Distractions To Success Are Always Demanding Attention

I Love To Ride.  Not When My Tax Deadline Is Due, However!

How organized are you?  Do you have trouble trying to remember stuff?  I do.  I get my plate so full of things I want to do that I actually overload my ability to remember all of them.  Some of the things I would like to complete do not matter as much as I think they do.  Even those things can weigh my list of thoughts down.  If I get too many of those 'not-so-important' things listed in my head that I want to see done, I can overload my list and forget to do some of the more important things that need to be done.  This can grow into a fairly serious problem for a business owner.  Skipping to do some important 'need-to-do' stuff can creep up later and bite the business bad.  Make sure you do a better job managing the list of things you need and want to do in your business life.  Getting yourself better organized on the lists of things you plan to do is a vital part of where your success will land.  Get your list of do's better organized.

First of all, what kinds of things should be on that list?  Keep in mind, a business owner should somehow develop a serious pattern of work habits that take care of the routine required responsibilities.  If the owner does not actually perform these routine tasks, someone hired should.  In the end, required business duties should not be something that must be remembered to be placed on a list of things to do.  They are routine tasks that are already being managed in a time structured way.  If not, change that kind of arrangement.  Routine responsibilities must be met on a regularly known, already applied schedule.  Routine business tasks should never be something we try to remember to place on our "to-do" list once in awhile.  They are routine work that is completed in a routine fashion.  That is one of the secrets to success.  Make sure your business practices this step.  Get a routine schedule knocked out to support the required duties the owner performs.

To make this first step happen well, an owner needs to decide what kind of required work is part of the owners daily routine.  If the owner has adopted to perform some of these routine responsibilities, make sure they are completed with a routine level of success.  For example, if the owner becomes the daily radio advertising voice of a marketing campaign, make sure that owner stays disciplined enough to perform that daily task, every single day.  If the radio deadline to do that daily segment clip is 10 AM, then the owner must make sure that task is not interrupted at 10 AM.  There should be no reason why the owner needs to add that routine step to his daily "to-do" list.  It is already part of his routine pattern.  Every day at 10 AM he is calling the radio station to complete that daily message.  That responsibility has already been set in place, established in the daily routine of the owners schedule and therefore does not need to be on a reminder list.  The owner does not need to add, "put pants on" to his getting-ready-for-work list of activities.  He already puts his pants on in a routine way.  He does not need a reminder to put his pants on, too.  It may sound silly, but I have watched many really smart business owners get this kind of stuff out of control.  They can struggle with routine responsibilities.  They will often make arrangements to sabotage their required work duties.  I have seen it happen a lot of times.  Distractions to success are always demanding attention.

Speaking of distractions, I have seen loved ones call the owner at 9:57 AM and want to talk about something they think is very important, and it usually is.  Unfortunately, they do not fully know the owners routine at work and when they hear his radio spot every day at noon, when it actually airs, they do not know he makes that segment happen at 10:00 AM every day.  When they call him at work at 9:57 AM and he says I will need to call you right back, they feel shunned a little bit.  They know their news is also important.  They do not fully comprehend his structured routine to success.  I have watched many owners fail to properly manage this challenge.  It gets messed up a lot.  Learning how to juggle loved ones needs with the requirements of the business is a tall art to paint.  Get good at communication on this one.  It can come back to bite the owner very hard, in one fort or the other!  Trust me, both the business model and the loved ones care a lot about the owners level of attention.  It is a tough nut to crack.  Good luck with finding the balance.

My point in this post is to identify where the routine stuff needs to be placed and respected.  So many business owners fail to perform their leadership tasks really well mostly because they are so disorganized.  They are whimsical about what they need to do each day.  They usually hate the domination effects of a routine pattern of required duties.  Owners also hate to be told what to do.  They like their freedoms.  That is one of the main reasons why they decided to own their own business.  If today they want to travel to the city to go see a new manufacturer of a line of goods they are considering to offer, they like the power of making that decision at 9 AM this morning and skip right past the radio responsibilities.  I watch business owners perform this kind of disorganized managerial crap all of the time.  They do not like to be controlled by the routine of responsibilities.  As a result, they justify the decision to go to the city and add failure patterns to the rest of the required work they need to do.  I see this kind of stuff happen more than the owners will ever admit.  Distractions to success are always demanding attention.

One of the main reasons why smart people do not often win at the business game is that they do not know how to control the quiet ways they sabotage their success efforts.  Most owners do not recognize how success happens.  They truly believe that success comes from their good creative ideas and their subsequent spot on, whimsical "direction-making" efforts.  Not true.  Never true.  Not ever to be true.  These notions of how success actually happens are completely false notions.  Unfortunately, thousands upon thousands of business owners still believe them to be true.  As an outsider looking in, it is so disturbing to see this kind of sabotage keep so many owners away form simple success.  They get sideswiped by quiet, yet effective moves of disrespect for an organized approach to their business routine.  They fall for the love of the freedom call and break their routine strides for doing what needs to be routinely done.  They permit more distractions to take control.  They give those distractions too much attention.  It is part of the internal drive of the owner to produce more of the freedom call.  Distractions to success are always demanding attention.

What Does "Cooking Your Books" Look Like?

Think More Clearly!

What does "cooking" your books look like?  Sometimes it does not look like "cooking" your books.  Many business models do not believe they are performing acts that would be considered "cooking your books."  First of all, let's talk about why people decide to "cook" their books.  Before we can truly examine the common ways many people "cook" their books and why many do not consider it "cooking" is to learn how we must truly accept why this process occurs.

First of all, the pressure to perform is very high.  We live in interesting times.  The economy is tougher to manage than ever before.  The rules of the business world are ever changing.  The amount of uncontrolled changes that hit the business scene on a regular basis adds unknown pressures to the performance landscapes.  These increasing unknowns compressed by a shrinking economy deliver an atmosphere that breeds creativity for survival.  Survival desires are troubled enough to cause more creativity for reporting what is not going well.  This is where the most common seed of "cooking the books" begins.  The desire to survive and the pressure felt to paint a better picture of where we are headed sets the stage for some new creativity to occur.  Leaders begin their trek to discover interesting ways to report how they plan to recover from their packages of debt, efforts of failed patterns and in many cases...near destruction.  Hence, "cooking the books" procedures begin.          

