Writing code is not my gift although I need to have a great looking website. Knowing how to use the Internet is vastly different than understanding how everything works on the Internet. So, imagine my frustration when my website was hacked repeatedly in a short period of time and my web designer goes AWOL. Repeatedly, because the problem was never fixed by the “experts.”
For six days my website was down while those in the know tried to figure out what happened and how to restore it. I realized I was working with wannabes and not professionals.
I send out an S.O.S. to my twitter followers and received many responses. The non-professional responses from “experts” were shocking. From “Sure I can help your emergency, what’s your budget?” to “After you get your problem fixed drop me a line for hosting services, etc” And then he gives a thank you to who referred him to my post.
Being a professional at what you do means understanding customer interaction, being responsive to the customer and possessing solid knowledge. Claiming to be an expert and actually being an expert are vesting different things. The way the hacker got into my website (as I am told) was due to poor code writing by my “expert” web designer.
A Professional:
Operates a business not a money-making hobby
Possesses a skill set beyond the basics
Builds client relationships, not just grabs what walks along
Spends more occupational time on this job than on the other jobs he might do
In the land of multi-tasking and multiple occupations the woods are full of people looking for different ways to make money and the buyer is skeptical until he knows whether he is dealing with a professional or a wannabe.
In my case I’ve learned through multiple experiences eLance.com for web work is Wannabe heaven. Be a pro.
Ever notice small children don't really understand numbers? I gave my nephew a pretzel and he told me he didn't want just one, he wanted five pretzels. So I broke up the one pretzel he had into five pieces and had him count with me to five. He was happy he now had five pretzels.
Studies have found that behavior never leaves us; it just happens at larger numbers for adults. Numbers get so big we don't relate to the differences between millions, billions and trillions. Those are just words and zeroes.
This first image is a man standing in front of $1 million dollars in $100 dollar bills. The second image is of the man standing in front of $100 million of $100 dollar bills stacked on a pallet. If we related to these numbers accurately, we'd be 100 times more happy as we were with the $1 million and most people don't react that differently between the two numbers.
Our government now tosses around the trillion figure. The third image is $1 trillion in $100 bills stacked in pallets. Can you even see the man in the lower left corner of those double stacked pallets? The difference between a million and a trillion is the difference between a small pile of money and a warehouse filled with money, yet most of us react to these numbers about the same.
The next time you hear about the cost of a program or trade deficit expressed in trillions, think about these images.
Maintaining your focus on your job on Friday is critical. Let these 10 bits of information keep you focused on why your job is important to you and your organization especially on the day most people want to start the weekend early.
1. 24% of all newly hired sales associates will not prospect -- ever! Improve your hiring profile.
2. 45% of all newly hired sales associates will not close a sale -- ever! Leave the closing to the experts.
3. 79% of all leads generated at a trade show are never followed up.
4. 82% of all homeowners can't tell you the name of their Realtor if they bought their home more than two years ago. How lasting is your customer impression?
5. With the economy on life support, many health professionals are worried that even more folks will put on "recession pounds." How is your exercise program coming along?
6. 90 per cent of businesses that lose data from a disaster are forced to close within two years of the disaster. How effective is your disaster recovery program?
7. If your household income was $150,000 or higher last year, you were in the top 5%.
8. Through our social training we have allowed interruptions to eat up 2.1 hours of our day (28% of the average workday.)
9. Spam accounts for 14.5 billion messages globally per day. In other words, spam makes up 45% of all emails.
10. Over 141 million cans of SPAM are sold worldwide each year. If you pay too much attention to socializing and email spam, you may find yourself dining on more of this SPAM.
Instead of falling into the common trap of coasting into the weekend, why not Kick Ass today.
