Numbers Don't Lie, People Do.

It Takes Courage To Win.

I have not always liked the numbers my business produces.  In fact, sometimes the numbers my models produce are numbers I do not want anyone else to see.  I would much rather parade around some numbers that are healthy and include some good record breaking results.  Those are numbers that are more fun to have others see.  It is kind of funny how we tend to analyze bad numbers by looking for ways to justify how they were made.  Bad numbers are simply, bad numbers.

Bad numbers do not lie.  If something is wrong, the numbers will reveal it.  They will not always reveal it in the way that might be best understood, but they will reveal something is wrong.  Numbers do not lie.  Numbers cannot think or respond to questions.  Numbers can only reveal what has been done.  The people who gather the numbers, now that is a different story.  They will lie about how those numbers and how they were made.  People will make wrong assumptions about how those bad numbers were made.  They will make wrong assessments about what caused the numbers to become bad.  People will actually lie to themselves about what kinds of things produced the wrong set of numbers their business produced.  People will lie.  Numbers don't lie, people do.

I cannot tell you how many times I have set foot in a retail operation and within minutes I have passed judgement about how that operation is performing, financially.  Retail has a specific set of procedures that must be followed in order to produce consistently good numbers.  It ain't rocket science.  It is slippery grounds, however, but not rocket science.  Retail can be an unruly beast if you allow it to dominate how you manage what you should or should not be managing.  The beastly attitude a retail operation can harbor has been known to quietly kill good ideas, interesting opportunities, clean efforts of control and as a result...that beastly attitude will produce numbers that are not something an owner would prefer to parade around his contemporaries for fanfare.  Retail can be very slippery territory for producing good numbers to reveal.  Like I said, I have been inside many retail operations and in seeing how they operate I can closely predict if their numbers are good or bad.  There are some very telling signs that reveal what is not being done correctly.  Some of those signs of wrong doings will always produce negative results.  Always.  When I see them, I already know what the numbers are fighting to overcome.  Likely, however, the leaders of those retail operations producing wrong numbers are continuing to lie to themselves about how their numbers are going wrong.  The numbers are not doing the lying.  The people are.

If your numbers are consistently producing unwanted results, your likely producing excuses for why they are doing what they are doing.  You are also producing some wrong assumptions about why those numbers are not falling on the financials the way you want them to fall.  In fact, sometimes the leaders will adjust how they process their internal accounting to justify where the numbers went wrong and as a result, they will actually place badly produced numbers to be revealed in a way that fits better to their desire.  They lie.  Leaders will lie about the sources of their bad numbers in an effort to cover what they did not do well.  They will tend to disguise how they did what they did not do.  It is much like adding gasoline to a small fire.  I have watched great leaders make this simple mistake.  It is astounding.  I have done it myself.  Changes need to be made.  The numbers are wrong, they are wrongly portrayed and they are arranged to disguise why they are wrong.  The numbers don't lie, people do.

When I enter a small retail operation I can usually tell if the leader is lying or not.  Ego control is usually the first telling sign.  If a leader has not been able to control their ego, that usually means they do not make good decisions with what their numbers reveal.  They usually make decisions based upon what makes them look good.  Numbers do not usually care if you look good or not.  In fact, numbers do not know how to make you look good or not.  Numbers only reveal what your operation has done.  That's it.  Numbers cannot think.  They cannot go to the meetings with you and sit at the table to describe how you should have been treating them.  They cannot produce a lie.  They do not know how to do that stuff.  Numbers do not have the ability to manage emotional decisions.  Numbers cannot make decisions.  Numbers do not drive what you do or how you decide what to do.  They only reveal what you have done and what kinds of decisions you have made.  Numbers show up after you make the decisions you felt you needed to make.  When I enter a small retail operation, this is exactly what I am looking to find.  Who knows the numbers, how are they gathered and in what ways do they regularly use those numbers to make the decisions in their business model?  Big holes will surface here, immediately, if the model is struggling.  I usually do not need to look any further.  I already have my answer.  The business model is not producing good numbers.  Period.  Lie all you want, this is where it begins.

Customers Just Seem To Piss Me Off!

A couple of days ago an elderly, frail lady was standing next to the sales counter waiting for the couple that brought her into the retail store.  The couple that brought her into our business model was still walking around the retail store gathering a few things to purchase.  Her health was obviously too challenged to do too much walking around in the large store so she stood by the sales check-out counter to wait for the folks she was traveling with.  She seemed to be along for the ride.

I was chatting with another sales associate behind the counter about some new stuff we were working on for the recently introduced delivery program our store was managing to build.  While we were chatting about some mechanics on the delivery plan, we started to chat with the elderly lady standing nearby.  She was kind of 'sour' in her personality.  We chatted with her, but on a very guarded note.  It was also obvious that she had a pretty good chip on her shoulder about life in general.  Her personality was not a smooth one.  It was kind of rough around the edges.  During that conversation it looked like the couple she was waiting for was just about done gathering the stuff they came in to purchase.  They made a pass by the sales counter and told her they were almost done.  She rolled her eyes in reply.

It was just about then that she moved closer to the sales counter next to us and picked up a small inexpensive item sitting on the sales counter.  We often place new or special priced small items on the sales counter for consumer attention.  She spotted one of those small items and said it looked interesting.  She picked it up just about the same time her couple was coming around the corner and headed to our area to ring up what they they gathered to buy.  As the other couple approached the sales counter she said to us, "I am going to put this into my pocket."  And she did.  The other couple approaching us could not see her 'pocket' move nor hear her say what she said.  It was out of their sight and range when she did it.  I was puzzled and so was the sales associate I was standing with.  In fact, we both took a double take look at each other the minute she said what she said and did what she did.  My eye brows were standing straight up.  Nobody said anything.

As the other couple came up to the sales counter with the items they were getting ready to purchase, she said, "I am leaving now.  Good bye."  She turned and went out the door.  The sales associate and I were standing there staring at each other in complete shock.  We were stunned motionless.  Out of nowhere we started to laugh uncontrollably.  I was shaking my head.  He was trying to hold back his laughter as the couple placed their items onto the sales counter to check out.  I picked up one of the items the elderly lady took out of the store and asked the couple if they would like to add it to their list of purchases.  They said, "No."  The both of us were fighting to stop laughing so visibly.  The couple now at the counter thought we were being a bit silly.  They made their purchase and I am sure they wondered what was wrong with us.  I am sure they chatted about our laughter as they walked through the parking lot to go back to their vehicle.

Once they left the store we both looked straight at each other and burst out in full laughter.  We had many great phrases we began sharing with each other about the event that just took place.  He said, "Wow, at least she is an honest thief!"  I said, "Hey, I like her plan.  It has a lot of great mechanics!  Her timing is perfect.  She is a real pro!"  He said, "We got 'had' by a 95-year-old thief!"  "She is not nearly as stupid as she pretended to be," he continued.  He said, "I can just see the headlines now, clerk jumps 95-year-old lady at the store and accuses her of stealing a two dollar item from the sales counter right in front of him!"  We had many other great lines we shared with each other as we laughed uncontrollably.  It was a different experience.  We live in interesting times.  This time, the customer did something wrong that did not piss us off.  It made us laugh.  We each put a buck into the register and moved on.  It was worth the entertainment.

How many times does a customer do something that pisses you off?  How many times do you blame the customer for the challenges they bring to your desk?  How many times do you blow off a mad customer because you are tired of hearing that stuff?  How many times do you ignore what the customers say and suggest?  How many times do you try to avoid chatting with a customer who is complaining about something your business did or did not do?  How many times do you wish your customers would just buy the stuff you sell and get lost?  How many times do you find you try to avoid spending extra time with the customers you serve?  Do you find you do not have time for your customers?  Do you roll your eyes when one of your least favorite customers comes into your store?  Do you ask someone else to go help a customer you do not like?  Do you catch yourself trying to avoid some of the customers your business serves?  Do you have a 'black list' in your mind of the customers you hate to do business with?  Do customers just seem to piss you off?

Watch This...What Is So Private About Steve Jobs Arrogance?