The decisions to make bookkeeping adjustments that should never be made are driven by the strong dislike to report terribly bad results we have been producing but do not want to reveal.  No leader desires to continue to produce unfavorable economic results.  "Cooking the books" is a natural way to satisfy a strong urge to hide what has been already done wrong.  We do not want to carry anymore responsibility for those terrible business results anymore.  So we kind of develop a logically designed creative plan to adjust how we report what we want to do...rather than reporting the wrong stuff we have been doing.  Truthfully, we talk ourselves into doing wrong things to hide what we have done in order to further improve what we really want to do.  We cheat a little bit.  We arrange for making some bookkeeping adjustments that we can attribute to logical explanations that will help us get rid of our negative pattern of unwanted numbers and results.  We "cook" the books.  We use educated accounting methods and techniques to accomplish this kind of band aid goal.  We "cook" the books.  We get really creative in our accounting techniques.  We strategically shift some bad performing numbers to new areas and place them in balance to those new areas of review so we can pull them away from where they usually would be placed.  We "cook" the books.  We report bad results in new ways.

Again, be reminded why we do this kind of creativity.  We believe we cannot live with the true patterns of previously produced negative results.  We also believe we have a better plan to correct those errors.  This kind of combination drives us to find creative ways to accept the past wrongs.  This whole process seems to give us new permissions to continue on and try directing new and better ways to do the things we do.  This kind of scenario helps provide the justifiable support for creatively hiding what has been done wrong.  We are able to logically justify why the wrongs can be swept under the rug in a creative and acceptable way because we truly believe we have the repair and solutions on the right path for future success.  Therefore, we "cook the books."  What's more, we can strongly justify why this step is very necessary.

In the beginning of this whole process, somewhere deep inside our soul we recognize and begin to deeply believe that we are not able to produce favorable numbers and business results in the same fashion we once did.  We concede fully to this terrible notion.  We have tried so many things in so many ways to make our numbers work well and produce favorable and consistent business results.  Unfortunately, we have failed constantly at that effort.  This "feeling" becomes one of our most damaging patterns that supports how we begin to logically define how we can accept a strategic process for beginning the long effort of creativity for learning how to structurally begin "cooking the books."  We deeply know we are not able to produce favorable and consistent business results in the previous ways of operations.  This main stream of "feeling" dominates how we constantly think about the business model we lead.  We have grown to become at odds with the potential for success this model can currently produce.  We do not believe it can happen until the numbers meet where we want them to reflect.  We believe it is the numbers that are wrong.  We logically climb onto the buss that works its patterns to blame the past and we want to remove how that past continues to kill our future.  This is where the seed of "cooking the books" begins.

Many leaders get to this point and do not fully recognize the future damage they are setting in place.  They are too blinded by the creative logic of repair they have adopted.  They only need to report the past in a more acceptable way in order to be able to convince others how to move onto the future repair they want them to see.  They do not see how they creatively begin the process to "cook the books."  The storm of wrongness begins.  It looks like good weather when it first begins.  It becomes much like the calm before the storm.  Some terrible winds and damaging weather is just around the corner.  Batten down the hatches...here it comes.

Managing Errors In Business?

Mistakes Happen, Just Do Not Encourage Them!

I like watching professional sports, sometimes.  I get a little bored with some of the player and owner antics that come along with the professional sports world within its integrated money issues.  I can, however, live with the spirit of great athleticism.  I am often amazed at the effort and ability of so many players.  I enjoy watching how certain players seem to come up with fabulous play.  It is exciting to watch.

Some of you know that my youth to college life was dominated by a lot of baseball.  I ate, drank and slept a lot of baseball in my life.  My time chips centered around that sport.  One of the things I have grown to appreciate about that sport is how one inning a player can become a real goat by making a terrible mistake.  Then three innings later that same player may become the hero for doing something extraordinary that caused the team to win.  It is a sport that offers so many mistakes a second chance.  It is funny how one player can become the hero when earlier that same player was on the everyone-condemnation list.  I have worn those shoes.  I have felt terribly small for the mistake I made in an earlier inning and later in that same game, steal a base that caused a wild throw to score the guy ahead of me, which eventually proved to be the winning run.  Stuff like that happens.  The professionals know this truth very well.  They have seen it over and over in their career.  A mistake is not the end of the world.

How do you manage the errors you make in the business you own?  Do you try to cover it up and hide it away from the others to see?  Do you sweep it under the rug?  Do you allow it to take you down?  Do you ignore the mistake and make it again?  How do you manage the errors you make in your business?  Listen, we all make mistakes.  Nobody comes to the dinner table perfectly designed.  All have fallen short, according to the 'real' book of life.  I like the word "all."  That does not usually mean sometimes, somebody.  It means, everyone.  There are no players that can escape this truth.  "All" have fallen short.  "All" have made some errors.

I created a big mistake yesterday.  It was very aggravating.  I am one of those people who is a high-need achiever.  Errors do not fit well in my world of play.  I am my own worst critic.  So when I make a big mistake, I am typically pretty hard on myself.  I wage war on the mistakes I make.  I hate them.  I had a nurse tell me the other day, "You do not need to be perfect."  She was referring to my diabetes eating habits.  I had a scheduled follow up with her the other day on my benchmark routine work to see how I am managing my type 2 diabetes.  My wife and I have taken this work very seriously.  We have been able to manage our diet in such a good way that my sugar counts have been managed low enough to remove the need for taking any more medicine.  We have been able to successfully manage my type 2 diabetes with an improved diet and exercise routine.  During the examination, the dietary nurse told us that we did not need to be perfect in our efforts.  Her comment might have something to do with the spreadsheet of our recorded vitals we turned in to her, reflecting how we track morning, noon and night all of our diet activities.  She may have noticed our efforts of over-kill.

When they diagnosed my diabetes, I asked enough questions to wear the poor doctor out.  I told him to get this challenge under control right now and get me started on the medicine.  At the same time, I asked the doctor what I had to do to get off of that medicine.  He spelled out the plan and defined where my vital marks must remain in order to remove the medicine.  Those marks and that plan became my goal.  I wanted to remove the need for medicine to manage my diabetes challenge.  I shared that plan with my wife and off we went.  We reached those marks and have removed the use of medicine.  This is a good example of how my wife and I work.  We hate mistakes and mismanaging our eating habits had to be corrected.  That is likely why the dietary nurse made the comment she made.  She likely witnessed our intensity to meet our goals.  That is likely why she said, "You do not need to be perfect."

