One of the Best Ways to Jumpstart Your Company’s Growth

by Chas Klivans 

Most business observers agree that as a company grows it hits speed-bumps at revenue levels of $5 million, $10 million, $20 million, and $50 million. They also generally agree that most Founders, CEOs, or General Managers fail in their well-meaning efforts to take their companies over these hurdles.

The two conventional approaches to solving this speed bump problem are based on a paradigm that inadvertently solves only 50% of the problem. No wonder getting past it is so difficult. Pure business types will argue that this common phenomenon is rooted in weak departments such as R&D, sales, production, purchasing, or financial control. Organization development thought leaders, on the other hand, ascribe it to sub-standard people management originating in B-level executive talent, compensation plans, or culture. These two traditional approaches usually fall short because CEOs leading real world companies need a unified real world business solution focused on both achieving profit and sales plus organizing people to work better together.

Does Your Company Have Some of These Symptoms?

Recently an Owner, Founder, CEO, and President communicated the following about their respective organization:

• At a $20 million distributor of automobile parts, the eight top managers reported directly to the Owner and he alone knew costs, gross margin, and profitability of the company. Management meetings with all the executives were not held.
• In a $10 million regional residential plumbing repair and maintenance business, the six senior managers reported to the Founder, he alone knew the financials, and he was head of the Purchasing Department. This Founder held occasional town hall meetings but when observed he controlled the sessions with a tight fist.
• In a $4.5 million job shop for the military, the CEO did all the customer bids, all the selling, all the purchasing, and regularly drove unfinished parts to outside contractors for deburring and plating in his own car. This CEO called a managers meeting only during a crisis and then was not present, but had his Office Manager run the meeting.
• In a $50 million company the seven top executives reported to the President. He was also the Sales Manager and Chief Financial Officer. Management meetings were held only when sales were down and during them the President was observed tapping into his Blackberry the entire meeting, even though he sat at the head of the table and led each meeting.

The common thread was that all of these top executives reported they were stuck at one of these revenue speed bumps. These leaders said they had tried everything they could think of, they all felt they had hit the wall. However, all of them still acted like start-up CEOs who got involved in virtually every detail of running the company. I know the fear that results in holding onto this start-up mode of single-handedly pushing the business, because I have done it myself. We are all human.

Going Through the Toll-Gate

Most top leaders need to go through a metaphorical “toll-gate” to successfully navigate the $5 million to $50 million speed bumps which every company faces. The Founder, CEO, or General Manager needs the courage to let go of the familiar cherished leadership style he used to get his start-up company off the ground: pushing it forward mostly by himself.

Starting at the first speed bump of $5 million in revenue and more so with each consecutive speed bump, the daily leadership power dynamic must migrate from inside the CEO’s head to inside the heads of each internal leader. The craft of making a small company into a large company is that the leadership style of the Owner or General Manager evolves from solo pushing to the management team collectively pulling the company forward. In addition, this key ingredient boosts the valuation price strategic and financial buyers will pay for a business, because they know the operations can survive without the top leader.

The CEO needs to shift his thinking so he trusts himself to let go of controlling every part of the business and pivots to the role of larger company CEOs, who understand that their daily responsibility is managing the managers and not being a department head. Unless this power dynamic emerges, executives on the senior team will remain undermanaged and the CEO will continue to hold back company growth.

How to Operationalize Making Your Company Larger

The craft of how the CEO transitions from pushing the business forward to the management team pulling the firm forward includes many components. One important tool, described below, is to look at a company’s infrastructure from four different levels.

At the 20,000 foot level invite superior operating women and men who have spines of steel (that is who built sales and profits at a minimum two to three times the size of your company) and big hearts to look over your shoulder and guide you. This is not something to be learned from a book or lecture. Be prepared to take a highly respectful beating as they observe how you run the business. With great love (in a professional business sense) they will correctly tell you where to go with the company and, equally important, where not to go. They will also keep your management team out of denial.

At the 10,000 foot level, conduct a regular quarterly town hall meeting where everybody in the company gets together. This is a very successful practice even in several billion dollar NYSE companies. Place it on the company calendar so employees expect it. At this meeting, show the attendees the company’s financials and key operating metrics, good, bad, and ugly. They already have an instinctual feel for the numbers so harness this knowledge to your advantage. If concerned with confidentiality, have employees sign a confidentiality statement if they didn’t already do so when they received their employee handbook. For the next quarter, determine five items the team will focus on doing, communicate those items in a written memorandum to all employees, and at the end of each quarter grade yourselves on performance.

At the 5,000 foot level the whole leadership team gets together for a weekly managers meeting to review the prior week’s successes and failures and to set priorities for the coming week. If you are looking for what speeds up the sales and profit engine the most in a business, this is it. If leaders need to travel that week, make it mandatory that they participate by phone or Skype. The ones that resist the most need the meeting the most. Try to keep the meeting to one hour. Most firms hold it on Monday morning.

At ground level, the executive team conducts a daily huddle to review the day’s priorities and deal with any fires that need immediate attention. Hold this meeting first thing in the morning and keep it to half an hour. Just holding this meeting will help you do your job as a larger company CEO, because larger company CEOs do not want secrets and surprises. If you are making a lot of changes or have difficult challenges, your people can feel beaten down. In this case, start the meeting with one piece of good news. If someone is a negative Nancy and says, “I can’t think of any good news,” tell them, “No, you’ve got to come up with some good news.”

This has one other advantage. Most companies have a lot to worry about. It is easy to focus on the fact that you or one of your executives is not where you want them to be. At this meeting, take a moment to celebrate small wins in the business so the atmosphere remains more upbeat than it would otherwise be. Many CEOs are so focused on where they need to go that they do not have the fun they need along the way.

Conclusion

By the time your business has reached $4 to 5 million in revenue it is already too large for you to steer it by yourself and for you to be the sole source of innovation. The power dynamic in your leadership style as the Founder, President, or General Manager needs to change for the organization to grow from a small- or medium-size business into a larger company. This secret sauce enables you to scale up to a larger, more complex enterprise with more moving parts, which need to operate in unison in order to achieve greater wealth creation. The more information you share, the more power the team will have to steer the business with you.

If this is not done, you will drive your management team crazy because the leadership style that worked well for you as a smaller company CEO now hurts your ability to function as a larger company CEO.

Ask yourself this question, “Are you pushing, when your management team needs to be pulling?”

A Great Leader's Year-end Checklist

 by Les McKeown via @inc

The year is almost over. Great leaders know how to tie up loose ends and make sure their employees are happy and ready to move forward.

Salespeople live and die by the annual review. Auditors have built an entire industry around it. For the next month, print and television media will pour out gallons of coverage of the past year in review...

And yet, as leaders we often move from one year to the next with little or no time spent reviewing the year just past from a purely leadership perspective. To help counter that, here's my five-point year-end leadership checklist:
 

 1. Manage the narrative. Every business, division, department, project, group or team ends the year with an often unspoken (but widely accepted) narrative:

-"We blew it."

-"We nailed it."

-"Our customer service team let us down."

-"The first three quarters sucked but the fourth wasn't too bad."

Your mileage will vary. As the leader, it's your job to understand what narrative has taken hold in your team, and to manage it accordingly. 

This isn't the same as PR or spin. Managing the narrative isn't about manipulating what people think, it's about knowing what has taken root in your team's perception and helping the team members understand its importance.

So--as this year closes, what narrative has your group or team subliminally adopted? How accurate is it? Do you need to amplify or clarify any of it? Does it need to be discussed as a group? What lessons can you all learn from the narrative?
 

2. Straighten the angels. Next week, we'll put up the Christmas tree in our house, and as always, the final thing we'll do is to straighten the angel at the top.

Whether you've had your best year ever or the worst year imaginable, some--probably all--of your top performers will have been bent out of shape getting you through it. 

Some of them will have developed less than helpful traits - of arrogance perhaps, or gruffness, or maybe just thoughtlessness. Some will be harboring grudges, or feeling hurt or confused. Others may have been blindsided by events and are finishing the year off their game. One or two may simply be exhausted.

They're your angels. You're their leader. You need to go straighten them out.
 

3. Cull. In the course of any year there's a whole bunch of individual and group dynamics which lose efficacy, and which only you can untether. Practices that have become outdated; policies that no longer work; routines, rituals and habits that now just get in the way; meetings that have lost their purpose.

Ask for nominations of less-than-useful activities from your team, but make the final decision yourself - and make everyone's life simpler by culling those that truly yield no ongoing benefit.  
 

4. Restock. During the year you and your team will undoubtedly have used up one or more of the staples of healthy group interaction: energy, perhaps, or enthusiasm. Maybe as a team you've lost a sense of fun, or maybe you've run short on objectivity or perspective.

Take a moment and think about it. Again, take soundings from your colleagues. One way or another, you don't want to start the new year with one or more of those staples missing from your team's pantry. 

