Tag: outcomes

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Patience is a Vice and Virtue in Business

iStock_000017171991XSmallPatience is virtuous when it empowers you to use good judgement. Patience is a vice when it is used as an excuse or method of procrastination.

Patience has a role in every aspect of business. Patience can be a virtue when leaders need time to evaluate and research the benefits and risks associated with critical business decisions. Patience can also be a vice when it hinders progress or is used by leaders to stall or delay difficult decisions.

In business, leaders gain respect when patience is used as a sensible guide. It can help define practical goals and set realistic expectations on performance. Patience is valuable in strategic planning, negotiations and critical thinking exercises that have significant impact on the future of a business. Patience also defines a business reality and sets a tone of perseverance.

Leaders can immediately lose respect if they show little or no patience. Rushing to judgement can sabotage activities or blur facts. Charging forward on key decisions regardless of the cost or potential dangers, can result in missed opportunities and less-than desirable outcomes.  Leaders that employ too much patience may be deemed as lacking confidence in their own decisions or lacking confidence in others.  It can spark insecurities and even instability in the business. No patience creates a perception of erratic and unstable leadership.

Patience needs balance. When patience is part of the decision-making process, be certain that there is substantiated purpose. For example, use patience in planning when you need to acquire experience, research facts, test an outcome or survey others for input. Patience used to delay a decision because of a lack of experience or knowledge can create a false roadblock. Set a timeline. Using patience to gather feedback is a good use of the virtue.  Patience becomes a vice when it drives you to continually seek consensus on all decisions.

Patience as a virtue gives you capacity to endure waiting. Patience as a vice is not setting a deadline, allowing difficult decisions or unexpected outcomes to linger and potentially harm the business. Patience, used correctly, is part of your business ethics. It helps in governance.

Patience gives you the fortitude to make decisions. The right amount of patience enables leaders to use levelheadedness and detach from emotions in the decision and use logic and facts. Patience is a vice when it is used so frequently that it creates an emotional detachment to any decisions or prevents you from personally engaging or taking responsibility for your decisions and commitments.

Patience in business needs to be modulated. It is a guide, a compass. It is never absolute. There are times you have to make immediate decisions. There are many times you need to trust your gut, your instincts, you inner voice and just go. True leaders have the courage to accept associated risk with making a immediate decisions, as well as knowing when it is important to deploy patience at the right time to get the best results.

“Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.” ― Aristotle

Jamie Glass, President and CMO at Artful Thinkers @jglass8

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Wishing, Wanting and Hoping Does Not Work in Business

What works in business is “doing”. Executing the plan requires effort. It is the muscle, the labor and the heavy lifting that gets the job done.

If you are wishing a prospect calls you to buy something, the wait is long. If you are wanting people to respond to your awesome tweet, the anticipation is agonizing. If you are hoping a great venture capitalist recognizes your incredible invention, your desires can go unfulfilled.

The message is not harsh or meant to burst your bubble. It is a direct call to action. Your wish, want and hope strategy needs reconsideration. It is not time to give up. It is time to change your strategy. Winners get rewarded for hard work. They do what others won’t do and that is how they win.

The sales person that makes the most calls, nurtures the most relationships and asks for the close multiple times, makes the sale. The marketing person that gets their message out through multiple channels using frequency and smart engagement tactics sees return on their marketing investment. Business leaders who knock on many doors to showcase their compelling business models that are producing multiple returns with predictable growth get the call backs from the investor community. Those that are putting their nose to the grindstone are realizing the rewards. The rewards of hard work.

Ambition needs to be equally measured by production. In a recent board meeting, the discussion soon centered on what we want to accomplish in the next five years. A boisterous board member remarked that the question was not relevant. The room became silent. Finally, someone asked him why would we not want to focus on our goals and define our strategy. He starkly replied, “You don’t have anyone to do the work.”

Every business needs leadership, directing activities and measuring accomplishments. Great leaders inspire others to believe they will be winners and thus hard work will pay off. The fact remains that without the “doers”, leaders are really a figure head. A strategy without anyone executing the tactics is a failed strategy. Labor is what drives businesses forward. Those that execute in the business are those that bring in the revenue, open new markets, and create innovative products.

The amount of time defining the mission, vision and strategy of your business needs to be matched exponentially by the hours of “doing”. Plans without the work tethered to tactics are simply great ideas. Goals are achieved through sweat. A vision is actualized through production.