We took my mother to a birthday dinner the other night.  We had a long list of things to do.  We had a good time and ended the evening on a good and early note.  She did invite us over to watch the Steve Jobs interviews on the CBS program 60 Minutes.  We declined that event.  My wife and I had already seen all of the CBS interviews with Steve Jobs on line with our computer.  When seven o'clock in the evening came around, the time it aired on television, we were attending an online church service with Dr. Ed Young, Sr. at The Winning Walk.  Thanks to people like Steve Jobs we can move our information around in different ways than ever before.  We no longer need to wait for television to give us the 'scoop' when they determine they want to share it with us.  We can go get the 'scoop' in our own time schedules.

I used the mouse on my computer to navigate the online commands for watching the interviews with Steve Jobs.  Thanks Steve, for the idea of using a mouse!  I am a terrible typist.

What an arrogant fool, however.  Steve Jobs, like so many people in this world, could have beaten his cancer issues.  He had the means to have it removed when it was tiny, first detected and able to be small enough to successfully take it out of his body completely.  Steve Jobs could still be here today if it were not for his mind type of unusual arrogance.  I call this effect the "David Theory."  I have mentioned the "David Theory" in some of my posts in the past.  I am sure this theory has an official name out there in the world of psychology.  I gave it my own name when I discovered its effects a long time ago.  I nicknamed it the "David Theory."  We will get to that story, next.  However, first we must chit chat a little bit about Steve Jobs and the idea of transparency.

Yesterday I wrote a post about transparency.  I wrote about some stuff that becomes a gray area in revealing what ought not to be revealed.  I wrote about the idea of comparing privacy versus transparency.  Steve Jobs felt compelled to tell the story about his long, non-relationship with his biological father.  He also felt compelled to tell how he personally felt about that private relationship.  Why did he share that information with the general public, who has no business knowing that stuff?

Steve Jobs biological father has no business being in my personal line of informational sight.  Steve Jobs father is not and should not be a part of my life travels.  His father is a complete non-issue in my life movements.  Steve placed him there rudely.  He assumed that revealing this failed relationship was something I needed to know.  He included it in the interviews he did about his business life.  He got real transparent about that private issue.  We have come to believe that technology should reveal the private stuff we all carry in the lives we travel.  Steve missed this error.  Some discretion, some restraint needs to be exercised about the stuff that is private to us all.  Every single one of us has some private stuff in our lives that has no business being made public.  We are losing the respect for privacy.  I believe the world of technology is helping to increase that movement to destroy our desire to keep some stuff private.  Steve was one of the key catalyst that profited greatly from that movement.

Steve Jobs stands in a long line of influential people whom have infused a pattern of 'transparency beliefs' that has tilted the opinion that 'all is fair' in the world of personal exposure.  Steve comes from the information sector, a key driver in the age of information, the technology machine that believes in the right to gather all the information you can.  Steve's influence in that sector was huge!  Yet in his bigger than life influence, I discovered something interesting about Steve Jobs in those interviews.  He is just as much the arrogant fool I had witnessed in the previous experiences I have had about reading how he managed the relationships with the people in his private and business life.  I already knew about his rudeness from previous stories written about him.  Steve walked right over the top of people, purposely.  He admits that it was not pretty stuff.  That does not excuse it.  Steve admits that he did not just walk on people, he crushed them with pleasure.  The examples are not hard to find.  He included some of the best ones in his interviews.

Steve Jobs arrogance was high on the charts of life.  That is the truth.  At least he admitted it.  It cost him his life, however.  It was one of the best traits for him to build the enormous financial life he constructed.  It was also the trait that took him away from living that life.  Ask his children this question...would they rather have him or the money still remaining on this earth?  You know what they would choose.  Steve's arrogance took that away from them.  This is exactly what 'wrong' transparency does.  It creates a sense of exposure that does not need to be reported.  It drives a rudeness through the thoughts of millions of people.  It fosters an 'ugly' that we all use to chip away from the few beautiful characteristics we each possess.  Steve Jobs used the wrong personality traits to decide to ignore his growing cancer.  He did so against the advice of some really informed experts and professionals.  He tried to carve out new ideas for untested treatments for cancer control instead of using the 'carving out correctly method' and removing it completely when it was small and doable.  It cost his children their dad.  I do not see how they were tops on his chart of consideration.  This is a prime example of the "David Theory."

Privacy works wonders in this area of life.  Most reading this post might feel a bit uncomfortable about reading this kind of slant about Steve Jobs.  Unfortunately, Steve placed it into his book for you to read, first hand.  He just wants you to pay for this private information in another way.  He never stopped marketing himself.  He has passed on and is still marketing himself.  He arranged to have his book released after his death.  Think about it.  Do not get caught up in the menagerie of information spills.  Some stuff is better left alone.  I am violating that process right now in my own post.  It is such a great and catastrophic example, why not?

Steve allowed his arrogance to forget about restraint.  I happen to be doing the same thing right now.  He was successful in the business world and we tend to believe that the manageability of his personal life was excellent, too.  It was not.  He failed just like his biological father failed.  He was too weak inside to admit he could have worked on fixing that relationship.  He had the opportunity to begin that work and skipped right past it.  He described in great detail how he skipped making that move.  If it was a part of his business plan, he would have fixed it in a heart beat.  Unfortunately, it had nothing to do with his business life.  Therefore, it was not high enough up on the chart of importance.  Steve tells the truth, why can't we?  He failed in family life.  He is gone when they need him the most.

I saw a television commercial the other day.  It shows a grandfather reaching out to hug a "just-learning-to-walk-child" coming to him.  Only to see that the grandfather was a 'mirage image' that the small child walked right through because the grandfather had passed on.  Ironically, it was a cancer commercial.  It was trying to wake us all up about how important other things in life are, like family respect.  What a great example of the "David Theory."

Page two.

Transparency, What Should I Keep Secret?

High Speed Internet

When the information age began, we called it the 'new' economy.  It has lived up to that name.  It has become the 'bulk' economy.  We live in the 'bulk' age of information.  Information comes in 'bulks.'  Google anything in your search line and discover a long list of information about that subject.  Information is everywhere, on anything with variety.  We have discovered how to find anything about everything.  There is no true transparency because nothing is hidden anymore.  There are no secrets.

If you want to buy a car, just search for what the manufacturer spent to make it.  You can search long and hard enough to find those facts.  They are in cyberspace.  They can be accessed if you know how to do it.  What's more, it is not that hard to do anymore.  You can spend an afternoon gathering real information about how much your car cost to land on the dealerships floor in your home town.  Now you know what they paid for it.  When you go in to purchase it, you have some good information to use as you negotiate the price you want to pay when you consider buying it.  Everything is transparent, if you want it to be.

We can dig up the pattern of things anyone has done in their lives if we want to find out about who they really are.  Their life records are floating about in cyberspace.  If they have a group of people following them around to report what they are doing right now, you can see what they ate at the last food joint they attended.  I do not necessarily care about what some famous person ate today, but millions do!  You might even be able to see the type of forks they used, too!  I am not being funny.  It is true.

Transparency is the rule.  We live in a transparent age.  We communicate with our children more now than we ever did in the past.  We have instant messaging.  They can live and work on the other side of the world and know exactly what we are doing in the local grocery store, right now.  So much more is available to easily share than ever before.  We have become an extremely transparent society.  Dirty laundry is now common to be seen in the general public's view.  We, as a society, have come to believe this is alright to see.  We want our politicians to be more transparent.  We want our boss to become more transparent.  We want our investment managers to become more transparent.  We want our parents to become more transparent.  We want our children to become more transparent.  We want our teachers to become more transparent.  We want our neighbors to become more transparent.  We want our law officers to become more transparent.  We want our doctors to become more transparent.  We want our celebrities to become more transparent.  We have become junkies to the idea of promoting more transparency.  Technology delivered this ability right straight to our front doors.  The 'new' economy is all about loads of information, coming quickly and even mobile in hand-held, almost wrist watch ways.  We have become transparent junkies.

We want the 'low-down' on everything!  We send what we find to our sphere of influence as quickly as we can find the 'news' about someone or something.  We want so much to be recognized for 'discovering' this information.  It is much like we are involved in a race to pass on the 'low-down' about everything we can find that will 'shock' our friends.  A new song, a new political fault, a 'failed' major attempt, a sporting event 'upset', a new fashion 'hit', a great management discovery and a flashing corporate growth pattern...we want to be the 'first' to report what we have found.  Information has become one of the best ways to gain a popularity badge!  I am guilty of playing that process.  I stand next to hundreds of people every single day who are playing that very same game.  Transparency is king.