In life, nobody is perfect.  Never.  We error all of the time.  It is not usually the error that takes a small business down.  It is the repeated series of errors that usually do the trick.  Small business models usually fail because the owners do not manage their errors very well.  They either lose control when errors are made or they do not eliminate the repeated ones that hurt the most.  To error is human.  To mismanage the human errors is a troubling pattern to follow.  I will likely be able to refrain from making the mistake I made yesterday because I recognize exactly how I made that error happen.  I will correct the wrong steps I made that led to that error.  Make sure you perform your leadership in this type of fashion.  You do not need to hide your error.  Expose it, address why it happened and determine what you will do to refrain from making that same one again.  That is how you manage errors in your business model.

This is easier to do when you are making the errors.  It is altogether a more difficult thing to manage when your staff or employees are producing costly errors.  Now you discover the approach has a whole different kind of tune.  Your reaction to someone else and their costly error becomes a new set of leadership challenges.  It does not look exactly the same to an owner as it does to the employee.  One has to pay for the error, the other usually does not.  Errors look altogether different to the person who has their wallet on the table.  The person who has to pay for the error has a slightly different perspective developed on how to take errors less serious.  The sting of the cost may distort how they view the error.

Going Out Of Business? Let's Throw In The Towel.

Never Stop Promoting Your Business

I had a business friend recently tell me that writing a business plan was too much work.  I am serious.  He described to me why he does not waste his time trying to come up with ideas and systems for deciding what his business should do.  At least not in that way.  He said he finds it is a lot more efficient to do the right stuff he needs to do when that right stuff comes up.  We talked for a short while.  He continued to talk about some of the problems he has experienced in recent years with his family and business.  He described how anxious he was about getting to retirement so he could call it quits.  I had not seen him for about ten years or so.  He has a small sporting goods store.  It currently has a going out of business sign pasted all over its store front windows.  I was very confused about the conversation.  Maybe we should just throw in the towel?

I decided to ask him if he needed help in writing a new plan.  The above was his answer.  He described to me why he does not waste his time trying to come up with ideas and systems for deciding what his business should do.  At least not in that way.

Apparently he is going to try to do some other business.  He described it to me a little bit.  I could not see its future so I lost interest in the conversation.  His current sporting goods store has struggled for several years.  He had a business partner in that model who was the founder and original owner of that business.  They were lifelong friends.  They had a good working plan for many years.  Somewhere along the way they got lost.  I noticed how much energy and excitement that business model used to produce many years ago.  It was filled with young customers and families roaming about in the store.  The store was always fashionable, exciting and a central part of the community activities that drove outdoor sports.  Snow skiing, water skiing, white water rafting, mountain climbing, snow boarding, windsurfing, skateboarding and trail hiking were major categories of huge interest to this business.  They used to schedule community bus trips to the regional mountain ski slopes every Saturday during the snow season.  They sponsored the high school ski teams and instructed the ski team students.  Some of their past students were state competitors with two becoming winners of state championships.  They used to manage a white water rafting trip every weekend down a class of good rivers during the late spring and summer months.  My wife and I have taken that trip a few times with them.  We have some great memories that came from a couple of those trips.  I remember how the food break for lunch was always classy!  They pulled out the stuff to set it up and it was always like a fancy dinning experience on the shores out in the middle of nowhere next to the rushing waters of the river nearby.  I remember the lunches!

I remember shopping for school bags for all of my three girls because this was "the place" to go for that kind of return back to school shopping.  All of the kids at school wanted bags from this sporting goods store.  If you raise children, back to school fashion is very important.  This was the place to fit that bill correctly.  This sporting goods store used to carry some great looking specialty shoes in its separate fashion-conscious clothing department.  This is where all of the 'happening stuff' was offered.  I remember going into this store to visit with my business owner friends when they were so busy employing several floor staff members.  One employee would be back in the office doing the books.  She would be receiving the products, posting the invoices, printing the sale labels and charting the expenses, payroll and accounting.  She worked for these guys for almost 25 years.  I remember how some of their prime youth customers who were the most active sports enthusiasts became their part time employees helping these two owners develop their growing business model.  Some of their best skateboarders, skiers and mountain climbers worked part time on the showroom floor of the store.  They tagged the new merchandise, displayed it and wore it to show how it appeared.  They waxed the customers boards, did the routine repairs in the product shop and provided the customization each customer requested.  It used to be a 'happening' place.

Sometimes when I would stop by to visit my friends, who owned the business, they were jammed busy with all of the direction work they were spinning to get done.  There was very little quiet time in that shop.  The phone was always ringing to handle the many things that were scheduled, ordered, shipped, returned, and managed.  Ski events needed managed.  Bus trips were always happening.  Lessons classes were being filled.  Training team sports were being organized.  Meetings were being scheduled and produced.  They even used to manage a quarterly sports fashion show.  This shop was busy.  The owners were able to fill their days with plenty of work.  My visiting time was limited.

One of the activities we shared was golf.  Every once in awhile the owners and I would go out to shoot a round of golf.  We had some great fun.  They actually played some pretty good golf.  I was not as particular about my choice of clubs on every shot.  However, they always scored better than I.  We had a lot of fun chatting about life and business on those days.  One thing is for sure, the founder was the one with the business mind.  He was the one who would actually write the business plan.  He was the one who would come up with the many ideas.  He was the one who never got excited about what was going wrong.  He was the one with the most pleasing personality.  He was the one who prepared the best meals on the white water rafting trips.  When you went with the boss, you got first class treatment...always.  The truth, he is the one who built up this model to become the hot and happening place it eventually grew to become.  The founder had the right kind of dream, vision and drive.  His chosen partner was the mechanical side.

Every business needs a solid promoter.  Small business is all about promote, promote and promote.  If you have one of these people on board, good for you.  If you do not have one of these people on board, go find one.  They will be worth their weight in gold.  On the other hand, every business needs someone who stays firmly placed next to the disciplines of the mechanical side.  Someone needs to make certain all of the products get properly tagged before they reach the sales display floor...no exceptions.  Good tracking, good inventory controls, good recordings and excellent books.  The backside of the business needs to run perfectly.  Every possible discount must be realized.  None will ever get by a great back office leader.  The founders partner was that guy.  They were a good team.  They had a great business model.