Wishing, wanting and hoping are great for daydreaming. Put your dreams into action. The performance of you, your business and your teams are visible in hard evidence. Facts. Results. Failures. Accomplishments.

As you analyze the hours in your day spent on strategy and planning; multiple that amount of time by 10 and that is the minimum time you need to apply to working in your business. In other words, every hour of strategy and planning needs to be matched by 10 hours of laborious action. Match your planning time with a report card of hours worked on your to do list. The outcomes are a result of the effort. Measure your business success by the achievements, the outcomes, the results.

Wishing, wanting and hoping in business creates a crisis in confidence. Wishing is obscure. Wanting is desirous. Hoping is improbable. Doing is concrete. Working is absolute. A commitment in confidence is defined by action. Execution moves a business forward. Nike reminds us all the time to “Just Do It”. The simple motto is one that all businesses and leaders need to follow. Do it. Get it done. Then start again and just keep doing!

“The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.” – Thomas A. Edison

Jamie Glass, President and CMO at Artful Thinkers @jglass8

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Over the Hill or Through the Woods

iStock_000021617437_ExtraSmallThe beginning of every year is an opportunity to set your direction and communicate your path forward. It gives you the chance to review and define your goals, personally and professionally. For everyone else, it gives them the ability to know how to best support and follow the leader. Does everyone that can impacts your business know your 2013 plan?

The lack of a defined plan for the year, leaves everyone taking their “own” best path forward. In the end, this may not produce or represent the organization’s goals or objectives. People will be moving, activities will be happening, yet you may be headed to exactly where you did not “plan” to go. It is up to you to stop the wandering effect of your business and your followers. Set the direction. Communicate your exact plan. If you don’t have a plan, create one now — before it is too late.

If you have a plan and you have not shared it, this is the week to get it done! People and businesses need goals and plans. You can work endless amounts of time, expend great energy and spend a lot of money to end up in the wrong place. How did that happen? Usually it is because everyone is not working collectively on the same outcome. Everyone is heading in a direction, but it may not be the “right” direction.

As a leader, it is critical to everyone working with you that they understand your strategy and goals for the business. A plan provides the road map empowering you to define the activities and tasks. It opens the door to assigning responsibilities and setting accountability. More importantly, it gives you the capability of making a pivot or shifting your plans by creating a benchmark for how you will measure success along the path forward.

Working on a shared and communicated plan, gives business leaders a reason to stay in touch with employees, measure their progress and assess performance. People thrive on accomplishments and desire feedback. Knowing how they are contributing to the success of the business can only be measured by stated goals and objectives.

Get everyone working together. Options may be limited or options may be bountiful based on the path you choose to take the business. Communicate your choice. Will you be headed over the hill or through the woods. What will be in the basket full of goodies you will offer to your customers, vendors, employees and partners. How do they prepare to avoid risks? What will be awaiting when they arrive at the determined destination?

Your team is waiting for you to tell them the story. How it begins this year and how it will end. Provide regular updates and know that people will be looking for you to lead them in the direction you have shared.

“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” — Henry Ford

Jamie Glass, Founder, President and CMO of Artful Thinkers

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Letting Go of Old School Business

We are working in an agile, lean, bootstrapping world.  We are delivering big data globally, in nanoseconds.  We manage and run businesses 24/7 with on demand expectations from customers, employees and vendors.

Are you operating your business in modern times or like it is the 70′s, 80′s, 90′s or even the last decade? Your established ways of doing business may be holding you back. You may be out of touch with what can move your business forward now. It is time to let the “old school” business practices go and embrace progress.

Aged leadership techniques for running businesses that worked 20 and 30 years ago are great for television dramas, but not for motivating others to help you create a thriving organization.  Managing from top down with authority and control is counter productive to collaboration and innovation.  Dictatorial bosses are not respected today.  Confrontation and intimidation were once seen as ways to “control the population” of workers.  Today, it is misguided and creates resentment, all barriers to inspiring others to come together to solve problems and flourish in the workplace. Is your leadership style up-to-date?

Work environments that are open develop greater trust and equality in mission.  The millennial workforce is community driven, with a sense that you do well by doing good.  Parents and institutions work hard to instill the values of sharing. It is expected to carry over to the workplace.  Openness and freedom of expression are as important as basic rewards and even compensation.  Younger generations will work hard, but old carrot and stick approaches are less appealing than basic respect and the feelings they experience by doing good work.

