The Biz Wizard - Thoughts on Leadership and Management

“The effective executive builds on strengths — their own strengths, the strengths   of superiors, colleagues, subordinates; and on the strengths of the situation.”
— Peter Drucker in The Effective Executive
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I feel strongly that maximizing your organization’s strengths (in each aspect of it) and minimizing its weaknesses is a key to success. Why spend time and energy on improving a weakness when the best you can hope to achieve in that way is mediocrity.

One of the best actions any manager/owner can take is to clearly identify the strengths and the passions of his area of the company. Making sure that each person is placed in a role that utilizes their strengths and minimizes their weakness will move your area toward increased productivity as well as improved employee satisfaction. WIth improved productivity, esprit de corps and retention, comes profitablity and growth.  A win-win for everyone involved.

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“The question ['How do we intend to win in this business'] (see July 28 BLOG post) forces companies to delineate their strengths and weaknesses in order to assess where they can profitably play in the competitive landscape.  Yes, profitably - that’s the key.” — Jack Welch in “Winning”

I feel strongly that every owner/manager must know what the strengths of his company are as well as what his strengths and weaknesses are and what those of each member of his team’s are.  It is such a waste of time and energy working on improving a weakness - which will only result in possibly raising it to mediocrity - when one can move that person into a position in which his strengths are maximzed and his weaknesses minimized.  It’s ALL about putting the right person in the job that fits their specific strengths.

Here’s a classic example of not putting the right person in the right job.  A construction company has a contract to lay pipe along a road.  The job consists of digging a trench in a straight line along the road, laying the pipe in it and covering the trench.  The job must be completed on time, on budget and accurately.  The crew consists of a backhoe operater, two pipe-layers and a supervisor/problem-solver.  The crew is moving along very well.  It is on schedule, on budget and even looks like it is going to finish ahead of schedule, thus making more profit.  This is primarily because the backhoe operater is excellent. 

So, the supervisor gets promoted or quits or for whatever reason, is no longer the supervisor of this crew.  The excellent backhoe operator is promoted to supervisor because of his great work and a new backhoe operator joins the team.  Within two days they are behind schedule, the ditch is curving all over the place and the new supervisor is yelling at everyone to get themselves in gear!  He is also very frustrated because they encountered an unforeseen problem and it is his job to come up with a solution and he is just not good at problem-solving.  Thus, the company is losing profit every hour that this situation exists.

At this point, the company went from a highly skilled and profitble crew with a great backhoe operator and a great supervisor to a crew with a lousy backhoe operator and a lousy supervisor.  This happened simply because of promoting a highly skilled person to a job that did not fit his strengths. 

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“And so the great ones [business owners] I have known seem to possess an intuitive understanding that the only way to reach something higher is to focus their attention on the multitude of seemingly insignificant, unimportant, and boring things that make up every business. (And make up every life for that matter!)” — Michael Gerber in “The eMyth Revisited”

What do the businesses that you deem to be great, the ones you go to over and over again, do that seperates them from the rest.  Why do you always go to them?  The ones I think of have the owner or the manager out with the customers and clients often.  They have every employee taking care of little things.  Everyone knows my name; everyone looks at me when I am there and SMILES, even if they aren’t interacting with me; everyone grabs the phone before it rings too many times.  It is the little things that seperate them. As well as the owner/manager being directly involved in the day to day little things.  So they never lose touch with what drives their business!

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“You may be reluctant to investigate your strengths quite simply because you don’t believe that your true self is much to write home about. … Despite your achievements, you wonder whether you are as talented as everyone thinks you are. … The anxious little voice in your ear whispers, ‘When will you be found out?’ and, against your better judgment, you listen.” —Marcus Buckingham in “Now, Discover Your Strengths”

Every person in your organization has strengths. Unfortunately, due to a variety of factors, they rarely know what they are. The success of your organization depends largely on your ability as a leader to define the strengths of your people and to mazimize them through support, focus and enhancement.

Fitting the right people to the right jobs will be a huge benefit. Just as putting them in the wrong jobs can be a killer.  Whatever you as a leader can do to improve your ability to determine people’s strengths, do it. It is an essential ingredient to the success of your organization.

