3 Signs That Point To Your Business Being Aligned
Alignment in your business is about focus. It’s about a collective working together for a common goal and having the ability to overcome the obstacles that come up along the way. Alignment can be difficult to achieve but when you have it, your business thrives. Alignment is about aligning the work that your business does with the vision for where the business needs to go. A common theme that you will see about alignment is that it takes a high level of commitment to communication to achieve. This is, quite frankly, a commitment that a lot of business owners are unwilling to make. But not you. How do you know
Winning Impossible Games
Chuck Norris can win a game of Connect Four in only three moves. It’s easy to play it safe in business. We set safe goals. Make what we think are safe hires. Playing it safe can only take us so far. To stretch yourself and your business, you need an impossible game. Having an impossible game and stretching yourself shouldn’t be confused with being reckless. If your impossible game is to jump off a ten story building and live, well, good luck with that. That’s extreme but impossible games are those projects that just don’t seem reachable for us. You may lack the knowledge to get it done or the
Write It Don’t Wing It
Since I have been talking about objectives recently and also since we are getting ready to do a call on the subject as well, then we definitely need to talk about the power of committing what you are doing to writing. A big problem for business owners when it comes to staying focused is their desire to just wing it rather than writing important things down. Let me start by saying that I can sympathize with business owners who don’t write things down. I get that people don’t want to feel like they are put in a box and that written goals can feel like you are sacrificing your ability
Teamwork Is A Way Of Life
“In Africa there is a concept known as Ubuntu – the profound sense that we are human only through the humanity of others; that if we are to accomplish anything in this world it will in equal measure be due to the work and achievements of others.” — Nelson Mandela I Am Because We Are As your business grows and you start achieving a certain level of success, at some point, you are going to have a team that helps you keep your business moving forward. For some business owners, running and managing a team is a liability. For others, they thrive in a team environment. Ubuntu and Its’ Role
How You Separate The Wheat From The Chaff In Your Business
It’s easy to get caught up in the not-so-important details of your business. This shows up when business owners swear their e-mail box needs to be open at all times of the day. It also shows up when an employee swears that they needed to redesign a new fax cover sheet for the office. I mean, come on, the old cover sheets were ugly! Separating what’s important from what’s not important is essential in your business. This Bible idiom of separating the wheat from the chaff is so appropriate in business. When your operation starts to grow, it’s easy to get lost in the minutiae of the day-to-day operations. Keeping
A Great Business Relationship Starts With A Great Question
We’ve all been to the cocktail party or the networking event where we get bombarded by the person who wants to talk about themselves the entire time. Worse is the person who asks you the sort of questions that they use for screening potential customers. To them you are just another notch in the belt so to speak. You know as well as I do that this is not the way to start a business relationship. Great relationships start with great questions. This is true in life and in business. When you meet someone for the first time the goal is to learn as much about them as you possibly
Want To Be More Productive? Get Good At This…
A Simple, Easy To Implement, Effective Tool For Being More Productive Productivity and organization are hot button topics for business owners. As your business grows, so does your responsibility and your stress level. How do you manage your day so that you: Complete projects in a timely manner Handle the essentials of your business every day Have less stress in your life Keep your professional life from interfering with your personal life. Do I have your attention yet? Watch the tip video on a simple strategy of using time and space effectively in your business. Want more help? Come to our Business Habits Workshop through the Freedom FastTrack in
The One Person Most Likely Sabotaging Your Business’ Culture
I just wrapped up a high level workshop with a group of great business owners that covered setting the right strategy for your business as well as coaching your employees for high level performance. One of the questions that I get a lot in any workshop that I do, and this last one was no different, centers around business owners’ concern with how employees handle their work. Most of these concerns center around where employees lack in the areas of productivity, goal setting and overall organization. The question is always, “How do I make these employees better?” For some business owners they may be talking about the single employee that
Business Relationships: What Are Your Intentions?
Great relationships don’t happen by accident. You may initially meet someone by chance. For example, I met my wife by a chance occurrence and we have a great relationship. In some cases you may be seeking out a specific relationship. Whatever the case, when you are communicating with people about your business, what are your intentions for doing so? Connections come from different groups of people with entirely different intentions. For customers, they want to know how you can improve their lives. For employees they want you to help them feel a sense of purpose and importance. For partnerships, they want to know how you can help them move their
Enjoy Smooth Sailing With Your Clients By Following One Simple Tip
Effective managers know that, to get the best out of your employees, you need to set the right expectations right up front. Doing this not only ensures that your team will be successful, it also helps you to build a strong relationship with your team also. The same advice also works to ensure that you client relationships go smoothly as well. When your business is newer and you haven’t established rules and parameters for how you work with clients, it’s easy to create some bad habits in your relationships with your customers. These bad habits can be due to any of the following: You don’t anticipate the rules that need
