Beyond the Bones . . . Finding the “Who” in Your Business

When I was in high school back in the 70s, like most students, I had to take biology before they’d let me out the door. I sat in the first row of Mr. J’s formaldehyde-ish smelling classroom – right in front of a human skeleton that peered over the class with a stony gaze. On a boring day, I’d sit there and stare right back, wondering “who” that skeleton once was and what her life was like. I’d marvel that in spite of our different outward appearances, we all looked about the same as that skeleton when everything else was stripped away—the pretty girls and the pimply faced ones, the muscular jocks and the waifs, the paunchy middle-aged teachers and those who were probably as ancient as the skeleton. So, I would ask myself, what did this person once look like? What made her different? What was her story? And I’d spend much of the class allowing my imagination to bring her to life.

So it is with our businesses. When it comes down to it, in many ways a business is a business. Underlying each one is a system of processes and procedures that make up the “bones” of the business and give the company structure . . . the organizational charts and work flow processes, admin, bookkeeping, production.

But what lies beyond the bones of your business that gives it its unique character? What is its story? Why did you create your company? What does your company do that you’re very proud of, that you can feel in your heart, that you’re passionate about? What brings it to life for your employees, for your customers, for the community? Are you communicating the vision of your company and why you’re in business? If you help employees and customers understand that, and help them understand the WIIFM in your vision, your business suddenly doesn’t look just like your competitor around the corner anymore. In the minds of potential customers, you’re business is dynamic, full of life—and you’ve invited them to share in it.

So, who is your business? Are you telling that story?

Forecasts Are Never a Sure Bet

Welcome to spring in Kansas City! But if you expected to be enjoying crocus, daffodils and redbud trees right now, you’re sorely disappointed. As all of us who live and work here know, we got hit with three major late-season snowstorms that have kept winter at bay. We’re still shoveling when we should be mowing, wrapping scarves under heavy coats, and hoping our neighbors clear their sidewalks so we can walk the dog. And as I write this, snow and cold temperatures are forecast even for April 1.

 What’s going on here? We’re supposed to be waking to sunny skies and moderate temps this time of year, with some showers here and there to nourish all those budding flowers and trees.

The Spring of 2013 hands us a lesson for our businesses too. How often have we invested in our companies, forecasting sunny skies ahead because of a new product, new people, or new processes, only to find ourselves hunkering back down, retrenching, and wondering what happened to the “spring” that was supposed to come?

Like weather forecasting, there are a lot of variables that make predicting the future of our businesses an inexact science. But like hearty Midwesterners, entrepreneurs push on.

What If Days Were Dollars?

The old saying “another day, another dollar” is often uttered with a shrug by people who’ve spent a good deal of their lives at dull, routine jobs. When I heard someone use that expression the other day, I started thinking, “What if days really were dollars?”  And if they were, how many “dollars” would a person get in a lifetime?”

Well, the average life expectancy for Americans is currently 78.6 years, so if we got a dollar for every day, we’d each be allotted $28,689 during our lifetimes.

$28,689 for an entire lifetime. It’s not much, is it? A person living on an income as tight as $28,689 would learn very quickly how to prioritize those dollars.

And yet, in a lifetime in which we may get just 28,689 days to eat, sleep, build our businesses, enjoy our families and the multitudes of other things we want to accomplish, how many days do we spend on things that don’t matter, that we don’t enjoy, or that we think we’re expected to do?

Time is money. Each new day is currency to spend. We can’t bank it—we have to use it as it is delivered. Whether we spend it purposefully, fritter it away, or focus on the things that are inconsequential is up to each of us. But at a certain point, the most successful and the most happy people realize their 28,689 days are dwindling and they can’t keep putting off the things they really want to do, thinking they’ll get to them one day. They know that if they really want to do them, they better do them.

What is it that you need to stop thinking about doing, and actually do?

The Way Back . . .

I’m about as directionally challenged as you can get—so much so that if the pink Pepto Palace at the end of my street ever changes color, I probably won’t be able to find my way home. You don’t have to spin me around to disorient me. Generally, turning the key in the ignition and placing my foot on the accelerator guarantee that I’ll be traveling in the wrong direction within a matter of minutes. 