Have you used people’s strengths to move them into different jobs in your organization. Let me know how this has worked for you?

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“Strong teams have a purpose - a driving ambition to achieve something worth doing. Try this excersize: write down your answers . . . Why do you exist [on this team]?  What must you accomplish before you consider yourself a success [to this team]?  What is your contribution [to the team]?  The answers should define your purpose. . . .  [which] gives your team the clarity to act, and the passion to weather downturns.” — Yamashita & Spataro in “Unstuck”

Great teams are no different than greatness in any other aspect of life and/or business.  They require clarity and passion - without either one, you cannot be great.  You cannot be great at achieving an unclear goal and I have never seen greatness achieved by luke-warm people.  Passion takes a person to greatness. 

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   “In my experience, an effective mission statement basically answers one question, ‘How do we intend to win in this business:’
   It does not answer: What were we good at in the good old days? Nor does it answer: How can we describe your business so that no particulor unit or division or senior executive gets pissed off?” — Jack Welch in “Winning”

So, let’s cut the BS and write a mission statement that tells it like it is, like it or not, and is specifically aimed at the strategic plan of winning in your niche market.  Gosh, with that done, you can then make very rapid decisions by simply comparing the optional answers to whether they fit your mission or not. 

As Jack Welch continues to describe, a mission statement created with winning in mind “… requires companies to make choices about people, investements and other resources, and it prevents them from falling into the common mission statement trap of asserting that they will be all things to all people at all times.”  Therefore, you must focus on your strengths, because you sure aren’t going to win at a business you are mediocre at.

My experience says that great people want to work for great companies … not mediocre companies.  So what comes from focusing on winning is that you attract winners to your team who you will need in order to win … it almost becomes a self-fulfillin mission.  Almost … YOU (the leader) still have to lead as a winner, coach as a winner and establish a culture that supports and nurtures winning.  But at least you have a solid game-plan to work from.

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“The problem with most failing businesses I’ve encountered is not that their owners don’t know enough about finance, marketing, management, and operations — they dont, but those things are easy enough to learn — but that their owners spend their time and energy defending what they think they know.  The greatest businesspeople I’ve met are determined to get it right no matter what the cost.” — Michael Gerber, “The eMyth Revisited”

Every hour we business-owners/managers have choices to make.  One choice that constantly presents itself is whether we know the best way to do something or whether someone else knows the best way.  DELEGATING is incredibly difficult for most small business-owners and managers. 

Since we each have a finite amount of energy to expend each day … spending most of it on those things we are great at will produce the best results and most productivity.  Therefore, knowing what your strengths and weaknesses are (the hard part) and delegating those things in your weakness areas (the really hard part) is actually the best way to make your business succeed. 

The keys are recognizing that our pride in knowing everything is hurting us; that spending our energy on things we are not great at is hurting us; and that hesitating to both surround ourselves with and delegating to people who are great at those things we are not great at is hurting us.

Pain is not pleasant … but the pain of lost pride is far less than the pain of failure!

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“Two monks were walking down a road and came to a river.  On the bank of the river was a beautiful young woman who was afraid to cross the river by herself.  One of the monks gallantly stepped forth and offered her a ride on his shoulders.  Upon reaching the other side, she thanked him and they went on their separate ways.
    About a hundred steps down the road, the second monk asked the first ‘How could you do that? You are a monk, a renunciate. You should not be carrying beautiful women on your shoulders.’
    To which the first monk replied, ‘Oh, are you still carrying her? I let her down as soon as we reached the shore.’” ~ A traditional ZEN story

There are approximately 16 hours in which I can be productive today.  That includes being productive in my job, in my relationships, in my personal growth, in having FUN … in everything.  If I am still carrying around “stuff”, then every minute that I spend thinking, worrying, fretting, angering, frustrating on that “stuff” is time I won’t be productive and I won’t be having FUN.

What parts of life will I miss while I spend time on that “stuff”? What am I still carrying around?  Does this “stuff” make me happy when I think about it?  Does any of it make me feel ”trapped”?  I must get all the “stuff” that is not making me happy or that is making me feel trapped out of my life.  Stop thinking about it; stop letting it take away my freedom!  Stop allowing it to stifle my FUN.