Now the sign on the storefront says going out of business!  What happened?  As you might guess, when I bumped into the partner of that model he described how the economy finally took him down.  He bought out the founder several years ago.  The founder retired in another city far away.  The founder was also smart enough to make his partner use a real bank to buy him out.  The founder did not carry the papers of the business sale to his partner so he will not need to deal with the residual costs of this model going out of business.  I always thought of him as a smart guy.  Now I know he is a smart guy.  Take a major tip here owners!  Sell it clean if you sell it.  Otherwise, you might get it all back very broken.  Just a tip.

Here's what happened.

Make Sure Your Business Has A Good Imagination

How important is your imagination?  Of the principles that make up a business owners key components for producing the qualities of success, imagination is truly one of the most important components to practice.  Although so many key qualities are required to help an owner find success, having a good imagination works wonders.

I work with a lot of business leaders who fail to possess any imaginative qualities.  They operate their business models with a very sterile approach.  They also do not win very often.  They struggle to find out how to help their business models produce some excitement for their customers to see.  Remember, customers need to be entertained.  They may tell you they do not need to be entertained, but their consuming actions do not support those descriptions.  Customers spend more when they feel better about how they spend.  Logic does not always win the buying battle.  Feeling good will dominate how consumers spend.  Your improved imagination will work wonders in helping your customers feel better about how they spend money in your business environment.

The past couple of decades have been filled with a lot of great business advice.  One of the main themes that has been approached heavily during these times of good advice is the one that describes how important it is to provide your customers with a good experience.  The 'experience' your customers witness has been strongly evaluated.  There are two sides to the 'experience' equation that flips the consumer coins.  On one side of the improved 'experience' coin is the art of practicing error-free transactions.  This side of the consumer coin includes the art of making sure your business model does what it says it will do and that it does those things very well.  When the consumer flips their coin to decide how well your business model performs for them, your model better at least land on this side of the coin well.  Your model needs to be able to have good execution land present on one of the sides of that flipped coin.  The other side, if it lands upwards when flipped, needs to make sure the customer sees how good your business imagination delivered what they feel good about seeing.  Your success will hinge greatly upon how well your coin performs both of these sides.

If given a competitive choice, your customers will flip the coin most often that carries both sides of their purchasing desires.  Your customers want to be served correctly, efficiently, respectfully and properly.  That is one side of that flipped consumer coin.  The other side of that flipped coin is the side that helps your customer feel good about where they did their business.  How they feel about where they go is as important as making sure their transactions were handled correctly.  If given a choice, customers will honor the business models most that make sure both sides of the coin are present when flipped.  The models that work harder to include both concepts on each side of that consumer coin will be the business models who win the most.  Hands down.

Today, we are not going to hammer how important it is to make sure your business mistakes get eliminated from the consumer view.  That is a subject all by itself.  Today, we need to make sure we understand how important having a great imagination is to the things we need to do to make sure our business model provides this wonderful service to its consumer base.  Having a great imagination is vital to winning big, long term.  It is one of the top seventeen principles to business success.  Imagination.  Get good at it.  Make sure your business has a good imagination.

Business Challenges Sometimes Need A New Perspective.

It is time to travel again.  I hit the trail to go visit a close friend who is having some serious surgery.  He is the million dollar miracle man.  We met this new couple after they moved into our region about three years ago.  My wife and his wife are actually the closer friends.  Both women exercise a few times a week and they spend at least once each week doing their own Bible study together.  They also schedule shopping trips they enjoy.  The ladies met two years ago.  Her husband and I have become friends through their connection.  He works in a dangerous job that includes heavy construction inside the halls of our federal dam systems.  He has traveled around the west coast when certain heavy repair projects are designed and scheduled for particular dams.  Our home town has one of those dams currently scheduled with one of those heavy maintenance jobs right now.  This is how these folks found their way to move into our area.  They moved to our area about three years ago and we met them about a year after they were here.  We get together once in awhile to have dinner, sit by the outdoor fire pit to chat about life or watch a movie here and there.  It has become an occasional friendship.

Last year he was injured on the job, very seriously.  He actually passed away a couple of times during the transportation process and surgery work in the initial recovery effort.  It was a tragic period of time for his wife and family.  He suffered greatly from the accident.  His current recovery has been absolutely remarkable.  He describes how his medical expenses have exceeded the million dollar mark already.  He is a paraplegic.  His internal organs were crushed in the accident as well.  It is nothing short of a miracle that he is still alive and well.  He has some continuing serious health issues but overall, has learned how to walk again, aided.  He even drives his car.  It is amazing stuff to watch his recovery and especially his will.  His will is off the charts.  He is one very determined person.  He often gives my life a new perspective.

We are traveling because we are visiting them in another major city.  He had received some more incredible surgery work.  They are rebuilding his intestinal region.  They also removed a complicated hernia that could never be removed because his internal tissues, after the accident, were not strong enough to handle the surgery work.  The current surgery stuff they performed yesterday was complicated and risky work.  His body took the work very hard.  We have not been able to go see him in recovery, yet.  We hope he recovers well enough today so we can see him.

His wife has become very strong.  Their lives have been changed forever.  We have watched them grow from one set of people to a completely different set of people.  These are the same people we met two years ago.  They have become two examples of two people who have learned how to take a whole new approach to this life we live.  They were forced to make some unbelievable adjustments to learn how to live in their future lives.  The work he once did, is now gone.  He is physically unable to perform that work anymore.  He has had to learn how to live with reasonable degrees of constant pain and limited mobility.  His digestive track does not work properly.  He has had to endure some very embarrassing moments.  They are part of his life now.  His wife has become his routine care giver.  She fills in to provide the duties he cannot perform.  We sit and wait to see how he recovers from this recent set of surgical moves.  The group sitting in this waiting room is somber.

I write about things that are designed to help business owners and their business leaders perform necessary improvements in their business paths.  I see things that get in their way and try to warn them of the potentials for future demise.  In many cases, I have walked the wrong trail as my source of evidence.  I encourage the owners to consider doing the right things first.  I know they read and see what things I write.  I try to encourage owners to avoid doing the wrong things first.  I want them to win more than they lose.  Winning is so much more fun.