Getting lost used to make me nervous, and sometimes even afraid. But after years of winding through neighborhoods with endless loop de loops of cul de sacs lined with houses that all look alike, searching desperately for the way back to a main road, I finally realized something that calmed me: Somehow I got here. A street, a highway, an entrance of some sort allowed me in. Unless I’m in some kind of a warp field that swallowed up the road behind me as I drove, I can get back out. 

So it is with our businesses. There are times as entrepreneurs when we plain and simply lose our direction. We take wrong turns. We drive in circles. We feel lost. But somehow we got where we are, and we can get back out and headed in the right direction again. Sometimes finding the right path takes as much winding and maneuvering as it took to get lost in the first place. Sometimes we are shrewd enough to discover a shortcut. Just remember, dead ends usually have warning signs – if we’re alert and spot them, we can back up or turn around. Sometimes, though, we give up when the way out is just around the corner.

Importantly, we can’t forget that we’re the driver and making the decisions—a GPS is about as good as spellcheck; it can give us guidance but it doesn’t fix everything.

It’s About Time

As years end and new ones begin, we get reflective about time . . . what we accomplished during the twelve months just ended, and how we’re going to spend our time in the upcoming 365 days.

Nearly universally, though, most of us agree we don’t have enough time. Yet if anything in this world is “equal opportunity,” it’s time. We each get 365 days a years; and each day, unwaveringly, presents each of us with 24 hours, and each hour delivers 60 minutes, and each minute supplies 60 seconds. There are no exceptions to that rhythm.

Why is it then that some people seem to achieve so much with their time (haven’t we all marveled at how the “busiest” people we know appear to juggle their schedules so effortlessly?), and others live in a state of constant overwhelm, with meetings and tasks and obligations coming at them so fast they barely have time to react?

The people who accomplish more with their time have learned to “slow down the pitch.” Think about it.  Just as a great hitter makes mental and physical adjustments to slow down the speed of a 90-mile per hour ball hurtling toward the plate, some people are able to do that with their time. They have learned to be in control, to really see the ball coming and create the mental perception that the ball is arriving at the plate slower, giving themselves time to recognize the pitch and react appropriately.

So, as we start 2013, consider techniques for “slowing down the pitch” this year so you can actually accomplish more:

1. Stand deeper in the batter’s box (better positioning).
2. Visualize yourself successfully hitting a home run.
3. Take a pass on some of the things that are pitched up to you because they’re not in your strike zone.
4. Keep your eye on the ball. While multitasking may appear to be a key to getting more things done, study after study shows it isn’t. Push away all your other tasks and focus on the “ball.” The pitch will slow down and you’ll see the ball much more clearly.
5. Don’t overcomplicate what’s on your plate. Get out there and enjoy the game. When batters are tense and worried, their muscles tighten up, they can’t connect with the ball, and they don’t get on base.

We wish each of you a Happy and Prosperous New Year . . . and remember to have some fun while you’re swinging at those pitches this year!

Why Dissatisfied Employees Aren’t a Bad Thing

Several weeks ago I was reading through my LinkedIn updates when an article title caught my eye—Why You Need Dissatisfied Employees. “Really?” I asked myself.  Everything we hear as business owners tells us we what we need to do to keep our employees and our staff satisfied.

So, I read the article, and with my curiosity piqued, I contacted the author, Robert Sher. I learned that Robert is the founder  of CEO to CEO, a firm that improves the skills of chief executives of midmarket companies who are navigating major shifts in their business or their marketplace, the author of The Feel of the Deal: How I Built My Company Through Acquisitions and is a columnist on Forbes.com. After exchanging a few emails, I invited him to be my radio guest and share his thoughts.

A few of the interview highlights are excerpted below. For the full interview, listen to the show’s archived podcast.

Kelly: Why are dissatisfied employees critical to a high performance work environment?

