Today is a brand new day. I get to release all of my energy all over again. I have stored up a night's worth of energy and today I am releasing it somewhere. Learn how to treat your business in the same fashion. Even though I own a business that never goes to sleep, treat it as if it does go to sleep every night. Pretend your business turns off its lights and begins to restore itself every night. When it wakes up in the morning it has a whole bunch of new energy waiting to be released for the day. Learn how to 'pretend' this effect.
Your business model will improve if you learn how to make it fresh every day. Each day is a new day with new opportunities. Even though you operate with consistency and excellent routine, you still need to remain fresh and ready every single day for new and exciting things to occur. If you wake up grumpy in the morning and head to your business model with a small chip on your shoulder, how well do you think magical and wonderful opportunities will arrive? Not. Abraham Lincoln was recognized for some famous philosophies. One of my favorites he professed was that people make themselves just about as happy as they want to be. In other words, happiness is a learned process. It is not an accident or a chance occurrence. Happiness is a planned event. Happiness and success are the results of something you plan to reach. They both require you to perform them in order for them to appear. They are not happenstance favors.
If you walk into your business each day with a happy walk your chance to find a new worthwhile opportunity today are much better than if you walk into your business model with a chip on your shoulder. It really comes down to the fact that you need to determine how badly you want to respect the responsibility to control your happiness. Your business cannot sizzle with a bad attitude. It can go up in flames, but it cannot sizzle. The first idea you need to work on in order to help your business sizzle is to approach it each day with a healthy walk. Hit the road running with energy and make sure that energy is ready and willing to produce some fun. Your perspective has everything to do with that effect. Clean up what you see and how you see it. Quit looking for the garbage littered around the edges of your business model. We all have garbage somewhere. Refrain from placing your 'F's' on the refrigerator. Start your day rested, fresh and willing to release a ton of positive energy. Teach yourself how to become good at it. Make yourself just about as happy as you want to be. This is step one to producing sizzling hot ideas. Get your mind right.
Next, work harder on developing a great staff. They will show up to work with the same kind of approach you allow them to present. If you have surrounded yourself with 'bad attitude' people, guess how they will walk into your business model each morning? Your next step is to make sure your business model has a good night of rest and comes willing to release some good energy each morning. Your staff has a lot to do with that process. Yesterday one of my co-workers came to work with a very strong hang-over. It has been a long time since I have seen someone come in to work with this condition. I was very cordial about my suspicions. We had a lot of work to do and needed to remain full of good energy. This was the first time in many weeks that I did not see good energy from this employee. Something was very wrong with yesterday's work approach.
By the time a couple of hours passed, and the restroom was occupied almost full time by that employee. My suspicions were nearing their bulls-eye mark. Then a customer walked into our business and asked this employee if they were 'alright.' He wanted to know if the employee remembered seeing him last night. The conversation was brief and pointed. The employee denied being drunk last night to the guy who was asking about whether or not last night was a remembered event. The customer dropped the subject when he recognized the denial in the conversation. He made a small purchase and left with a sheepish, half-smile expression that told a different story. The next hour was filled with the absence of that hung over employee. The rest room was the only room that employee was visiting. Our work efforts were strained. The fact that one employee was 'missing' was an issue with the rest of the crew. The stress to complete the work set in front of us for the day had increased with the fact that we were missing one of our helpers. Everyone dialed up their work levels as best as they could. It was a challenge.
Success is a planned event. It does not honor slippery respect. If you truly believe a low grade of business respect will produce a high grade of business results, you are dead wrong. Your model will never enjoy setting up and breaking record performances. Never. You must learn how to control those effects. They matter more than you might expect. Do not permit anyone to come to work and destroy that level of responsibility. I had a great business mentor who has since passed on. I miss him. He had so many daily lessons that stung badly when he rolled them off of his tongue that I did not always enjoy standing next to him. They were truths, however. As we all know, truths tend to hurt a little bit. He was not afraid to hurt you if he felt you needed a lesson or correction in your methods of respect. He passed them out willingly. A lot of them hurt. A lot of them were right on target, though. As much as they hurt, they hit the center of the problem. Dead on. He would say things like this..."If someone does not do what you ask them to do, they either did not hear you are they do not respect you. Speak louder and find out which one it is."
The employee who showed up to work hung over knows better. That employee does not respect how the rest of the staff needed to accomplish what they came to work to accomplish. Period. If you get wishy-washy on this level of truth, your leadership is at risk and your business model will never become a champion model. Never. Clean it up. Your tolerance needs to become tighter controlled.
