you do with the network you create that will determine your future success.

The focus of this post is not on leveraging your network for business or sales but rather working with your network to set up what I call an Advisors Network. No one knows everything that is needed to be successful in life and business in every circumstance. We all need help in many areas over the course of our lifetime. This is where the Advisors Network comes in.  It allows you to leverage the expertise of many people when you need this specific expertise. Each of these people brings something to the table that you may not have as a strength or as a skill.

Does Leadership Need To Be Regulated?

There have been some incredible epic failures in leadership over the years and the rate of the failures seems to be increasing and the seriousness of the incidents seems to be getting worse. We are left in the aftermath of these failures asking a ton of questions;

  • Why are leaders failing so often and in such a dramatic fashion?
  • What has changed in our society that could be contributing to these failures?
  • What sort of training does a leader need to become a leader?
  • Do we need to regulate leaders by implementing certification organizations similar to what exists in North America for medical doctors, lawyers or professional engineers?

How Do Leaders Get Their Organizations From Vision to Action?

Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Enable Others to Act, Encourage the Heart”  Kouzes and Posner

 

I attended the annual CII conference in July this year and was really impressed with the quality of the presentations and tools that were offered. Construction Industry Institute, CII, was initiated by the University of Texas and is a collaboration between academia and industry to research some of the tough issues that industry faces and to come up with practical approaches and tools to deal with these problems.

Every year, CII selects a number of these tough problems and creates research teams comprised of academia (professors and grad students), representatives from owners, construction companies, engineering firms and suppliers to research these problems and come up with potential solutions. Each team has 2 years to do its research and to compile the results along with tools or guidelines to help address the problem identified.

Every year, CII holds its annual conference and the research teams report out their findings to the conference attendees. I would highly recommend membership in CII to anyone that is involved in engineering or construction.