When you've identified which is missing, or has run down to dangerously low levels, think through how to restock in the next 30 days--can you theme the holiday retreat, or your end of year address accordingly? Do you need to give your folks some mentoring, or coaching, or training; or just a rest, or a new perspective?
 

5. Center yourself. Finally, what about you? How have you changed as a leader this year? 

Draw a line down the center of a page, and list on one column your defining characteristics at the start of the year, and on the other, your defining characteristics at the end of the year. How do the two lists differ, if at all?
Ask someone who knows you well to repeat the exercise, from their perspective of you. How similar is their list to yours? 

As you look at the two lists, which characteristic of yours most helped your group or team this year? Which characteristic caused the most trouble? (When you've decided, ask your team if they agree--you may be surprised by how differently they view which characteristics are your strong points and which are weaknesses.)  

Next year, how can you do more of the first characteristic, and less of the second?

The 20-Minute Exercise To Eradicate Negative Thinking

BY KAIHAN KRIPPENDORFF via@fastcompany

Belief is contagious. It wins supporters. It’s self-fulfilling. Here's how to get there when nagging, negative thoughts are holding you back.

After a flurry of emails in response to my blog post on passion, I reached a disheartening realization: Passion is useless if you don’t already believe.

You see, what we can achieve is limited by what we believe. Henry Ford knew this: “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you are right.”

So here I was, passionately committed to become the world-class business guru, best-selling author, the speaker who fills stadiums. And yet there was voice telling me, “You can’t do it. Keep trying, trying is fun, but in the end you will fail.”

You’ve probably heard that voice as well.

I’m making progress--my book sales are accelerating, my keynote audiences are growing, and I’m sharing the stage with people like Jack Welch and Robin Sharma--but in the back of my mind the voice pulls the reins: “You can’t do it.”

Great “outthinkers” seem to overcome this voice. Their belief matches their passion. Napoleon believed he was the greatest general of his time and so he was. Steve Jobs believed his people could achieve the impossible, so they did. Richard Branson believed he could win against British Airways, and so he won, even though every airline that tried over the prior three decades failed.

Belief is contagious. It wins supporters. It’s self-fulfilling. As Harvard professor Rosebeth Moss Kanter shows in her book Confidence, the belief you can win creates momentum which improves your chances of winning.

So what do you do when you don’t believe?

Over the past four weeks, I’ve studied books and articles, interviewed entrepreneurs and experts, then assembled it all for you in a simple framework with which you can systematically attack whatever belief is holding you down. Give me 20 minutes. This works.

Fundamentals

1. Beliefs aren’t real. They are mental maps, abstractions of reality, that help us predict a complex world. My son believes good batteries must be cold because I keep ours in the freezer. He believes Santa Claus rides a sleigh.

2. Four anchors form our beliefs (For more, read Why We Believe What We Believe by Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman). 

• Evidence: Something happens (e.g., gifts appear one morning and my mom says they are from Santa Claus)
• Logic: It makes sense, more specifically, it is consistent with our other beliefs (e.g., gifts can’t just appear out of nowhere, my mom and dad were asleep...it must have been Santa)
• Emotion: Strong emotional associations (a 3-year-old’s joy at getting a new choo choo) embed beliefs more indelibly
• Social consensus: We believe more deeply if others believe too (e.g., Maria and Nico and Sofia all say Santa brought them gifts too)

3. We reject what doesn’t fit. Once a belief is formed, we explain away any inconsistent evidence. I saw a documentary in which a young child said to his friends, “Santa came to my house and ate a little bit of a cookie, then he went to Jack’s house and ate a little bit and drank some milk, then to Maria’s and ate some and then...So if he went to ALL of our houses in one night, it must mean--” You are sure he is about to realize Santa can’t be real, but instead he animates excitedly, “Santa must have been really hungry!”

4. Humans need consistency between beliefs, actions, and words. In Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini calls this “The Rule of Consistency." This is how beliefs hold us down or lift us up. If you believe you can’t, you start acting and speaking like someone who can’t, so you actually can’t. Interestingly, the relationship also works in reverse: Change your action or words and you can change your beliefs.

The Model

Over a 12-hour flight home from Paraguay, I assembled these principles into a model we can use to deconstruct and replace any belief that holds us down. It is simpler than it looks.

Imagine a hot air balloon being held down by four anchors. The balloon represents the belief holding you down and actions and words this belief influences.

The four anchors represent evidence, logic, emotion, and social consensus. To release the balloon you must replace the offending belief. Do this in five steps:

Step 1: Identify the belief.
Find a belief that is holding you down. Tip: Write down beliefs until you find one that hurts. In my case, “You don’t really have what it takes to be world-class author/speaker/thinker.”

Step 2: Identify the anchors.

• What evidence/events anchor the belief? (my books aren’t on the NYT best-seller list)
• What emotions anchor your belief? (I feel comfort because in not really trying, I know I can’t fail)
• Who around you reinforces this belief (social consensus)? (well-intentioned people who congratulate me on already having achieved the dream)
• What logic locks in this belief; what “dependent beliefs” fit? (wanting to fill a stadium is self-centered, thinking I can offer what people don’t already know is conceited)

Step 3: Pick a new belief.
What alternative belief would be consistent with someone who really achieves your dream? (I am destined to be a best-selling business thinker and speaker.)

Step 4: Release the anchors. 

• Evidence: what alternative evidence supports this new belief? (people pay me lots of money to speak, I’m sharing the stage with some of the biggest business gurus)
• Emotions: what does it feel like to really live this new belief and fulfill your dream? (passion, purpose, having made an impact)
• Social consensus: who can you surround yourself with to support the new belief? (other business gurus and authors)
• Beliefs: how can you replace the “dependent beliefs” identified above? (this is not conceited because it’s about serving others; the best business gurus do it to serve others, not for their ego)

Step 5: Set your course.
Write down five specific things you will do (action) and say (words) that force you to live your new belief.

Completing this process took me 20 minutes and has put me fully in the game, committed and knowing I can win. Would that be worth your time?

Click here for a more detailed workbook. I will also invite you to a free webinar outlining this framework and add you to my newsletter. If you don’t find my newsletter valuable you can unsubscribe with one click.

10 Leadership Practices to Stop Today

by Paul Spiegelman via @inc

If you want to be the best in your industry, you have to get rid of your outdated management style.

You might not feel it day-to-day, but business management is in a major transition.  The old days of command-and-control leadership are fading in favor of what might be better termed a trust-and-track method, in which people are not just told what to do, but why they are doing it.  More formally, we're moving from what was called "transactional" leadership to "transformative" leadership. And there's no turning back.

Business owners certainly have a long way to go, especially in more established companies where old practices die hard.  But you can see increasing evidence that by creating a company with a clear purpose and values, you'll find your employees connect themselves to something bigger, and that increases productivity.  In other words, a culture of engagement leads to greater customer loyalty, and better financial success.

Here's my list of "old school" practices you ought to chuck, and "new school" practices to champion instead:

1. Out: Micro-management, or the need to control every aspect of your company. In: Empowerment, the ability to give your people some rope--even rope to make mistakes without blame.

2. Out: Management by walking around the office; it is no longer enough to be visible. In: Leadership by watching and listening, engaging in conversation, implementing the ideas presented to you, and distributing the results.

3. Out: Pretending you know everything. You don't have all the answers, so why try to make people think you do?  In: Knowing your leadership team members and trusting them. Choose great people who have the right skills and fit the culture.  And get out of the way.

4. Out: No mistakes, or a "no tolerance policy" some still think works. In: Learning from mistakes, or being the first to admit an error.

5. Out: The balance sheet drives the business, and informs all other decisions. In: People drive the business, boosting customer loyalty, and profit.

6. Out: Job competency is sufficient. Do the job asked, and you'll survive. In: Recruit "A" players who will go the extra mile. They're out there.

7. Out: Invest in technology to increase productivity. In: Invest in people.

8. Out: Demand change; be very specific about what you want and when. In: Nurture change; your people can come up with the best ideas and you can give them credit for it.

9. Out: Fried food in the cafeteria. In: Wellness in the workplace.

10. Out: Incentives; pay employees more money and they'll do more. In: Rewards; being valued matters more than money.

So ask yourself which of these out-of-date practices you're still using. There's no time like now to try something new.

3 Best Ways to Say 'No'

Struggling with productivity and time management? Try these simple guidelines to improve your focus simply by saying "no."

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Sometimes it feels like there's just way much to do and too little time.

You may believe that, but it's not necessarily true. Perhaps you're just spreading yourself too thin, and that can change.

There are many helpful productivity and time management tips, but I believe the most powerful one is the art of saying no.

That's no to yourself, no to employees, no to friends, and yes, even no (sometimes) to clients. Reflect upon the times that you regret saying yes to something that took you away from your primary focus. How much time and stress would it have saved you if you had uttered one little word?