I am blessed to be able to leave my home, travel comfortably to another area and sit and wait for a friend to recover.  I am blessed to be able to be in a life position to be able to offer this kind of friendship to someone who could use it right now.  I have challenges running parallel in my life, too.  I am not without my own mountains to climb.  Every business owner faces these kinds of troubling things.  Mountains are placed on our paths of travel.  Business ownership comes with more of them than we could ever describe.  Sometimes the challenges we face in our business world seem out of control and very big.  As I sit waiting in this little room, I do not see my challenges as large as they were yesterday.  All of the sudden, they seem miniature in size when compared to the ones others are digging to manage.  I will take my mountains over these ugly challenges any day.  My wrecks are minor details in my life of travel.  My friend is facing a major crash.  His body is fighting for its life.

Business challenges sometimes need a new perspective.

Bad Profit Mechanics Comes From Impatience.

What?

Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead.  This is a famous phrase.  It denotes the need to forge ahead at all costs to get something done immediately.  The thinking suggests that there are times when a certain level of loss is actually permitted to be calculated within the structure of making a better move ahead, usually political in nature.  Go ahead, wreck the ship, we can worry about fixing the damage later.  We just need some good results to appear right now.  The thinking implies that in order to get good results later we will ignore the losses we calculate to accept now.  We concede to pay the price today in order to arrange for better play tomorrow.  This theory truly has no business playing ball in the profit centers of a small private business.  No effort can bring back the profits that were forced to be lost.  The profit losses designed to occur will become lost forever.  All losses must somehow be paid for in the end.  Private business cannot function long term accepting this kind of routine approach.  For that matter, neither can governments.  The problem we see in most governments, they design their system to operate at a loss.  What's worse, the patrons actually accept this kind of design as being normal.  It is not, but it becomes familiar enough to run in tandem with our decisions to accept.  Unfortunately, this phrase and its suggested methods often dominate some small business profit concepts.  Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead runs well too common among many business models.

This kind of concept promotes bad profit mechanics.  There are no good designs resting inside this whole concept.  If you constantly wreck your ship by running it ashore to get back to land, your ship repair bills out run the revenues you generate from being on shore.  Stop using this method and your future profits will increase.  Quit sacrificing your assets, your energy and your good values by intentionally damaging them to get better future numbers in a specific area of your focus.  It is stupidity, justified.  Your small business model will never grow up strong with this kind of thinking.  Too many really smart people get way too smart to respect the harm this kind of plan promotes.  Do not damn the torpedoes, and run full steam ahead.  The calculated losses are not worth the trip and the cost of the resulting repairs.

Let's examine how we get too smart to see the damage this kind of planning provides.  We get so smart we sometimes stink in results.  We think we are so calculating, so intelligent, so clever that we come up with plans that are surrounded by pseudo winning concepts.  Since we can define how our thinking works towards a better goal, we accept what losses we must endure to get that goal immediately served.  We want instant success so badly that we are actually willing to pay a stiffer calculated loss to quickly promote the justified arrival of a goal our patience can't absorb.  Now...my business friends...that is the real truth.  We can use our intelligence to calculate a plan that will include a sacrifice of profits in order to reach a more desirable goal.  We will actually pretend and convince ourselves that the losses we calculate to accept do not ever need to be re-paid.  We believe this foolishness to be true.  We get too smart with our intelligent ways to justify loss as we expedite impatience.  It is the main ingredient to the invisibility of why a business model continues providing its future with levels of plagued failure

Smart people sometimes do not get it.  This whole concept is likely why only a very small percent of all business owners produce basically all of our world's profitable success.  It might be that as little as 3% produce over 90% of the world's profits.  Too many people operating within the hidden confines of this stupid phrase.  Forcing a planned loss is stupid stuff.  It reflects damaged thinking.  It reflects a level of great impatience.  It might even suggest a politically motivated slant.  Shame on us for getting this simple concept wrong.

Let's take a huge current example and break it down.  Let's challenge how invisible these stupid thoughts can run.  Let's go to the phrase.  We can apply this phrase to a current business move that was exposed to millions in a flash of wrongs that looked like rights.  Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead is the center of thinking that can show how easily wrong thoughts get moved to the top of our intelligent beliefs.  We like to perform stupid thoughts when our impatience runs thin.  We are more apt to allow the pressure of time to enter our views so we can work on our logic to arrange for more expedient results.  At that point of pressure, the losses we must endure do not glow anymore.  They become part of our intelligent plan.  We actually plan to lose what we will lose.  It becomes part of our intelligent work.  We actually accept driving a loss as a benefit to receive a better dressed future result.  We want that better result now so we must find a justifiable way to accept the price we would be willing to pay.  We can calculate what loss we would be willing to promote in order to paint a better outcome now.  We intelligently promote what levels of stupidity we can eventually support.  We are smarter than we thought.  That is exactly why some winners lose.  It is also why some losers never win.

I have a perfect example.  You will not like it.  In my mind, it ain't rocket science.  But I like winning more often.  Most do not.  Most spend way too much time working on intelligent ways to calculate why they justify loss.  I do not spend time working on my losing ways in this fashion.  I do lose a lot.  I accept that part of my management ways.  I know I will have some lost profits with what I sometimes decide to do.  I get beat when things turn out wrong.  That is part of the game.  Losing happens.  However, I do not like the idea of intentionally making a loss happen to build up a better view for someone else to see.  I do not like to practice getting too smart to accept a loss.  If my plans do not work profitably, I do not damn the torpedoes and forge straight ahead so I can desperately sacrifice quality efforts, quality faith, quality respect for the right things we make and to permit my impatience to rule my thoughts.  I like winning clean.  I will take my losses with perfect stride.  They are part of what happens when we risk doing what we do.  You will never catch me planning to lose on purpose.  I will not be counted in that line of smart people.  I suggest to those who prefer to win more often, go the other way.  Do not buy in on those intelligent ideas that are arranged to accept how we should arrange our play to actually lose on purpose to gain a better looking set of immediate results.  It is pure stupidity with layers of clothing that look very intelligent.  Refuse to play that way.

Now...for the great example.  In the end...bad profit mechanics come from impatient ways.  Let's take a look.

Learn The Art Of Giving Bad Work A Rest.