1. Take action on something that has been sitting on your desk all week. Make it happen! 2. You know that crap that is piling up on your desk? File it, delegate it or throw it away. 3. Write one Job Well Done (JWD) note to an employee and mail the handwritten note to their home address. You will make their week next week, I promise. 4. Set one Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) to get done by the end of this quarter. I mean BIG! 5. Call your buddies and plan a cookout for Saturday night and party like there is no tomorrow. 6. Now you have a party to look forward to. Get your ass back to work and focus -- HARD! 7. Pick one employee to energize. Ask them insightful questions about their career and show you care, and want to help them succeed. 8. Forget a heavy lunch today. Take a brisk walk for an hour then eat an apple with peanut butter at your desk. 9. Notice you missed your post-lunch coma? Great! Be more productive than you thought possible on a Friday afternoon. 10. Call a customer or client just to wish them a great weekend and let them know how pumped you are about your job.
During the space race of the sixties NASA needed a pen that would write in zero-gravity so their astronauts could take notes and keep records while in space. Since pen technology is based on a gravity feed of ink to the point, NASA spent a million dollars (in 1960's dollars) to design a pen that would work in zero-gravity. What did the cosmonauts use in space? A pencil.
Sometimes I see businesses overcomplicate simple matters and spend hours in meetings agonizing over issues because they are usually focusing on the wrong question. The question wasn't what pen can write in zero-gravity, the question was how can an astronaut write in space?
What are the questions your leadership team is spending hours of meeting time on, that might be the wrong question?
Are you agonizing and focusing on how and where to trim expenses and labor or are you looking for innovative ways to find more sales to keep you from having to make those layoffs?
Are you asking questions like, "Why did this happen and who is responsible?" Or are you asking, "How can we solve this problem and prevent it from happening again?"
Look at the issues you are facing and trying to address. Which ones are you overcomplicating? You probably can save your organization thousands of dollars and hundreds of man hours by doing this one thing today.
I hear people still talking about dreading Mondays and pining away for the weekends. These are the lazy attitudes that the swollen economic times of the 90's infected executives with. Even with a lazy start to the week on Mondays and an early tail out to the week on Fridays companies still made profits and executives and sales people still made good bonuses and commissions.
Those times are gone, and the attitudes bred during those "easy" times need to be gone with them. If you are an executive and dread Mondays and likes to kick back on Fridays, you have three choices in front of you.
1. Stay in the same groove.
What was once a groove in great economic times is not a rut. While businesses are fighting for every ounce of sales they can get, the slide in and slide out attitude at work will only put those organizations led by this attitude further behind the competition and further away from recovery. Many businesses that are closing or going bankrupt are suffering under the weight of such malaise and using the excuse of "the economy." Ever wonder why some business in an industry are going under while others in the industry are doing just fine in the same economy? It's not the economy; it's the difference between who is in the rut of lazy attitudes and who is working harder than ever before.
2. Bail out
The bailout I mean here is not a stimulus package, it's leaving and bailing on the organization. Before anyone reading this feels executives abandoning a company during these challenging times is a wimp, it can be the best thing a person can do for the survival of the entity. In some cases, it's a retirement that should've happened years ago. I see this to be the case in many family-owned businesses. The vigor to grow the business left over a decade ago but it was easy to coast and enjoy the fruits of prior hard work. But now, the energy and the passion just isn't as intense as it was when they first started the business, so now it's time to turn it over to the next generation of family members who have the energy and the passion to fight the good fight.
In some cases, yes, executives are taking their golden parachute and heading off to retirement land. Bully for them and don't let the door hit ya where the Good Lord split ya. You don't need them anymore and you want them gone; as that person has gone from the ship's captain to the dragging anchor. 3. Reinvigorate for the battle
Once upon a time NFL training camp and Major League Baseball spring training were designed to knock off the rust of players who had been sitting around for months off season. These pre-season times were designed to get players back in shape ready to play when it counts. In today's high priced, high profile games athletes know they will lose their positions and therefore millions of dollars if they are not focused on their conditioning 12 months a year. That is how the game has shifted and that is how business is shifting. No longer are their low key days of the week. No longer is there a seasonal best effort.
