Measurable Solutions for Business Management by Shaun Kirk
May 5, 2008
09:15 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
As a business owner I’ve had staff come and go over the years. Some have done extremely well and others not so well. During the time I was directly involved in running my business I found some weaknesses in myself that tremendously affected things that were going on. It was not uncommon for me, whenever something was not going well, to ignore it. Sometimes I would hope it would go away or I might ask somebody else to solve it for me, whatever was going on. As time went on I started to actually think negative thoughts about a certain staff member or staff members that I had difficulties communicating to. I would have thoughts that perhaps they should move on – why don’t they just quit? If I wasn’t happy somewhere I would just quit. Why won’t they? As time went on these people would usually just end up leaving or I would be forced to fire them. As I learned more about how to better run my business I realized that nearly every one of these situations of the unfortunate firing or the employee quitting directly pointed back to my inability to communicate. Don’t get me wrong – it wasn’t as though I was completely and utterly responsible for what other staff members were doing that led to their termination, but prior to things getting so bad that somebody needed to be fired, I needed to act and did not. As an example, let’s say that a staff member walks in 20 minutes late for work. As he walks in the door you glance in his direction. He now knows you know that he is late. But yet you don’t say anything about it. Let’s say it happens again the very next day and you notice it again. You see him coming in, and he doesn’t say anything and you don’t say anything either. After a while don’t you think that employee will think it is acceptable to come in 20 minutes late. Since you don’t say anything it must be alright. That’s possibly just the first time where things were not okay with a particular staff member, but it created a license to kind of push the edge of the envelope since it didn’t seem like you would do anything to exert proper discipline. If you just would have said to the staff member who came in late, “Hey, what happened? You’re late.” in a very friendly manner and heard what he had to say and just acknowledged it, that might have handled it all by itself and things would have been fine. But you didn’t, because it was a little uncomfortable for you. Wouldn’t it have been a whole lot easier to confront at that time than to deal with more serious disciplinary actions later simply because you wouldn’t hold your position as an executive? When you have a staff member situation that you are not quite handling the way you should you usually go home and talk to somebody, like your spouse, about that staff member. You usually are not saying great things about that staff member, and you consider that he or she is not as valuable to you. Well, those critical thoughts and comments regarding that staff member will likely not get him or her to advance in the business. If you look over your time as a business owner or manager you may find that with any staff member that ever quit, you knew that they were going to quit before they quit. You start noticing that the more negative thoughts that you have about the staff member, the less likely they have a chance of making it. It is pretty interesting. If you start thinking that you have the best staff – that these people will do anything for you – and you start treating them as though it is true, well guess what? It will become true. But if you consider that you have staff that, quite honestly, are less than ideal, who won’t go to bat for you, who are just trying to put in time and get a paycheck, versus being loyal and dedicated to the expansion and purpose of your organization, you’ll get exactly that too. Usually you find how a business is doing based upon how the owner is doing. Is he or she happy? Can he or she get things done all by himself or herself? It is a barometer of you. If you are not doing well, your business doesn’t do well. A very simple place to start is by considering that you have very willing staff members who are completely on the team, playing by the same rules as everyone else. When something just doesn’t seem right, you should go to that individual and talk to him or her about that concern that you have, and you’ll find that the practice will run more smoothly and things will be easier. Find out what really is going on, because that is part of the hat of being an executive. It is all up to you, as it always has been.