Separate Your Quality Of Work Away From The Rest Of The Crowd

I used to install floor coverings during a couple of decades in the past.  My father had learned the floor covering trade.  I used to help him do some of that work here and there.  I learned how to do what he was doing.  When I took over the family business of operating the furniture store, I inherited the floor covering retail model as well.  Nobody wanted to run the floor covering store.  I took it on at the same time I took over the furniture store operations.  Both retail operations, the furniture store and the carpet store, had separate locations with stand alone facilities.  My father quit the labor-intense floor covering stuff.  As a result, I hired the labor to be serviced by other employees.  That was a whole new experience for me.  I discovered how different the people who possess skilled trades can become.  Wow, that was a brand new set of interesting experiences.  Quality control became a constant issue of high governing maintenance.  The tail always seemed to wag the dog in that model.  The skilled laborers tried hard to control the dog.

It took me a couple of years to get that kind of leadership fully understood.  The best way I could see how to lead those skilled tradesmen was to become one of them.  I learned how to install flooring better than all of them.  I made sure I got properly trained, licensed and skilled.  No longer could any one of those skilled labored employees pull the wool over my eyes about performing quality work they were expected to do.  I was clearly operating inside the fort they used to protect.  I was complete buried inside their loop.  No lame excuses could survive my view.  I was practicing good leadership by example.  It is a very nice place to lead.  It has its shortcomings, however, but it will help to control those who are required to carry a licensed skill.  When you, the leader, can do very well what the skilled laborers do, it will go a long ways in helping your leadership demands protect better quality of work.  It will consume your precious other time demands but it will greatly add power to your leadership ways with those skilled trades.  In the end, I recommend it.

I was able to pull it off because I could do my other managerial tasks after hours.  I could catch up on my managerial functions of the two retail stores once the employees went home for the day.  I would also be able to properly schedule my flooring work in spaces of time that did not allow the tail to wag the dog.  I would only perform the crucial flooring work that required my licensed skills.  The rest of the menial tasks were performed by helpers learning the trade.  For example, I would send a helper up to a house to move out the furniture, tear out the old flooring and to prepare the new installation work.  Once the helpers completed that prep work they would call me to come and perform the actual installations.  When the installation was done the helpers cleaned up the site and put the tools away.  They took care of the wrap up duties on the site.  I left to go back to my office to manage my two business models.  I performed this kind of work pattern for almost two decades.  The flooring work became one of my "side" specialties.  By its nature, floor covering work could be easily scheduled properly.  My employees eventually nicknamed me, "The Doctor."  I still am referred to as 'Dr. Turner' from many of them from my past.  I hear it from some of them when I bump into them in the general public here and there.  I will hear them in public say, "Hey, Dr. Turner...how are you?"  I usually do not notice it much.  It became such a coined phrase back then that it no longer sounded strange.

I tell this story for one reason.  I learned something very valuable about those years of specialty trades.  I learned that some days do not exactly turn out as you had wanted them to become.  Sometimes the skilled work you performed did not turn out as well as it should.  Once in awhile, a carpet seam just would not cooperate well.  You would cut and burn it one more time because the first time looked terrible.  For some strange reason, your skill levels were not "on" that day.  For some aggravating reasons, your skilled performance was not going to cooperate on this particular day.  You could re-do your weaker efforts over and over and the results would continue to fall short of where your allowance was geared.  Sometimes it would just not come together well.  The craft of excellence got tripped up today.  Stuff happened.  The artful skills seemed destined to disappear.  Those days came around once in awhile, for one reason or another.  When those bad days of performance arrived wrong, I learned how to recognize their presence.  I could recognize that for some strange reasons, my best skills were not hitting the top of my performance levels.  I also learned how to recognize that even though I tried to correct where they were not performing well that some times the corrections did not turn out better.  In fact, many of them seemingly got worse.  I learned how to recognize this 'once-in-awhile' challenge.  It was something I learned how to identify early on within the skilled work I was performing.

I did not usually discover this kind of challenge very often, but when it arrived it seemed impossible to correct.  It seemed the harder I tried to improve the craft, the worse the results kept turning out.  I learned one of the most valuable lessons I could ever perform.  I stopped doing what I was doing.  I learned how to stop.  I learned how to pull up and stop.  For some strange reason, I was done doing good work for that day, and I knew it.  It was a great piece of quality discovery.  I was able to admit that it was not my day to paint great pictures.  For some strange reasons, my artful skills were absent from my ability to insert.  They were gone for the moment.  Nothing I could do would return them to play.  I learned the art of stopping what I was doing, professionally.  I learned how to drop that effort for the time being and go do something else.  In many cases, I folded up shop for the day and rescheduled to return the next day under a new and fresh approach.  I learned how to respect and make that kind of professional move.  It was amazing how much difference a day makes.  Almost always I would return the next day to easily perform excellent work that was such a huge challenge the day before.  Walking away was the best thing to do.  It was a tremendous lesson for my mind to learn to accept.  When it ain't happening, stop it.  I learned to stop what I was not doing well.  Come back another day and as if by magic, all would usually turn out smoothly.  It was a wonderful lesson for me to learn how to perform this new "delay technique" to my approach for overcoming those challenging days.  I learned the art of giving bad work a rest.

Leaders; Tip: Choose Fewer Words.

The Best Leaders Today Are The Ones Who Read How To Improve.

Say what you mean and mean what you say.  Choose fewer words, however.  Keep your thoughts to yourself and remain stealth on many of the things that run through your head.  Reveal only that stuff that truly needs to be revealed.  This will help you become a better leader.  If you are a manager or an owner of a business model, you will need to improve your leadership skills if you plan to win more often.  Your business success will center around the health you produce surrounding the leadership skills you employ within your management ways.  Your leadership skills will determine the level of health your business model will most likely produce.  The productive work your staff will perform will hinge greatly upon the kind of leadership you inject into the model you lead.  Those people will perform best when they can trust how you think, how you plan and especially how you speak about what you say and do.  Your words will not go unnoticed.  Choose them wisely.

A careless leader who gives little thought to the kinds of things spoken is a leader who does not care much about producing great results.  Great results do not show up on the front porch of a careless tongue.  It would be far greater of an advantage to say nothing at all than it would be to speak out of turn on a subject matter that damages future relationships.  A quiet tongue works better in this kind of setting.  Watch your tongue more often.  Just because it is your opinion does not necessarily mean you should share it with the people you plan to lead.  They do not always need to hear what you think.  Choose your words more carefully.