But how do you say no to your own mother when she calls to chat in the middle of the day? Or to the client who expects you to go beyond the scope of a project without paying for the extra work? What about all of those cool ideas that enter your mind; how do you say no to yourself and remain focused on what's most important?

Here's a hint: You can say no without uttering the word. Here are three simple guidelines that might just make your life easier.

1. Don't respond immediately.

When you are asked to do something that brings isn't a part of your primary focus, simply tell the person that you will get back to them. Take a little time to assess the pros and cons of saying yes. Reflect upon your goals and review how saying yes will affect them.

Even if it's a simple request, it may put you behind schedule. Is it worth it? You have a right to say no, and once you begin to see the results, this little word will roll off your tongue with greater ease.

2. Consider creative solutions.

Sometimes we say yes because we just want to be nice. Saying no does not mean that you aren't a nice person; it simply means that you have priorities and boundaries. When someone comes to you with a request that you would like to fulfill, but would put a crimp in your schedule, think about giving them a partial yes--or offer another solution.

A few weeks ago I was asked to speak to a group on very short notice. I really wanted to do it to help them out, but I knew the cost. Following my own advice, I offered to get back to the meeting planner by the end of the day. I decided that I simply couldn't take the time out of my schedule right now, so I called a peer and asked her permission to pass her name along as a potential speaker. Then I called the meeting planner with this wonderful solution and a commitment to speak to her group in January instead.  No doesn't necessarily mean never.

3. Keep it simple: Never over-explain or apologize profusely.

You do not have to apologize for doing what's right for you and your business. If you are kind in your response and offer a few very simple words of explanation, most people will respect you for it. Take a moment to put yourself in the other person's position and choose the words that seem most appropriate for their personality type. If they are direct, be brief and direct; if they are emotional, use a more compassionate tone.

Remember that long explanations and apologies may backfire, causing the other party to push harder and you to question your decision. Don't complicate the situation, just kindly say no with a brief explanation (one sentence) or creative solution attached.

Just for fun keep a list of your progress. If you say no to picking up the phone when your friend (or even your mother) calls during your work day, jot down how much time you saved and call them back during a time when you can both enjoy the conversation. Resist the hasty yes and keep track of your time savings for a week or two. Soon you will be delivering a powerful no with ease!

Marla Tabaka is a small-business advisor who helps entrepreneurs around the globe grow their businesses well into the millions. She speaks widely on combining strategic and creative thinking for optimum success and happiness. @MarlaTabaka

9 Daily Habits That Will Make You Happier

by Geoffrey James via @inc

 These minor changes in your daily routine will make a major difference in your life and career.

Happiness is the only true measure of personal success. Making other people happy is the highest expression of success, but it's almost impossible to make others happy if you're not happy yourself.

With that in mind, here are nine small changes that you can make to your daily routine that, if you're like most people, will immediately increase the amount of happiness in your life:

1. Start each day with expectation.

If there's any big truth about life, it's that it usually lives up to (or down to) your expectations. Therefore, when you rise from bed, make your first thought: "something wonderful is going to happen today." Guess what? You're probably right.

2. Take time to plan and prioritize.

The most common source of stress is the perception that you've got too much work to do.  Rather than obsess about it, pick one thing that, if you get it done today, will move you closer to your highest goal and purpose in life. Then do that first.

3. Give a gift to everyone you meet.

I'm not talking about a formal, wrapped-up present. Your gift can be your smile, a word of thanks or encouragement, a gesture of politeness, even a friendly nod. And never pass beggars without leaving them something. Peace of mind is worth the spare change.

4. Deflect partisan conversations.

Arguments about politics and religion never have a "right" answer but they definitely get people all riled up over things they can't control. When such topics surface, bow out by saying something like: "Thinking about that stuff makes my head hurt."

5. Assume people have good intentions.

Since you can't read minds, you don't really know the "why" behind the "what" that people do. Imputing evil motives to other people's weird behaviors adds extra misery to life, while assuming good intentions leaves you open to reconciliation.

6. Eat high quality food slowly.

Sometimes we can't avoid scarfing something quick to keep us up and running. Even so, at least once a day try to eat something really delicious, like a small chunk of fine cheese or an imported chocolate. Focus on it; taste it; savor it.

7. Let go of your results.

The big enemy of happiness is worry, which comes from focusing on events that are outside your control. Once you've taken action, there's usually nothing more you can do. Focus on the job at hand rather than some weird fantasy of what might happen.

8. Turn off "background" TV.

Many households leave their TVs on as "background noise" while they're doing other things. The entire point of broadcast TV is to make you dissatisfied with your life so that you'll buy more stuff. Why subliminally program yourself to be a mindless consumer?

9. End each day with gratitude.

Just before you go to bed, write down at least one wonderful thing that happened. It might be something as small as a making a child laugh or something as huge as a million dollar deal. Whatever it is, be grateful for that day because it will never come again.

Are You Blocking The Way?

by Vineet Nayar via CEO.com

On your ascent to the Corner Office, you’ve probably encountered an abundance of leadership theories. Which one do you subscribe to? Do you lead from the front? Are you in the back? Or do you walk shoulder to shoulder with your team?  For my part, I just get out of the way.

No kidding. I truly believe that the role of the CEO is overstated in business.  Just like a head coach in the NFL or a Major League Baseball manager, we often get too much of the credit when our team succeeds, when it’s actually the players on the field who need to get all the praise.

Let’s face facts. It is too simplistic to attribute outstanding performance to a leader. Just because you are the CEO, it does not mean that you have all of the answers. Nor does it mean that you are making all of the decisions.

Some of you might already subscribe to a participative style of management and arrive at solutions in collaboration with your leadership team. But that is not what I am referring to.

Think about it. In today’s market environment, who is really most important to your customers? Who lives in the value zone? Who is innovating to find new solutions to overcome the new challenges facing our customers? It is the employee at the customer interface. The CEO is too far removed.

So the business of a leader is really to enable employees in the value zones of the company; encourage them to actively seek and initiate new ways to create value for customers; and enthuse them to take on the responsibility for change. Then, most importantly, step aside as they get to work.

And I am not the only one who subscribes to this view. There are many forward-thinking leaders who take this approach as the new gospel truth. Brad Smith, President and CEO of Intuit, for example, concurred in a  recent interview, to Forbes, “Regardless of whether you are leading a large enterprise or a small team, you need to remove barriers to innovation and get out of the way.” A similar view was shared by Joanna Pineda, CEO, Founder & Chief Troublemaker at the Matrix Group, who  wrote in her blog recently, “The more I got to thinking, the more I realized that sometimes, CEOs should set goals and parameters and then get the heck out of the way.”

And why not? After all, it is the employees who have been at the core of every game-changing idea around us. Look around. Whether it is the iPhone, the tablet, digital cameras or any other recent technology innovation, employees — perhaps those tucked away in the research and development labs — are the ones who have built them. They have carved the shape of the products that defined the past and present. Without a doubt they are the ones who are going to build our great companies in the future.

No matter how much senior management might resist shedding the spotlight, the winds of change are swirling and hierarchical pyramids are getting destroyed everywhere we look. Social media has built a new world run on collaborative power and popular revolutions are leading political and social transformation.

It is time to actively channel the power of these winds by building windmills, rather than walls. It is time indeed for CEOs to move away from legacy management systems to decouple power and position. If we can just broaden the leadership franchise, we are sure to find new ways to transform business by letting the real people, making a real difference, come to the forefront.

There is an African proverb that goes something like this: A blade of grass does not grow faster if you pull it.  I think this is profound wisdom for CEOs today as they look to lead more effectively in the “New Normal.”

Vineet Nayar is Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of HCL Technologies Ltd. (HCLT), a $4.3 billion global information technology services company and author of the highly acclaimed management book “Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down” (Harvard Business Press, June 2010). He is also an acknowledged management visionary and a radical thinker who architected the company’s „Employees First, Customers Second‟ (EFCS) strategy, which transformed HCL’s business, through its inverted organizational structure which has helped create transparency and accountability within the organization and encourage a value-driven culture since its conception in 2005.

CEO Confidence Index

Vistage and the Wall St. Journal team up for a survey measuring the sentiment of U.S. small-business CEOs and owners about the economy. Respondents are limited to businesses with annual revenues of $1 million to $20 million. The findings are analyzed by Dr. Richard Curtin, University of Michigan. Read more about the survey, or read about the October results.
 

Green Eggs and Ham: Overcoming Objections in Sales

One of my Vistage group members had a copy of Green Eggs and Ham in his office.  When I asked him how it got there he told me, It is the best sales book ever written!".  I reread it and, he is right!  It is an amazing story of persistence, overcoming objections and closing the sale.  I liked this blog post to illustrate some of the practical points of the book!

by Carmen Hudson
Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Suess is a classic tale of the struggling salesman. Poor Sam-I-Am isn't even trying to get his prospect to buy his product yet: he's just trying to get the man to take a sample! Sam-I-Am overcomes no less than 73 objections before he makes his "sale".

