Tag Archives: vision

Posted on

How To Get Unstuck And Start Moving Towards Success

Are you at a place in some area of your life or business where you feel you are stalled? Maybe you are not quite sure what to do next? Should you change careers, change employers, hire some new staff, go after a new market segment, chase a new account, acquire a new business or divest a portion of your business?

Are the factors of the decision overwhelming or maybe some of the details have not come in so your vision has not yet taken shape and you feel you are simply “stuck in a rut”?

Perhaps the best thing to do to get “unstuck” is to just do something. As Michael Hyatt said;

Posted on

Your Employees Are Happy . . . And Other Popular Myths!

Are your employees really happy? What does “happy” actually mean? Are we even asking the correct question? Perhaps we should ask; “Are your employees engaged at work?”

According to Gallup only 31% of US workers are engaged at work (the numbers in Canada are similar to this). This is scary! It means that 69% of our workers are either not engaged or, worse yet, actively disengaged. This is costing our economy billions of dollars each year!

Being happy or satisfied at work is not the same thing as being engaged. According to Gallup, paying people high wages, providing Ping-Pong tables and free meals may result in “happy” employees and high employee satisfaction survey scores but it does not mean that your employees are engaged and productive. Jim Clifton stated; “A winning culture is one of engagement and individual contribution to an important mission and purpose. Human beings are not looking for company-bought goodies — they are looking for meaningful, fulfilling work. It is the new great global dream — to have a good job, not a free lunch. The dream is to have a job in which you work for a great manager; where you constantly develop; and where you can use your God-given strengths every single day.”

Posted on

What I Learned This Year And Why Its Important

This past year has been a very busy year for me. I have been “on the road” for about 3 weeks out of every month, traveling all over the US and Canada, twice to Europe, twice to India and down to Mexico City. My main role on these business trips is to review projects and provide insights, connections, suggestions and guidance wherever possible for the managers that are running these projects. The project managers are as diverse as the projects themselves which vary widely from around $20 million to upwards of $350 million. This has made for a challenging year!

Besides striving to provide value on these projects, I also try to learn as much as possible wherever I go. One of the interesting observations I have made is that regardless of culture, business environment, language or time zone, everyone wants to be successful. However, only those that are willing to take responsibility for their success actually achieve it. What I mean by this is that the people that take responsibility for their success do not let anything stand in their way to achieving success. For example;

Posted on

How to Get the Pulse of Your Organization – Part II

Back in May 2014, I wrote a blog post entitled How to Get the Pulse of Your Organization. In this post I described two techniques that can be used to effectively communicate and lead your organization; “Did You Know” emails and a web based employee feedback system. In this week’s article, I will introduce two other techniques that I used to communicate and keep my finger on the organization’s pulse.

  1. Monthly lunch with the leader – Pick a random set of employees each month to have lunch with you. Do not repeat employees until everyone in the organization gets a turn. A group size of 10 to 20 works best. Use these lunches as open mic sessions for employees to ask you whatever questions they may have. Be open and honest with your answers and wherever possible tie the answers back to the organization’s vision, mission, values and goals. Above all else, listen intently to the feedback, take notes and never get defensive. These sessions are your opportunity to hear what your organization is thinking and talking about. If the conversation starts out slowly, you can prompt discussion by asking questions like;
Posted on

Are You Getting Beaten By the “Tyranny of Small Decisions”?

In 1966, Alfred E. Kahn wrote an essay entitled “The Tyranny of Small Decisions.” Khan was an economist and his essay was predominately focused on economics. However, the concept defined in the essay applies to each of us and can profoundly impact business and business leaders.

So what is the tyranny of small decisions? In a nutshell, it is what results when a person, group of people, business or organization make a number of small decisions over a period of time. These decisions are not bad decisions on their own but, taken together over a period of time, the result of the decisions are diametrically opposite from the outcome desired.

For instance, take the super busy executive running his business day to day without a clear set of values or a defined vision, mission and goals. This person is going to make decisions each day that seem correct and make sense at that moment but the sum of these decisions could add up to a disaster over the long term. Without the long term view of the business and a proper focus on what is to be achieved, the executive will make “firefighting” decisions that may take care of the issues at hand but destroy the business overall.