The head person looks, [...]]]>

The work of a leader, CEO, Business Owner, General Manager, Entrepreneur, Head Guy or Gal or whatever you call yourself is distinctively different than any other work you do in the business. When I say work I mean the way you think, respond to situations, your motivations, behaviors, actions, activities, communication…everything.

The head person looks, acts and responds in the business completely different than anyone else in the organization.

The doer, the expert, the technician as it is often referred, has a different perspective. They see the world different. They respond different. Are motivated by different things. Act different.

Understand that…

• Being really good at marketing, the doer, doesn’t make you a good leader. Marketing people see things different than the leader.
• Being a great engineer, doesn’t make you a good entrepreneur. Engineers have a different perspective than an entrepreneur.
• Being an highly experienced accountant, doesn’t necessarily qualify you to run a business.
• Being a excellent chiropractor or health practitioner doesn’t mean your business will be healthy.
• Being the best in construction or sales or technology or real estate or whatever your do in your field doesn’t mean your business will be the best.

In the absence of understanding the distinction between these types of work and, let’s face it, a confident knowledge in how to be and do the work of the leader etc… without guessing and engaging by trial and error, you will likely default in your response and approach to business through the eyes of the doer.

The doer, the expert in you, will rule the roost when it comes to the work you do and the decisions you make.

The evidence is running around like a chicken with your head cut off in a constant state of solving problems, frustrations, chasing the next deal and making sure you are getting paid.

The competent leader is confident, calm, thoughtful, proactive, strategic, insightful and sees and acts well beyond today. They also have engaged, motivated followers.

The battle of time and energy wages between these two characters within us. The doer often wins and the business ultimately suffers. You ultimately suffer the fate of wanting the business to be more, mean more, do more, be more significant. But you lose.

There is only one solution – You must kill the doer inside you. Put that sucker to death. Stop letting him, her, it dictate the way you think and work.

The first step in the execution process is to make a very important and bold decision. You’ve got to have some guts and courage.

1. You must decide you are willing to move on, grow, evolve, really change – Yes. I mean YOU. Personally!
2. You must learn how a leader thinks – I mean really. Let’s be honest. Do you really know?
3. Then you must learn how a leader acts and what they do.
4. You must kill the doer inside you.

Let’s put them to death together.

Warren knows business. He’s practical, straight-forward, pragmatic and unconventional. His approach works. There are about 50 billion reasons why this is true (his net worth). Although, I acknowledge that money is [...]]]> Do you remember the commercial, “When E.F. Hutton speaks, people listen?” They should change it to, “When Warren Buffet, speaks people should listen.”

Warren knows business. He’s practical, straight-forward, pragmatic and unconventional. His approach works. There are about 50 billion reasons why this is true (his net worth). Although, I acknowledge that money is not the only measure of success, it certainly is compelling.

Buffet is indeed an unconventional guy. He is a contrarian. When the general business community, the trends, the fads and waves are going a certain direction, Warren goes the other direction. When everyone is buying up stocks like crazy, Warren is selling and accumulating cash. When the marketing is crashing and everyone is selling, Warren is buying.

I saw a segment on 60 Minutes the other day about Warren and his succession plan when he dies. (He doesn’t plan to retire). Here is the link if you want to watch the clip. Click here

Warren, if he has his way, wants to appoint his son Howard as the Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway (his primary business). What makes this so unusual and unconventional is that Howard doesn’t work in the business and, by Howard’s own admission, isn’t really qualified for the position. He’s a corn farmer.

Warren’s primary reason for bringing Howard in to succeed him is to preserve the culture of the business. Warren and Howard agree that Howard understands the values of the organization that would ensure that they are preserved over time. Warren is seeming unconcerned about whether the business will continue to succeed when it comes to the day to day operations. I suspect they have a set of standards and systems to ensure consistency and quality in the work they do. That’s not the concern. The concern is preserving the values and culture.

A culture is a delicate thing. Warren knows this and understands that if a culture is cannibalized it could destroy a business.

So how can we learn from one of the richest men in the world?

Very simply.

First, we need to determine the culture and values we want to create in our businesses. If Warren wants to preserve values, then they must be important for the sustainability of the business. (Within the Level 7 System, we engage in this work of determining the culture and values for you organization)

Second, we need to establish a strategy for effectively building, communicating and Threading the Culture through the organization. We have to establish a sustainability plan. (Within the Level 7 System, we engage in several processes including Building Effective Downward Communication and Establishing Your Threading Culture Strategy to ensure your business has a fully ingrained and established set of values and culture).

Learn how you can apply some of the strategies in your business.

Bottom line: We shouldn’t discount the value and importance of a solid, sustainable culture if we want to build a quality and prosperous business.

Most businesses have high expectation of accountability but never talk [...]]]> No matter how many systems, policies and procedures you might have in place in your business, if you can’t or don’t trust your people to operate or live by your standards, then all the work you spent creating them is a waste of time.

Most businesses have high expectation of accountability but never talk about it. There is certainly no written standard for it. Accountability is simply communicating that a business expects their people will consistently follow-through with their commitments.

Time to work on creating solid accountability and an enviroment that supports trust and personal responsibility.

Implementation Tip of the Week

1. Develop Your Accountability Policy
2. Develop Your Delegation Process
3. Establish methods for tracking delegation and special projects
4. Develop method for tracking and handling violations to Accountability Policy

One of the lessons was acknowledging the importance of good and relevant decision making. I was attempting to make [...]]]> Several years ago I set my kitchen on fire and almost burned my house down. Some of you have heard the story. After the dust and smoke settled, literally, I learned some very valuable lessons.

