But first! An Invitation!

Business Therapy? You’re invited to a daily 1/2 hour zoom conversation (attend via audio or video) for business leaders to talk get resources, hear ideas from each other, share what’s working, feel not so alone, get and give help about pivoting. Every weekday at 3pm EDT for the foreseeable future. No signups, totally free. Just show up and tell us what’s on your mind. Video: https://zoom.us/j/3065371681?pwd=RlAxb25PaEVRUDZaMlNxNW5nUVVmZz09 Audio: +1 646 558 8656 (US Toll) Meeting ID: 306 537 1681. Password: 919322. Please share. Thanks.

Getting Ready to Pivot

Even if you did a business plan for 2020, you probably want to think it through again in light of the global health crisis and the impact it’s having on your clients, sales revenues, suppliers, costs and your employees. It will probably get worse before it gets better. What can you do to minimize economic hardship now and to get set up for success when we get past the worst of the crisis? You might want to rethink your strategy. That’s called strategic flexibility or the ability to pivot your products/services or your target market. For me that starts with an in depth look at my client’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT). These four categories might have some different factors now than they did the last time you did the analysis. Here are some examples of factors you may not have listed before. Strengths

• We are all working remotely.
• We are cross trained to cover for each other in case of illness.
• We have good writers who can write educational pieces to demonstrate our thought leadership.
• We have some cash in the bank to help us through.
• We are small enough that we can turn on a dime.

Weaknesses

• Some of our services have to be provided in person, too risky.
• Our online products are half complete.
• We haven’t yet created a marketing plan for our intended online products.
• Our cash will likely only last for X months.
• We’re too reliant on a single supplier.

Opportunities

• We offer services and products that people need, they are not discretionary.
• We have suppliers who can provide us with other products we haven’t sold before but are needed now.
• Our clients/prospects look to us for information.
• We sell gift certificates that can be used later.
• We may be eligible for a government grant.
• We offer products/services that are in the supply chain of an ‘essential’ service.

Threats

• The Covid-19 virus has created health uncertainty impacting our team and our clients.
• The economic climate has clients spending less money.
• Our clients’ clients are not reliable, making our clients feel there is risk in spending money with us.

Here are the questions your team can ask once you all complete your lists of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

1. How can our strengths be used to enhance our opportunities?
2. How will our weaknesses diminish our opportunities and what can we do about it?
3. How can our strengths mitigate the threats?
4. How might our weaknesses and the threats come together as a perfect storm and destroy our business and what can we do to prevent that?

If you meet with your team and brainstorm a more detailed SWOT analysis, you might come up with some new ways to make your company more successful now and better positioned for a resilient comeback.

In my coaching practice I often hear “How can I be a better delegator and get more off my plate?” I understand the manager/leader is looking for better time management. But he or she is still focused on himself/herself which is the opposite of the mindset of delegation. How about these questions instead?

1. How can I be a better delegator to empower each person in the organization to grow and learn?
2. How can I be a better delegator to push decision making lower into the organization and closer to the customer to enhance the customer experience?
3. How can I be a better delegator to bring out everyone’s creative ideas to make the company more innovative?
4. How can I be a better delegator to elicit staff commitment to the organization and its growth goals?
5. How can I be a better delegator to avoid the disruptions and expense of staff turnover?
6. How can I be a better delegator so I’m a role model for others in the organization to also delegate and get these benefits everywhere in the organization and its culture?

These are real leadership questions that are focused on the team and on the organization. Each of these identifies the true benefits of delegation. It is much bigger thinking. The most effective manager/leaders:

• Carefully select the right person to delegate to and identify why (reward, capacity, needs a challenge, needs to develop a skill)
• Define the task or project, (what needs to be done and how much leeway is there to be creative in getting it done)
• Specify the desired end result, (what it looks like and how it fits in the big picture)
• Provide plenty of instruction and/or practice
• Identify resources, (people, money, training, space, reprioritized workload)
• Coach the person in her decision making, (Q&A helps her think it through and develop better decision-making skills)
• Hold the person accountable (define milestones)
• Checkup, encourage and provide feedback at those milestones and throughout the process
• Coach the person to see inevitable failures as learning opportunities,
• Believe in the person until she believes in herself, celebrate successes