Retro is cool for clothing and design. It doesn’t appeal to where people want to spend a good portion of their day. Are you keeping up with the times?  Are the visual clues in your office showing you are fresh with new ideas or stuck in generations past? Is your desk cluttered with paper files, stacks of business cards or even shelves loaded with management and leadership books that were promoted two decades ago?

Here are some clues that you may be stuck in your old school business ways.

Micro-management feels good.  No one wants to be controlled by the overlord.  If you are running the numbers every morning, watching arrival times and wondering how to squeeze out another ounce of productivity, it is time to refocus your energy. Today, results and outcomes move businesses ahead of their competition.  Align your team with organizational goals and expectations. Celebrate accomplishments.

Dress code policy is a regular meeting topic.  Ties and nylons are bygones as standard office attire. Loosen up! You want people to be comfortable when they are working hard.  Innovators want to collaborate with peers, not be addressed by the “suit” in the room. Do you represent yourself as an equal that inspires others or someone that dresses to impress?  If your employees are impressed, it is because you empower and motivate them.

You love your big executive suite.  Big offices represent old austerity days.  Everyone knows you earn the big bucks with your title. The expansive office gives the impression you are unreachable and untouchable.  It does not increase your cool factor. If you have spent a big budget on office decor, it shows your priority. How about an office ping pong table, an employee lounge or creative think tank room?  Big offices exclude you from working with your team.

If you have a time clock on the wall, you are truly old school.  There may be legal reasons you may need to track or “clock” hours; however, time clocks bolted on the wall give the impression you are still operating in the industrial world.  Computer software can be set up on any standing office computer or tablet and help you remove the visual of ancestral ways of tracking every second of work time.

Your technology budget for 2013 has a large line item for new desktop computers.  Laptops, tablets, smartphones are how productive people operate today.  Information available via online “secured” vaults and in the cloud storage provides convenience to vital documents and programs. Carry-on computing gives you freedom and accessibility to work from any where at any time.  Times are changing and desktops are definitely old school.

Are you still using out of office notes?  Throw the pink slips away. It’s not new, it is called voicemail. Use it. Return the calls left for you.  It reflects your follow-through and respect for others.  Better yet, encourage your team to find you via text and call you on your mobile device.  Make it easy to be in touch.

There may be financial, legal and security reasons that you can not leave all your old school ways of doing business behind.  Make sure that there really is a reason for holding on to the older ways you conduct business.  If the only reason you are using old school business techniques or tools is inability or lack of interest to change, you will be left behind. Your employees see it.  Your customers know it.  Your vendors and suppliers are pained by it.  It’s time to move into the new school of doing business.

Today is apps and accessibility, cooperation and alliances, nanoseconds and responsiveness.  Being a progressive in business creates more opportunities for growth, in people, profits and productivity.  Let the old go and go anew.  You might like the results.

Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning. – Benjamin Franklin

By Jamie Glass, CMO & President of Artful Thinkers and Managing Director of Sales & Marketing Practice at CKS Advisors.

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Be in Your Business Now

As a business leader, you have three options of where to put your focus. The Past. The Future. The Now. Being present in your business now, gives you better leverage to improve from your past with the valuable foresight to manage risks and opportunities in your future.

21st century businesses require real time accessibility and responsiveness to meet the changing tides of immediate customer demands.  Innovation is quickly driving businesses forward and leaving many behind. Being disciplined on the point of convergence of past and future, enables you to put 100% of your business efforts into the business now.

It is important to know who you are, where you are coming from and where you are going. The past provides insights that can help your business pivot and shorten learning curves.  As a leader, you depend on the knowledge gained through good and bad experiences to improve performance and business outcomes.  There is only one path to progress.  You have to move from the past to the future through your business now.

Living in your business past, with regret or admiration, does not give you the necessary focus to be centered in the now. “When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.” ~Alexander Graham Bell

Leaders that spend time relishing in their great accomplishments may be ignoring the unknown threats or countless competitors looking for better, faster ways to knock you off your pedestal.  Put the plaque on the wall, file the kudos and at-a-boys and know that your business needs you to be working on what’s next – now.

Likewise, if you are spending your business now redefining vision statements, missions and the company’s next BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal), you may be missing the bumps and obstacles that threaten you from achieving important milestones in your daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly journey.  Your revenues depend on you to zero in on the now.

One way to keep you in the now is to have a mission statement that puts you squarely in the present moment.  Starbucks puts its’ employee, partner and customer focus in their business now with their simple mission statement.  It says, ”Our mission: to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.”

