Remember, economists deal in global statistics which are the AVERAGE of every country’s economic potential. You, the business owner, do not have to be an AVERAGE statistic in the next decade. Want more in your future than doom and gloom? Then change the game you’re playing in your business. Take back your future. Get your team together and brainstorm how you can deliver more value to your customers to earn their business and their loyalty.

Here are our top three tips for delivering top line value:

1. Reinvent your customers’ experience buying from you. Get their feedback. Search out their pet peeves. What works and what doesn’t. Choose to listen by being curious, rather than defensive. Every pet peeve has a golden opportunity in it for your business, but only if you choose to see it that way. Then analyze based on the complaints where the problems are in your customer experience system. Put together a team made up of someone from each part of the business, including those departments not part of the ‘problem’. Mandate? Reinvent how the process works to deliver what the customer really wants. Set a deadline and give this team carte blanche to come up with a game plan, budget and implementation plan you will approve.

2. Deliver value in surprising ways. How can you and your team go the extra mile for your customers? Can you teach them something that will help their business? Make introductions that will help generate more traffic? Show them how to get more mileage from your product or service. It’s like those Apple iPhone commercials that show you how to use their product. Or the webinars that Nevada State Bank put on featuring Darren Hardy from Success Magazine for how to build a successful mindset to deal with the economy. Or the supply salesperson who designed a supply cart for a hospital and filled it with her products so that the nurses didn’t have to take valuable time away from nursing to stock the shelves with new product deliveries.

3. What are you talking about? Are you adding to the doom and gloom mentality when you talk to your staff, suppliers and customers? Are you dwelling on the headlines or spending your creative energy with your team dreaming up how you are going to outshine the economy. Your mindset powers your business. What fuel are using?

As business owners, we can be part of the problem or part of the solution. We don’t have to succumb to the headlines. What will you choose to do?

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common
Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how
old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic
red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable
lessons as:

• - Knowing when to come in out of the rain;
• - Why the early bird gets the worm;
• - Life isn’t always fair;
• - and Maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t
spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not
children, are in charge).

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned
but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a 6-year-old
boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens
suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher
fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for
doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining
their unruly children.It declined even further when schools were required to get
parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student;
but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted
to have an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became
businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims.

Common Sense took a beating when you couldn’t defend yourself
from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for
assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman
failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a
little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death, by his parents, Truth and
Trust, by his wife, Discretion, by his daughter, Responsibility, and by
his son, Reason.

He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers;

1. I Know My Rights
2. I Want It Now
3. Someone Else Is To Blame
4. I’m A Victim

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was
gone. If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority
and do nothing.

Listen to these series of interviews with Rob McGregor, a leadership coach to CEOs, business owners and military commanders about how to deal with some of the more vexing people problems that flummox the best of intentions. From why your people don’t manage as you would like them to how to manage your board and build high powered teams. Every leader who wants better performance, productivity and an end to the number one frustration of owning a business (do I really have to manage people?) should take 10 minutes out of their day and listen.

Want to find out how Rob would help you sort out your top three management frustrations?

Email Sarah Thomson at SarahT@spiritwest.com to arrange a free 30 minute coaching experience. Then you’ll know if you’ve found the right solution for you.

Podcast #1:  Why Don’t My People Manage ?

Podcast #2:  Want to Grow Your Company? Learn How to Build High Powered Management Teams

Podcast #3:  I’ve Got a Board But it’s Become Frustrating to Manage. Now What?

The Business Leader’s Dilemma
You hired what you thought are great people. Yet when they start working, you find that the results you wanted are not materializing. What is your next step? Fire them? Send them to a course? Wait till they figure it out?

Rob McGregor, Spirit West’s leadership coach says “Often it is not the person you hired that is the problem. It is that they have not received clear expectations nor had the opportunity to fully discuss what is needed. Or perhaps they did ask some questions but didn’t gain anymore clarity than before.”