Please use the above as your checklist each time you delegate a task or project to someone. It’s fair to your direct report. It also will produce a better result. Here is a little more explanation of the questions above:

1. The direct report feels respected and challenged. Her confidence grows knowing that she is being trusted with a new challenge to master. She feels empowered that her manager/leader believes she’s up for the challenge and is willing to support her in mastering the challenge.Delegated decision making (often called distributed leadership) puts decision making closer to the person touching the customer.
2. That means that customers don’t have to wait for a manager/leader to pay attention to the situation. Customers want immediate and no-hassle problem resolution. Also, those customer touching staff are empowered to bring feedback from customers back into the organization to develop better products, services and processes.
3. Innovation comes when individuals feel their ideas are welcome and they feel that their managers/leaders won’t punish them for mistakes. People try things when they are encouraged to fail forward. An effective delegator turns failures into learning opportunities.
4. Part of our human nature is the desire to belong and contribute. By delegating, the leader/manager is including him in the team effort. By acknowledging the mastery of the delegated work, that person’s contributions are being honored and he’s more likely to reciprocate to the organization his time, energy, respect and creativity to help the company fulfill its goals.
5. Most people don’t quit jobs, they quit managers. Especially in today’s world where workers are highly mobile looking for new opportunities. If she has an empowering manager who continually brings out her potential to master more and more delegated challenges, she’ll stay. The company will not have to deal with the costs and disruptions of recruiting/hiring/training/managing a replacement. Delegation has a positive impact on the bottom line.
6. People model what they see their bosses do. When the leader/manager delegates effectively, the direct reports will experience the personal benefits. They will want to delegate similarly to their direct reports (now or in the future). When this permeates the culture of a company, there is more productivity, better morale, greater innovation, and improved growth.

Do you feel like delegation is something you should do, but don’t do? Maybe you don’t think you have time for the process of delegation, or don’t have the right skills, or it’s just not a habit that you’ve developed yet. Maybe you’re too afraid that the people you delegate to will fail and the impact of that would be too disastrous. Yet you’d like the benefits for yourself, your people and your organization. Contact me. I can help you get past whatever is in your way and guide you to build new habits. Select a time on my calendar and let’s talk. https://calendly.com/drivingimprovedresults/60min

How often do you acknowledge and praise each of your employees?

The Problem: As a business owner or manager you get caught up in the daily tasksthe things you have to get done.  Because you are task and deadline focused, you sometimes forget to praise your employees, to acknowledge them for a job well done. Then you wonder why they are not more productive and friendlier to the customers. Solution: If you fail to appreciate your employees, you are throwing money away and actually causing lower productivity. People work harder when they feel better, when they earn praise for their work and effort. Think of yourself. When you got praise, didn’t you have a burst of energy, a sense that anything was possible, increased momentum to attack the next project? I challenge you to do some ‘management by walking around’. Look for good things that each person is doing and give that person some gratitude. Make it a point to find something to praise at least twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon. You will see a huge difference in empowerment, energy, positivity and performance. Everyone looks to you as the person who leads the culture. A culture of appreciation will start with you and will positively effect productivity, the customer experience and your bottom line. Explained in more depth on page 9 - 10 of my book, The Customer Loyalty Playbook, 12 Game Strategies to Drive Improved Results in Your Business. Download the first chapter for f.r.e.e. from my websites. Available at Amazon as a paperback or ebook.

A colleague recently said“Just because I don’t set goals for myself, that doesn’t mean I can’t help others set them.”  

Do you agree with that statement?  It is easy to look at any difficult task that others are doing, and then consider to opt out ourselves by choosing an alternative that is easier for us individually.   To a certain extent, we are who we are; we are successful in our own right.  So why should we push ourselves to be something different, to stretch outside our comfort zone?   The power of goal setting is that it does require us to move outside our daily zone of comfort, to work toward something that is not already a part of our daily routine. 