There is step by step process that you can use to overcome objections, and like any sales "script", if you can brand these into your memory and make them yours, you'll be able to deliver them smoothly and avoid making it sound canned or corny. While our friend Sam-I-Am does not follow the outline exactly, he does go pretty closely.

First, Make Sure You Understand the Objection.

Sometimes the objection is not the objection. For example, a prospect might say, "I have to think about it. I never buy anything like this without thinking about it first."

This could be true. But it often isn't. Sometimes this is just a smoke screen for whatever is really bothering the prospect. Restating and clarifying the objection can help you zero in on what the prospect's actual problem is.

A good way to do this is to say, "I can certainly respect that, Mr. Jones. I myself like to make sure I am carefully considering every angle before I spend any of my hard earned money. Can I ask you a question?"

Usually, the prospect will consent to being asked a question. A question is not threatening, and it reassures the other person that you are interested in what they are thinking and feeling at this juncture. So when they assent, you ask the key question.

The Key Question: "Is the need to think about this decision the only thing keeping us from doing business today?"

If the prospect says, "Yes," move on to the next step. If the prospect says, "No," he will often follow it up with the real objection, perhaps, "I just am not sure I have the money for it right now." Once you're working with the real objection, you can proceed to trying to overcome it.

Clarify their Desires.

If you are like most salespeople, you likely have a variety of options to offer any customers, even if those options are just as simple as the "red one" or the "blue one." Sam-I-Am, for example, offered "here," or "there", as well as "in a box" and "with a fox." Asking about options refocuses the prospect's mind on ownership, on seeing your product or service as his. So once you have isolated the objection, you might be able to move on to something like this:

"I can definitely appreciate that Mr. Jones. Nobody wants to spend their money on something they're not going to need or like. But just so I can clarify for any conversations we might have in the future, did you like the red one, or the blue one, better?"

"I definitely liked the red one better," Mr. Jones might say.

Overcome the Objection.

"The red one is an excellent choice," you might say, "And I see how well it will compliment what you're already doing. You did mention to me that you were really wanting to have a nice couch that would compliment your existing decorating scheme, I can see how the red one would be the choice for you. But you said you were concerned about the price?"

Again, you're making sure you're dealing with the real objection.

"Yes," Mr. Jones might say. "$999 is a little more than I'd hoped to pay."

How you overcome the objection might well depend on what you have to offer. Does your product or service offer savings in the long run? Do you have a slightly different option that offers a lot of what the prospect is looking for at a cheaper price? Do you have negotiating room to lower the price or give deals and specials? Your own sales manager or company will likely have their own industry-specific tips to deal with the specific objections.

Sometimes, however, the prospect will switch objections on you again, and you'll have to go back to the beginning. Just make sure you switch up your wording, or you'll start to sound like the happy bobble headed psychobabble robot, understanding and appreciating everything the prospect ever said.

Thank you, Thank you, Sam-I-Am!

You are doing your prospects a favor by overcoming their objections in the right way. By continuing to ask enough questions to learn what your prospects real concerns are, you will be able to dramatically raise your close rate as well as be assured that you've created the relationship that brings customers back to you, rather than risking a case of "Buyer's Remorse" and cancellation down the line. After all, when Sam-I-Am finally made his sale, he created a customer for life.

The Real Truth About Sales Tests

Our Vistage speaker this week is on sales and marketing, unquestionably the lifeblood of any business.  This post by Greta Schulz hits home a key aspect of success.

How do you know if that sales candidate you or your sales manager fell in love with is really the superstar you hope they are?  Before you pin your hopes on your managers’ ability to screen, recruit, interview and hire…you should know how pre-employment testing can raise your success rate in hiring new salespeople.

The keys to pre-employment testing is to make sure you’re testing for the right things.

Example:  Do you want to hire salespeople who knowhow to sell?  Or do you want to hire people who willsell?  Understanding the difference can make or break your career as an executive.  The right test will give you an accurate, honest assessment about your candidate and list them into the following four categories:

# 1. Can Sell and Will Sell:  Know what to do and consistently execute in selling situations.  Hire and train these and you’ll never need to worry about hitting budget.

#2. Can Sell but Won’t Sell: This is the most dangerous person to have on your team.  They know what do in selling situations but don’t consistently execute.  We keep giving them more time because “they’re just so good”. If you’ve got these on your team, find out quick if they’re fixable.  If not, replace them.

#3. Cannot Sell But Will Sell: This person is the one that may pleasantly surprises you.  They don’t look or act like they could sell their way out of a paper bag, but they sell anyway.  Hire these, provide the right type of on-going training and you can guarantee superstar performance.

#4.  Cannot and Won’t Sell: Hopefully you don’t have any of these.   They’re easiest to spot and you should deal with them quickly and decisively.

What’s the right type of test?  There are so many sales pre-employment tests which fall into four types.  Here are the characteristics and limitations of each.

Personality Tests:  Determines personality type and stability.  Cannot accurately predict whether or not people can or will sell.  It also brings up old beliefs that an outgoing personality, a real “people person” will be a good salesperson. After doing this for years, that is not a predictor of strong sale ability at all.

Benchmark Tests: These are an analysis of your “best salesperson(s) and taking the “characteristics of this person to try to hire in their image. In my opinion it is the combination of each person that makes them successful or not and to try to mirror that is setting up for failure.

Sales Aptitude Tests:  Assess what people know about selling.  They won’t necessarily tell you whether or not someone will execute is a selling situation.  There’s a huge gap between knowing and doing.

Internal beliefs Test:  Measures strengths and hidden weaknesses that more accurately predicts whether or not someone will sell.   Measures guts, goals, selling system effectiveness, willingness to prospect, and their willingness to do whatever it takes even if it’s uncomfortable.

If you want to know how someone will fit in your company’s culture or how to manage them, use a behavioral test.  If you want to predict future sales performance, use an Internal belief test.

When combined with a strong recruiting process, you can virtually eliminate bad sales force hires.  Hold your managers accountable for their hiring mistakes. Sales training should come only when you have hired the right people.

Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton knew how to hold his managers accountable for their hiring recommendations.  When his executives hired a candidate, Walton asked each to write a page outlining the candidate’s strengths and why they were hiring the candidate.  In the event that employee ever needed to be fired, Walton required the manager to write a page explaining why.  Then the manager had to travel to see Walton to personally explain the differences in the two memos.  After one of these sessions, few managers repeated a hiring mistake.

There is nothing more important than hiring the right people. It should be an ongoing process. When you have a good strong group, then and only then should you spend time and money on training. You need the right ingredients to make a great meal even if the recipe is good, right!

Email me if you would like a sample; greta@schulzbusiness.com. And ask!

Stop Caring How Many Hours Your Employees Work

by Ilya Pozin

Bring your company into the 21st century, where work is about goals accomplished, not hours clocked. Your employees will thank you.

The traditional 9-to-5 workweek is just that: traditional, a vestige of a different era when the number of hours an employee clocked on a production line was an easy way to measure productivity. The nature of work has changed, but too many businesses still automatically adopt a rigid schedule without considering its effects on employee productivity and happiness. 

Enforcing strict working hours erodes employer-employee trust. Telling them whenthey must complete their work is a fast way to make them feel less autonomous. And nothing kills productivity faster than an atmosphere in which employees feel forced to work. They should want to complete their work--for the good of the company and because they like what they do, not because they feel obligated or forced. 

The fact is, giving employees full freedom to come in and leave when they want may increase their output and productivity. 

Here are four reasons why you should drop set working hours: 

1. It diminishes productivity.

When employees are forced to be at work within specific time parameters, their success is tied to when they come in and leave the office--not what goals have been met. Just because an employee is present doesn’t mean he's actually being productive. Let's face it: Simply filling the requirement of sitting in a chair for eight (or more) hours is not exactly motivating.

2. It doesn't foster trust.

Employees should have full autonomy to meet their goals however they want--put the onus on them to determine the best process. That way, they’re more likely to own their work and be passionate about being the best they can be. 

3. It's distracting.

Do most employees' projects and tasks consistently fit within a rigid, 9-to-5 schedule? Probably not. So why do you want them thinking about how many hours they clock instead of meeting their goals? Employees can and should determine how long they must be at the office to get something done. After all, during a big project you don't want someone walking out the door when the clock strikes 5 simply because she's met her time quota for the day. 

4. It's bad for teamwork.

Working in a team can make a huge difference when it comes to productivity. But when individual team members are bound by set hours, you exacerbate potential issues over who's pulling their weight. Let your employees focus on meeting team goals and collaborating to make it happen--whether that means they all work together in the office during the same hours or whether they work in chunks of time here and there. They know how to get their work done.

Getting rid of employee hours can require a culture change in your company, but you’ll reap the benefits of increased flexibility and autonomy. Keeping employees happy and productive starts with you showing them trust--and enforcing hours shows exactly the opposite.

