Are the Right People on Your Bus?

The people closest to you in your personal and professional lives will have a tremendous influence on who you become. As a friend of mine told me,

“I put people in my life who don’t let anything stop them.”

They have the same success mindset she does, and at her young age she has accomplished more than most people do in a lifetime. How does she do this?

Think of yourself as a bus driver and the seats behind you are occupied by those closest to you. What are you hearing from them? How do they act from day to day? How much of a priority are you to them? What actions are they doing you are proud of? What positive influence do you feel in their presence?

People you want on your bus

You are the average of the people you associate with. If you are surrounded by whiners and those who believe life is out to get them, then you become just like those people. If you spend time around people who are glad to see Mondays, are upbeat about life, and are eager to work hard to succeed, then you become more like them as well.

Make a list of 20 people currently on your bus. Family, friends, and the people you are closest to in your work environment. These are the people influencing your thinking, habits and drive to achieve. Are these the right people that will help you reach your dreams?

Off-loading your bus

Once you review who is on your bus you realize there are people there who really don’t have any business riding with you. What do you do about that? As you grow as a person you will be moving at a different pace than those around you who are not growing as fast. Eventually, you can outgrow some relationships.

As you reconnect with old high school friends through social media you will see how differently people have grown or changed over the years. Your current passengers on your bus are the same way. Are they growing with you?

Offloading passengers is tough to do. It depends on how badly you want to succeed. Making a choice to move beyond current friendships and family relationships can be a challenging and difficult process but one that is critical to your development and success. If their influence is negative, if you are a low priority, if they just don’t see the abundance of life’s opportunities, then you have no option but to let them off the bus. Either with a swiftness of a good-bye, or allowing things to gradually drift away; however, you choose, you need to make room for the right people to impact your life in a positive way.

Obviously, if you are only looking for people to give to you without you offering anything in return, your bus will be empty of the people you want to attract.

Getting the right passengers on your bus

Where you spend your leisure time, where you network, and the activities you get involved with will expose you to the average of the groups you are in. Not finding the right people? Then it’s time to find new places to connect with the right people.

Consider the people you want to be involved with then ask yourself the following questions: Where do I meet these people? How can I connect with these people? What is it about me that attracted the wrong people on the bus to begin with and what do I need to change in order to attract the right people on the bus? The answers to these questions could be the greatest decisions you make in creating greater success for yourself.

How Your Business Can Avoid a Death by 1000 Cuts

2009 was a season executives performed cut, cut, cut type of economic measures and hopefully your business wasn’t one of the many that died from self-inflicted 1000 cuts. Gruesome? Many businesses went under more because of their arbitrary across the board cuts bleeding them to death than the actually down economy. This year will also be an economic challenge as we all need to get more for less out of our businesses. Be a leader and don’t die at your own hand. Remember, you must avoid cutting your own throat when trying to get more for less.

Look into the details

The easy road is to do the simple stuff many companies do. Across the board cuts, wage freezes and slice and dice the budget. This is where you can cut your own throat. What if you need more personnel to properly run your department? What if cutting your marketing dollars removes more revenue than you saved by not advertising? What if you best talent decides to bail because of a second year of wage freeze?

Study the details of your organization looking for cost saving opportunities. What services are you outsourcing you could bring back in house using your staff? What tasks can be streamlined? Are you getting your employees involved in finding better and more cost effective ways to perform tasks? Could you do a better job of scheduling people for peak customer times?

Take each department of your organization and explore ways to make improvements without cutting deeply into profit-producing opportunities.

Have a plan

During difficult economic times a tight strategic plan is more critical than ever before because every meeting, every dollar, even step must be made in the positive direction toward accomplishing goals. When I see organizations missing the marks they set to achieve for the year and then use the excuses of the economy, how hard they worked to get what they did get, or how they did the best they can under the circumstances, I see an organization that is off the path.

Define your targets, your action items to reach those targets and set a timeline for each step along the way. Accountability is the easiest choice to get more for less. How accountable are you holding your executives to their responsibility of reaching their targets?

Put away the knife

Why do companies cut budgets instead of focusing on finding the additional revenue to meet the budgets? Because reducing costs is always easier than finding more revenue. Who said it was supposed to be easy? The job of every company is to make profits and grow the business to extend the longevity of the organization.

Stop the cutting mentality and spend more time finding additional opportunities to grow your business. Are you looking for more for less this year? I suggest you focus on the more and dedicating fewer days to figuring out the less.

4 Ways to Energize Yourself and Your Business

At the start of this decade no one was waiting around the office at midnight dreading to see if the electric grid crashed, if computer-based machinery stopped, or society fell into chaos due to Y2K as we did ten years ago. Yet, I still witnessed people dreading returning from their four day weekend to the daily grind that chewed up many businesses and their leaders last year.

To revitalize a company the leader must first be revitalized. How can you revitalize yourself when the economy is still down, people still seem to be in a negative mindset, and the future is quite unclear? With these four action items you can reenergize your vitality as a leader and once again set a positive tone for your staff to follow and vicariously become more energized themselves.

1. Get a reality check

I’ve heard it said many times; things are never as good as they seem and never as bad as they seem. 2009 seemed to be a pretty bad year for most organizations. Many executives just gave up in the fourth quarter and started focusing on 2010. In retrospect, 2009 was filled with lessons. Step back from the pain and frustration of 2009 and make a list of lessons learned that can help you in the future. We all learned last year, in some cases it could be what not to do. However, aren’t those some of the best lessons to have?