Some people say, “knowledge is power.”  More accurately, knowledge isn’t power, applied knowledge is power.   That is why my colleague’s statement may not stand up to the test – he knows intuitively that setting goals is the right thing to do, but chooses not to apply goal setting in his own work.

So why are goals so powerful?  It is not just the goals themselves that are powerful, but rather the discipline of forcing yourself to get outside your box, of mapping out a set of actions that take you from point A to point B, of the confidence that comes from incremental action and success that makes goal setting so powerful.  As you spend time in your own goal setting, consider these key principles that may guide your activity:

• As you set goals, consider setting shorter-term goals over longer-term goals.  Of course we all have long term goals for which we need to strive.   Setting shorter-term goals, even if they are pieces to get you to a longer-term goal, can lead to success. And success drives success – you feel good that you accomplished something, and that motivates you to keep going.

• Consider the “why” behind your goal.   Why is this goal important?   What are the rewards if you achieve it, or the consequences if you don’t?  Often, we run forward toward our goals without taking the time to consider why they matter.    Taking the time to identify rewards and consequences provides another motivator for your goal, and renews your commit to achieving the goal you set.

• What do you need to say to yourself to support your goal achievement?  How often do we hold ourselves back with our self-limiting language?  Consider using an inspirational quote, or a plaque, or a picture of your goal as a way to affirm your commitment and give you a visual or verbal nudge when you feel like you aren’t making progress. 

What other principles or tips do YOU use when setting goals?  Please share them with us and with our community.

In school we are asked to answer questions and take tests. There are right and wrong answerspassing and failing grades. Because we’re a product of our past experiences, we take this same framework into our adult experiences. We have goals and we judge ourselves on whether or not we can achieve our goals. Succeed or Fail. Good or Bad. Don’t make a mistake. You might anger others or disappoint others, or even yourself. We then take a failure and morph it into lack of confidence, lack of self esteem, feelings of not being good enough.  Whoa!! That’s a dark hole. Let’s not go there.

Even though it’s hard to change the paradigm after all these years, it’s a worthwhile thing to do for the sake of all the years yet to come. Let’s say there is no failure, only feedback. Edison tested different materials for the inside of a light bulb. 10,000 times he failed before he got the one that worked. He called each failed attempt an ‘option eliminated.’

Mistakes give us feedback. The feedback shows us if we are getting closer to the solution we seek. It helps us shape whether or not we’re headed in the right direction. Do you remember the children’s game where an object is hidden? The others tell him he’s getting ‘hotter’ when he gets closer, and ‘colder’ when he’s going in the opposite direction. What we call ‘failure’ is really a feedback mechanism. If you use your experience for learning if you’re ‘hotter’ or ‘colder’ to a solution, you can get to success more easily and quickly. All of your failures leave you better equipped to succeed the next time.

Failure breaks your pattern. We all get into patterns that are created when things work. So we do them again and again. These are patterns we use everyday to communicate, to eat, to work, to have relationships, to function in our daily lives. We can get stuck in these patterns. Then something doesn’t work and we experience failure. It causes us to try something new and discover something better. After the defeat you’re much more likely to rethink everything and start anew. Henry Ford said that ‘failure is the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently.’

What do Penicillin, America, Champagne, Post-it notes and Viagra all have in common? They are ‘failures’ which have given rise to innovation. Sir Alexander Fleming was doing an experiment that ‘failed’ only to discover that the penicillin mold was killing harmful bacteria. Columbus failed when he set out to find a new route to India. He found America instead. Champagne was invented by a monk called Dom Perignon when a bottle of wine accidentally had a secondary fermentation. 3M invented glue that was a failure – it did not stick. But it became the basis for the Post-it note, which was a huge success. Scientists at Pfizer tested a new drug called Viagra, to relieve high blood pressure. Men in the test group reported that it was a failure at stopping high blood pressure but it had one beneficial side effect. Pfizer found that the drug had a dramatic effect on men’s sexual vigor. Viagra became one of the most successful failures of all time.

Entrepreneur’s embrace the phrase coined by the CEO of the design firm IDEO “Fail often in order to succeed earlier.”  Hewlett Packard cofounder Bill Hewlett said HP needed to make 100 small bets on products to identify six that could be breakthroughs. Failure can be quite useful as long as you learn from it.