How (not) to get a raise

Be Happier: 10 Things to Stop Doing Right Now

Sometimes the route to happiness depends more on what you don't do.

 

Flickr Creative 

Happiness--in your business life and your personal life--is often a matter of subtraction, not addition.

Consider, for example, what happens when you stop doing the following 10 things:

1. Blaming.

People make mistakes. Employees don't meet your expectations. Vendors don't deliver on time.

So you blame them for your problems.

But you're also to blame. Maybe you didn't provide enough training. Maybe you didn't build in enough of a buffer. Maybe you asked too much, too soon.

Taking responsibility when things go wrong instead of blaming others isn't masochistic, it's empowering--because then you focus on doing things better or smarter next time.

And when you get better or smarter, you also get happier.

2. Impressing.

No one likes you for your clothes, your car, your possessions, your title, or your accomplishments. Those are all "things." People may like your things--but that doesn't mean they like you.

Sure, superficially they might seem to, but superficial is also insubstantial, and a relationship that is not based on substance is not a real relationship.

Genuine relationships make you happier, and you'll only form genuine relationships when you stop trying to impress and start trying to just be yourself.

3. Clinging.

When you're afraid or insecure, you hold on tightly to what you know, even if what you know isn't particularly good for you.

An absence of fear or insecurity isn't happiness: It's just an absence of fear or insecurity.

Holding on to what you think you need won't make you happier; letting go so you can reach for and try to earn what you want will.

Even if you don't succeed in earning what you want, the act of trying alone will make you feel better about yourself.

4. Interrupting.

Interrupting isn't just rude. When you interrupt someone, what you're really saying is, "I'm not listening to you so I can understand what you're saying; I'm listening to you so I can decide what I want to say."

Want people to like you? Listen to what they say. Focus on what they say. Ask questions to make sure you understand what they say.

They'll love you for it--and you'll love how that makes you feel.

5. Whining.

Your words have power, especially over you. Whining about your problems makes you feel worse, not better.

If something is wrong, don't waste time complaining. Put that effort into making the situation better. Unless you want to whine about it forever, eventually you'll have to do that. So why waste time? Fix it now.

Don't talk about what's wrong. Talk about how you'll make things better, even if that conversation is only with yourself.

And do the same with your friends or colleagues. Don't just be the shoulder they cry on.

Friends don't let friends whine--friends help friends make their lives better.

6. Controlling.

Yeah, you're the boss. Yeah, you're the titan of industry. Yeah, you're the small tail that wags a huge dog.

Still, the only thing you really control is you. If you find yourself trying hard to control other people, you've decided that you, your goals, your dreams, or even just your opinions are more important than theirs.

Plus, control is short term at best, because it often requires force, or fear, or authority, or some form of pressure--none of those let you feel good about yourself.

Find people who want to go where you're going. They'll work harder, have more fun, and create better business and personal relationships.

And all of you will be happier.

7. Criticizing.

Yeah, you're more educated. Yeah, you're more experienced. Yeah, you've been around more blocks and climbed more mountains and slayed more dragons.

That doesn't make you smarter, or better, or more insightful.

That just makes you you: unique, matchless, one of a kind, but in the end, just you.

Just like everyone else--including your employees.

Everyone is different: not better, not worse, just different. Appreciate the differences instead of the shortcomings and you'll see people--and yourself--in a better light.

8. Preaching.

Criticizing has a brother. His name is Preaching. They share the same father: Judging.

The higher you rise and the more you accomplish, the more likely you are to think you know everything--and to tell people everything you think you know.

When you speak with more finality than foundation, people may hear you but they don't listen. Few things are sadder and leave you feeling less happy.

9. Dwelling.

The past is valuable. Learn from your mistakes. Learn from the mistakes of others.

Then let it go.

Easier said than done? It depends on your focus. When something bad happens to you, see that as a chance to learn something you didn't know. When another person makes a mistake, see that as an opportunity to be kind, forgiving, and understanding.

The past is just training; it doesn't define you. Think about what went wrong, but only in terms of how you will make sure that, next time, you and the people around you will know how to make sure it goes right.

10. Fearing.

We're all afraid: of what might or might not happen, of what we can't change, or what we won't be able to do, or how other people might perceive us.

So it's easier to hesitate, to wait for the right moment, to decide we need to think a little longer or do some more research or explore a few more alternatives.

Meanwhile days, weeks, months, and even years pass us by.

And so do our dreams.

Don't let your fears hold you back. Whatever you've been planning, whatever you've imagined, whatever you've dreamed of, get started on it today.

If you want to start a business, take the first step. If you want to change careers, take the first step. If you want to expand or enter a new market or offer new products or services, take the first step.

Put your fears aside and get started. Do something. Do anything.

Otherwise, today is gone. Once tomorrow comes, today is lost forever.

Today is the most precious asset you own--and is the one thing you should truly fear wasting.

Want Success? Love to Sell

by Geoffrey James

Adopt the one characteristic that unites all highly successful people: they love to sell.

 

Getty

The most successful entrepreneurs and businesspeople share a single, essential characteristic: they're good at selling. No idea, expertise, product or service ever became successful without somebody selling it to investors, peers, employees and customers.

I can, and have, published hundreds of posts explaining how to improve your ability to sell, but up until now, I've held back a secret. It's a secret so powerful and so essential that it will seem painfully obvious when I reveal it in this post.

The Big Secret of Success

The secret is this: the way to become a great salesperson (and therefore successful in whatever you do) is to enjoy selling.

Take Steve Jobs. By all accounts, Jobs was often miserable and frustrated when working with other people and creating new products. But on the stage, selling those new products to the waiting world... the joy in his face was marvelous to behold.

I've seen the same phenomenon in many industries. The CEOs who are the most successful are those who get a bigger kick from meeting with customers than from handling day-to-day operations.

The secret certainly holds true in sales and marketing. I can tell within seconds of meeting a salesperson or a marketer whether or not they love their job. And, not surprisingly, I've watched the ones who do love selling make the most money.

If you truly want to be successful at whatever you do, you should now be asking yourself: "How can I learn to really love part of my job that involves selling what I have to offer?" If that's what you want to know, read on.

How to Love Selling

In my experience, people who truly love selling see themselves in service to a higher purpose. For CEOs like Steve Jobs, that higher purpose is "changing the world," which was the tone of every sales pitch Jobs ever gave.

That idea--"change the world--is deeper than it seems at first glance. The reason successful people want to "change the world" is that they want to make it a better place, where people are happier, safer and where there's less pain and suffering.

However, it's impossible to change the world if nobody knows or understand what you're selling. Selling, in other words, is the vehicle through which you change the world.  Without selling, every idea falls on dry and barren ground.

Selling, therefore, is nothing more nor less than a way to be of service to others and that's where the enjoyment comes in. When you're selling, you're creating a better world for yourself and for others. How can you not enjoy that?

This concept runs contrary to the popular notion of the slick salesperson who cares only about making the deal. Nevertheless, it's the way that truly successful people feel when they're selling something they believe in.

The Bliss of Selling

This true nature of selling and how to enjoy it was recently made clear to me when I reconnected with an old friend, a guy whom I consider to be among the most successful people I've ever met.

His name is David Rotman, and when I originally met him, he was a "mover and shaker" in Hollywood, the executive producer of the classic fantasy movie Dragonheartand co-producer of the action film Cliffhanger, among other projects.

Make no mistake about it, producing movies is a sales job par excellence, which involves getting multiple people to buy into your vision of what's possible and then keeping them motivated to make that vision a reality.

Since then David has enjoyed success in other areas, like writing and selling screenplays, and promoting special events like the Agape Lovefest. He recent left Hollywood to help out at his family business, one of the largest furniture stores in the world: the famous Rotmans in Worcester, MA.

Talking to David is like taking a bath in positive energy. When he talks about selling (in all the many forms that he's been successful at it), he uses the word "BLISS" which he defines as an acronym: "Beaming Love In Sacred Service."

Right now, David is applying that concept to selling furniture while he learns the business from the bottom up, but I believe that the concept of BLISS has been the core of the many successes that he's had in his life.

How to Make it Real

Here's how to create, foster and expand the love of selling that will, in turn, help achieve success:

1. Have a Mental Touchstone

Decide why you do what you do and how it helps people and then use that deeper understanding as a way to keep yourself on track. In David's case, it's the concept of BLISS. Whenever he's dealing with people, he internally reviews his motivations and actions to make certain that they're coming from that core idea.

2. Focus on Real People

Rather than abstract "markets" or "customer bases," think about real people who you're really helping. David, for instance, takes photographs of himself with other people he meets, famous and not famous alike. One wall of his office in Hollywood was covered with these photos, a constant reminder of the emotional connections that he'd made.