Owners often believe they must share every business thought they think about with the people they employ.  This perspective, to believe all business thoughts should be shared, is not only a false notion it can become very damaging to the leadership the owner would prefer to direct.  Not all business thoughts are good ones to think. Not all business thoughts will pan out like we describe.  Sometimes we change our minds.  Sometimes we change our beliefs.  When our mouth rolls out every thought we choose our words can become dried solid like cement in the minds of our followers.  Our words dry permanent in the working minds of those who are trying to help our model win.  Wrong thoughts can become dried ways our staff moves.  It takes a lot of extra energy therms to break up old cement and more energy to haul it away.  Be careful with how much you say.  Be careful with how you say the things you say.  Be careful with what you say you will do and how you will actually do it.  Make certain that your words actually match your actions.  Your pure leadership is at stake.

I hear things like, "We need to get better at treating our customers better."  Then just shortly after an owner shares those thoughts with their staff of sales people, that same boss walks by a frustrated customer who is trying to find a particular item.  That boss does not immediately notice what the sales staff sees.  The staff witnesses that boss walk right by that obviously frustrated customer, totally unnoticed.  The staff sees exactly how the boss does not practice what they preach.  Leadership dies.  The age of 'do as I say, not as I do' is long past.  Those days are completely gone.  Anyone practicing those old techniques of leadership ways are the leaders of today who are struggling big time.  Get rid of those old techniques and ways.  They no longer have a productive place in the current world of business leadership.  Those rough and old techniques are useless today.  They add to the contribution of losing ways for the business model to perform.  They will not help growth happen.

Another old technique that no longer works is to threaten your staff to perform better with their working ways or else!  The 'or else' ways of managing people does not work anymore.  They do not need to put up with that kind of disrespect.  Most people have become very smart in how they can disguise what you do not see.  They will project a friendly process for you to witness while at the same time produce far less than what they were truly capable of performing.  The competitor who has a better atmosphere for producing higher levels of leadership ways will actually produce better growth that may destroy your efforts to increase market shares.  You may never actually notice how the competitor does a far better job of group performance than your organization.  Your intelligent staff keeps that view away from your senses.  You will see only those things your staff wants you to see.  Your careless words described what you prefer to see.  Your staff is intelligent enough to make certain this view comes to your surface of sight.  Threats and coercion do not work well anymore.  Find a better plan.  Develop better leadership habits.  Improve how you lead the people you hire.  In the end, they are the ones who must produce their success in better ways.  They are waiting for you to teach them how that can be done.  Threats are not how that works best.

I once had a mentor who told me that it was not how he said what he said that mattered.  It was how I interpreted it that mattered the most.  He further described how sometimes the best lessons came from the instructions for 'what not to do' instead of what 'should be done.'  So often owners look to see what they can do to improve the results of their working ways.  Owners hunger for new ideas that work well.  Owners look for things they can add to their current package of things they do to produce better results.  Good owners are always searching for the next new working idea.  Good owners are constantly trying to find the next new thing that helps them win.  This kind of effort suggests that good things come from added ideas and methods.  That is why we often miss what we can do to improve how cutting out some things will help.  Cutting away at some of the things we do does not appear to be the best way to improve how we grow.  We usually look to find more things to add in order to grow.  When in fact, some stuff needs to be cut out, instead.

If you practice coercion to motivate your staff and its performance desires, cut that out.  Get rid of that technique.  It does not work anymore.  Trust me, it is completely dead.  When your horse is dead, dismount.
There is nothing more goofy to watch than a business owner trying to use old rotten methods of motivation to inspire people that are not listening.  What a total waste of time.  Learn new motivational techniques.  Go online and get some help.  There are virtually thousands of wonderful sites to visit.  Go get help.  Your business model is waiting for you to improve.  Give it a better chance to do what it was meant to do.  Some of the old ways we used to lead were always wrong.  Now our staff knows it.  What used to work occasionally no longer applies.  Our staff now knows better.  They have grown up to be more inclined to gravitate to the direction of improved respect.  People are so much more informed today than ever before.  Recognize this truth and learn how to respect what they can and will produce.  Put away the whip and learn who to become a better leader.  Kill the threats.  They no longer work the magic they once produced.

Are You Protecting The Ways You Own What You Do?

I had a recent thought about something I was asked to do almost 35 years ago.  I have mentioned this specific experience once before.  I remember how much it caught my attention when I first came across its path of notice 35 years ago.  It was such a large discovery back then that it still pops up in my mind every once in awhile.  I am occasionally reminded about how some experiences in life are never remembered and how others are never forgotten.  When those memories first happened, it is sometimes amazing which ones get remembered and more amazing how some of those experiences we thought would be remembered become forgotten forever.  This one particular experience was one of those that I never guessed would stick forever, but it did.

I plainly remember this event as if it happened yesterday.  It shows up in my mind every single time exactly the way it appeared to me 35 years ago.  I first see his watch, he takes it off and sets it down on the corner of his desk.  He props it up so he can see the time it shows from the face of its hands.  He looks to me and says, "You have five minutes."

I can still see my store manager's image sitting at his desk.  This was the man who had made a serious effort to begin to mentor me in the mid 1970's.  I was too young, too wrapped up with myself and too arrogant to recognize his move.  In retrospect, however, I see all of the signs he expressed to take me down a great path of wonderful business lessons.  I was too inexperienced and too filled up with my own rotten egotistical ways to become a good follower.  My window of opportunity soon closed.  I truly think I missed out on a lot of great lessons early on in my business career.  I can think back to how and when he finally pulled away.  Those patterns are very clear to me today.  Unfortunately, I did not recognize them in the 1970's like I do today.  They are exactly the same kinds of things I warn other business owners to pay closer attention to as they develop their own winning ways, today.  Get help.  Pay attention to those who are taking their winning skills and placing them over us to offer us helpful hints on how to win more often.  Drop ourselves just long enough to see how help can deliver more wins.  Winning is far more important than protecting the way you own what you do.  It is a very tough concept to wrap our heads around.