You need to try many things. Some will fail and some will succeed. If you are afraid to fail, you don’t try any at all and that’s keeps you stuck and stagnant. You are not learning. One of the CEO’s in my circle wants his people to fail. Because if they are trying things and some things fail, it means they are also finding some successes.

So rather than fearing failure, our new paradigm can be embracing failure as a learning mechanism on the way to success.

How do you view failure? How does your organization view failure? Please share with our readers.

One of my elementary teachers that I most remember is Mr. Stevens He  was a good teacher and I learned a lot in his music class. But what I most remember about Mr. Stevens is that he walked around with a ruler. When anyone wasn’t paying attention or misbehavedhe would snap that ruler on the top of your shoulder and it would really sting.

These days this would never be allowed but, “back in the day,” the ruler landed on my shoulder once or twice (completely undeserved, of course). The mere threat of “the ruler” was sufficient to keep most of us in line. A vivid memory to me, this is an example of motivation by fear where, essentially, Mr. Stevens used the threat of pain and embarrassment to keep us 5^th graders in line. And, for the most part, it worked.

Then there was dear, sweet Mrs. Bell who was forever cajoling her students with sweets and extended play periods if we would merely complete our homework assignments and behave in class. Her approach also resulted, like Mr. Stevens, in a fairly well-behaved classroom, much because the rewards were sufficient to alter the actions of some who would have otherwise misbehaved or not minded. Mrs. Bell’s methods are a simple example of motivation by incentive.

Traditional Types of Motivation

Both of these types of motivation (by fear and by incentive) are based on external factors (pain and sweets in my examples) to get a desired result. These two types of motivation are also found extensively in the workplace, where verbal abuse, threats of firing, and exhortations of “do better or else” occur daily. Similarly, it is common practice that bonuses, award trips, and other forms of compensation are used to motivate employees. The issue is that, since these forms of motivation are based on external factors, the modified behavior (to avoid the negative repercussion or to achieve the benefit) is often short-lived.

The very essence of fear is negative, and any results produced under the stress of fear is typically second-rate at best. Many of the same kids who behaved well enough in Mr. Steven’s class, misbehaved in other classes. Their change in behavior was situational and not long-lasting. Likewise, many students in Mrs. Bell’s class acted well enough to get the rewards that were being offered, but behaved less appropriately when there were no special incentives. Again, parallels can easily be drawn with situations at work where employees change their behaviors depending on which of these two traditional types of motivation is utilized. Fear and incentive motivation can be used temporarily but for less than lasting results, so they can work well even if they working from home, since a llots of staff now work from home but did you know that you can easily monitor employees working from home so that you can keep track of what they are doing, so you make sure they are effective and motivated.

The Power of Attitude Motivation

As the modern workforce changes and evolves, incentive and fear motivation (the carrot and stick) are no longer as effective as they once were. And their motivational power diminishes after the promised reward has been gained or the threatened penalty has been avoided. A more powerful and sustainable form of motivation, motivation by attitude, motivates successful employees. When you are motivated from within, you are not dependent on other people or things. You are driven by your belief in yourself, your dreams, your desire for mastery and your goals to maximize your potential. You want to achieve because that’s your life’s purpose, not simply because you want to gain an external reward or avoid a loss or punishment.

Motivation by fear is about avoiding. Motivation by incentive is about getting. Motivation by attitude is about becoming. When your goal is to become the best you can be, you will be self-motivated to exceed even your own expectations!

There's a simple definition for this complex subject: "Self-motivation is an inner drive that compels behavior." What makes it complex, however, is that little word "inner," because what works for me may not work for you, and vice-versa.

Dan Pink is an author who writes about this and the last 40 years of research about what works and what doesn’t work and in what situations when motivating employees. You might be surprised that some of your assumptions from your youth may not be valid with knowledge workers in the current workplace. His book is entitled, Drive, The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.

What are your opinions about these various types of motivation? We’d love to hear some of the ways in which you can increase your self-motivation.