That begs the question, what should we keep secret?  Furthermore, how do we keep what needs to be kept secret...secret?

I have a neighbor who is having some specific challenges with one of their children.  They are faced with some hard decisions about some social ills that each of us have had to deal with at one time or another.  How should they manage that bit of dirty laundry when it has become so public after some friends that child has that have openly shared what is going on.  Nothing they have done is illegal.  Nothing they have done is abusive.  However, their private lives and the challenges they are managing are now public affairs.  An argument from a parent with one of their teenage children has gone public.  Why?  Because it can and more importantly, we may be losing the 'art' of managing transparency correctly.  With the growth of our information age, we might be jeopardizing the need to keep some things private.  Not everything needs to be transparent.

I own a business.  It is private.  It has no partnerships.  It does not serve and manage public monies.  My income from that endeavor is nobodies business.  I choose to keep it private.  I should have the right to protect that effort.  Some believe I need to be more transparent about what I make in that endeavor.  I do not agree.  Some things need to remain private.

Welcome To Leadership, It Always Comes With A Price.

Leaders Are Like Little League Coaches, They Must  Endure The Price.

Experience is overrated.  I know it takes a lot of bloody noses to learn how to do some things very well.  Some of us are slower learners than others.  I know that, too.  Some of the best lessons we learn in life come from the worst experiences we have endured.  Some of the worst experiences we endure take a few times for us to get it down correctly.  At the end of this process we become experienced, worn out, but experienced.  That's why experience can sometimes be overrated.  Welcome to leadership.  It always comes with a price.

The harsh realities teach us a lot about how to do some things better.  Sometimes we become better parents, better coaches or better business owners from the terrible failures we produced in our life.  Our trail of failures can come littered with lessons that are well learned.  The mess we made of the lessons we learned can be made up of life long wounds.  That is why experience can be overrated.  The prices we paid to get it figured out may be with us forever.  Welcome to leadership.  It always comes with a price.

Some of the best leaders in this world have endured many perfect storms.  Those storms have managed to damage bits and pieces of the life trail those leaders performed.  The bloody noses they discovered while getting their life lessons have left a trail of obvious wounds.  Sometimes those wounds never seem to heal.  One thing is for sure, those leaders know what to do correctly the next time that kind of decision reaches the surface again.  Those leaders carry a lot more wisdom after the damage gets delivered from the decisions they failed to make properly the first time around.  We become a lot smarter when we try to fix how the bleeding started.  Welcome to leadership.  It always comes with a price.

Hindsight is 20/20.  We know that.  We also know how to see what we should have done when our decisions find a bloody nose result.  'Oops' usually does not cut it when a leader makes a terrible mistake.  Leaders must prepare for a larger line of criticism for the mistakes they deliver.  The expectations we place on leaders are higher.  We hold our leaders to some higher standards than we are willing to lay out for ourselves.  We give our own mistakes a lot more leeway than those made by the leaders we meet.  We expect our leaders to know more, to do more, to perform better and certainly to succeed more often.  We hold our leaders to higher standards than we are willing to perform ourselves.  It comes natural.  Welcome to leadership.  It always comes with a price.

If blame is to occur, the leader will likely learn how to wear it.  That is what leaders do.  They wear the blame.  They may not produce the ill that caused the blame to surface, but instead, they are often held responsible for not preventing the ill to arrive.  In the end it is the leaders fault.  The leader sitting in the leadership chair will be the one who carries the blame for the bloody noses we must endure.  That is exactly how leadership works.  Welcome to leadership, it's more than business.  It is life.

I watched a mother in a grocery store a while back have an episode with her young boy.  At that time, she was his leader.  Unfortunately, that episode did not reveal this truth.  The boy was in control and driving the bus with his terrible temper tantrum.  I could see many faces in the crowd that wanted the mother to smack the boy 'up side the head.'  He was rude, selfish, out of control and wrong.  His mother was paying the price.  She was getting a serious lesson on leadership.  Her bloody nose was growing.  She was growing more embarrassed while the boy increased how he was lashing out.  I could see the eyes of the other people standing around this scene.  They were blaming the leader.  They wanted to say, "Do something!  Take control!"  Welcome to leadership.  It always comes with a price.

Accepting The Truth Is The First Step To Repair

Accepting The Truth Is The First Step To Repair

Sixteen years ago I retired.  I had finished saving my furniture store business from failure.  It is funny what you will forget.  Time will move past those troubled days and they will fade away from your memory.  That furniture store owned some properties, some rentals, some fair assets and a lot of inventory.  It had money in the bank and no payments.  However, I had learned how to produce some side income in two small ventures.  Those small ventures did not require the same full and demanding time requirement that my furniture store operation delivered.  I had spent the last fifteen years of my furniture store ownership recovering from a near bankruptcy 'close call' in that business.  I had just completed a grueling 15-year process of corrections in my operational efforts with that business model.  I was tired and worn out.  When it became solvent, I stepped aside.  I no longer liked what it represented.  That was sixteen years ago.

I still own 25 percent of that business model.  The balance of ownership went to the folks that are running that model to this day, successfully.  My wife works there two days per week.  It is a lot smaller operation than it was during the days when I operated it.  It is scaled down tremendously, but still solvent.  I make absolutely no decisions in that business model.  According to Robert Kiyosaki, the author of "Rich Dad Poor Dad", I am a true business 'owner.'  A true business owner is someone who owns the business but does not need to go to work to make it happen.  Compare that to the person who is self-employed.  Self-employed is someone who owns the business but needs to show up to make it run.  That is how my relationship works with that furniture store operation, at least 25 percent of it.  It remains open and flopping along in this terrible set of economic times.  It still does not interest me.  Digging it out of bankruptcy was a big task.  It wore me out mentally and physically.  It was a very trying process.  Those fifteen years seemed more like 50 years.  When you get behind your finances as deep as I had gotten  it takes a very long time to correct the wrongs and recover from their damage.  In my case, it took fifteen years to complete that recovery.  The process of recovery also took my good spirits away.  It happens.

Since that time, I have been hired twice to help save a business model from failure.  Both times, we were successful in that process.  Each time I do this kind of recovery work, it does not get any easier.  Each business model comes with a separate set of reasons why they were failing to survive.  However, the work needing to be done to help them correct their paths is all the same.  Profits must be generated and money delays must be managed carefully while the correction begins its work.  Each recovering business model must change the way they are doing their business.  Most of those changes come from the top.  The top leadership must make the largest emotional change of effort.  The leadership is doing a lot of stuff wrong.  The leadership is where the problems began, where they are protected and where they need to be altered.  In both of my efforts to repair those failing business models, the person who hired me is the one who needs to be changed.  Try that one on for size!

The only way this kind of work can be effective is for the change agent, me in these cases, needs to be extremely patient in the slowness to change that will occur.  Patience is the key.  Patience will win long term if the work for change is set up correctly.  Stepping on the gas will wreck the ship.  Quietly turn the steering wheel once in awhile will be the better move.  Treat the business model like a really large ship, do not try to turn it around quickly.  You will tip it over.  Go slowly.  You want an effective recovery, not a failed continuation.  Recovery takes a long, long time.

If you are trying to recover from a failing business model, get yourself prepared to spend a lot of hours, a lot of days, a lot of weeks and a lot of months going slower than a turtle.  It takes a long time to make the right things happen that will help your efforts work well for the failing model.  Do not expect quick recovery to occur.  It does not happen that way.  Do not tease yourself into believing that foolish stuff.  The mess the business is in is usually caused by some seriously wrong patterns that are deeply protected by the leadership that got it in that wrong position in the first place.  A failing business model is not an accident.  A failing business model is the by-product of a complete series of leadership wrongs that are stacked on top of each other hidden from the view of its leadership.  Flipping a mirror in front of those failed leaders is not an easy task.  They protect their views deeply.  They will protect those views right to the end of bankruptcy if you allow them to do so.  Many do.  If your business model is struggling to survive, I can bet all of my ownership on the fact that your leadership is somewhere near the roots to the problems your model is experiencing.  In all three of my personal efforts to help struggling business models recover from near failure, the leadership was the key blame.  All three cases.