That image of that boss setting me down to teach me how to win more often still remains clear in the memory banks of my mind.  I can still see his unique John Lennon glasses, his parted hair line and his perfectly pressed white shirts and tie.  I can still see his gold watch get placed on the left hand side of the large desk he had in his office.  I can still see him look at his watch as he set it down and turn to me to say, "You have five minutes."  I remember the long stare on his face as he waited for me to begin.

At the time these things were happening I could never imagine I would remember these things in such great detail as I have.  They did not appear to be one of those great memorable moments my life would see.  Yet still today, over 35 years later, I can see that moment as if it happened ten minutes ago.  It is funny how things like that happen in our lives and paths.  This was one of those defining moments in my business time.

I had recently expressed my unhappiness for having too much to do and not enough time to do it in.  I shared that expression with this boss.  He listened to my complaints about that exact thing earlier in the week.  This was the time he specifically asked me to come to his office to share with him how my time was being robbed.  He started off the discussion by taking off his watch and telling me I had five minutes to share.  Then he said, "Go."

That five minutes seemed like an hour.  He showed me one very interesting lesson.  He defined how he manages his time so well.  This lesson was delivered to me well before "The One Minute Manager" was ever produced.  I have read several of Ken Blanchard's books.  His work is worth reading.  I have some of his books sitting in my library at home.  I go back to review some of the segments he produced.  I truly recommend his work.  If you are a business leader, go check out some of his work.  You will gain some advantage to what you do.  My boss could have written that book.  He was the perfect example of how a one minute manager performs it well.  Years later when I read Ken Blanchard's book I pictured my previous boss all the way through the book.  I could see Jim on every turn of the page.  I think Ken was following Jim around before he wrote his words.  Jim was one of the successful ones Ken writes about.  I was too young and too stupid to follow his lead at that time in my life.  I missed it.

Managing your time effectively is the most important challenge each leader learns to face.  The ones who actually practice the art of making their work respect this technique are the ones who develop the best results.  Hands down.  It is the first magical trick to producing highly effective management results.  It is the best way to eliminate too much 'busy work.'

I love 'busy work.'  So do you.  Unfortunately, 'busy work' does not produce the kind of results that deliver our highest returns.  In fact, most 'busy work' steals away valuable time chips that could otherwise be used for producing higher results.  The problem most business leaders have is that they do not effectively respect how their moments in time are better used.  Most of us permit our time chips to be stolen away by trying to manage the things that do not matter.  We grow our bad habits doing the things we ought not to be doing.  We also learn how to protect those ways.  We developed these bad habits of how we use our time so we quietly take ownership of them.  Since we developed and own these bad habits, we protect them with extra energy.  We waste valuable time doing the things we ought not to be doing.  We work hard on protecting the ways we own what we do.  Our work eventually becomes tired and lazy.  Our effectiveness drifts to the side of the ledger that does not produce efficient results.  Our habits become protected and run unchecked by the watch sitting on the top of the desk, monitoring how we spend the hands that are going around.  We magically lose our time.  It goes away without a trace.  We go away each day with too much necessary work remaining to be done and we used up all of our time doing our work.  My boss gave me that pure lesson in those five minutes nearly 35 years ago.  I still remember it to this day.

Always Exercise Caution In Your Business Affairs

Yesterday I watched a customer talk about a competitor located in a nearby town.  We had a nice conversation about stretching out our marketing efforts to begin servicing that new area with a mobile effort.  We chatted about some of the obvious possibilities.  We discussed the potential for our local business to be able to reach out and gain some new valuable trade from that neighboring town.  He offered some ideas and history of the competitor located in that neighboring town.  It was a telling conversation.

He was directly related to the previous owner of the one large competitor located in that neighboring town.  His Uncle sold that business, our largest competitor in that region, to another couple several years ago.  Since that sale, his opinion of the new owners was not very high.  He described how many of the locals in that region were traveling outside of that small town to do their business.  He felt it was time our model looked at expanding our business efforts into that neighboring town.  I shared with him that we had recently developed a once per week plan and were currently seeing some nice growth servicing that region.  He was surprised to hear that we were already making that expansion move.  He added many good suggestions about how the dynamics work in that neighboring community.  I listened to his tips.

I also shared with him some important stuff as well as refrained from sharing many other things we had already accomplished.  I reminded myself during my friendly chat with him that I am not sure if he is an ally or an adversary.  I was careful with what I shared.  Good leaders do not tip their hand to those who have not proven which side of the fence they sit.  Good leaders do not assume the ones with the friendly personalities are allies.  We easily get trapped into believing that someone who treats us nice is on our side.  Be careful, sometimes they come dressed in sheep's clothing.  Control how we like to be tickled behind the ears.  It can become one of our worst development traits.  Always exercise caution in your business affairs.

I can spend hours describing where I made my most terrible mouth flapping mistakes.  I can build a small library to house those wonderful errors.  Be careful in how you share your plans.  There are people quietly working out in this world who would delight in bringing your plans down.  They will not arrive on the scene of your developments wearing the wolf clothing they eventually expose.  Be careful in how you share your plans.

In my career I have discovered many times how an enemy was in my fort.  Adversaries come in all sizes, shapes and forms.  They do not always wear wolf clothing.  Some of the worst offenders may actually be inside your organization gainfully employed.  Never assume your organization cannot have these kinds of underwater movements.  Once in awhile in my past I have discovered who my employed adversaries were usually when it is the worst time to have discovered it.  Although it has not been a huge problem in my business history, it does occur.  Pay closer attention to who runs ally and who runs adversary.  Look deeper beneath the hidden clues.

One of the best ways to reduce this potential is to learn how to get your employees deeply involved in the changes you make.  The more development and work for change they actually take on will easily reveal how much support they actually carry.  When your employees are deeper involved with the changes you are trying to make they have less of a chance to continue to wear the sheep's outer shell.  Sooner or later, they will need to take off the disguises they use to subvert what is being changed.  The wolf will show up earlier in the development process.  This gives your organization enough time to manage that distraction, early on in the process of change, and get on with producing a better winning way.  The earlier you find the adversarial stuff the better your plans will develop with success.  Do not be afraid to find the adversarial stuff.  Every organization has its wares on this subject matter.  Not everything is openly and completely accepted.  Some developments you lead are not popular to support.  You may discover that you are the last one to know about that perspective.  I have worn those uncomfortable shoes.

I like what an old timer once told me, "Always exercise caution in your business affairs."