April 4, 2008
10:29 am | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
As a business owner, you are a leader whether you like it or not. Whether you like it or not you have to guide your group in order to expand your organization. And whether you like it or not, there are some difficult situations that you have to confront and handle -- hopefully in a way that inspires confidence in you from your staff. I commonly say that in order to be successful you only need to be right 51% of the time. You really don’t have to be much more right than that to make it. Fortunately or unfortunately the more correct you are in your actions, decisions, policies, directions and programs the more agreement you get from your group. Some people, one would say, are natural born leaders. I believe a natural born leader is one who is right more than 51% of the time, but even more importantly is willing to be wrong 49% of the time. He or she is willing to make the difficult decisions organizationally in planning, administration and justice within the group. The group then respects him or her for making the call and is more likely to support the leader in future decisions. If a business owner has guided his organization to high levels of prosperity over a period of time, when that business owner presents a new plan or goal to the staff they are likely to support it because that leader has demonstrated a majority of correct decisions and actions in the past. Conversely, if a business owner has not guided his organization to desired levels of success in the past, when that business owner presents a new plan or goal to the staff they are likely to disagree with or not comply with the plan because the leader has demonstrated a majority of incorrect decisions and actions in the past.Business owners I have met commonly know what they should do but most of the time they lack the courage to make the decision and act. I see this so often — an owner knows exactly what he needs to do to expand his organization or handle a particular staff member, but chooses to do something else; something easier to face, something easier to confront. This choice, in essence, makes him do the wrong thing. A real leader is one who does the right thing for the group even if it doesn’t win a popularity contest. If you formulate a positive plan, if you get agreement on it from your staff, if you are not weak about your orders and if you follow through and get compliance, you will expand. We find in a less courageous leader an inability to issue an order and probably more importantly the lack of the ability to get compliance to that order. These are two vital abilities that any leader must possess. The ability to make the call and the ability to make sure it gets done. If you were able to face things in your organization without flinching or avoiding, if you were able to make the tough decisions and knew you were at least 51% correct in those decisions, if you were able to get others to get the work done and enforce compliance to your orders, you would find you would become significantly more successful and you would sleep better at night. About the Author Shaun Kirk is Co-Founder of Measurable Solutions Inc., a consulting firm engaged in all areas of business management. Measurable Solutions trains entrepreneurs and executives how to be consultants to their own businesses, so they not only can expand their own business but any business. With his partner, Jeff F. Lee, he has built the most rapidly expanding company of its kind in the world. Visit his website at http://www.measurablesolutions.com
02:30 pm | 0 recommendations | Be the first to comment
The only barriers that are worth solving are the barriers that actually keep you from winning the game. If you aren’t sure what the game is, then you might consider any problem in your office significant enough to handle. This could be something such as having two staff members not getting along and you spending an afternoon trying to patch things up, when most likely if you’d just throw them in a room they’d work it out and you could get back to solving the barriers that are in the way of your practice goals being achieved. A true barrier is something that you must confront fully and handle or you will never get to the next step. Sometimes a barrier could be a thought or consideration that you put in front of you to keep you from doing something courageous or starting something new. These thoughts are in place so you can sleep better at night. What do I mean by that? Well, if you consider that there’s too much competition in your area as the reason you’re not doing well, then you don’t have to do anything about it — unless you plan on taking out your competition, which I doubt is on your list of things to do. The fact is, there isn’t such a thing as too much competition: take a look around at the number of people that need your service or product. All you have to do is become better known and better respected than other companies who sell that product or deliver that service. You may not know how, but because you don’t know how, you commonly have to put a barrier there or a reason why you are not doing well. Honestly take a look at the barrier of “there is too much competition.” What are your true options about that? What can you actually DO to change that? Think about that for a minute. You cannot change competition – to eliminate competition would be to move, and have you ever heard of a business moving out of a densely populated area with a lot of demand for their services or product to a remote area and doing better? Chances are they didn’t do better. Well, what are your options then? Burn the place down? Not much of an option. The only option you have is to change the public’s opinion about you so that they choose you over your competition. Imagine how much less stress you would have if you knew exactly what to do each day to make your business expand. What if you could spot when someone placed a barrier in front of you whether it was worth one nanosecond of your time to solve? Would you have more freedoms? Could you actually focus more on your purpose to provide the best service in your area? I bet that you could. The recognition of the true barriers to your business expansion will greatly enhance your freedoms and allow you to expand your company. Many businesses don’t even set a goal to beat last week’s sales or production because they are so mired down with all the problems of the day-to-day company. This indicates a game with too many barriers and that’s a game that you can never win. About the Author Shaun Kirk is Co-Founder of Measurable Solutions Inc., a consulting firm engaged in all areas of business management. Measurable Solutions trains entrepreneurs and executives how to be consultants to their own businesses, so they not only can expand their own business but any business. With his partner, Jeff F. Lee, he has built the most rapidly expanding company of its kind in the world. Visit his website at http://www.measurablesolutions.com.
