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?