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Avoiding the Arrogance Trap. … When a whole organization knows that a CEO is curious and is open to learning, that shapes the culure of the whole company. But when a CEO projects arrogance, the whole company shuts down and stops learning. The personality and behavior of the CEO is so crucial–it cascades throughout the organization. ~ The Curious CEO (at bnet) 

What do you want your company to look like to the world?  What do you want it to “BE”?  Is this image a true reflection of you?  If not, it is going to be very difficult to make your company into something that you are not.  Your company culture is not only what the people inside the company feel and do, it is how the company is perceived by the whole world? 

There are no companies providing exceptional customer service that have an owner/president who doesn’t passionately care about treating his clients well.  Companies in which co-workers are arrogant and poor team players nearly always have a supervisor or manager who is arrogant and self-centered.  A company’s culture can only be changed when the leadership of that company becomes what they want the company culture to be. Or …. the leadership is changed.

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“If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want and all that is left is a compromise.” - Robert Fritz

Often clients tell me they just can’t achieve goals. How frustrating. Being a solutions-oriented guy, I tried many different approaches to help clients reach their goals. It was rarely easy, but for those willing to listen and act, the below tens steps helped people immediately progress toward their goals.

1. Who Will You Be (After You Achieve Your Goals)

A goal will help you BE someone more than you are now. Who will you be when you achieve your goal? Are you passionate about becoming this new person? And please, be TRUE TO YOURSELF. The 1st step toward achieving your goals is to determine who you are passionate about becoming. Who do you need to become to live your perfectly happy life?Selling more products or losing more weight or owning a new car are not goals; they are just steps along the way to a real goal.Loving the way you live, being a respected expert in your field or living without stress or guilt are real goals … and they are achievable if you are passionate about getting there.

2.The Power of Three (Focus to Attain Your Goals)

“… life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness …” “… faith, hope and charity…” … of the people, by the people and for the people …”   Research shows that the human mind can only focus on three things at a time. Too many of us are overwhelmed by too many things going on in our lives. We can’t focus; we are buried by the tyranny of the urgent.

Set your BIG goal, then set only three “on the way there” goals that take you toward your big goal. There are probably more than three, but just pick three to work on at a time. Prioritize them both in importance and in chronology. What really must happen first - before you move on to step #2? Won’t you feel better having achieved three rather than failing to achieve any of seven?

3. Be True to Yourself (When Setting Goals)

“Success depends on getting good at saying no without feeling guilty. You cannot get ahead with your own goals if you are always saying yes to someone else’s projects. You can only get ahead with your desired lifestyle if you are focused on the things that will produce that lifestyle.” - Jack Canfield

You will never achieve the goals that others think you should … but you will achieve goals that are honestly true to YOU. Test your goals. Are they trying to make you into who you “should” be (based on what others think) … or who YOU want to be?

Be true to yourself in everything. Stop trying to be someone you aren’t. How can you ever be happy being someone else. The world needs who YOU are.

“Work and play are the same. When you’re following your energy and doing what you want all the time, the distinction between work and play dissolves.” - Shakti Gawain

4. Pave Your Path with Stepping-Stones

“I’m tired of dreaming. I’m into doing at the moment. It’s, like, let’s only have goals that we can go after.” - Bono

To achieve your big goals, you must pave the path to them with small stepping stones. Set mini-achievements for each step along the way. Feel good about yourself often. Celebrate each achievement. Seeing daily progress toward your big goal will motivate you to take the next step, and the next, and the next.

5. Stay In Control of Your Destiny

“If you are not moving closer to what you want in sales (or in life), you probably aren’t doing enough asking.” - Jack Canfield

Set goals and set steps that YOU can control. If your goal is to live in a log cabin in the mountains, then one of the steps toward achieving that goal is to earn enough money to accomplish buy the land, build the cabin and to not have to work all the time so that you can actually live in and enjoy the cabin.

If you own a business or are a salesperson, you will tend to try to earn the money by setting a goal of selling “X” amount in a given time. Unfortunately, that is out of your control. But, you can control the process that will likely lead to selling that amount.

