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
Success This Year Starts At The Core Of Your Business
As another year comes to a close, this is the time where we start to reflect on the past year. What went great. What didn’t go so great. Where we would like to improve. We then put together a plan or a set of resolutions on how next year will be different. Before you finalize your plans for world domination, I have one piece of advice, don’t ignore the core of your business. What’s the core of your business? The core of your business consists of why you exist, where you are going and what your business values. You may know the core of your business by another set of
A Business Lesson From Diana Ross
Do you know where you’re going to? Do you like the things that life is showing you Where are you going to? Do you know…? Lyrics from the Theme From Mahogany If you have shopped at a grocery store or if your mom is a music fan, you have probably heard the above song by Diana Ross. Me? I’m not ashamed to admit that I am a R&B junkie and I love Diana Ross and many other artists from that era. You probably didn’t come here to hear me wax poetic about 70′s R&B but I do want to talk about the business lesson from the above tune. Bear with
Forget Jerry Maguire: Creating Mission, Vision and Values That Won’t Get You Fired
“Jerry Maguire” was a fictional sports agent and apparently a good one. Jerry had everything he wanted; the girl, the career, the fame. Unfortunately Jerry Maguire also aquired an ill that befalls many a successful sales person, he got a conscience. He looked around and saw the industry how it was and knew that the way they treated athletes wasn’t right. He had an altruistic plan to fix the sports agent industry. Then he created a mission statement. That mission statement got him fired. Around the time that the movie Jerry Maguire came out, mission statements were all the rage in business. Everyone had to have one and they were
The Importance of Strategery
Your business has some specific things that must happen in order for it and you to be successful. You and I know this. The real question is, do you know what those activities are and how do you ensure that your business stays focused on these tasks day-in and day-out? The minute that you say the word “strategic” to business owners, either their eyes start glazing over or they think that anything else you are going to say is some variation of business buzz words that they don’t care about. I get that. However when it comes to having strategic objectives for your business, it’s important that have these clearly
Why Your Business Lacks Focus and What To Do About It
Focus is sometimes a difficult task for an entrepreneur. Unfortunately, for these same entrepreneurs, focus is also a necessary component for execution and making your business work. You must be able to not only initiate an idea but also be able to see it through to completion. For most entrepreneurs, the thing that they love most is starting a new venture. It seems like most of the entrepreneurs that I have worked with have one eye on their current business and the other eye on their next project. This is a tremendous strength but when not managed can be a huge liability as well. Some business owners just don’t seem
Measuring Results Starts With Clarity
Measuring results is important for any organization to have long term sustainable success. Before you can understand what results you need and why, you need to make sure that you understand your business at its’ core. Before you mearsure results, you mist have clarity in place. I have already talked about why mission, vision and values are important to your business. They really are the foundation for everything that you do and your results are no different. Many small business owners wander ahead with their business without understanding the fundamental questions about their business. Questions such as: Why do I exist? Where do I want to go? What’s most important
Make the Big Picture Manageable
We can say with a fair amount if certainty that most small business owners are big picture thinkers. The ability to create and see your vision is the initial step for any entrepreneur. The challenging next step is to take that big picture and create manageable steps to achieve the big picture. One mistake that I see in talking with new business owners is that they get bogged down and overwhelmed by everything that needs to be done. This kills us in the planning phase of our business deciding what to do now and what to do later and how to put it all together. We then just shut it
The proper steps to build your website
Ever spoke with a company and thought that after speaking with them that you had a good idea about what the company was about only to be confused after visiting their website? This happens to businesses and clients way more than it should. So how do you make sure that what you are taking the right approach? I will coming purely from the tactical angle of your approach and not the specifics and webite design and function as I leave those items for my web partners to handle. With that being said. There are 5 components of the website creation process. The first component is having a firm grasp on
People get a feel for you through your website
If you want people to really get a feel for what you are about in your business, make sure that your website represents your brand and what your core values are. Too many times we treat our website like a necessary evil or put one up because we know we need to have it but don’t take the time to do it right. The problem with this mindset is that your businesses’ website is an extension of you. If your website doesn’t express what you are about correctly then you have visitors that don’t properly understand what you are about. The problem with this is that you end either disappointing