To stay competitive means full bore effort and attitude every day of the work week, including Monday and Friday. I've started the terminology as a reminder to myself to make Mondays -- Make Money Monday, and Fridays are now Kick Ass Fridays. Because the team that quits in the closing minutes of a close game always loses. Be a winner!
As AIG gets caught in the media blender, once again they are faced with choices that are no win situations. Do they ignore contracts and then face the legal battle of not paying contracted bonuses or do they fulfill contractual obligations and get hammered by a governing body that is looking for an example to hang from the yardarm for all to witness?
As a leader of business organizations you are going to be faced with choice dilemmas that appear to have no winning option. When faced with such options make a selection and defend your choice. The heat will be on and the rush to judgment will be swift and most likely misinformed. But making tough choices comes with the territory.
Do I think AIG should pay those bonuses? The contracts should be honored otherwise they are imitating the home owners who are not honoring their mortgage contracts by not paying and fulfilling their obligations. Should such non-performance based contracts even exist? Absolutely not! And this is the advantage of such economic corrections we are living through. Such times force organization to review behaviors that have gone astray in boom times and make corrections for better business practices.
In some cases, business with egregiously bad business practices pay by going under. Some get a second chance to correct their mistakes. Enron wasn't so lucky, let's hope AIG recognizes their errors and rebounds.
I know this country appears to be out for blood and a pound of flesh from bailout corporate executives. We as the American public have a choice dilemma of our own. Do we castigate these leaders and tear them up every chance we get, or do we assist them in correcting the course as fast as possible so we all can benefit from a renewed economy? We gain nothing in economic recovery with executive bashing even though we may feel better doing so. We need to make the choice where we all benefit from renewed economic strength.
Ask yourself: Does it make sense to abuse those who we want to lead us out of the recession? Will they deliver their best efforts this way? It's time this country get solutions-focused and let go of the blame-focus, so we can move ahead. It is often said the reason people who are miserable, are in fact miserable because they are more comfortable in that state of mind. The longer we are miserable the less likely we are driven to get beyond it. Leaders set the tone for finding solutions and now is the time to look ahead instead of looking how we got here.
I've been doing strategic planning for years. Working with executives and boards of directors can be challenging, inspiring, frustrating, exasperating and unbelievably rewarding. Sometimes even in the same process!
Saturday I met with a wonderful on-going client on a planning retreat. To the credit of the CEO she trusted me to implement my new Fast Forward Strategic Planning process and the step up in the workload, time commitment and effort from her managerial team was going to be extensive, yet she allowed me to take them on this ride. After hundreds of hours invested by her team it was time to present to their work to the board.
This board has been very typical of boards in this industry: conservative, steady and somewhat of a micromanager. What we were presenting was going to require a real step out for the board to embrace change, embrace a potential shift in direction and to rise to the challenge to pick up the pace significantly and move forward fast. With the support of statistical data, the proper presentation of "scary" ideas and the gentle support of the management team the board were presented an aggressive new type of planning proposal. Prepared for battle the management team waited for the rebuttal. An amazing thing happened! The board of directors (average age of 64) not only didn't offer rebuttal but galloped ahead of the management team in talking about change. The managerial amazement was palpable! How did this happen?
1. Proper preparation
To create great shift requires the absolute right approach. The management team spent those hundreds of hours gather information, discussing the possibilities, the competition and the direction they knew they needed to go. Statistical information as well as a thorough market analysis can make the unknown easily understood.
2. The Compelling Argument
When trying to lead change it is critical to develop what I call the compelling argument. Paint the picture so it's easily understood and points the direction the organization must go to thrive in this new economy and intelligent board members will be able to easily embrace the concept. Hammering home tough ideas will only create resistance and eventually dissolve into taking sides where no one wins (See Congress.)
By taking the time to create the compelling argument, questions can be asked, critical data clarified and the coming together of the proper direction evolves throughout the discussion.