If you desire to correct what is going wrong with your business model, you are agreeing to correct your ways of operation.  Those ways are the ways you direct your operations to run.  You are going to correct you.  It ain't your business model that is at fault, it is you.  You are likely the reason why failure is lurking.  The next question is this, how well do you like me now?  Get over it and you can learn how to mend what you are doing wrong.  I did.  It is now something that I specialize in doing.  I fix broken business models.  I do that by fixing the wrong leadership that is occurring.  I am not a genius nor someone who is great at building a great business model.  However, I am very patient and know the truth.  I accept the work that needs to be done.  I know the leadership needs to be modified.  I accept that fact and begin making the adjustments in their style with little tiny bites.  If you are one of those leaders who is in my cross hairs I will slowly begin to irritate you.  I will begin to irritate you into making the moves you need to be making.  You will not like me very much.

Give Me An Experience, I Will Give You My Business

These are some tough times.  The business of business is difficult to work profitably.  Some of the brighter people in this world expect a lot of sectors in our society to face as many as ten more years of recovery before they return to the once robust economy they enjoyed a few years ago.  Some sectors will be an economic challenge for a long time.

I am in the process of wrapping up the marriage of one of my daughters.  We are completing that great event later today.  Last night was the rehearsal dinner.  Today, we head over to the rented facility and complete the decorations for the final event.  This process has been a good adventure.  It began its trail nearly nine months ago when they made the original announcement.  There is a lot of business to be done in preparing for a fair sized wedding.  It is not a small purchase.  The business of marriage is a big business.  Even the simple ones have a fair sized price tag.  It is fun being the person who I am when a new experience shows me how others do business.  The marriage business knows how to attract a good experience.  It works hard on pleasing the bride.

There was a moment last night at the rehearsal dinner that I discovered a facility that had no lack for business.  Three other wedding and rehearsal dinners were in process on the grounds of this famous restaurant.  Counting our small group of 20, they had a good night.  One of the wedding groups I saw last night had about 150 people outside in the open-sided event tent on the grounds.  The facility includes several buildings, a large garden area, and two restaurants.  All places were packed last night.  Both restaurants on the grounds also serve the general public with food and spirits.  They have figured out how to blend the two business services into one big happy family.  It was a good event, a good meal, and great service.  It was the happening place to be on a Friday night.

There was no sign of a recession in this place last night.  They may have served at least 450 people last night.  Each one a paying customer.  I doubt the average ticket was less than $20 per person.  I suspect it might have been at least a twenty thousand dollar night.  Not bad for a funky restaurant business out in the country.

If you own a small bagel shop, these kind of numbers may wick you off.  When my daughter selected this place to host the wedding and the rehearsal dinner, she was told they were booked in advance for four months.  That was seven months ago.  They still look to me like they are holding their own ground in the business of hosting wedding events.  It is obviously one of their specialties.

So many good ideas float around a business that has its capacity met on a regular basis.  This place does not seem to have any trouble filling up its doors with a full capacity crowd.  It had them standing in line, waiting to get in.  They did not seem frustrated with the length of the wait.  No sign of a bad economy here!

If you have read enough of my posts you will know by now that I do not believe in forming excuses to support a low level of income volume for the mere purpose of going along with being  part of the poor economic times we are facing.  I do not believe anyone needs to accept low production during tough economic times.  This business last night is my kind of business.  They do not accept the trappings a poor economy provides.  They, instead, violate how everything must slow down.  They have learned how to speed up during tough times.  What is your excuse?

This business model last night is obviously expanding its parking lot right now.  They have a current crew getting prepared to begin work on a neighboring plot to add paved parking for their increased guests.  No sign of a recession here.  The place was congested properly, filled comfortably and processed politely.  The complete staff handled 'busy' with a great deal of enthusiasm.  Enthusiasm was heavily encouraged.  Elbow deep in people to serve was not a problem, it was a joy.  The help, the movement to serve, the quickness in request response was well trained.  The patrons could easily carry on with their evening out and enjoy the experience without ever wondering why their request for more coffee had not arrived yet.  It was already on their table as if the servers were standing ten feet away to retrieve it when the request was made.  Spot on service.  No problems, all solutions.

I had fun.  Our section had fun.  The people I could see in my regional view were having fun.  All I could see was a special place, with special surroundings and special people serving the patrons that were out for the night looking for a good experience.  They found where that experience could happen.  It was worth waiting in line to enjoy.  Does this kind of patron response happen in your business model?  Apparently, it is still happening somewhere.  Why not your place of business?

Let's Make Some New Noise In Our Business

Help Improve Educational Opportunities!

I actually liked the last post.  During the run of writing things down for that post, an idea popped up that seemed interesting.  The post was covering the idea to make some noise in our business model.  There are three types of noises to make; a lot of noise, a loud noise or a cool noise.  During the description of defining how to make noise in a business model we actually described a new idea that I want to pursue.  In that description I used the phrase, "Link Up With Learning."  It has the tone of being something worthwhile to market well.  For those who do not do this kind of thing in their business model, let's examine how to take this idea to the next level.  Let's produce a plan to begin making some new noise in our business model.

We will try to concentrate on making a 'cool' noise in our model.  Remember, money works by showing up to the places that provide solutions.  We want to build our business model next to a lot of good solutions.  While we are working to improve how we do our business work, we will introduce a pattern of effort to help provide some new solutions for the need to improve better education in our area.  We will begin our marketing work to include steps that will help the less fortunate receive a better educational opportunity.  Even though it is true that when the student is ready, the teacher appears.  It still remains that many young students in our world do not have the means to capture all of the best tools education can offer.  Many young children get an early start on the wrong foot and become left out from the education process.  This pattern begins early and unfortunately carries on to the future.  It eventually becomes a pattern that produces a large unwanted cost to our tax paying society.  The children that fall behind early may never catch up.  The ones who do not catch up become the ones that drop out of the education process.  In some areas, that means about 25% of the children will not finish their basic education.  Ladies and gentlemen, that means you the tax payer will eventually need to supply those people with the basic needs to survive on poverty.  It will be your pocket that will need to open open up to pay for that supply.  Whether you like it or not, you are going to pay for it.  You already are.

Now I cannot guarantee that your tax obligations will shrink if you find a way to reduce this costly mess.  However, I can assure you that it will be good for business and good for the ones you help to improve.

Let's give it a whirl.  First of all, we need to be the catalyst for this big plan.  We do not need to carry the whole load, however.  In fact, as a small business we cannot carry the full load.  It is not in the cards.  The economy of scale refuses to allow us to sink enough money into this project to make it work well.  As a result, we need to focus on becoming the catalyst, the hub, the center of motivation for this whole movement to improve educational opportunities for the less fortunate.  We can build an army of many business models that are part of the move to help others "Link Up With Learning."

Sit down and write a very simple plan.  Make sure it fits on one page.  One page only.  Design the plan to be titled, "Link Up With Learning."  Make sure that every other business model who joins in uses that same title..."Link Up With Learning."  In that plan, have them do some kind of method to select five young students to help improve their educational opportunities.  Make sure everyone who selects five students in their region titles that effort as "Help Find Five To Fix."  Part of the plan must include working with the school districts to see where they need your business help.  The educators know where the most help is needed.  They also know how that help needs to be applied.  Trust them.  Do what they suggest.  Make sure they know that eventually media will be watching what all of you are doing to improve the opportunity for five selected students that are part of your program of educational help.  Knowing that media will arrive somewhere in the process will help to keep the process honest.  Your business does not need a black eye.  Let's put an alligator on the front door step of this effort, O.K.?  It is an interesting world, let's make sure we keep your efforts on the clean and narrow lines of positive movements.  Always exercise caution in your business affairs...especially when you are giving.

"Help Find Five To Fix."  That will be the next thing that each business needs to do in their efforts to join in.  Start the process. Write a one page plan to help where you want to help.  Meet with the educators in your region and find out where you can help make what they do become more effective.  Get started with this effort and title it "Link Up With Learning."  As you work with the educators, have them select the five most needed people you can help.  Make a short plan to do what needs to be done and contribute some of your time and money to help those five improve their chances to learn more.  Feature those five children in your marketing plans and encourage them and their families to participate in the learning improvement efforts.  Be smart, be caring and serve what needs to be served.  Become a great role model in this effort.  "Help Find Five To Fix."