Robert: When you first think about it, you ask, “How can that be? We want people to be happy and comfortable in their jobs.” But when you look at the research, what jumps out is that people who are really engaged, are engaged in accomplishing a specific goal. And at the heart of that desire to accomplish that goal is the sense of dissatisfaction. Let’s just step out of the business world just for a minute and think of an Olympic athlete who is training for the gold medal. Is that athlete satisfied? Not at all. Then from a workplace perspective, when you have a team that is comfortable in their jobs, that’s not the kind of team that’s going to drive your business to the next level. When I’ve had employees in my company who were a little dissatisfied with the results they were achieving and were trying to perform better, that’s when the organization moved forward. For example, when you have a shipping crew that gets a little upset when something comes back damaged or when there’s a ½ % error rate, that dissatisfaction is going to cause them to improve.

Kelly: Obviously, before you can have a high-performance environment, you have to be able to recognize the signs of a low-performance environment and do something about it. In your experience, what are the common causes of low performance in the workplace?

Robert: What I see with all my clients are five common causes. The first is that it is not clear what each individual and each team is supposed to do. Is the sales team supposed to just sell more at any price, or are they supposed to focus on new accounts, or grow current accounts?

The second is that the definitions of success and failure are not crystal clear. If I’m a sales person, how much must I sell? Having the definition of “success” be clear brings it to the front of employees’ minds.  They know, “If I can get to “X”, then I win.” Now making failure clear is the other side of this for productive work environments that want to take it to the next level. Essentially saying, “If you don’t at least do X, we’ll consider you to have failed.”  They’ve done research on airplane pilots. Pilots aren’t motivated by a concept of success—that the plane landed smoothly. They are motivated by the concept of failure: Do not crash the plane.

The third lever that’s really important is visibility, or exposure. It’s great to have a business plan and it’s great to have measures and targets. Yet as humans, we pay much more attention when other people see whether we performed; whether we succeeded or failed.

Number four is a leadership issue. In low-performing environments, the CEO and managers often aren’t willing to make it uncomfortable for low performers. We accept excuses and make it “okay”: “You’re selling frozen yogurt and the weather was colder than last year, so it’d ok that you missed your targets.”   Allowing excuses decreases performance.

The final driver of a low-performance environment is that the range between high performers and low performers is too great.  Having both high and low performers on the same team is always a bad sign.  The medium performers don’t strive to perform, knowing that there is no consequence for lower performance.  The high performers get arrogant and demanding, or leave.

Makes sense, doesn’t it? For a more complete treatment of this important topic, click here.

Thanks for Your Success

“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” ~ William Arthur Ward

Throughout the year, our staff receives many thank you’s from the business community—from our 25 Under 25 winners, from the owners featured on our magazine covers, from advertisers who successfully reach their targets, from entrepreneurs who pick up a new insight in an article or on the radio show, and from many others who somehow benefit from what we do here at Thinking Bigger Business Media.

And while we are grateful that you let us know we are making a difference, we can’t close out the year without saying thanks to all of you.  

Thank you, Entrepreneurs. Your success is your gift to us. Because of it, we have the best jobs that exist. Day in and day out, we get to celebrate your achievements. That spot on the cover, that walk across the award stage, or that guest interview on my radio show is simply our champagne toast to all you have accomplished. So, thank you for all the blood, sweat and tears, the tough decisions, and the never-say-die attitude that have made you and your company what it is today.

Thank you, Advertisers and Sponsors. Without you to underwrite our magazines, digital publications, events and radio show, we would not have the financial means to showcase the entrepreneurs who make Kansas City such a wonderful community, or publish the information that entrepreneurs find valuable for growing their businesses. Thank you for your support and for walking with us on this journey to celebrate and raise the profile of entrepreneurship in Kansas City.

Thank you, Business Experts.  The business growth tips and insights you provide in our magazine articles, on the radio, and at our live events educate and inspire the entrepreneurs in our audience to reach even higher.

Thank you, Readers, Event Attendees, and Business Community. Our relationship with each of you opens new doors, and your feedback keeps us Thinking Bigger in all we do to serve the entrepreneurial community.