One of the lessons was acknowledging the importance of good and relevant decision making. I was attempting to make a complex meal for my wife and kids. At least it was complex for me. It back fired. Afterwords, my wife reminded me to keep it simple. The family would have been happy with a grilled steak and perhaps a baked potato. I wasn’t exercising good decision making because, although I was trying to do something nice for my family and wife, I didn’t really consider what really mattered to them. I didn’t know the truth about the kind of meal they would most enjoy. I took it upon myself, my instinct and personal preference when deciding what to cook.

We often do the same thing in business. Making the right decisions and choices is fundamental to building a successful organization.
And yet, we often make those decisions based on guessing, applying our personal preferances or being entirely subjective.

Further, we expect our employees to make good decisions also. It is difficult to ensure that our people will be effective in decision making if it is based on intuition an subjectivity.

We need a principle to guide us in how to approach effective decison making in business. The Level 7 Principle of Knowing What’s True addresses this issue.

The Level 7 Principle of Knowing What’s True establishes a culture that suggests the business become objective in its assessment of performance and factors that may impact decisions.

If I had asked my family in advance what they would prefer for dinner, at least I would have known the truth about what mattered to them. Even though I burned the dinner. (Oh you have not idea how much I burned it) My kids probably wouldn’t have eaten the meal anyway. I was wasting my time because I made a bad choice what to cook.

Without objectivity in business we will make bad decisions. Yes, we won’t always be correct in everything, but with the Level 7 Principle of Knowing What’s True we will dramatically minimize our mistakes.

Implementation Tip of the Week

1- Make a list of the areas of your business where your objective decision making is critical. Here are some areas you will probably look at:

• Overall company performance
• Customer Satisfaction
• Employee Morale
• Employee Performance
• Sales Conversion Figures
• Lead Generation Results
• Market and Industry Opportunities

2- Determine how you are currently gathering the information. If you are not collecting accurate data in an area, develop your system in order to produce quality information.

3- Establish a schedule to review the information on a regular basis and make adjustments to your systems as needed.

4- Begin to think objectively about all your decision making and performance assessment. Ask yourself, “how do we know that what we are thinking is true?” For example, if you are assessing an employees performance, you need to be looking at tangible performance numbers rather than subjectively assessing if they are really producing or not.

Get more detail on the Level 7 Principle of Knowing What’s True in the Level 7 Manifesto. Click here to get a copy.

In [...]]]> Everyone has a role within your organization. In some cases people occupy multiple roles or positions. Interestingly, although everyone has a title in the business, people are often confused about what others do in the business. A lack of clarity results in a lack of efficiency. Often critical tasks slip through the cracks.

In order to elimate this problem, you need to create an organization chart for your business. But just don’t create an organization chart for your business as it is today, create one for the future. Consider your business goals or targets 3 years from now. What will your organizational structure need to be in order to support those goals?

Finally, as you consider your role and work as the CEO/Leader/Owner of your business, be thinking and strategizing about how you can move yourself out of some of the more tactical roles in your business up the organization chart.

1 – Draft your organization chart as it stands today.

2 – Review your primary goals for 3-5 years from now. 

3 – Consider the roles and positions you want to occupy in the business in the future. Review your Business Life Connection.

4 – Draft, review and finalize your organization chart of the future.

A while back she participated in a dance competition with her team. It’s not unusual at [...]]]> My 15 year old daughter Maddison has been dancing since she was 4 or 5. She is quite good, I think. At very least I enjoy watching her. I enjoy watching her mature in her technique and abilities.

A while back she participated in a dance competition with her team. It’s not unusual at these events to have workshops in the morning and afternoons before the evening event. These workshops are often taught by the guest judges that are brought in for the performances.

One of the judges that was there had a very impressive resume having choreographed and worked with long list of celebrities. She has worked with Jennifer Lopez, Gloria Esteffan and Madonna to name a few.

The morning after the competition, Maddison was talking to my wife about the workshops, demonstrating some of the techniques that she had learned the previous day. Here is what fascinated me. The language of dance is universal. Now I don’t know dance at all but, not surprisingly, they have universal terms to describe the various moves and positions.

When the judge was working with Maddison and the other girls, she was using the exact same language or terms that they had learned in their studio here in Arizona. It made communication and understanding very easy. As a result, they were able to learn and accomplish a lot in a very short period of time.

In order for you to be effective in your business, you need to have a common language; one that the people in your business can easily understand without having to struggle to interpret. Most businesses don’t have a common language. Even when we say something like “marketing” it could have different meanings. When speaking of core values often people will say we value integrity in our organization. What exactly does than mean? I could ask 10 people to define integrity and I might get 10 different interpretations and answers.

Common language begins with your vision and your goals. I recommend coming up with terms in your organization that are unique to your business. Come up with terms that people can really understand.

One of the powerful attributes of Level 7 is our use of unique and yet a common language that people that are engaged in the implementation of it understand and can embrace. Over time, the people in your organization begin to understand the language of Level 7 and ultimately begin operating according to its principles and actions.

When someone says something like, “What is the result we are looking to achieve” or “let’s focus on the system,” we know they are learning the language of a productive and effective business.

And what that amounts to is a beautiful dance. (You know I had to tie it back to the analogy)

Begin to develop your Core Values in Action document.

1. Consider your core values. These are beliefs and values for your business that are not to be compromised. Every action and thought must be congruent with these.
2. Make your list. Come up with a unique term for the item that your people will be to identify with.
3. Define the meaning of each item.
4. Write an actual example or story to illustrate each of them.
5. Compile your materials to create your Core Values in Action document.