3. Learn the Craft of Selling

It's easier to love doing something if you're good at it, so the time and energy that you put into learning how to sell, is time and energy that will help you love selling. The idea is to create a self-reinforcing system where your ability and your love for the craft proceed in lockstep and apace.

4. Consider Connecting with David

David is creating a network of people who believe that business in general and selling in particular is meant to be a blissful experience. If you're interested, consider connecting with him via his LinkedIn profile.

How to run your business in Evernote

I have become hooked on Evernote thanks to my friend Tim.  Now I use it in both my business and personal life, on every device, everyday.  Here is a useful article to help get you started. 

Christopher Null

Evernote isn’t a revolution. Like most of the technology products we tend to use regularly in our daily lives, Evernote is an evolution, a collection of good ideas that rollsinto a single program the functionality of a half-dozen apps you would otherwise use separately.

Evernote was designed for individuals, but businesses have been adopting it in increasing numbers, finding unique ways to put it to use. Evernote itself has taken notice of this, and later this year it will be launching Evernote for Business, which could elevate Evernote’s business utility even further.

Meanwhile, if you’re new to Evernote, or are just dipping your toes into it, here’s how to put the little app that could to its best use.

Evernote's desktop app syncs with its mobile and browser counterparts.

Get started with Evernote

Evernote is a hybrid system of offline and cloud-based features. You’ll need to create an account when you first download Evernote; you can then install the software just about anywhere. In fact, the more places you install it, the more useful it becomes. Evernote is available for the Mac and Windows and all mobile platforms, so no matter how multi-platform you are when you work, there’s nothing keeping you from running Evernote on every device.

Evernote’s core functionality is in storing your notes and keeping them organized and synchronized, in real time, among all your devices. It pays to understand a bit about Evernote’s terminology, which isn’t always intuitive, before you start filling the app up with content.

In Evernote terms, every page you create is its own Note. Notes are most useful when organized into various Notebooks, essentially a folder full of notes. Setting up notebooks tends to be easier on a computer than in a mobile app, so it’s a good idea to configure your notebooks ahead of time on a PC, even if you leave them empty to start. A group of notebooks is a Stack. Just drag one notebook to another to automatically create a stack. (Right-click to rename it.)

For example, if you used Evernote to keep an archive of payroll, each paycheck would be a note, each employee would be a notebook, and various classes of employees (full-time, part-time, contractor) might be a stack.

Add tags by clicking the appropriate box above the note itself.

Add content

When you create a note, you can give it multiple Tags, by clicking the “Click to add tag” button in Windows or the Info button (an i in a circle) in the mobile app. Tags are especially useful when you’re embedding nontext content, since everything in Evernote is searchable. They’re most useful when you have common but more general terms that you might want to search across all of your notebooks: “2012 taxes,” “personal,” or “urgent,” for example. Adding content from within the mobile app may be less intuitive than it should be to new users. To create a note on the go, navigate to the notebook you want to work in, then click the oversized plus-sign (+) button at the bottom of the screen.

Speaking of adding content, one of Evernote’s major features is that you can add all types of content to the archive, not just text. The program supports PDFs, images, audio recordings, sketches (with the Skitch plug-in), webpages (with the Web Clipperbrowser plug-in), and more. Evernote has a rich plug-in ecosystem, which you can explore on the Evernote homepage if you want to delve even further into special types of content.

Share content

Finally, we come to Evernote's marquee feature: Sharing. Everything you create in Evernote is automatically shared with your various installations of the software unless you specify otherwise when creating a notebook. (Note that you can't change this behavior later.) By default Evernote synchronizes all installations of the software every 30 minutes;  or, you can press F9 to initiate a manual sync.

You can also share content with other Evernote users. The easiest way to do this is to right-click a notebook and select Share Notebook. You’ll be prompted to enter email addresses or to create a public link to the notebook that is accessible via the Web. After accepting the invitation, the recipient will find the shared notebook under the Shared tab on the left-hand navigation pane in Evernote. Note: To share notebooks with full read/write access, the owner of the notebook must be a Premium user ($5 a month), which comes with additional features like extra content and the ability to make text within PDFs searchable. Otherwise, notebooks are shared as read-only.

Now that you’ve got a handle on the basics, it’s time to put your new Evernote skills to better use. Here are some ways that small business owners are elevating Evernote beyond the obvious.

Upgrade your note-taking

At its core Evernote is a juiced-up note-taking system, but you can get more out of it if you make use of the software’s multimedia capabilities. Joey Price, CEO of Jumpstart:HR, says, “I record the audio of client meetings while jotting down notes in real time. We manage a lot of different clients, and sometimes taking notes in shorthand isn't enough. Being able to replay the audio back once I've left helps me re-immerse in my thought process and generate new ideas to help our clients.”

Archive essential emails

Storing email permanently in a webmail folder or within Outlook is usually fine, but it means you have to have access to your inbox in order to read it. Evernote gives you a couple of options for upgrading the way email is archived. First, Outlook users can use the “Add to Evernote 4” button that appears in the toolbar to send the full text of an email to Evernote as a note at the touch of a button.

Not an Outlook user? Use the “email to Evernote” capability to send any message directly to Evernote. When you create your account, Evernote assigns you a custom email address to use. Just forward notes or received messages to this address, and they’ll automatically be converted into notes behind the scenes.

Forget about that receipts shoebox. Evernote digitizes and filters receipts with OCR.

Keep tabs on inventory

Evernote may not be robust enough to replace your inventory-management software, but it’s an excellent tool for keeping tabs on the various items you sell, along with basic pricing information. If your business involves a smaller number of SKUs, you can even use Evernote as a way to showcase your wares from any device. Just add a photo, details, and prices, and Evernote turns into a handy mobile portfolio that you can update anytime.

Collaborate on projects

Building an agenda for a meeting either with staff or with clients is usually a tedious, email-based affair. But share a notebook from within Evernote, and the process becomes much more collaborative. Agendas can be built and refined on the fly right up until the meeting begins. Brainstorming sessions can take place asynchronously, and each participant can add notes whenever the mood strikes them instead of being limited to a single brainstorming session. Got a big event to plan? Evernote can keep a dozen subcontractors on the same page.

Integrate with Getting Things Done

Evernote is a natural tool for the productivity obsessed, and while you can probably figure out how to add it into a Getting Things Done workflow, one Web programmer has done the heavy lifting for you, thanks to this 15-minute configuration guide. It's definitely worth a look if you’re a GTD freak.

One Evernote user captures all check pay stubs sent to employees for an easy archive.

Track expenses, pay employees, and prep for taxes

No, Evernote can’t cut a check, but it can keep tabs on who got paid what. Justin Lugbill of Lugbill Designs uses Evernote to replace the shoebox full of receipts. You can scan or take a snapshot of each receipt, and then save it to Evernote. Says Lugbill, “Every receipt that I get, whether it’s paper or an email confirmation, I forward to my Evernote account.” Different expense categories each get their own notebook, and employees have their pay stubs archived and organized in separate notebooks, so Lugbill can easily look up any given check. The end result looks more like a bookkeeper’s chart of accounts than a to-do list. 

Archive analog notes for posterity

The conference rooms of the world are covered with whiteboard notes that are promptly erased by the evening cleaning crew, just as many a hotel bar is littered with note-covered cocktail napkins that are swept away into the trash. No one wants to have to be the guy who copies this information down into digital form, and with Evernote you don’t have to. Jesse Waites of PNTHR.com says he snaps photos of anything drawn or hand-written outside the office and drops the picture into Evernote. As noted earlier, Evernote can convert handwriting in PDFs into plain text for you. It even scans images for text and saves that text separately.

Stash software keys

What do you do with all those software keys you get for registering purchased and downloaded software? If you’re ultra-organized, you might save them in a file that you store on your computer… which you have to hope you remember to back up or print out before you wipe your hard drive (at which point you may actually want to use them again). Simple solution: Forward all registration-code emails to Evernote and drop them all into a notebook, and you’ll never lose them again.

Store business cards in Evernote. OCR turns text into usable, searchable data.

Remember a name

Business cards have a nasty tendency to end up in stacks (or the trash), which makes them virtually useless to both the giver and the receiver. Evernote makes for a great repository for contact information. Just snap a picture of the card, and let Evernote’s OCR go to work. Add notes and tags to remind you why exactly this person was important. Alternatively, you can use Evernote Hello, which, while it isn’t specifically designed with business cards in mind, does let you use Evernote as a sort of souped-up contact manager.

Spy on competitors

David Handmaker of Next Day Flyers says Evernote makes competitive analysis on the Web easy. “I’m also a huge fan of Skitch [the Evernote add-on that lets you edit and annotate screenshots and images]. I, along with many of my team members, use it frequently to take screenshots of our website or our competitor’s sites, and we mark it up to highlight important information. The functionality and ease of use is fantastic. Plus it saves our company money, as now we don’t have to buy as many Photoshop licenses for the team.”

Are You Involved in Every Decision at Your Company?

