What they do not always get, is how easily they allow themselves to slip out of the right kind of doing. Sometimes it does not take very much to permit the mind to slip out of the right gears and begin doing the wrong kinds of things. Sometimes this is where the business model begins to break down its winning ways. This is where the separation starts its troubling effects. It is at this point that the good ones begin to out run the not so good ones. Each business model is driven by a different set of leadership methods. Each model begins to follow separate sets of permissions and respect for the levels of discipline allowed. The business results follow closely near the permissions allowed. One business leader may permit more careless ways of respect than another. The performance results follow.
I visited with a business leader just yesterday and he described how he had not yet finished his effort to get 'totally organized,' as he put it. He described how he was working on some marketing and inventory methods to help him get better organized. He showed me one of those areas he was working on. He took me back to his office and found a small clip board sitting in the deepest corner of his office with a few notes written on it. It was sitting on the top of a two drawer filing cabinet under some other materials. He had to dig it out to show it to me. He described how this clip board and a few notes written on the page it contained was the current effort he was using to 'get better organized' about his product ordering procedures. He was dead serious, too. It was not something he was joking about. He actually felt good showing it to me. It was like a small victory to him. He has been a business owner and leader for over twenty years. In all of those twenty plus years, his business models have struggled with producing long term sustained success. He is again, right now, struggling with business success. In fact, one of those business models has gone out of business for good. It takes enormous effort, enormous discipline and enormous respect for doing the right kinds of things in the right ways on a consistent basis. Otherwise, a little clip board may be the only evidence that something good is going on.
Become a good business operator. Quit flirting with trying to avoid what needs to be done. Quit believing that your own understanding is all that you need to operate well. Quit teasing your own perspective. Quit fooling around with untruths. Quit lying about how well you are doing. Quit toying with success as if it is not supposed to be coming your way. Quit blaming everything else for your set of unwanted circumstances. The winners in business all face the same circumstances that you face. They all see the same landscape, the same challenges, the same employees, the same marketing opportunities, the same pitfalls, the same family problems, the same lack of capital issues, the same cost reduction demands, the same levels of competition and the same kinds of interfering consumer activities. The winners in business face exactly the same set of circumstances that the losers face. They just handle them differently.
Most of the winning business leaders do more than work their organized efforts onto a small clip board of a few scribbled notes. Many of the business winners in today's world of commerce still attend seminars and topical learning sessions about how to continue improving what they do, how they do it and where they need to change. This is crucial stuff to recognize. I see the winners do this kind of continual stuff. I see most of the losers do just the opposite. The losers can often be caught trying to justify how they pretend to be knowledgeable about how they explain away the things they choose to do with their valuable time. They are lost and do not recognize it. Many of them are excellent sellers at protecting the environments they create and direct. They can sell away every single obstacle and excuse. Only an experienced mind will notice where the small scribbled notes were hidden, on the clip board they were resting in the furthest corner away from where the true action was occurring. Reality is often times a completely different story. The evidence is usually revealed by the numbers in the end, waiting to be explained away.
I am one of those business leaders who has learned how to protect what I do. I am just as fallibly created as the next leader on this subject. I can cover my rotten tracks with the best of them. However, in the end, I am also totally responsible for the lack of growth I produce in my business life. It is, in the end, my own fault. I am the leader that produces these outcomes. They rest on my watch. They rest on my porch. They rest in my home. My level of success comes from me. My level of performance comes from me. My lack of discipline comes from me. I am the one who drives who I am. I am the one who should pick up the ball of that responsibility. It is not the economy's fault. It is not my competition's fault. It is not my employee's fault. It is not my family's fault. I am the one who is totally responsible for the outcomes I have received. It is amazing to me how we have created a world that does not see themselves in this kind of light. Accountability is almost non-existent. We live in a world of non-existent accountability. We will even use a small clip board and some short notes on a single page to justify why we do not need to become better organized. It is not our fault! Non-existent accountability.
This is exactly how many business leaders perform their low levels of accountability in their own business environments of unwanted trials and errors. I did not want to spend another round of valuable time re-planting roses. I did not want to invest a lot more of my hard earned money buying twelve more healthy roses. However, I did exactly that. I did that extra spending and that extra planting work because I was not originally disciplined enough to take care of my proper weather investigation and failed to follow-up with my required responsibilities. I skipped what I was supposed to do. I skipped my responsibility to cover the roses up, to add some mulch around the root base and secure them from the pending frost. My roses died. They froze to death. I blamed the weather!
This is how business leaders do their business leadership. What's more, I told one of my furniture store customers, Dale, how I had lost my roses this year to the late frost we had a few weeks ago. Dale and I were talking about gardening and the rose subject came up. Dale is an avid gardener. The minute I described how I lost my twelve roses, before I could end that sentence he said, "Terry, shame on you!" He interrupted my described reason why my roses died and asked me if I knew how to protect them from the freezing weather. He lightly lectured me about performing the proper plant care responsibilities for producing a good rose garden. I was not interested in his opinions, at that time. I explained to him how I found some really cool new roses we did not have before the old ones became frozen. I justified my way around my lack of responsibility. Business leaders do this very same thing in their business models. I know. I work with a lot of them. I think the same thing Dale thought when he listened to me explain my way around my lack of due diligence..."stupid!" Oh well, that's what leaders do! They lie to themselves. I am guilty.
This is exactly how business leaders do the stuff they do that keeps their business models from performing great results. They ditch their true responsibilities into the 'get-to-it-later' file. They ditch the work to investigate how to improve what they do, they ditch the reasons why they should do better work, and they ditch the truth about why they failed. In fact, rarely do any of them feel like they have failed. They all do the same as me, they believe all of the new roses I bought were a great new discovery! Business leaders do these silly kinds of justifiable things. We deny our ways as being incorrect, we blame something else for our losses and we protect this belief with all of our heart. I was doing this same thing with the loss of my roses. A truely successful gardener, Dale, was not listening to my excuses. He pretended to accept my denial. I made it clear to him that I was not about to change my disciplines. In fact, he likely noticed how I worked on myself to convert my lack of discipline into an adventure. I think I could hear his mind quietly say to himself, "silly fool."
Accountability is almost non-existent. In many cases, it is completely gone. Tons and tons of business leaders operate their work in the fashion that easily fits the shoes of non-existent accountability. I blamed the late frost for the death of my roses. A successful gardener, Dale, did not lose his roses in that same storm. He was also able to keep more of his income in his own hands than I was able to do. I had to pay twice for the success of my twelve roses! How competitive is that in the world of business? Think about these types of consequences. Think about the added cost to your business operations that could be socked away or working deeper on something more necessary. The edge to success is often times missed by the poor leadership we supply to our business models. We have skipped performing the correct levels of accountability. I failed my roses. They could not defend themselves. That was my job. I failed to do what I was supposed to do. I left the small list of notes on the clip board at the rear of my office files. I did not do my job. How many business leaders actually wear this kind of accountability on the employment responsibilities they carry for the workers they hire!? Think about these things when you head to your mouth to find your latest excuse. That clip board cannot do what needs to be done. Much the same as those roses could not protect what they needed to do.
Non-existent accountability...let's go to work on that one. Learn how to become more accountable in your business model. Quit blaming the frost. Quit blaming the economy. Many business models are winning very big right now! How is yours doing?
Until next time...
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