2. Make a plan

Free-wheeling is no longer an option for leadership; nor is sticking directly on a plan. Flexibility within a plan is different than free-wheeling in that you have a clear understanding of destination and the ability to make adjustments. Do you have a written plan for this year? Do you have a written plan for your personal life? I’m not being pollyanna here, I know you don’t suddenly wake up one day and life is all rosy. The business side of life is still going to be a climb up the mountain, but your personal life can be a great source of energy fueling that climb. Have a personal plan as well as a business plan.

3. Find inspiration in your personal life

People are still going to reject some of your sales efforts, companies are still tight with budgets, and the country still has a ways to go before we are into positive growth. In other words, business is still going to be a challenging environment. That is why I set 50 personal goals for the year (to go with my 50 professional goals for the year) because I know I get inspired in my personal life. Who inspires you? What inspirational friends do you need to spend more time with? What friends do you need to avoid/drop/move on from? If you aren’t being positively impacted by your friends, you are losing energy that is needed to fight the business battle. Find inspiration.

4. Try something completely different

How many times last year, did you ask people to give you more, hammer them for not doing their jobs correctly, and generally focused on the negative aspects of the business. Try something different this year. Become solution-focused instead of blame-focused. Be proactive instead of reactive. Look for innovative approaches instead of cutting budgets and doing less of the same that wasn’t working in the first place!!!

Pushing an elevator button repeatedly does not make the elevator arrive any quicker. I think we fall into this type of behavior frequently when times are tough. Get real about the positives, find solutions for the negatives and get energized to lead. Because it is the beginning of a new year, now is a great opportunity to refocus, reinvent, and reenergize yourself and your staff. Get pumped to make a difference this year.

Is Your Business GPS Programmed?

Isn't it great how we can climb in the car enter our destination address into the GPS and have basically worry free travel knowing we won't get lost and will reach our destination? What does your business GPS look like? Since executives don't have a Garmin gadget sitting on their desk for them to enter where they want to be in 12 months and expect basically worry free travel, we have to do it the old fashioned way. We do that by answering some questions to help us determine the focus of the trip. Such as, do you know your destination you desire to reach by January 1st, 2011?

What is the address?

Having a clear picture of where you want your business to be is no different than the clear definition of where you want your car to be at the end of the trip. Instead of entering a street number into your GPS, enter in the "address" you want your business to reach. The address looks like, revenue dollars, on market share street in the town of profits in the state of celebration.

What is guiding your path to reach your destination?

A strategic plan is the best map for getting from Point A to Point B. Have you mapped out your route to your desired destination? Just being filled with desire and hope today isn't going to get you there. I know lots of hard working people who are struggling. Your mapped out plan keeps you on task even when you have to take unexpected detours. The more detailed the directions the better defined the route. Imagine the GPS lady's voice tell you, "It one mile, turn left" as opposed to your VP telling you at the last minute, "We should’ve turned one mile back."

What obstacles do you anticipate?

Rarely does a year happen with smooth sailing the entire way. In fact, if your seas are that calm, you probably never left the harbor. Obstacles are part of every journey and anticipated obstacles are easily navigated when you are prepared for their inevitability. Make a list of the potential obstacles you will face this year and make a plan to render them non-events, just part of the landscape of reaching your destination.

What are your contingency plans?

To journey the path to great destinations requires fore-thought as I've mentioned but also necessary to achieve greatness is the ability to think on your feet and be decisive. Every great leader is comfortable and ready with contingency plans when the unexpected happens. Unless you want to be stopped dead in your tracks well short of your destination, be ready to make choices quickly to keep your business progressing forward.

Whispers are Now Broadcasts

My parents' generation barely wanted to talk about sex with doctors let alone in public, and today with social media and phone technology we are so open with our thoughts we have a new word: sexting. What was once whispered is now considered broadcast worthy.

Between twitter, facebook and texting millions of people feel the need to express their every emotion, thought and circumstance. That behavior is slopping over to the real world too. Recently I was in a poker tournament and the young man beside me started just going off about what he was going to do based on my actions. It is rude to talk about a hand while it is still in play so I asked him what he was doing. He told me he was talking to himself. Another person immediately chimed in, "We can hear you!"

This is where we are in society -- out loud, unbuffered thinking and communicating. Is this the transparency we really need? Social media is becoming the self-help group therapy session for millions of people and it is changing how society interacts. The lines are blurring of what is considered professional, confidential and appropriate.

Had a bad meal at a restaurant? Tell everyone and take a picture of the food to post. Dealing with a rude customer service person on the phone? Tell the world.

People are creating hate blogs, corporate bashing websites and editorial commentary on anything and anyone. This is changing business interaction and creating ethical questions for organizations.

Can an executive read an employee's posts and take action based on what was posted? Can an employer read a prospective employee's twitter postings (tweets) before the interview? Can a business file a suit against a customer for false reporting of a negative situation? How does an executive handle a negative thread of posts on their corporate facebook page? Is that censorship or good business?

These questions and many others are raising the stakes on the open communication in social media. Executives need to crate policies to deal with these broadcasts from employees, customers and cowardly bashers who have been given a forum to vent.

As we've seen with the Tiger Woods story, a person can go from role model to pariah in a matter of hours as people heap opinions upon opinions in open communication. In the age of instant communication and unvarnished baseless opinion organizations need to be ready to handle a firestorm that was once whispered but now is an open broadcast. The rules of communication have shifted dramatically in the last 12 months. Businesses need to create the proper response within the next 12 months or risk the loss of control on your brand, business message and information.