3. Get commitment
Throughout the presentation to the board I constantly asked for them to offer agreement or opposition verbally. If they oppose, we have more discussion and clarity of our differences. If they agree, this becomes a type of commitment and contract with themselves based on the information they possess at the time. I also think the managerial team needed to hear in the words of the board members that they supported this new managerial-driven direction and were ready to participate in making it happen. Once the verbal commitment is in the air it lends more stability to that commitment. Does that mean there isn't back-sliding? Not at all, but it does create a firmer foundation to return to as the process of change is hopefully more forward than backward, but steps in both direction are natural.
This process works, and I tip my hat to the management team of my client for their hard work and effort. I also tip my hat to the board of directors of this organization for not only supporting change, but actually jumping in front to lead the charge. I wish all my clients could be such a class act.
Trust in corporate leaders is at an all time low. The legacy of the Madoff scandal, the bank failures and the Big Three auto CEOs stumbling over themselves begging for money, as well as this administrations bull's eye on executive off-site meetings, have caused the masses to be convinced corporate leadership is tainted and the enemy. Those of us who are either in those executive positions or serve those executives knows the vast majority of business owners, CEOs and presidents are great people who truly are good leaders and can be totally trusted.
As a business leader how do you prevent being painted with the broad brush of cynicism? Transparency.
1. Regularly call a full staff meetings or if you organization is too large for that; create a video for them to watch on your website. In this meeting or video come clean with all information; the positive and the not so great. Make sure your presentation is low on BS spin control, (that is what created the distrust in the first place) and high on genuine content and commitment.
2. Focus your information on how you are working to grow the company and how you are creating the plans to make it happen. Sure things change and executives are used to plenty of wiggle room but not is the time for executives to be spot on with their actions because there isn't time nor room for too many wiggle mistakes. Step up and take the pressure -- that is how you should operate at your best anyhow.
3. Conclude the information session be answering employee questions. Give your employees the opportunity to submit questions to you. Sure you get to pick and choose and you can avoid the lunatic ones, such as, "Tell me why you can't give every employee bailout packages so we can be happy?" But don't avoid the hard questions. If you only answer the softball questions you will only fuel the cynicism. Take the tough questions and give tough answers. By doing this as frequently as you see necessary (minimum once a month) you build your credibility in the workforce, you continue the growth culture and you prove that you are not one of the bad guys.
Sure, this will take some time, but your consistency of honesty and sincerity along with important information will keep your employees listening, and if they are listening, they are giving you the benefit of the doubt. In these critical economic times you want to be able to be heard and trusted. This will be a great step in making that happen.
Yesterday I wrote on how business can benefit in these economic times and today I have more to add to the list. Get focused on the opportunities not the negative chit chat and take advantage of some great ways to make your company great.
Businesses will make the extras effort to please customers
Your vendors are going to go the extra mile to appreciate the business you are still sending them and they are more willing than ever to work with you on special needs. Not only is this good for you as the customer of that vendor, but it gives you the chance to tighten that working relationship even more.
What are you doing special for your customers? I'm not talking discounting (actually, that is a dangerous slope to avoid if possible.) I'm talking about what customer service evaluations are you making to target areas for improvement? Where are your opportunities to create remarkable service to give your customers that "wow" experience? In the past maybe you didn't feel the need to go that extra step, but now is the perfect time to amp it up, and give customers a solid experience they will want to tell others about.
Leaders are forced to actually lead
When the economy is in good times companies can actually make money in spite of themselves. I know, I’ve had some as clients and it amazed me they were able to stay in business with all they were doing wrong. The glory economic days of the 90's elevated many companies and executives to levels they had not earned, but the wave of high consumer spending and rising markets lifted all these executives to leadership status.
Now that the economy is in a steep decline the real leaders get to show their skills and unfortunately, those who are in positions of leadership also get exposed. The recession is a great time for leaders to rise to the occasion and demonstrate the real skills that separate them from the wannabes who hold the position but not the talent. Leaders will thrive in this economy, managers will merely survive. How are you doing with your organization?