If you do not act promptly and clearly about how you do not want this to occur in your business model, what are you afraid of? Are you afraid someone will not like you? Your business model already does not like you. It will not produce great success with this kind of daily approach. Is that what you want? Look in the mirror. Look very hard. Be very clear on how you want to make your business model sizzle. The rest of your staff is quietly watching how you respond, did you know that? They will learn how you lead by watching how you respond. The ball is in your court now. That ball of interest was hit by the employee who came to work in one of the poorest conditions anyone could bring to work. That employee was 'on the clock' and the others knew it. The ball is in your court. You better learn how to hit it well. If you want your business to 'learn' how to sizzle, this is where you will establish that pattern.
John Wooden was a college basketball coach. He is likely one of the most winning leaders of any organized model. He wrote a book. I recommend it. It is filled with unbelievable lessons of greatness. None of those lessons are unusual or difficult to understand. He practiced simple fundamentals. He came to work every single day rested, ready and willing to play as hard as his energy would allow. Every single day. No exceptions were allowed. None. When John Wooden recruited high school stars to come to UCLA to play basketball for his team, the first time they entered the locker room he made it a point to go introduced himself to each one. Every year it was the same. Every new recruit was treated exactly the same in the introduction. He did not deviate once. John Wooden took each introduction serious. He had a routine he described was designed to get the 'greatness' understanding set clear. He wanted to make sure each new recruit understood what was expected. His very first introduction to the new recruits was to show them how to put their socks on correctly. Literally. He would take each new recruit and sit them down in a chair. He would hand them a brand new pair of socks. He asked them to put the socks on and watched to see how they did it. Then he stopped every single one of them in their tracks. He said, "No, that is not how you correctly put your socks on." He would take one sock and roll it up tight into an opening ball. He placed it over their toes and began to unroll the sock up over the foot and up the ankle. He showed them how to 'smooth out' all of the wrinkles, the bubbles, and the slack. Then he gave them his lesson of importance...he told them if they do not learn how to put their socks on correctly they will eventually get a blister or two on their feet. Once a blister arrives, their focus on doing what they need to think about doing will be compromised. Their ability to control their mental thoughts about playing excellent basketball will be interrupted by the pain on the foot. If the pain of the blisters gets too strong, as it usually does, they will need to 'sit out' of a game or two to allow it time to heal. This kind of disrespect to your teammates is not the kind of respect that produces greatness. He described to the new recruits how their success would help this team become very great, but only if they understood what it really took to make that happen. He closed the orientation down by saying one more thing to the new recruits. If they do not put their socks on correctly and they get a disturbing blister, they can go play for another team who does not care about this level of respect. He would prefer they go destroy some other team.
I know you were not expecting this kind of thinking to be the sizzling hot ideas that will help you produce great results. Unfortunately, there is no greatness that comes by accident. John Wooden made his sizzling hot record production happen by plan, not by little timely gimmicks that got lucky once in awhile. Every single player knew that if they spent the morning in the restroom getting rid of a nasty hangover, they were not helping their teammates produce what the business needed to produce. They fully understood the low level of respect they would offer to the rest of their co-workers. They also understood that the boss would just as soon have them go destroy the efforts of some other team. John Wooden also describes how he had to remove a lot of great players from his team in his career. He also describes how the ones that stayed heard everything he taught without having once to raise his voice. He was recognized as the gentle giant. How gentle is a person who will terminate you if you get a blister on your feet? Think about your business model more clearly. Quit worrying about how the others think. Go each day rested, ready and willing to find greatness. Expect your staff to do the same. Come with new socks every single day. Ship out the ones who do not 'get it.' Your business model is waiting for you to lead it to greatness. Greatness helps it to learn how to sizzle.
I told the John Wooden story to the hung over employee. The staff sent her home to rest. She walked across the parking lot looking a bit distressed about the way her day turned out. The rest of the staff worked extra hard to get done what needed to be done. It was a 'tall ' day for all. It was also a very quiet day. Not much was said by the rest of the staff. They, too, heard the sock story. I saw a lot of revelation appear on many of their faces. You see, she was not sent home to go rest. She was sent home for letting others down. That is why she walked to her vehicle the way she did. That is why the rest of the staff worked so hard and quietly. A new understanding began to form. Come to work with new socks in mind.
Respect is not completely gone. It just needs a little reminder once in awhile.
Until next time...
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