Surveys of employees often ask what is the one attribute they look for in an effective leader. Trust always near the top of the list. Whether you are a manager, supervisor, salesman or team lead it is important to be trusted by those you deal with on a regular basis. Once that trust is lost, it is difficult to impossible to regained.Here are some suggestions on building and maintaining trust.… Read the rest
Peter Drucker was quoted as saying, “The function of business is to attract and maintain customers.”One should add in order to make a profit or to be financially viable. Let’s suggest that within these combined statements there are three concepts to be explored:
Here you are with a strong desire to start a business on your own. You have some ideas and some financial resources, but what’s the next step to business success? Of course, there is the legal requirement for licensing and registration of the business, but that is only a formality.
The video below show the content of a one-hour workshop to be used for business or organizational meetings. The video is 15 minutes in length and indicates some of the subjects covered in the workshop. Our workshop are not lecture but are facilitated sessions where the participants don’t just sit and listen but become actively involved. Consider for comany meetings, amnnual associatioon meetings and lunchand learn sessions. Contact us for more information.
bob@plangoals.com
Nine out of ten managers and leaders tell us that they wish they could make better use of their time. They look for programs in what is called Time Management. We have found that what is really needed is not a management program, but an overall strategy in determining the goals to be achieved and how they can be integrated into our daily workday habit… Read the rest
One of the greatest lessons in time management is to realize the difference between spending time and investing time. The dictionary defines spend as “to use up, exhaust, consume.” If you spend, you have no return. On the other hand, when we invest we “spend with expectation of some satisfaction, of obtaining an income or profit.”
Have you ever sat at your desk and literally played this mental game. Have you ever heard these types of questions or statements rolling through your mind?
… Read the rest
Every morning I have a routine to start my day. I get up, brush my teeth, floss, rinse with mouthwash, shower and put in my contact lens. If for some reason that routine is disturbed, I might find myself later in the day wondering why I can’t see well. Have you ever found yourself leaving home and going in the wrong direction in your car because you are not going to work that day, but to a different destination. These are two examples of the habits that develop over time into routines.
As a business or organizational leader, we often need to consider ways to motivate people. One business owner was lamenting about the lack of motivation in his sales staff and remarked that if they were all on straight commission there would be a much greater level of performance. Let’s consider two of the most common approaches to motivation; rewards and recognition.
Webster defines rewards as, the giving of either money or another kind of payment for something good which has been done. Reward practices we have seen include piecework incentives, sales commissions, and prizes for performance. Piecework was very common in the manufacturing of goods where an employee was paid by the number of products they produced.… Read the rest
In difficult situations, when companies are in crisis and can only be saved by major effort, group morale often rises to far higher levels than before. Individual objections and objectives are bypassed in the collective drive to do what must be done. This is where recognition awards take importance. High group morale can enrich individual motivation and performance remarkably! These are two types of awards: planned and unplanned.
On its basic concept, recognition awards are effective ways of increasing and boosting people’s morale. It encourages them to be accepting of and have a desire for change at all times. The change they will make is not entirely for the advantage of the company, but to their own personal achievement as well.… Read the rest
Performance Management is a system developed out of the best practice of top performing 
organizations to provide managers with a structured approach to the key retention criteria.Simplistically, most people will feel motivated and will want to stay in their job if their manager:
Most Performance Management processes contain critical opportunities for recognition.
Traditionally, the annual appraisal is the only meeting during the year when an average or better worker will meet his or her boss to discuss performance. People with poor performance can and do have a regular audience with their manager; sometimes on a weekly basis.… Read the rest
As a manager or organizational leader, you must be constantly aware of the environment you create. The environment can prove to be one where people perform well or one where people feel unappreciated and destined for failure. In a March 1998 article in Harvard Business Review, The Set-Up to Fail Syndrome, Jean-Francois Manzoni and Jean-Louis Barsoux discuss this exact situation.
Have you ever experienced a situation in an organization where, although you have been appointed to a responsible position, you don’t seem to be part of the in-crowd. Meetings are held without extending you an invitation. Your superior by-passes you, talking directly with your subordinates when requiring information or making decisions. You inclusion in social functions is often an afterthought.… Read the rest
If you’re an employer or manager, then work place absence is costing you money, inconvenience, and upsetting your customers. So we all know, not all days taken off work are due to genuine sickness. Many employees “take a sickie” because their morale is low and they just don’t like or can’t do their work.
The challenge for employers and managers is to make people happier at work. If people are happy at work, they are less likely to take a day off every time they wake up with a stuffy nose.
Some bosses think that paying more money, improving job security, or working conditions is the answer. It isn’t and it’s also something that can be very hard to achieve.… Read the rest
Do you want to know the big difference between due diligence and a core competency? Here’s a classic example: Collecting 50 business cards per day is an act of data procurement, while training to a 60% conversation to appointment ratio is focusing on an essential component to ensure your sales team’s success.
Don’t focus on accountability to tasks but enlighten to identification. It’s much more important to teach your people the ‘business’ of the business they’re in. If you currently have your sales team accountable to tasks, then you’re merely ‘managing’ tasks. In order to become more effective, you should be training on measurement of competencies so your people can ‘run their own business.’… Read the rest
So often we hear from the owner of a business or the manager of an organization lament about the performance of employees or associates. They speak of it as though they were having an out-of- body experience in which they were completely separated from the activities of the group. When I hear these types of comments, I am reminded of an old Greek phase, translated to the fish rots from the head down.
Leaders often feel helpless in changing the performance of a group. There are many practices and personal work habits that they can adapt which will make a difference. Let us look at three areas and look at behaviors and how each affects others in the group.… Read the rest
When is the last time you had a conversation with someone where you really felt like the person you were talking with was engaged in the conversation and was really interested in what you were communicating?
Their body language, eye contact, and tone of voice were focused and inviting and surrounding distractions seemed irrelevant. Every one of us can remember a meaningful conversation and what it felt like to “be heard.” Being heard is an important component to how we measure our self-worth and self-confidence.… Read the rest
In fact many organizations are faced with the reality that they need to get more results through smaller and perhaps more fragmented teams. As your employees have added and shifted roles, positions, and responsibilities, how do you know you have the right people in the right positions in order to maximize your organization’s efforts and outcomes?… Read the rest
you’re talking to the business owner of a multi-site,multinational organization or the owner of a corner store, there are three critical measurements that denote the overall health and well-being of any organization: employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and cash flow. This applies to non-profit organizations as well as businesses.
In sports, 
that scoreboard will report the runs, hits, and errors. In business, the scoreboard maybe a financial statement or a sales report. In a non-profit, it may be the number of people served or the number of programs run. These scoreboards reflect the end result of the business’ activities, but these types of measurements are difficult to use in defining a specific problem or developing programs to make improvements.Most businesses or organizations could not exist without a scorecard. … Read the rest