Weak competitors are weeded out from an industry
In 2001, the speaking industry was full of many people who had enjoyed a prosperous decade of the 90's and many of us wondered how some of them actually were getting paid for the quality of the work they were providing. On that fateful day in September of that year, the industry changed and hundreds of people previously known as speakers would leave the business to rejoin what I call the "check of the month club."
This economy will also remove the weaker players in all industries. Like it or not GM, Ford and Chrysler have been exposed as the weaker organizations in the global auto industry. The same is playing out in your industry. If you are one of the good companies, one of the strong companies, this recession should be welcomed news for you. Although you may be going through a bit of hardship and a pain, your weaker competition is going through shutting their doors and soon the industry will be thinned out and you will be ready to take on new customers and grab more market share.
Rally around a common cause
It has been said previously that Americans are at their best when times are at their worst. Immediately after 9/11/2001 patriotism was at a high. We rallied as a people against terrorism and made sure the terrorists didn't mentally beat down our country, especially during our darkest days.
Although, I have to say we do not seem to be as resilient as we were eight years ago, now is the time for leaders to create that same type of rally call within their organizations to band together and fight these economic times by not getting down, by not splintering into separate factions and by not getting sucked into the blame game pundits and newscaster relish.
Great leaders show their best abilities when times are the toughest. Rise to the occasion. Create more face time with your employees, talk about the good things that are going on and rally your people to call on their abilities to win in these economic times. There are going to be plenty of great business stories as we reemerge on the other side of this -- make your organization one of those great stories.
I am tired of hearing from the News Terrorists in the newspapers and on the airwaves about the constant flow of negative information.
A recession is a necessary economic event to correct bad behaviors. The reason this recession seems so harsh is because we had a tremendous amount of bad behavior going on that needed corrected. Fortunately, the good news is the bad behavior was confined to a few companies. The bad news is that those few companies are large and many are tired directly to the financial structure of this country which impacts all businesses.
If you are one of those impacted businesses who didn't cause this but are being affected by this recession you have an opportunity to capitalize on it. The following three opportunities are the steps good organizations are using during these recessionary times to actually benefit from the recession.
1.Resources have never been cheaper
So many companies are going into spending hibernation trying to survive this year. Smart business owners realize resources will never be as inexpensive as they are now and are using this opportunity to capitalize on this opportunity to retool, upgrade and properly position themselves for outrunning the competition.
2.Businesses are improving processes
In fast money times production is at full speed ahead and the money machine is printing profits.T he attitude is no time to slow down and tweak and implement major improvements, just keep the profit makers up and running. This is why a slowdown is the perfect time to make process improvements, cross train and retrain employees, and increase your organization knowledge about the business so better informed employees will be ready to serve more demanding customers.
3.Encourages innovation and creativity
As sad as it is, the cliche "If it ain't broke don't fix it" really is the way many businesses run in this country. Well my friends, it's pretty obvious the economy is broken. The way many organizations have been conducting their businesses has been broken and the results are self evident. When times are good, executives are not prone to adding more change to the organization and some laziness sets in to just ride the wave. In this economy the innovator, the organization driven for creativity, is the organization finding new and better methods of conducting all aspects of their businesses and they are the organizations who are gaining market share and growing.
Instead of going through meetings with all of the bad number reporting, instead of beating salespeople over the head to drum up sales, instead of counting the days you can hopefully make payroll, shift the attitude within your organization. The doom and gloom on the lips of too many people will not energize anyone. Talk about how this is a great opportunity to try new things, and refocus and retool. Build the excitement of the opportunity. Put those improved attitudes to work on innovation and creativity and watch your organization migrate from negative to energized as you put these ideas into action.
Russell J. White has distinguished himself as one of America's leading business growth strategists. He helps corporate clients surpass their goals for excellence in growth, profitability, customer service and leadership. Non-profit organizations, athletic conferences and governmental agencies have also called on Russell for strategic planning consulting, executive coaching, leadership academies and keynote presentations.
Russell is also a music enthusiast, golf addict, adventurer and renegade thinker.
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