It might be as simple as providing these five children with the proper school materials to do the work they do at school.  It might be as simple as making sure those five children have the proper nutrition when they arrive to school.  It does not need to be some grand contribution.  Sometimes it is the simple things that count the most.  Come on, give a hand.  You can afford to do something little like this.  Help those five kids get a better shot at learning more.  Once you achieve that step, encourage other business models in your area to do the same.  You are the catalyst for a new business movement.  You can make sure you make a difference to five kids in your area.  You need them to learn more.  Help them get a better shot at learning more.  There are plenty of really smart people out there that know what needs to be done.  You do not need to figure that part out.  You have a business to run.  Just find a way to help make what needs to be done for the five you selected to help.  You have started the "Link Up With Learning" and now have begun to help the five you found to help, "Help Find Five To Fix."

Once you get this thing started, it will grow through some challenging stuff.  Overcome them.  Then work it into something good for those five you are working to help.  Once that becomes established as a pattern of good work, call up a couple of other business owners you know and encourage them to "Link Up With Learning."  Do not make the phrase a business name, however.  It does not need to become a society business model.  Trust me.  Use only the marketing name as the key component for recognition.  Keep the rest of the project out there in space.  We have way too many other things to do that need our time and money.  We do not need another set of governing agencies, another business model nor another set of limiting rules.  We just need a connection based idea that will offer some small pockets of a little help.  That's it.

After you introduce another business into the process, have them write a single page business plan for how they want to "Link Up With Learning."  Introduce them to the educators that helped you.  Now go away and allow that new business partner in this effort do what they want to do to help.  Go find another one to introduce.  Become the catalyst.  Work with your five kids and help them to improve their educational opportunities.  The other business models will work with their five to help them improve their educational opportunities.  All you need to do is introduce more business models into the "Link Up With Learning" process.  Encourage the other involved business models to do the same.  Some will, some won't.  Do not worry about it.  Do your five.

We Have A Right To Be Heard, How Is That Going For You?

The Popular Post, "The Right To Speak."

A few months ago I posted a piece about having the right to speak.  It has become one of the top posts of this blog.  Even though it is now parked in its resting place within the older post archives, it gets a lot of attention.  It has finished in the number one spot three months in a row.  Readers out there are looking for material in a post that has the ability to help them find a way to become better heard.  Business owners are curious to find better ways to be heard.  I do not blame them.  The real trick is to find ways your business model gets heard in the marketplace.  How does your business model make enough noise in the consumer marketplace to become busier than it can handle?  How can business owners make that happen?

That old post covered the subject on making sure we recognize that our business model was given a right to be heard.  What kind of noise is it making?  How loud is that noise?

For the hundreds of business owners who read that older post every month, how well have you been able to shake down how your business model speaks to its customers?  Is your business model making some better noise?  Have you improved how that noise is being heard?  You have a right to make a lot of noise, how well are you doing with that right?  Is your business increasing the noise it makes or is it still running silently?

Remember, your business model has a life.  You are the director of how it lives.  The things you do to help your business model make its noise are the things that help your model live the way you want it to live.  That older post covered how the markets move towards the business models that make the most noise, the loudest noise and the coolest noise.  Is your business model doing one of these three things?  If you are deficient in all three of these areas you are not finding very many consumers communicate with how your business does what it does.  The more you get your customers to communicate with your business model, the more you will enjoy a lot of trade.  What you help your business model say will greatly determine how much volume it will eventually produce.  With regards to your business model, do not be afraid of speaking your mind.  Learn how to get your business model to be heard.  Make some noise.  Try to select one of the three ways you can be heard and go with the things that will help your model perform that desire.  You can make a lot of noise, you can make the loudest noise or you can make the coolest noise.  Decide which one you want to do.  Then begin doing the things that will help that kind of noise become alive.  You are given the right to speak.  Get going and start making some noise.

In that older post we talked about the size and position of your audience.  If you plan to improve the noise your business makes, we need to determine who is listening.  We need to find out who wants to hear your noise.  How you make the noise you decide to make will be greatly supported when we find the right listeners.  If you speak a loud noise about auto repair, the ladies who want fashionable footwear will not be listening to any kind of noise you decide to make.  Scream all you want, scream continuously for months on end, make the noise the most interesting noise they have ever heard...they still do not care about your auto repair business.  Be aware of this truth.  However, when she is headed for town to check out a great shoe sale and her vehicle dies from some electronic malfunction, does she know what your business can say?  When her car dies, what kind of noise is going through her head?  Is she hearing dealership, or you?  Who has been making the loudest noise in the hallways of her mind?  How has been making the most noise in the hallways of her mind?  Who has been making the coolest noise in the hallways of her mind?  That is what she hears when her car dies.  She follows the noise that speaks the best.  Trust me, it ain't the yellow pages that makes the most effective noise.  You need to learn how to make the right noises, in the right ways, with the right people.  Make sure your business model is being heard.  Find your audience.  Who is listening?

That older post covered how to find the audience and to determine how to make the right kind of noise with them.  In order to be heard, we need to make sure we know who is listening and why they need to listen to our noise.  The noise our business makes will determine how well they are listening.  The audience will decide if our noise is being heard.  Pay close attention to that process.

That older post also covered the subject of finding the best ways to connect with the audience.  Are we connecting with the audience in the ways they use to hear us?  How does the audience hear us?  There is a lot of noise out there in the world.  How are they able to hear us above all of that noise?  You might need to do some strategic thinking about how your business noise will be heard above all of the other group noises out there in the world.  You are competing with a lot of other noises.  How can they best hear your business noise?

Do not skip around this issue.  You need to get serious about some strategic planning.  You need to hurt your brain a little bit and do some serious thinking.  I hate that crap.  However, it is vitally important and it will help you find how to make the most effective noise.  Get serious about doing some strategic planning.  Study how that process works.  If you have never done any strategic planning in the past, so what.  Do it now.  Just because you do not know how to do some strategic planning is no excuse for skipping the importance it carries.  It is your business model, you are holding the steering wheel and the direction it is going is your fault.  Learn how to use the steering wheel better.  Quit taking short cuts on the road to success.  They do not work well.  You might need to find a better GPS system.  The one you are currently using is not making the right kind of noise, as often as it should in the way it can be heard the most.  Chuck it out of the window.  Turn the business steering wheel into a new direction.  Let's learn how to make our business noise be heard.  Strategic planning will help us to develop what we should be doing that gets the most attention.  Do not skip around this issue.  You need to get serious about some strategic planning.

What Does Business Success Look Like?

I have mentioned Albert Gray before in one of my previous posts.  He is the famous author of, "The Common Denominator Of Success."  One phrase in his book became known around the world as the best piece of description for why the successful performers do so well what they do.  You can easily Google a search for Albert Gray and get thousands of sights that describe the power of his book.  I own a few copies myself.  I have read the pamphlet many times.  It is historic reading.  I, like thousands of others, recommend it.

Although much has been written about the common denominator and that famous phrase, "Successful people formed the habit of doing things that failures don't like to do," has become the dominate piece Albert Gray wrote.  However, the first two paragraphs of his book rate higher in my opinion than that famous phrase.  The words in those first two paragraphs say it better.  Those words describe why Albert was searching for what success really looked like.  Unfortunately, he got lost in his search to find what success looked like.  He found one of the key reasons instead.  The reason 'why to find the what' got lost in his original search when he found and shared one of the key answers he discovered along the way.  It is his "why" that lead Albert Gray to the famous phrase in this book, which is how he eventually delivered the key 'what.'  Albert Gray asked, "why."  We now read and see one of the key 'whats' that are required to become successful.  Just do the things failures do not like to do.  It is easy to see this truth.  Ask yourself the question, "What kind of things did I not do yesterday because I do not like to do them?"  Those are exactly the kind of things successful people do anyway.  It is never about what they like to do.  It is always about what they are able to bring themselves to do, especially when they do not want to.

The first two paragraphs are developed by Albert Gray because his 'why' was big enough to search deeper into the reasons for success.  Here is how Albert Gray began the book with those two paragraphs.


“Several years ago I was brought face to face with the very disturbing realization that I 
was trying to supervise and direct the efforts of a large number of people who were trying 
to achieve success, without knowing myself what the secret of success really was.  And 
that, naturally, brought me face to face with the further realization that regardless of what 
other knowledge I might have brought to my job, I was definitely lacking in the most 
important knowledge of all. 
   