There is no arguing that you need business goals, strategies and plans.  The only way to work in the business now is to know where you are headed.  Every business needs short and long term goals.  There is a big difference in working in the future or working on the future — now.  You can be working on inventions that will change the world.  If you focus on how the world will be versus your invention, you will lose your edge in getting the invention to market.  A daydreamer trap for the creative mind.

Have you ever met an entrepreneur that has hundreds of ideas.  When you talk to them, they focus on all the ways they can improve on an idea, open new markets and make millions and billions — in the future.  They have 20 solutions for every problem.  Yet, there is always one thing that is missing in their enthusiasm for what’s ahead, their business now.

How is your business today?  What is holding you back this week?  What challenges are stopping you from being that billionaire NOW?  When you are steadfast on living in future, you are probably not paying attention to the work required to get you there.  If your employees always see you so far ahead of them, they often lack accountability to what they need to do to make the business a success today.

There is a fragile difference between a vision and an illusion.  Apple is a perfect example of a company dedicated to the business now.  We often look at each new product as ahead of it’s time.  Some will remark, how visionary!  Apple looks at their new products as another completed project. The next Apple inventions we will be enamored with are already in production.  Apple is constantly improving products ahead of their time by working in the business now.  They do so with an eye to the future, short term and long term goals; however, they produce and service in the now.  Innovation is part of their work culture.  We, their consumer, are focused on their future. That does not deter them from meeting our demands now, it only keeps us loyal.

Use your past to better predict your future.  It is good business intelligence.  Being present for your customers, employees, partners today is what has the greatest impact on revenues now.  Investing in your future, is working on your business now!  Don’t ignore what’s right in front of you.  What you uncover by working on the business now could define you and your company evermore.  

“Forever is composed of nows.” ~Emily Dickinson

By Jamie Glass, CMO & President of Artful Thinkers and Managing Director of Sales & Marketing Practice at CKS Advisors.

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Vision Statements are Worthless without Disciplined Focus

Entrepreneurs can spend countless hours crafting their vision and mission statements.  It is often assigned to every leader as a required task in strategic planning.  Business investors and advisors will ask you, what is your vision?  Imagine answering, “I don’t know!”

Do you have a vision? A mission? Business values?  Often guilt rises in those that have not defined their vision when questioned by those that “know”.  Thus the ritual begins.  The business owner starts to define the grand vision: What do I want to be?  What is our ideal universe?  What is our big hairy audacious goal (BHAG) as a company? What motivates us?

Tah-Dah!  The task is complete. Yes, you have a company vision.  Check the box.  Your purpose for existence as a business, which is now articulated in a small paragraph, makes it’s debut on websites, in business plans and sales presentations and supported in company marketing communications.  What is the value of this exercise?  Can you translate it to revenue? There are businesses that have you memorize the vision. Vision testing. They are driven by the belief that if everyone is united by a common vision, they will achieve more.

Granted, there is no argument that you need a strategy to win.  If your vision consists of words to satisfy the strategic planning process, your vision is worthless. A vision must be supported by disciplined focus to accomplish your business goals. It is what differentiates the good from great.  Why?  It is the ability to look beyond the visionary clouds and execute on your strategy.  Disciplined focus delivers results.

Vision is unlimited.  Vision gives you big picture, inspiration and motivation.  Focus influences your capability to execute on what is most important.  Real power to deliver on a vision comes when you narrow your focus, allowing you to concentrate and build confidence. Disciplined focus enables you to positively face challenges and create sustainability in your business.  It is the foundation for growth. “My success, part of it certainly, is that I have focused in on a few things.” — Bill Gates

Have you ever watched a 3 year-old in a grocery store walking along side their adult companion.  They seem to lack much interest in the whole shopping experience.  Suddenly, they set their sights on what is intentionally positioned at their eye-level to grab their attention. They make their escape with remarkable strength.  Bolting in a straight beeline, with determination, to the prize!  They have disciplined focus on the outcome.  They grab and go!  Vision. Focus. Results.

If you have a vision or are thinking you need to craft a vision statement, take a few minutes to define the expected outcomes from your declaration.  How does the vision help you focus on what is most important for your business?  How do you use your vision as motivation?  How will the vision help employees be better in their roles?  How will the vision drive the business forward?  Once you know the desired results, you can apply the disciplined focus to execute your strategy and accomplish your business goals.