By JOSH PATRICK

Does every problem still come across your desk? Are you spending too much time in the weeds and not enough thinking about the big picture? Are you feeling burned out? For many business owners I know, the answers to these questions are a resounding “yes.”

One of the best ways I know to create value in a business is for the owner to become operationally irrelevant. That doesn’t mean leaving the business. It means changing your relationship to your business. Instead of being involved in every decision, you build a team and find a way to trust your senior employees to take care of their individual areas of responsibility.

I use the term passive owner to describe owners who have removed themselves from the day-to-day operation. Instead of solving problems all day, they have moved on to working on strategic issues. You know a business has a passive owner when it can run for weeks and or even months without the direct intervention of the owner, because there are managers in the company who are competent and have been given the authority and responsibility to keep things running smoothly. Here’s a fun way to think about it: Several years ago, Norm Brodsky wrote a column for Inc. magazine in which he argued that the more vacation time he took, the more he increased the value of his company.

Passive ownership is hard to achieve. At first, we don’t believe it’s possible. If we get to the point where do believe it’s possible, we often have to change not only our behavior but the culture of the company. Worse, we’re busy — so busy in fact, that we often don’t have time to stop and take a look around. We’re forced to deal with emergency after emergency after emergency. Before we know it, another day has passed and we’re still in the same place.

To take the first step toward passive ownership, we have to be able to get past living as if everything is a crisis. When we’re constantly in crisis mode, everything is late and we’re always under tremendous pressure. At least, that’s how it was for me. I thought I had to be involved in every decision. I lived as if everything was an emergency. I drove my staff crazy and, frankly, my company wasn’t a very satisfying place to be — neither for my employees nor for me.

In the early ’80s I ran across a book by Stephen Covey called “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” The book talks about four stages that people occupy. They are:

1. Urgent and important (where I was living).
2. Important, but not urgent (where I needed to be).
3. Not important, but urgent (I delegated, but not effectively. The project seemed to always land back on my desk).
4. Not important and not urgent (where I hid behind useless activities and was completely unproductive).

I realized that I would have to move out of stages 1 and 3 and spend more time in stage 2 if I were ever going to be successful. It wasn’t easy, but I found one thing that I thought was a crisis and successfully delegated it to someone else. Then, I did it again. Over the course of a couple of years, I managed to get some time to work on important but not urgent activities. And that’s when life started to change.

Passive ownership requires the owner to build a team of effective managers, to have a reporting system that shares critical company information and to have systems in place that let front-line employees know what to do and how to act. This might sound easy, but it often takes several years of taking small steps before you even get close passive ownership.

For my company, the result was that we went from providing inconsistent service to being tactically excellent. We developed systems, and we stopped acting as if everything was a crisis. We had systems in place to keep crises from happening in the first place but could plan for things that were likely to go wrong.

Building trust between my managers and me was a real challenge. My issue was that I had a very difficult time understanding what was happening when one of my managers made a mistake. At some level, I didn’t fully understand that it wasn’t on purpose. This is where I ran into W. Edwards Deming and his books on quality management. One of his rules was that you don’t blame the person — you blame the system. This was a really difficult rule for me to embrace. But as we put more and better systems in place, the mistakes got smaller and more manageable. This took time and the willingness to change.

There’s a reason a lot of owners have a habit of micromanaging. In the early years, if I hadn’t been obsessive about being involved in every aspect of the business, the business might well have failed. It was only as the business became more successful that I had the option of learning to back off. But I know I waited longer than I should have.

Take a moment and ask yourself whether you are constantly feeling the pressure. If you answered yes to the questions at the beginning of this post, you might want to think about ways to make at least some of these issues go away.

Josh Patrick is a founder and Principal at Stage 2 Planning Partners where he works with private business owners on wealth management issues.

7 Beliefs of a Leader Who Will Never Be CEO

shh (Photo credit: Inubleachanimefan)

In order to build a successful company, varying personality types must all be represented. This array of characters is more important than determining someone’s title: instead of trying to check the box for CTO, CMO and VP of Engineering, you should focus on hiring rockstars, all different from one another. These leaders bring their range of expertise to the group, none more important than the next. That being said, common thinking patterns need to be tossed out the window, right from the start, in order to be the chief executive of a company. Many strong leaders are priceless assets to teams but aren’t CEO material if they hold any of the following commonly-held beliefs.

It’s real when you see it. To build a company, CEOs have to be visionary and forward-thinking. No different than an architect and builder can “see” a house before the foundation has been dug, a CEO sees the results only when he first believes in them. Whether this is an invigorated team, a world-changing product, or the acquisition of a competitor, a CEO rests at the helm, perpetually steering the ship forward toward the goals set out in advance.

If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. In the age of creativity, our world moves at mind-boggling speeds. To keep up with the crowd, let alone stay ahead of the curve, companies must constantly innovate. Stagnation is the surefire path to mediocrity. If a fix does not come until after something is broken, it’s far too late.  It’s the things that work just fine that need the fixing.  “Fix the stuff that works fine” is the modus operandi of a true innovator.

Failure is not an option. Failing (fast) must be encouraged in a company of five or a company of 50,000. Employees need to feel comfortable speaking up and sharing ideas with their teams and broader peer group, which is only cultivated through a well-developed culture of openness. Ultimately, failing isn’t a nail in a coffin, but rather in a window into something otherwise unclear. Michael Jordan explains it succinctly, noting, “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” It’s not that failure is not an option, but rather that failure is the only option.

Risk is something that should be managed. Big risks lead to big rewards. The world’s most successful people – and their companies – are those who take outlandish risks, often cast off as crazy by others, until they’ve won, changed the game, and proved their naysayers wrong.  “Here’s to the crazy ones…”

Figure out the best way to do something and stick with it. If you’ve always done something a certain way, it’s probably wrong. Traditions are great at home with your family, but in the business world, they can lead to disaster. At ePrize, a digital promotions company I founded in 1999, we told the meatloaf story: a young girl asks her mom why she always cut off the end of her meatloaf before putting it in the pan. Without a good answer to her daughter’s question, the woman calls her own mom, who also has no explanation beyond “it’s just how I’ve always done it, because that’s how my mom did it.” Grandma calls great-grandma, who laughs hysterically at the question. Her response was a slap in the face: “I don’t know why you’re all cutting off the end of your loaves – I didn’t have a big enough pan!”

Your best ideas must be protected. The best ideas are never stolen, because they must be shoved down people’s throats. At first these plans will be ridiculed, then fought, and finally, accepted, but only once a critical mass has developed. Nobody wants to be the first one to the party. For customers you already have, remember that their feedback is a gift – use it to improve upon whatever you’re doing, because the truth is, there’s always room to improve.

Common sense is king. The best CEOs balk at the herd. If there’s a trend doing something in “zig” fashion, visionary executives will jump at the chance to “zag,” racing in the opposite direction. Even if it seems incremental (as opposed to disruptive or revolutionary), the status quo provides any company with the opportunity to do it better by doing it differently.

For more insight on creativity and innovation, visit JoshLinkner.com.

How To Nurture Your Company’s Rebels, And Unlock Their Innovative Might

WRITTEN BY: Tim Leberecht

BEFORE YOUR BUSINESS IS THREATENED BY EXTERNAL COMPETITION, YOU SHOULD COURT THE INTERNAL OPPOSITION WITHIN YOUR OWN WALLS, ARGUES FROG’S TIM LEBERECHT.

“Choose your enemies carefully, 'cause they will define you
Make them interesting 'cause in some ways they will mind you
They’re not there in the beginning but when your story ends
Gonna last with you longer than your friends."
--U2, “Cedars of Lebanon”

We know that opposition is an integral part of the creative process. But sometimes opposition itself can be a creative act. Beyond common tactics (listed on this Community Toolbox site as “deflect, delay, deny, discount, deceive, divide, dulcify, discredit, destroy, deal”), it can manifest itself as craftsmanship and art--whether it be street art by Shepard Fairey or satire like these recent Mitt Romney campaign spoofs of Venn diagrams.

As Make Shift’s editor, Steve Daniels, observes in the current issue, the nature of resistance is changing. Case studies ranging from Occupy Wall Street to neighborhood activism in Port-au-Prince illustrate that a combination of social technology and street-level ingenuity is producing new tools, techniques, practices, and skills for vocalizing opposition. And these in turn drive boycotts, counter-movements, and insurgencies, as well as opposition at a more mundane level, in day-to-day interactions.

With regard to business, numerous acts of creative opposition abound, from product hacks (e.g., hackers of Ikea products and Microsoft’s Kinect) to Beck’s decision to release his new album only as “sheet music” to be recorded by his fans. The entire maker and crowdfunding movements, as well as “innovation communes” such as The Glint, the Rainbow Mansion, and the Memento Factories, can be seen as fundamental acts of creative resistance to business as usual.