Of course, like most of us, I had been brought up on the popular belief that the secret of 
success is hard work, but I had seen so many people work hard without succeeding and 
so many people succeed without working hard that I had become convinced that hard 
work was not the real secret, even though in most cases it might be one of the 
requirements."

The first two paragraphs tell a better story.  So many business leaders manage their models every single day without knowing what success really looks like.  Albert Gray was spot on in his assessment about not knowing what success really looks like.  That message in the first two paragraphs of his book is larger than the one he made famous in the popular phrase he penned which has now been heard all around the world.  The truth still remains, most business leaders do not know what success looks like.  Albert Gray told us how to do it.  He shared with us how we can produce success.  He did not tell us what it looked like.  Albert Gray shared with us one of the key secrets to success, not what success looks like.

I still submit that most business leaders fail to know what success looks like.  That is the key reason why they fail to succeed.  They have no idea how to do the things they do not know they need to know.  They lead their business models through the life of that business without truly knowing what success looks like.  They have been told what success can be.  They have also been told what needs to be done to be successful.  The fact still remains, most are not yet successful.  They have been told how to succeed, what needs to be done and still they remain short of the successful mark.  Why is that?

I think the reason why so many business owners are not successful is because they truly do not know what success looks like for themselves.  In total respect to Steve Jobs who recently passed on from his founder-ship work he did on the Apple Company, Steve knew exactly what success looked like.  He certainly had the financial means to hang it all up and go do some life cruising around the world.  He did not choose that.  It did not 'fit' into his sights of what he knew success to be.  Steve Jobs knew what success looks like.  He accepted that set of truths and did what successful people do, he succeeded.  He knew what it looked like.

Lame Stuff Business Leaders Do Often.

I have a whole laundry list of things I do that is not good to report.  Whatever the case, I do them anyway.  I find I work on correcting some of the stuff some of the time.  Most of my deepest challenges are not there because I want them to be there.  They are there because I have not yet recognized them as being there and being wrong to protect.  My efforts to improve my business skills has not finished working on some of the things I need to work on.  Furthermore, some of the things I need to work on have not yet been discovered.  I do not know they need worked on just yet.  I am sure those days are coming soon.  I discover new things about improving my business skills every single day.  It can get tiring if you let it get to you.

That brings me to another serious of thoughts about business leaders.  A lot of them are operating their business models in the same fashion as I am.  They are doing a lot of things correctly but still have some room for improvement.  Fine tuning these few things can be very difficult stuff.  Some business owners have been doing their trade for quite a while by now.  The remaining things that need to be corrected are very stubborn to change.  Those areas that need some modifications are dragging their feet with the stubbornness they are using to refuse to change.  I have a few of those silly things in my style that I have refused to modify and they still drag some of my performance down.  Those few things that could use some healthy change have become part of my leadership signature.  They are the things that define how I lead my business models and the most telling definitions come from the ones that must tolerate my most unwanted characteristics when I lead.  Leaders often become identified for the unwanted characteristics they carry instead of the ones they use that help them win.  Welcome to leadership.

In my travels and self evaluation process in the business world, I have discovered some very consistent patterns of unwanted characteristics leaders perform.  There are some very lame things leaders do often that have become accepted in the patterns they use to lead the people and business models they own.  The lame stuff they do often can be placed on a consistent list.  It is interesting how so many business leaders can carry on with such a common pattern for lame business stuff.  Some of the things on the list will irritate a reader or two.  If an irritation surfaces, the phrase becomes true.  "The truth hurts."

Let's title this one, "Lame stuff business leaders do often."

First of all, they rarely keep their word.  They spend a lifetime saying they will do something when in fact, they usually do not.  They bump into a friend or a co-worker and exchange conversation.  During the conversation someone says something that requires action to be performed.  The leader says something on the order of how that sounds good, "Let's do that!  We need to get that done and get together on it."  The leader makes a sloppy gesture to keep a promise that is never intended to really happen.  It is only promised to tickle the listeners ear at the time it came up.  The promise has no substance.  It never was intended to be completed.  I see this lame move all of the time.  I hear it often.  It comes from leaders in all business forms.  Once in a blue moon I come across a leader who actually keeps their promises.  They actually do what they say they will do.  It is amazing to witness.  I can see the faces of those few I know who are good at keeping the promises they make.  They can fit in one hand.  There are not many out there who can perform this single act of great leadership.  Be of your word.  Do exactly what you say you will do.  Keep your promises.

I had a great business mentor who has long since passed.  This single thing was a serious issue with him as he trained all of his business students to correct how they treat their word.  I think it was his most serious subject for correction efforts.  Become a person of your word.  It is amazing how so many people become surprised at how rare a person of their word can become.  A leader who keeps their word is so rare that when it shows up in a challenging situation the followers are shocked that the promise was kept.  I remember a promise I made to some business owners located a few hundred miles away from my home.  They were struggling with some serious things in their business model and asked for my help.  We set a date and secured where to meet.  The issues in their business model were very pressing.  The day of my appointment came and the weather in our area became one of those most famous storms.  I had been keeping in touch with my business mentor at that time and casually told him where I had planned to be that day.  I worked with my business staff and arranged for them to run my model for a couple of days while I was away helping these business owners who were in some tough trouble.

The storm made history that day.  It was flooding everywhere in regional pockets between my home and the location of that business model a few hundred miles away.  I happened to be talking on the phone with my business mentor about another subject and mentioned to him how I needed to cancel my appointment with these owners who were having some tough times.  He grew quiet in the conversation.  I checked to see if he was still on the line.  I called his name a couple of times to see if he was still there.  He finally answered quietly, "You need to push through the storm stuff and be a person of your word.  Get there."  Then he hung up.  It was a magical moment for me.  I realized at that moment how often I allowed so many things to get in my way to keep my word.  I had developed a long list of tolerances I could use to change the promises I offered to keep and thereby justified how I could get out of them.  Everyone else was using the same excuses I used so it looked normal.  Breaking my word of promise was a normal and justifiable thing to do.  I did not consider it wrong to avoid the weather dangers and re-schedule my appointment.  I thought it was fine to modify my promise.  After I hung up, I made the decision to see what it was like to keep my promise.  I called around to find out what would be the best way to get to that town and continue to meet with the business owners I promised to help.  It took me an additional 2 hours of travel to arrive.  They were shocked to see me.  It was one of the best business sessions I have ever been a part of.  Those owners have since moved on but that next two days carried with it some of the best work I have ever done with the repair efforts of a broken set of business challenges.  It has become one of my top ten learning experiences.  The storm made history that day.

Be of your word.  Do exactly what you say you will do.  Keep your promises.  Failing in this area is the top most lame thing a business leader does.  They carry way too many excuses to fail at keeping their word.

Who Do You Team Up With?

Think Like A Group Winner

Growing up as a kid I discovered how much fun it was playing with the neighborhood kids.  We lived in a very humble neighborhood during a time when all of the people living in that area had little kids they were raising.  The neighborhood always had twenty to twenty five little kids running around.  There were the Snyder's, the Alford's, the Lingo's, the Fredrickson's, the Griffin's, the Putty's, the Cheadle's, our clan of four kids and many more.  They came and they went but always a lot of kids.  It was also the widest collection of youth because it was the peak of the baby boom.  Kids and kid noises everywhere.  Kid stuff was always scattered about the streets where we lived; bicycles, balls, toys, sticks, clothing, shoes and mittens.  Anyone driving a car into our little "circled" culdesac neighborhood would immediately recognize the remnants of children present.  Signals and signs of kids were always strewn about, toys and debris were everywhere.

Playing together in large groups was a common thing to find when we were growing up.  Group activities happened a lot.  We even had big neighborhood parades.  Once in awhile I will bump into a parent from those days past and they will describe how they remember some of our crazy long parades, with flags we used to make.  Some of those folks describe some really funny kid group activities when we get together and reminisce.  Group play was very common stuff.

In fact, some of my best memories include a few of those group things we used to do.  I can make a long list of some of the best group activities like the time when we all gathered together to take lunches we made and go to a nearby hill which had a natural cave at the top.  It was called "Eagles Cave."  We climbed the steep hill with our bikes and lunches tugged along.  Could you imagine seeing the parents watching these 10 to 15 kids doing some of this stuff?  We played together, fought together, had fun together and helped each other manage our challenges together.  Some of our play projects required a pretty large group effort.  I remember some of those group experiences.  We helped each other to play hard.