“A clear vision, backed by definite plans, gives you a tremendous feeling of confidence and personal power.” — Brian Tracy

By Jamie Glass, CMO & President of Artful Thinkers and Managing Director of Sales & Marketing Practice at CKS Advisors.

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Be Happy and Achieve More in Your Business

In a recent presentation by best selling author and NCAA Division I tennis champion, Roger Crawford, he asked the audience of business owners and executives, “Are you listening to your own head trash?” He explained that anxiety is focused on negative outcomes and it eliminates the possibilities.  Do you start your day thinking of the angst or promise of your business?

Several years ago, I was managing a small inside sales team for an entrepreneur with big dreams.  We were in the midst of creating the world’s largest, biggest, best company, EVER. We had a vision, a defined mission and we believed all was possible.

I hired a small group of spirited, eager professionals that were responsible for driving the majority of the company revenue.  Failure was not optional.  Every work day, they had to pick up the phone and convince businesses they needed our offering.  In fact, the expectation was they had to sell 5-10 businesses a day.  Many days were filled with rejection and disappointment. Despite the constant “no”, they persisted.  Dial more, ask again, always be closing, fax another brochure were our mantras.  The result, we took a small company and nearly doubled in size every year for five years.

Looking back, there is no doubt that persistence paid off.  We all knew that if we made enough calls, heard enough no’s, we would get to the yes.  Four people dialing for dollars soon turned to a couple dozen sales people and eventually two floors of people making outbound calls.  We had the formula.  We had a predictable model that scaled. Open a territory, launch a new product, buy more leads, add more sales people, increase price, and the business doubles again.  It was simple math. No anxiety, just possibilities. Followed by success.

There was only one real threat to our growing business — mindset.  We needed to hire believers.  As a business, we had the tools, the resources and the product. We needed people that believed in “yes”, despite all the “no” they might hear.  Our culture would not tolerate negativity. Our success was built on a foundation of positive attitudes. We could train and manage aptitude. Attitude was the difference between making our number or not.  Negativity was eradicated quickly to draw in more positive thinkers.  Only winners need apply.

Do you believe in your possibilities? Do you inspire winning? Perhaps the real inhibitor from achieving success in your business is mindset.  Happiness is proven to contribute to the top and bottom line.  Regardless the perceived “insurmountable” roadblocks of any small business, belief and persistence are your best allies as an organization.  Positiveness rolls down hill.  It is your primary responsibility as a leader to project happiness and the “can do” attitude.  Prospects respond to cheerful problem solvers.  Vendors like doing business with people that make them feel good.  Employees are more productive in happy workplaces.  Investors want to believe, in you!

In a 2012 released study, “Happiness as a motivator: positive affect predicts primary control striving for career and educational goals,” researchers Claudia M Haase, Michael J Poulin, Jutta Heckhausen noted in the report abstract, “…when individuals experience positive affect, they become more motivated to invest time and effort, and overcome obstacles when pursuing their goals, in part because they believe they have more control over attaining their goals.”

How do you set up your day to experience a positive affect?  Do you have a happiness ritual that puts you in the frame of mind to win?  How do you encourage happiness and inspire your employees?  In the startup phase of the company mentioned above, I would begin by blasting a song on the boombox in our little office.  My favorite play, “Here’s a little song I wrote, you might want to sing it note for note, don’t worry, be happy  In every life we have some trouble, when you worry you make it double, don’t worry, be happy.” -Bobby McFerrin

When I cranked up the volume each morning, I might see a little sneer. We started at 7AM. In the end, it was this song and our collective attitude that launched many successful careers.  We mastered our own happiness.  We mastered our destiny. We mastered hearing no and converted it to a yes. Yes to success.

As a business owner, you will face rejection by investors, vendors, partners, and customers.  Prepare yourself and set your vision on the possibilities.  Remove the head trash. If you read, listen or surround yourself with negative information, it probably will not encourage you to go out and do more. Negativity creates anxiety. Turn it off. Walk away. Choose to believe your hype, not others.

How can you inspire others to take your business to the next level?  Focus on what you and your team can achieve.  Set goals. Share the vision. Dream big. No matter how many no’s you get, believe in yes!  And of course, Don’t Worry. Be Happy!

Inspired by the motivational Roger Crawford, the Delivering Happiness movement and all those believers at Mastering Computers.

By Jamie Glass, CMO & President of Artful Thinkers and Managing Director of Sales & Marketing Practice at CKS Advisors.