Better performance. Better results.
Once upon a time, there were two owner-manager partners of a small professional services firm. Like a lot of small businesses, they started successfully, but struggled with consistency over the years, fending off near-death cash crunches on an all too regular basis. After surviving yet another near death experience, they decided they wanted to re-design … Read more Design Business Success Starting at the Top
I am inspired by others, as I most often am, to address a common issue that plagues many business owners and their teams. My inspiration was initiated by one, “The Knowing-Doing Gap,” a book written by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton, two then Stanford University educators and published by Harvard Business School ©2000, about why leaders … Read more It’s Not What We Know, It’s What We Do! A Practical Process for Taking Meaningful Action
“The right things” probably don’t change much as your business evolves and grows. But “the right way to do them” often does. More often than not, we don’t lack “knowing” but we do suffer from “not doing.” So how can we lead and manage (two discrete functions) and sustain success and continuous improvement. Here is … Read more How Do I Keep Doing “The Right Things” As My Business Grows
Effective performance management is critical to any organization and it’s success. Before we “jump in,’ let’s be clear about what “performance management” is. Every “result” is the output of an “activity” or “activities.” These “activities” may be a sequenced set, or process. But it is still simple “input – output.” This relationship between key activities … Read more 10 Questions to Ignite Your Performance Management
Most professional and creative service firm leaders surveyed, often over 90% of them, indicated they think they provide great value to their customers, and that they customers are very loyal to them. Surveys of those same clients indicate, often up to 80% of them, marginal satisfaction and openness to switching firms. Most professional and creative … Read more What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You: 4 Actions To Develop Stakeholder Loyalty
We all hear it and maybe even say it. “Our people are our most valuable asset.” It’s cliché and true. But many who know it or say it do not realize, or maximize that value. The statistics reveal a huge problem, and opportunity. A 2015 Gallup Poll indicates only 32.9% of the US workforce are … Read more 4 Steps to Unleash the Power of Your People
I wrote a post on the importance of developing and using an effective strategy and strategy statement recently. As a compliment to that, here is a piece that describes a simple, fast, and easy test to apply to your strategy to see if is likely help you and your business perform, achieve, and succeed. Rather … Read more The First Question to Ask of Any Strategy – A Quick Litmus Test
Yes, I am of the school of thought that believes (knows) that developing a well-thought strategy is not the product of a divisive process that wastes time and money and that ends up in a binder on a shelf or archived on the server. To the contrary, it can enable alignment, unification and focus of … Read more Do You Have A Strategy? Does It Work?
“Satisfied” or “engaged” employees? For most, it is intuitive and common to strive for “satisfied.” But it seems “satisfied” is “style” but not substance. What we want to strive for is “engaged” employees. To gain insight into the difference and how to achieve that difference: linkedin.com/employee-satisfaction-doesn-t-matter?
For almost every service agency, profitability is the financial result most crucial to survival, and ideally, sustainable, managed success. It fuels cash flow, and is a primary factor in determining valuation. So it stands to reason that measuring and managing profitability would be critically important too, right? But how many of us really measure and … Read more You Can’t Manage What You Don’t Measure