Now we all live in an independent world.  We take care of ourselves.  We help our own world do what we do to survive and support what we are trying to achieve.  We no longer work in constant groups to achieve our life of existence.  I see one person after another person working to do what they believe they should be doing without any extra effort to include others into the process of what they are doing.  It has become a world of everyone for themselves.  Those past days of everyone playing in large groups are long gone.

Individualism is dominant in our world of work.  One worker stays pretty much out of another co-workers way during the course of a working day.  They only cross paths when the work activities require it.  Otherwise, they do not try to 'team up' on many things.  Employees do not round each other up to do group work.  Our old neighborhood did that kind of rounding up stuff all of the time.  Group stuff is kind of rare in the working world.  Individualism is the dominate pattern.

Our old neighborhood was a rare time when group activities were part of our search for fun.  Group activities had a pleasing desire when we lived in that old neighborhood.  That is no longer the desire of the people who work under the same roof anymore.  It is very rare to have people driving to work with the thought in mind that when they arrive at the place where they work they are going to try and gather a group of co-workers together to accomplish a big project they would like to start.  That is not a common thought in the minds of workers headed to their job.

We are now very individual.  It is troubling to see a group of workers no longer joining together to work on projects of business improvements.  The personal competition is not very lending to this kind of activity.  Groups at work spend more time following than they do at leading, unless they lead only themselves.  Most follow what they think they should be doing and most do what they do in an individual way.  The only time workers team up together is when they are asked to team up together.  Otherwise, they will work individually.  You can see this pattern in your own business model.  Individualism is more common than teaming up to do what needs to be done.  Think about it.  Who do you team up with?  Who is the person that you share a lot of work time with to get the things done that help you to perform better at work?  What groups of people wait for your arrival so they can begin working together on the stuff you guys are trying to achieve?  Your co-workers are not waiting for your arrival, are they.  Each of your co-workers are individually going in to work planning on doing their own direction to do what they think they need to do.

Do not get me wrong, individualism is not a bad thing.  I prefer employees get to it when one of their group members has not yet arrived.  I like the idea of individuals being able to get on with doing some good stuff at work all by themselves.  I like productive people knocking it down by doing a lot of good individual stuff.  That is exactly how very productive business models move forward with their success.  The successful models have learned how to encourage, train and support the great efforts their individuals do.  It is one of the good marks their model performs.

However, what about team play?  How well does your business model perform when it comes time to join together in small teams to perform a group project?  Do your employees and staff have the skills to perform group success?  If not, why not?  What does your business model accidentally do to omit the possibility of this to happen?  Are you the type of leader who cannot work in groups to help each other perform at a higher level of success?  Is your leadership style defined in such a way that individualism rules how you play?  Does it rule how you work?  Does it dominate how you think?  Who do you team up with?

Is Our Leadership Determined Or Stubborn?

Determination Is A Life And Death Decision, Respect It.

When a mean dog shows his teeth, is he smiling or getting ready to attack?  It usually depends upon where his tail is located.  If his tail is up and wagging a little bit, he is smiling.  If his tail is down between his legs, I would not step forward  into his dangerous space just yet.  A dog showing his teeth can be interpreted in two ways.  He is either playing happy stuff with you or he his not happy you are in front of him.  Same teeth, different message.  The one you select to respect better be the right one.

Over thirty years ago I was managing a portion of department categories for The John Breuner Company in Sacramento, California.  I was part of the buying group for the upholstery division of a furniture store section of that company.  Sales managers and sales representatives for various furniture vendors were commonly circling my environment to capture my attention.  This is how many of those representatives did their attraction work.  They wanted to improve their popularity with all of the managers employed by the Breuner Company.  They felt it could improve their chances to get more of their items onto the display floors within the company retail units.  The John Breuner Company was the second largest furniture store retailer in the country at that time.  Getting more items on that retail floor was a big plus to those sales representatives and their district managers.

In the late 1970's, wining and dining your way to popularity was the main method used to get more of your products into our successful retail environments.  The sales reps used that method a whole bunch.  Going to dinners, barbecues, sporting events and regional headline entertainment shows was a common practice used by many sales representatives and their company support.  They did whatever they could to increase their chances to get more floor space.  One famous company even had the Dallas Cheerleaders arrive at their annual furniture show space during a regional market convention.  I do not think they were the 'real' cheerleaders, however.  They performed special favors in special rooms for the largest dealers.  I am certain I have offended some readers with that piece of reality.  Although I was not one of those selected to take part in that scene, I was there, I know.  Stuff like that happened.  I am sure in many tightly protected circles, it still does.

Taking great care of the people who help make the decisions on how your product could find its way to your popular sales floor was a big deal and very common.  Sales reps did what they could to attract your favorable intentions.  I still own two very valuable pencil sketch pieces of art given to me by an owner of a custom upholstery line from the San Francisco Bay area.  I have checked them out to test their value.  Not bad.  On another occasion, I had a sales manager for the Landmark Upholstery Company invite me to come and enjoy a barbecue at his private home.  It was a very nice spread.  The digs where not middle class digs.  His home was very special, professionally cared for and located in a district where only the wealthy could afford to reside.  He was part owner of the company he represented.  His company was also doing well at this time.

When I arrived at his house I was met by him and his two full-grown, well-trimmed, 'kill' trained Doberman Pincers.  One was standing at attention at each side where he was standing.  It was impressive, but unnerving.  I am not afraid of dogs.  Those two had all of my complete attention.  They were extremely intimidating, not to mention, very strong and very big.  We sat down in the living room and he made a couple of drinks.  We did the usual get to know each other process in our conversations.  The two dogs sat on the floor directly in front of me while I was sitting there trying to ignore them during the conversation.  Finally I asked Stan, "Do these guys need to be in this room right now?"  He smiled and said, "No.  Do you want me to put them in another room?"  I gave a yes nod to his question.  He put them away and secured them in another room.  I am sure any quick move I made towards Stan would have been lethal.  When a mean dog shows his teeth, he can be very determined to be warning you about what can happen next if you do not comply.  Determination can be very effect stuff when it is applied properly.  Those two dogs were not stubborn, they were determined.  There is a big difference.

Dysfunctional-ism Sucks, Unfortunately We Are Afflicted.

Dysfunction, Dysfunction...What A Challenge!

If you share a sales counter with co-workers and some sales tools and catalogs are stored under and near that sales counter, finding them where they belong when you go to get them is a real challenge.  Scissors do not always get returned properly.  A popular special order catalog is always hard to find when you need to show it to another customer.  A measuring tape seems to always disappear.  The sales invoicing on the computer needs to be logged back on because someone logged out to go online to check out a special order price and forgot to return the sales invoice back to its operational format.  The keys to the warehouse are not hanging on the key hook in the cabinet by the desk.  Someone used them and forgot to return them.  The customer loading carts used to help carry heavy products out to customer vehicles are not in the warehouse where they belong when you go to get one to help a customer load up some sold products into their car.  Working with dysfunctional people is like going on a daily Easter egg hunt.  Nothing is placed where it should be located.  A common five minute customer service step takes fifteen minutes to complete when nothing is where it is supposed to be and hunting for necessary sales aids becomes part of the service process because dysfunctional employees cannot remember to return items back to their proper storage place.  Dysfunctional-ism sucks.

Unfortunately, we are all afflicted to some degree.  Doing two steps to complete one is a trying and expensive human energy process.  The worse the affliction, the greater the company energy therms cost.  The labor cost to do double work is quietly killing the needed efficiency business models need to practice right now in this rotten economy.  Dysfunctional attributes are expensive to tolerate and protect.  Lost customer special order forms and bid proposals are the worst.  Sometimes they are found in the piles littered on a persons desk, even though their is a place set aside on the sales counter for those forms to be filed.  When a customer bid gets misplaced like this, a sale gets lost, customers become dissatisfied and revenues suffer.  Dysfunctional motions are expensive to tolerate and protect.  Keys get lost.  Orders get misplaced.  Sale items cannot be found when a live customer is on the premises to check them out but cannot find them to view.  Someone forgot to return the sale items back to the sale rack for others to view.  Only to find them four hours later placed in the wrong area well after the interested customer has left the premises.  A possible sale, simple and new revenues, was lost.  We blame the economy.  Dysfunctional-ism sucks.

