Forget Planning the 2nd Half of the Year...Embrace Choosing, Selecting and Acting to Achieve Profits & Productivity

Forget business planning the 2nd half of the year and embrace choosing, selecting and acting...

Welcome to “Conversations every business owner has with their team in July.”  It’s the start of the second half of the year and let’s forget traditional business planning and start embracing - choosing, selecting and acting now.  Here’s why...

Traditional business planning as applied by big corporations and government is bureaucratic and stifling.  An entrepreneur and business owner success requires - faster easier and flexible direction setting ways more aligned to their passion and control mindset.  Something more empowering...here’s how!

1. Choose what you want, need, must have in your professional and personal life to feel happy about your progress for the time period selected.  That’s your future.  Prioritize the list to the top two to three must haves.
2. Select what you want or must take from your past into the future.  Think of this as if you were packing for a trip and have only two suitcases.  All of your past is not required for the journey - so prioritize and select the best experiences, thoughts, feelings, relationships, knowhow to create the future chosen.  
3. Act on what and where you’ve chosen to go using what you’ve selected from your past to take into the future.   The more compelling and clear your future the harder to veer off course when the moment of choice arrives or the momentum of the day overwhelms you.  You’ll align your actions, behaviors and decisions to achieve what makes you happy about your progress.  

This approach embraces an entrepreneur's attitude of business and life by design vs. happenstance.

Now go have July’s conversation with your team and forget planning and start choosing, selecting and acting to achieve more and work less.  

Want to know more?  Let’s talk.  I’ll offer a complimentary 60 to 90 min session to understand your situation and I’ll guarantee you at least a half dozen implementable ideas to maximize your effectiveness in the 2nd half of the year.

Call me at ph:  972 291 5566 or Email:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com

Let’s get started...accelerating your growth.  

How to Avoid Facilitating Your Meetings as a Lion Tamer

Business owners - want to have fewer yet more productive meetings?  

Welcome to “Conversations every business owner has with their team.”  And today’s topic is how to have your people in fewer more productive meetings without you having to be a facilitation lion tamer.  

Situation - “Another meeting, I don’t have time for a meeting.”  “We never accomplish anything.”  You get the sentiments.   Yet you must have meetings to exchange ideas, engage your group, problem solve or coordinate action.  

Let’s assume you’ve done the meeting basics - clear agenda and purpose and invited the right people to participate.

 

Here’s a simple tip to keep your group more productive and engaged at your next meeting or work session.

The crux of the solution is a large sign.  It has an arrow pointing up corresponding to constructive and a down arrow siting a destructive comment or question.  Participants ask themselves to which degree their comment or question moves the agenda forward.  You get the picture.  With these two arrows they can test whether they are about to suggest adding or subtracting from the agendas purpose.  

This doesn’t mean that important or negative views or news is not spoken, quite the contrary.  It’s saying, “Stay on the agendas topic.”  

A simple pointing to or looking at the arrows keep participants on topic.

A Hierarchy of Constructive Comments or Questions are described as:

Destructive  comments or questions are increasingly detrimental if?  

Introduce these arrows and descriptors at your next meeting, explain the meeting ‘rules of the game’ and you’ll improve productivity, increase moral and leave with clear next steps.  That’s everyone’s definition of progress!

Still having challenges making your meeting as productive and positive as possible, then let’s talk.  I offer a complimentary 60 to 90 min session to understand your team dynamics.

I guarantee you at least a half dozen implementable ideas to maximize your time by reducing the number of meetings and improving the effectiveness of the ones held.

Call me at ph:  972 709 6776 or Email:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com

Let’s get started...building and operation as a high quality team.  You’ll work less and make more.

How to Surround Yourself with a High Quality Team - 5 Steps to a Recruiting Plan

Whether your company is recruiting for rapid growth, high grading or replacing people, knowing how to attract top talent is an essential business function.  

Watch YouTube Video

Welcome to my series, “Conversations every business owner has with their team - and today’s topic is recruiting team members whether your business is expanding and adding more or high grade the ones you have.”  

Here are 5 essential steps to the recruiting process to save you time and money while ensuring a great fit for your company.

1. Define the position - skills, competencies, passion level as well as the cultural fit with your vision, mission and values
2. Attract a large pool of applicants.  In today's job environment there are nearly 90 applicants per job with a well written and placed advertisement
3. Design the recruiting process that mimics the qualities you want completed.  With a large number of applicants, you can manage the process by having applicants demonstrate their competencies and show their desire to go the "extra mile."  Allow your applicants to de-select themselves based on the initial advertisement and instructions given throughout your process
4. Allow the applicants to de-select themselves by not following your instructions.  When they deselect naturally, you’ll be left with a more manageable number.  From this remaining group, high grade again and invite several for a group interview with you and your team.  The group interview is a multi-hour session where in the first half you and your team share information about your company, the position and your expectations.  Inform them that during the second half the applicants will step-up and perform many of the essential job required tasks to your team.  Many will deselect themselves and those remaining are demonstrating their desire to earn their way onto your team.  
5. After the group interview, reassemble your team and critique the new people interviewed against your hiring criteria for skills, competencies, passion level and cultural fit.  Prioritize and select the one or two you will make an offer.