Set steps like mailing a weekly newsletter to 500 good email addresses, having lunch with one Center-of-Influence every week and having a conversation with five referrals every week. Those are goals/steps you can control.

If you set stepping-stone goals that are out of your control, you are setting yourself up for failure. Don’t get caught in that trap.

For each of the above steps, there are preliminary steps. You must get 500 good email addresses. You must get ten good Centers-of-Influence. You must get the five referrals every week. Work backward to clearly define the steps that need to take place in order to achieve each stepping-stone goal.

6. Be Passionate About Your Goals

“Follow your passion, and success will follow you.” - Arthur Buddhold

Set goals and steps that make you want to jump out of bed in the morning! Or, find a reason to become on fire for them.

Oprah recently presented a show several people who had lost over 150 pounds. They ALL said the same thing. Yes, they had tried every diet known to man. No, none of them had worked. BUT, when a Doctor told each of them that they were going to die AND when they had a reason to live (seeing their grandchildren grow up, giving his daughter away at her wedding, etc.), only then did they have the burning desire to achieve their goal. They had a passion to be alive.

“Chase down your passion like it’s the last bus of the night.” - Glade Byron Addams

7. Become Alexander the Great

” … guided by our parents, by our teachers, by our managers and by our psychologist’s fascination with pathology, we become experts in our weaknesses and spend our lives trying to repair these flaws, while our strengths lie dormant and neglected.” - Marcus Buckingham - in “Now Discover Your Strengths”

Set goals that maximize your strengths. Improving your weaknesses will only bring you up to mediocrity. What an unhappy life that would be. Concentrate on becoming great in whatever it is that you are strong and passionate about.

Define your strengths. Make a list. Define your loves. Now be wildly creative about what you would LOVE to do with your life. Don’t hold back. What is your dream life?

8. Just Say “NO”

“Success depends on getting good at saying no without feeling guilty. You cannot get ahead with your own goals if you are always saying yes to someone else’s projects. You can only get ahead with your desired lifestyle if you are focused on the things that will produce that lifestyle. - Jack Canfield

Decision making needs to be easy - having clear, true-to-yourself goals defined makes it easy. “Does it fit my goal? Yes, or no?” If yes doesn’t move you toward your goal, then just say “no.” Why spend any time or energy on something that doesn’t move you forward?

9. Keep the Vampires Away

“Accept everything about yourself–I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end–no apologies, no regrets.” - Clark Moustakas

Spend your time around people who who support you and love you unconditionally. Stay away from the vampires who suck the life-blood out of you. They weaken your foundation and cause you to lose energy and commitment. Remember, this goal is who you deeply and passionately want to become. Achieving that is very, very valuable to YOU. Don’t let anyone keep you from being who you want to become!

10. Go to the Outhouse Often

“You must constantly ask yourself these questions: Who am I around? What are they doing to me? … What do they have me thinking?

And most important, what do they have me becoming? Then ask yourself the big question: Is that okay?” - Jim Rohn (Jim Rohn’s Weekly E-zine, July 21, 2003)

Eliminate the crap from your life. Just as vampires suck your confidence, crap saps your energy. You spend time and emotions dealing with crap. It drains you. Get rid of it. Only then will you have energy to put into achieving your goals.

You know what the crap is in your life. It’s the clutter on your desk; no shoes to match your best suit; the crammed-full garage; the car that needs a tuneup.

11. Be Like Mike

“Do what you do best and let someone else do best what you aren’t good at”. - Dave Laxton

Even Michael Jordan worked with a great coach. Would Michael have been as great if he had not played for Phil Jackson? I doubt it. Phil Jackson was as good a coach as Michael was a player. It was a “fit”. Regardless of how good you are, a great coach can help you be even better.

Of course, there is always the issue of “coachability”. Can you be coached? Are you open to someone else telling you what to do to be better? This is one of the hardest things for an entrepreneur to do. Entrepreneurs give birth to their ideas. They are like doting parents who are scared to death to leave their baby with a sitter.

But! Entrepreneurs, although incredible at giving birth to their ideas, tend to be lousy business managers. The two skills just don’t go together. Entrepreneurs need to stop trying to run the business and go give birth to another great idea.

Do what you do best and let someone else do best what you aren’t good at.

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