CON

All of these trends made me think about creative opposition within companies--about employee activities that are counter to the top-down policies without crossing the line into the unproductive and illegal. From passive disengagement, noncompliance, and disobedience to passive aggression, covert sabotage, and overt conflict, which tactics are appropriate, legitimate, and effective? How much resistance from its fringes can an organization endure before it is threatened at its core--and stops being an organization altogether? And most important, why would fostering creative opposition even be beneficial to companies?

 

In his book The Opposable Mind, the management guru Roger Martin argued that the ability to hold opposing truths was a critical quality for business leaders. Or in the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The mark of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two contradictory thoughts in its mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” If it is true that tension is a hallmark of our complex society and requires complex solutions, and that the “most enduring institutions” are contradictory, as David Brooks contends in a recent New York Times column about the Olympics, then creative opposition inside companies is nothing but the tangible manifestation of it. With a strong and self-organized in-house opposition, companies can cover the entire breadth of their corporate character. It allows them to acknowledge that they are complex and multipolar, that they have multiple truths, and that, through this tension, they can become capable of stretching themselves, expanding, and realizing their full potential.

There are other, more practical benefits to cultivating internal opposition. Today’s Millennial employees value freedom (and opposition might well be the most obvious act of freedom), and in that sense encouraging creative opposition among young employees, rather than squashing it, can serve as an important engagement (and retention) strategy. Moreover, companies that fail to allow internal opposition may be caught off guard and slow to respond when they face external opposition. Perhaps most important, resistance can serve as a catalyst for innovation. Alexa Clay and Kyra Maya Phillips, authors of the upcoming book The Misfit Economy, posit that the “black, gray, and informal economies,” with their underground entrepreneurs (“pirates, terrorists, computer hackers, and inner city gangs”), are underappreciated sources of new business models and products.

Similarly, I would argue, the contrarians and rebels, the people on the fringes of organizations who question and deviate from the status quo, which so often leads to inertia and inflexibility, are huge assets for any organization. Those who disagree with the present often see the future more clearly. This applies to hiring, too. Many business leaders, at least those who are forward-looking, essentially seek to hire “change agents”--individuals who are both creative and persistent in bursting a straitjacket of outdated practices and processes.

CR

Ashoka Changemakers, a global network of social innovators, and others have adopted the term “social intrapreneurship” and aim to equip contrarian employees with best practices and tools to self-organize more effectively. They also hope to raise executive-suite awareness of the potential of empowering social intrapreneurs. The Rebels at Work initiative has created a community hub for connecting corporate renegades, identifying “good rebels” as those “who feel compelled to create ways to improve, change, and innovate,” who ”stand against the prevailing mindset of the organization and argue for a better way.”

 

Companies are beginning to realize that opposition is vital and a certain amount of conflict healthy. Some have even launched internal disruption units that can drive radical innovation from left field (e.g., Anheuser-Busch’s Beer Garage or Google X). As an alternative, companies may also bring in agencies and consultancies--hired opposition--with the mandate to disrupt conventional thinking and overcome groupthink and organizational myopia. The caveat here is that these outside interventions can lead to changes that fail to become a part of a company’s cultural fabric for the long term.

So what else can companies do to make internal opposition productive? Here are a few possible actions to consider:

1. CREATE SAFE SPACES

Safe space does not necessarily refer to a formal group like an employee council but rather a practice of tolerating contrarians and mitigating their fears of retaliation or discrimination. It doesn’t mean that companies simply open-source all decision-making, flatten hierarchies, and initiate only grassroots projects. In fact, it might be more effective for companies to continue introducing new initiatives and policies from the top down but at the same time factor in enough space for oppositional voices. Every company campaign, policy, and product that is developed functions as a wave that generates undercurrents. And like every movement, it inevitably breeds a counter-movement. It is often this counter-movement that holds the insight for the next stage in the process.

2. MAKE SURE THAT INTERNAL OPPOSITION IS CONSTANT

Executives may be tempted to believe that inclusiveness (by way of crowdsourcing and other participatory designs) eliminates, or at least minimizes, resistance. That is certainly effective for the conceptual and rollout stages of a new initiative or policy, but many companies then fall short of allowing resistance after the rollout, thereby threatening to undermine the strength of the initial support they had garnered. Alignment is a moving target, and the window for resistance should always be open.

3. EMBRACE PASSIVE AND ACTIVE OPPOSITION

On the more passive (and sometimes passive-aggressive) side, employees increasingly find creative ways to sidestep policies and protocol. Take the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) phenomenon, propagated by professionals who simply bypass IT approvals to bring their own preferred mobile devices to the workplace. According to a recent survey by Forrester Research for Trend Micro, 78% of businesses have implemented BYOD programs--and 70% of them cited increased productivity as the main reason.

Creative opposition, in this sense, means raising the accountability for each and every employee. Employees as innovators strive to find better ways of doing business instead of just following the business-as-usual manual. This may result in the traditional corporate functions giving up authority and shifting from being owners to enablers. It’s certainly not an easy transition, but one that pays off in the long term.

INC

Companies could even go a step further and adopt and actively support formats such as House of Genius, a brainstorming session/idea incubator in which participants are anonymous. Why not institute an employee council with members whose identities are not disclosed? They could meet regularly to discuss important company matters and make recommendations, maybe even directly to the board, bypassing the management team. Or launch live-work communes that bring together employees and customers to develop antitheses to the company’s vision and policies? Or conduct internal brand hijacks or product hacks that challenge top-down initiatives and may become powerful counter-movements that prompt a rethink or perhaps even a reset?

 

It’s important to remember that incorporating creative opposition begins with asking the right questions. What is your company’s “black market”? What is its “underground”? Who are your misfits, your hackers? Who are the people who might want to “occupy” your company? Who is seeing the cracks in your organization and seeking to attack them? Invite them to do so before they invite themselves (and others along with them). Make sure your internal opposition has ample safe space to self-organize, is always close, and utterly creative. Resist the temptation to squash resistance. Bring the renegades into the mix and not into the fold. And remind yourself that occasional disloyalty might be the strongest form of loyalty.

[Image: Fighting Sheep, Pirate Flag, and Warning via Shutterstock]

Transformational Leaders Coach for Better Employee Performance

by Beth Miller • via @vistage

Business leaders can have many titles. But excelling at one role is a highly-effective way to bring about better performance in your employees: the role of a coach.

Coaching is about bringing a person from where they are to where they want to be; it is about transformation. Transformational leadership is a specific type of leadership that is becoming more popular today.

Transformational leaders create a lasting, positive impression on people and improve the companies they work for. And employees are more satisfied and productive under them. What leaders do is to work with employees to improve specific work behaviors and skills, and in the process, they become better themselves.

Are you a leader who wants to see better results from those you lead? What are some things you should do? Follow these coaching tips that have helped many of the leaders I work with.

10 techniques to coach employees to improved performance

1. Foster an ongoing dialogue between yourself and the employee(s). You want to be in touch with the person or people you are coaching. The dialogue must be two-way and continuous.
2. Collaborate with the person you are coaching. Work together to identify problem areas, to set standards and to develop a performance improvement plan.
3. Set up and follow a plan with the person or team you are coaching. Have a plan of action about what specifically needs to improve or change.
4. Share resources with them to help them become more successful in their work. Send them emails, or articles, you think they might find useful. Give them books and talk about what they think about what you share with them.
5. Celebrate success. Recognition is the best motivator and will show the employee that they are valued and doing something right. Find the person’s strengths and highlight them.
6. Acknowledge problems and concerns. Talk with employees about any problems or concerns you, or they, may have.
7. Listen actively. Try to be attentive, summarize their thoughts and give your feedback to what employees have to say.
8. Improve your questioning skills. Good coaches ask open-ended and non-threatening questions. The better the question, the higher likelihood of a great answer.
9. Try to be objective and nonjudgmental. You want them to be comfortable and honest with you. Focus on behaviors and the impact they have, not the personality.
10. Get people to think through their actions. Getting people to think things through can bring about personal insight and will help you understand them better.

Practice a behavioral approach to coaching

In his book, “Coaching for Improved Work Performance”, Ferdinand Fournies explains that focusing on an employee’s’ behavior is the key to correcting and improving performance. He says that leaders should focus on the behavior they want and reinforce that, rather than punishing the behavior they don’t want.

He also explains that telling someone something is not enough. A person must say AND do something that will make the other person receive their message. Asking the person questions is a way to do this.

He also gives a few more ways for leaders to improve the behaviors of their employees:

• Let employees know what they are supposed to do.
• Follow up with employees to maintain proper performance.
• Create a feedback system.
• Increase the amount of verbal reinforcement.

And finally…

Coaching is often a one-on-one process, but leaders can also set an example and coach an entire team. To do this, leaders must be available to everyone. They often come in the morning and talk to each employee and try to become a part of their group, rather than simply being someone who leads from the corner office. This kind of leadership is hard work, but the benefits are huge.