These 5 recruiting steps yield a higher probability of hiring the right person the first time, concentrates your team’s time efficiently and accelerates the new team member’s “on boarding” time to productivity.  

If you're adding team members this quarter then give me a call and let's discuss how to make this process work for you.  

Call me at ph:  972 709 6776 or email:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com  

And let’s surround you with the high quality team you deserve…

Recruiting for Competitive Advantage - The 16 Cylinders of High Performance

Business Owners - what's your guidance on recruiting and retaining people to out perform your competition?  

A 6 cylinder car engine is powerful enough for most transportation purposes, but is that really high performance?  Not compared to the 16 cylinders of a Bugatti Veyron - the fastest street-legal production car in the world.  Who is the human equivalent of that?

Most owners accept 6 cylinder employees - adequate for the job.  3 cylinders are for the body – someone who turns up, occupies the seat, covers the job description skills.  The next 3 cylinders are for the mind.  Mind encompasses education, experience and training – all those things that are proudly stated on resume.  Yet we've often recruited someone who seemed to have the right background, experience and educational levels, and then found that they didn’t really rise to the challenge.

The missing 10 cylinders come from heart and spirit.  The 5 cylinders of heart are about commitment, initiative and emotional involvement with a role.  The 5 cylinders of spirit are about vision, inspiration and having a “higher purpose”.  What are the implications of looking at human performance this way?

Firstly, at 10 of 16 cylinders, heart and spirit are more important than mind and body.  It follows that selecting people should be more about finding the right attitude than training and experience. You can train new skills relatively easily, but it is very difficult to correct the wrong attitude.  But too many employers define the necessary training and experience of desirable candidates that they narrow the field of selection unnecessarily.  We tend to hire for skills and experience and fire for attitude and lack of commitment.

Secondly, while you can find people with heart and spirit if you look for it, you won’t retain those valuable qualities if you don’t respect and nurture them.  People will switch off, and retain those qualities for friends and family, or they’ll just leave you.  Such people need to be led, not just managed.  They need to find a higher purpose at work than just turning up for the pay, whatever that might be.  Some organizations find it easy to offer the higher purpose that helps people unleash all 16 cylinders – in different ways social services, religious, health care, teaching, military and social enterprises can do it.  It is more of a challenge for profit making enterprises, but it’s not impossible.  Today the coolest job are going to high tech vs investment banking or medical doctors for the interesting and meaningful work.

Thirdly, be very clear that leadership is a 16 cylinder activity, while management may just be a 6 cylinder one.  Only 16 cylinder people make great leaders.

Fourthly, what does the employment market value the most?  It usually values the mind element the most, even though mind – education, qualifications, sector experience.  So if you recruit people with the right heart and spirit, treat them right and have systems in place to deal with any initial lack of experience, they may actually cost you lower salaries.

Finally, it is not impossible to train heart and spirit.  Organizations that acknowledge their importance, who want team members to bring emotional commitment, passion and a sense of real responsibility to the job and use it positively, who cherish and acknowledge those qualities and which don’t only reward knowledge, logic and technical skills, will develop the heart and spirit of those working for them.  But it has to be genuine or it is likely to be counter-productive – how many people have you met who are working on organizations that espouse high ideals but who are entirely disillusioned by their own reality?  Who are the 16 Cylinder people in your organization?  For that matter, how many cylinders are you firing on yourself?

How do you find and develop these people?  Can you develop a recruitment process that allows existing team members to show their own emotional commitment to their jobs?  Can you use behavioral profiling or even emotional intelligence analysis better to understand those areas?  Can you define what 16 cylinder performance looks like in someone’s job description and contract?

At ActionCOACH we believe you can - let's have a conversation that'll allow you to recruit for competitive advantage and have your team members operate at the 16 cylinder performance level...

Let's get started.  Call me at ph:  972 709 6776 eM:  StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com

How Much More Valuable is Your Business When it's Profitable and Works Without You...?

What direction is the value of your business going?  Are the discretionary cash flows increasing year-over-year?  If not, why not?  

How loyal is your client base?  Do they rave about their experience and stay with you even when you reasonably increase your prices? 

How solid are your people and systems to deliver great products and services on time, to spec, on budget and wow every time?  

How accurate and timely are your numbers that reveal the direction of your business?  These go beyond routine bookkeeping into predictive indicators allowing you to see the future cash flows and health of the business.

If you didn't answer "Yes" to these questions how much more valuable would your business be if you made more with less stress?  How about when you wanted to "exit" the business?  People pay a premium when the business works without the former owner there.  Let's have a conversation on how to fortify your business to become a commercial profitable business that works without you always being there.  

Great, give me a call at 972 709 6776 or email at StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com and we'll have conversation about how you can still achieve the goals you went in to business for originally - to be profitable and it works without you...

Your Team Works to Live or Lives to Work? Impact on Productivity & Profitability...?

Team's tend to fall into two contrasting philosophies about work.  Depending on which philosophy you lead your business by you'll attract like minded team members and customers.

And which philosophy will reward you and your business most?  Hint:  Your customers enjoy working with people that are passionate about delighting them.

To have a discussion on which philosophy guides your company and what you can do improve it, give us a call at O:  972 709 6776 or email: StephenMarino@ActionCOACH.com