I have never been able to total what the real cost has been to the multiple ways a dysfunctional error has occurred.  I have watched many of them kill a legitimate sale or kill the potential for helping a company service process increase the odds for a customer to return later.  When a customer witnesses a poorly handled sales process during the effort to secure the potential ability to special order some products of interest, they see the dysfunctional potential right before their very own eyes and immediately lose interest in agreeing to special order something from this kind of process.  Sales are lost before they ever can occur.  Consumers already lack confidence in the marketplace, why add more fear to the buying process with a dysfunctional approach?  Consumers need to remove the fear.  A dysfunctional sales approach will not contribute to that need.  Dysfunctional-ism sucks.

Unfortunately, those who practice this process with too much dysfunctional efforts do not consider their lack of organization a revenue and sales restriction.  Those who are dysfunctional have spent a lifetime excusing away their lack of discipline as being something funny to possess and normal to do.  They believe it is part and parcel of how they are basically designed as a person.  They do not believe they need to correct this affliction.  They become expensive employees with a high cost of general maintenance.  Dysfunctional-ism sucks.  It is quietly expensive, too.

What's worse, some of the worst offenders are the boss!  How do you help the leader who has this affliction?  How many times do you witness how much it hurts the bottom line?  What do you do when a flatbed truck traveled a long distance to pick up some heavy products and is pressed for time to return those sold items to his customer when you go to get your company forklift and it is not parked where it belongs?  What do you do to help that driver hurry up and make his deadline?  You go back into the showroom to find out who last drove the forklift and see where they parked it.  Everyone tells you it was the boss who last had it and he left with his customer to go to lunch.  You then walk the 4 acres of the business property to see where he left the loading equipment.  When that failed, you go next to the showroom to see if he was getting the forklift fueled at the card-lock station.  Not there either.  In the meantime, your new customer who has a tight time schedule is impatiently waiting for you to serve his sale.  The products he purchased for his boss are too heavy to individually load onto the flatbed he is driving.  You need to find the forklift.  Fifteen minutes later you find it.  It is parked out on the street behind a large display rack of some products you store for highway traffic to see.  The forklift is out of sight from the sales property.  It is found by walking the perimeter of the company lot to see if you can find any tracks of it leaving the company location.  You have already interrupted three other employees to solicit their help.  Dysfunctional-ism sucks.  Did I mention it was expensive in labor cost, too?  Did I mention it was a great way to discourage customer support, too?

How do you help the leader who has this affliction?  You mention this bad customer experience to your boss when they return from lunch.  That is what you do.  What do you do when they think it was funny and laugh?  You learn how to tolerate such inefficiencies.  That is what you do.  Dysfunctional-ism sucks.  Unfortunately, we are all afflicted.  When your business model has this affliction, everyone has it.  Everyone is afflicted by the inefficiencies.  Everyone becomes part of the expensive increase in labor cost.  Everyone becomes part of the dissatisfaction they deliver to the consumers who must endure such silly procedures.  Dysfunctional-ism sucks.

One, Get Out Of Jail Card, Free!

Hasbro and Monopoly, Wow!

Create or start something new.  That is it.  That is your 'get out of jail' card for free.  When burn out has arrived and nothing seems fun anymore, just start creating something new.  It really does not need to matter what it is.  Just make sure it is legal, ethical and moral.  We do not want to pay those ugly prices, too.  Do not forget about the laws of compensation.  What goes around comes around and the payment for what comes around is not usually very cheap.  Make sure what you create for the heck of it is not something that will bite you on the butt.  We have enough challenges already that 'burn out' is not willing to accept.  Just begin tomorrow by starting something new.  It does not matter what it is, with the exceptions I just warned about above.


If you are a manager or an owner who has the symptoms of job burn out, accept them.  They are real and they are very demanding.  Your leadership will begin to feel a lot like being in jail if you do not harness this rotten pattern of feelings.  It is a pattern that is hard to identify until it is usually too late.  Learn to accept it and start doing something about it.  You can easily work on the repair of fixing job burn out.  It is a fixable challenge.  You can get re-energized and love doing what you do, again.  It is possible to have fun at work once more.


Let's kill burn out.  It is a nasty jail sentence.  We need to get out of that jail, right now.


If you care about going back to your life of having fun building a great business model, pay attention.  I have 'hit' job burn out a few times in my almost 40 years of business experiences.  Get real, managing a business is not always a fun thing to do.  It carries some real heavy burdens at times.  Some of those burdens can decided to run a string of connections that seem like a long line of painful experiences.  Eventually they wear a leader down until even the simple stuff seems very hard to do.  In forty years, it has happened more than once.  Burn out is real, it is debilitating and it can destroy everything in its path.  It can become a rotten jail sentence.  If you have it quit pretending you do not have it.  That is much like adding gasoline to a burning fire.  Quit it.


If you have the moxie enough to accept that you are dealing with some form of job burn out, start looking around your organization for the people who know how to finish work.  Look for the finishers in your organization.  They will be hard to find.  Not many people are great finishers.  Most of us are great starters, but finishing what we started is more rare.  Go find those who have the skills to be good finishers.  They will be very important to you in this repair process.  In order for you to feel good about the 'burn out' repair process, those finishers will have an important role to play.  They just do not know it yet.  We are going to use them tomorrow.  Find your finishers.  If you do not yet know who they are, that is what we call a clue.  You have not been paying very close attention to your staff.  Shame on you, but of course, you have 'burn out' to blame.  Identify who your finishers are.  In your private office somewhere, write their names down on a piece of paper.  Remember, I did not say you needed to like these people...only that they are good at finishing things they start.  Write their names down on a piece of paper.  If you do not know who they are, ask some of the people you employ who they think are good finishers.  You may also discover some interesting answers and conversations in that line of questioning.  Find your finishers.  That is repair step number one.


Now that you have written the finishers names down in a private place somewhere, think about what kind of crazy ideas you have always wanted to do but never had the courage to do them.  It might be as silly as painting your business front door a wild color.  Maybe we can paint it a deep green with a silver and black lined trim.  What a great idea!  Do a color that is strong and wild.  Combine the color with a little bit of black trim to make sure everyone knows you painted the front door.  Remember, you have 'job burn out' it is time to do something crazy.  You have the perfect excuse.  Job burn out is a serious excuse.  It is very user friendly for doing stuff like this.  Give that project to one of your finishers and give them the instructions on how you want it to be painted.  Tell that finisher that you picked them out because they are good at finishing and you want to make sure this project gets done.  The interest and stir you just created is the kind of stuff that makes business fun to do.  It is the crazy stuff that finds its way into the record books of the good memories we make.  Start doing them again.  Start feeding the creative part of your mind again.  Jump start it with little creative stuff that can be done that will help you gain control of what is running out of control.  Do not worry about what is not being done, get going on some new things that are going to get done.  That is why you picked out the finishers.  They will be responsible for making sure your creative ideas get finished.  Finishing is not your job.  Starting is your job.  Not finishing.  You hire others to do the finish work.  All you need to do is start stuff.


This process is a lot like practicing 'positive procrastination.'  It is a healthy technique to use when you are overwhelmed by having too many important things to do with no extra time to do them.  When the list is longer than the clock, procrastination sets in.  It kills a good business leader.  It can lead to job burn out.  It can lead to producing a rotten jail sentence at work.  When procrastination is unavoidable, you are not delegating duties well enough.  You are not trusting your staff enough to do some of the things you think only you should be doing.  You have become a rotten leader and will not accept this truth.  Hence, after a long period of operating in this fashion you discover you are burned out!  Go figure.  Gee, I do not know why I am so pissed off about how my business is going?  Delegate, delegate, delegate...stupid.  Just start to delegate stuff away from you.  Quit worrying about how they turn out when you give them away for someone else to do.  They will screw a few of them up, but at least they will no longer be laying on your desk collecting unwanted dust and destroying your positive spirit anymore.  Shove those piled up things onto the floor if you have to.  Get them off of your desk!  Quit coming into your office and looking at overwhelming piles of things not done.  Get hem out of your sight.  Burn them, I don't care.  Just get them off of your desk and out of your sight.  And for goodness sakes, quit bringing new procrastination's back to your office to lay them down over the ones that are already there.  Stop this silliness and learn how to improve your delegation responsibilities.  Give this stuff to your finishers.  Buy them a small gift card from Starbucks when they tackle some of your projects!  Your leadership will return.  Did you know that?