What we notice with leaders is that they often think they have said what they want and in fact they have. But it was said once, it wasn’t a two-way discussion and what was said lacked the context of the bigger picture.

For instance, Rob notes that one client wanted his managers to organize their department so that they didn’t need as many people to do the work. Two months later, no changes were in evidence. The leader was frustrated and wanted to blame the managers for not following through.

Standing back from the situation, the following patterns are evident. Do you see yourself in this story:

1. The manager didn’t know what problem the reorganization would solve and how she would be able to do any better or differently without the additional staff member.
2. The leader did not explain his expectations and did not invite discussion as to how to achieve the result, what was important about it or how to go about making the change.
3. The leader waited and speculated about why nothing was being done rather than checking in regularly.
4. The manager fretted about losing a valuable employee.
5. The manager did not have experience reorganizing processes in her department. She was great at her technical skill not at process re-engineering.
6. The manager did not ask the right questions to get a full picture, did not assess what help she might need and did not ask for help in putting a plan together.

Hence, nothing happened. Who is responsible? Who is to blame?

McGregor helps business owners and CEOs deal with untangling these confusing situations. He says “The leader and the follower are both responsible for their lack of communication. Blame shuts down conversations so using it in the aftermath of missed expectations will not uncover the problem nor lead to a solution.”

The answer is no one is to blame. But both parties should be held accountable for working together on setting each other up for success.

And what would Clint do in the same situation? Stare himself in the eye and say “what are you going to do about it?”

There are two types of company leaders. You are either:

1. Fearing for what might happen OR
2. Steering to what you want to have happen

If you are in the first group, it is very likely that what you fear will occur WILL HAPPEN. If you want to beat the habit of running your company with fear about the future, click here.

If you are in the second group, it is very likely that what you want to occur WILL HAPPEN. If you want to know how to make sure everyone on your team agrees with you, performs at a level not thought possible before and is working toward your vision, click here.

How are you thinking about your own future?

There are two types of company owners. You are either:

1. Not thinking like an investor and therefore not taking the time to think about how you will extract your retirement money from your company OR
2. Thinking like an investor and steering your company to a well understood and defined exit strategy and have implemented a growth plan to be attractive to investors, financiers, employees and especially customers.

If you are in the first group, it is very likely that a Disease, Divorce or Death will do your thinking for you. That puts your investment at risk of not being realized (meaning no buyer can be found for your company) or that the amount that you actually get for your company is substantially less than what it might have done had you prepared you and your company to move toward a specific exit strategy. (Pick one, there are three-four options.) If this is you, click here for more information that might change your life or at least your perception of what might be possible.

If you are in the second group (thinking like an investor) but didn’t know you also needed a growth strategy, click here. If you are in the second group and are in growth mode and are moving toward a Strategic, Financial, MBO or Harvest transition or transaction, congratulations. According to the US Small Business Administration and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, you are in the small minority of business owners who will need/want to retire in the next 3-5 years and have a plan to get there. But ask yourself, are you getting the performance you’d hoped for? If not, click here.

Managers set the strategy and work with staff on the action plan. Leaders set the vision for how this work should be done and where the company should be philosophically, financially and strategically once the project is complete.

Leaders mentor managers by respectfully holding them able and accountable. Managers delegate and work with staff to ensure they have the resources to do the work. Sometimes the best leaders are staff members. Sometimes those people with leadership titles don’t know how to do more than manage, nevermind mentor.

In our work, we’ve found that the hardest thing for manager/leaders to do is to delegate… to stop thinking others don’t do it as well as they do. Many managers think you should be able to show someone something once and then get mad at them the second time when they ‘don’t get it’. People should just know how to change how they work by being told what to do. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but humans don’t work that way. And neither should managers who want to be leaders.

If your management team isn’t getting results and gets more resistance than progress, read this article about how leadership training helps the bottom line.

Not everyone is born knowing how to take on the these two roles.