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"Don Tinney"
When 100% of our time is given to doing the business (marketing, selling, making, fixing, shipping, accounting, etc.), we’re stuck. We’re in a rut that leads to failure.
It’s a common trap we can all fall into. We have something the market wants. Demand increases and the technical activity associated with getting and filling orders completely fills our schedules. Forty hours per week becomes fifty and then sixty. We start taking work home (it’s a sign when what we once enjoyed becomes work). Everything becomes more mechanical. We lose balance often at the same time our business is losing steam.
When we’re in the rut, the solution appears to be counter-intuitive and impossible to execute, but we must allocate a portion of our time to work on the business if we want our business to survive. It’s not optional – it’s essential. We need to continually infuse creativity into our business, if we want to stay out of the rut. That won’t happen if we don’t: 1) purposefully allocate time for it and 2) utilize an agenda that maximizes the creative input in the time allocated.
The best solution I’ve seen to infuse the most creativity in the shortest amount of time is the EOS® Meeting Pulse™. It calls for setting aside 5 days per year with your executive leadership team and 90 minutes or less per week (5% to 6% of your total work hours), using specific agendas to extract creative input to prioritize, solve your issues, maintain focus and advance your company.
If you haven’t already established the discipline, start today and stay out of the rut.
How often do we find ourselves in the position where people are trying to communicate with us and we’ve heard little or nothing of what they’ve said? When we are supposed to be engaged and working together with our team to resolve important issues, it’s disturbing to see how disengaged we can be:
- Out of the blue, Bob and Sally break out into a side conversation about a totally unrelated topic.
- Ted hasn’t contributed a word and keeps checking his cell phone.
- Debbie’s falling asleep.
Consider the impact of being physically present and mentally absent in company meetings:
- It takes much longer to get to a decision, especially if we have to repeat ourselves for those who keep drifting off.
- We make poorer decisions because we haven’t heard and considered relevant input.
- We have weaker buy-in because we aren’t all fully engaged in the final decision.
When you come to your senses and realize you’ve been mentally elsewhere, apologize to your team and, if time permits, humbly request to be re-informed. Then stay engaged. Be present.
The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines the noun, discipline, as:
- punishment
- instruction
- a field of study
- training that corrects, molds, or perfects the mental faculties or moral character
- a) control gained by enforcing obedience or order; b) orderly or prescribed conduct or pattern of behavior; c) self-control
- a rule or system of rules governing conduct or activity.
Words like punishment, control, enforcing, obedience, order, rules, system and governing all convey a sense of restriction. It sounds unpleasant and hard, so can’t we talk about freedom and creativity instead?
Although it seems counter-intuitive, discipline actually leads to greater freedom and creativity. Subject yourself to 1 hour of focused practice per day in almost any area and see what you get in return – freedom to create something extraordinary with an instrument, a tool, your mind, your body, your voice.
Discipline is hard. It is restrictive, and it’s all about keeping commitments we make with ourselves and others. I commit do the hard things that make it easier to do the things that matter most.
So restrict what you ingest each day to those things that are good for your body, mind and soul. Exercise regularly so you can do cool stuff for and with the people you care about. Invest time each day or week to develop a skill so you have more value to give. Be open and honest and insist that others are open and honest with you. Systemize what you do, stripping everything down to the essential components, and then force yourself to do those essential things every time. Keep these commitments and see what you get in return.
The rule that 20% of the people do 80% of the work or business is widely known. Focusing on the 20% that returns 80% of the result is the lesser known rule, but far more impactful on a business – and your experience.
EOS employs the second rule throughout the system. In short, everything is reduced to the essentials – the highest priorities. Focusing on more increases complexity and often impairs achieving the desired outcome, so why make it harder?
When you are choosing what your company does, pick one thing you can excel at and become the master of it.
When you define your marketing message, pick the three things about you, that when taken together, make you uniquely more valuable than everyone else, and communicate those three things in every sales call.
When painting your 3-Year Picture, pick the 5 to 15 things you want most for your business 3 years from now. In your 1-Year Plan, choose the 3 to 7 most important goals that move you a third of the way towards realizing your 3-Year Picture and, in the next 90 days, the 3 to 7 most important priorities (Rocks) for moving a quarter of the way towards achieving your goals.
With your processes, document the few essential procedural steps to do everything that is repetitive. With job descriptions, define the plus or minus 5 roles/responsibilities for each seat. Leaving the non-essentials undefined allows individuals to bring creativity to the process or seat.
It’s all about prioritizing and simplifying. If you’re not doing this, I strongly encourage you to start now. Start living the 20/80 rule.
When you face some issues with your team, emotions may flare and that can become a hindrance to resolving the issues. Take a moment to view this video for some tips on how to guide your team through the emotions to a positive conclusion.
A friend of mine who ministers to very poor communities in Mexico recently wrote, “Passion without organization produces frivolous fluff but organization without passion leads to lifeless and purposeless tedium.”
This is the time of year many of us pause to plan our future. Will we plan to produce “frivolous fluff”, “purposeless tedium” or something of real and perhaps enduring value?
At times, a clarified vision amounts to “lifeless” words on a page – more stuff to do without much purpose or excitement behind the things to be done. That’s tedium.
Entrepreneurial organizations are one of the few, if not only, places where teams and individuals can choose their path. We get to craft our own futures, taking on causes larger than ourselves. We get to plan in structure and processes to achieve what we want. So, when we have all finished drafting our 3-Year Pictures and 1-Year Plans, we need to challenge ourselves. Have we planned for “lifeless and purposeless tedium” or for something really meaningful we can get excited about and sink our teeth into? If we’re not excited about the path we’ve selected, we need to pick a different one.
When something good or bad happens, or we have an idea, we want to share it. When we have a question, we want to ask it. When frustrated, we want to vent.
Sharing our news, ideas, questions and frustrations whenever the urge strikes, consumes an incalculable amount of time and human energy, and that matters because many of us say we don’t have enough time to accomplish everything we want to accomplish.
Undisciplined communication leads to countless interruptions – leaders interrupting their teams, teams interrupting their leaders and teammates interrupting each other – making it hard for anyone to stay focused and get things done. With current technology, we can call, email and text our way into pure chaos.
The simple solution is to establish a Meeting Pulse™ that will instill the discipline of waiting to communicate. The idea is to set regular times when the right people can be present to focus on what needs to be communicated. In a structured meeting, your team can then work efficiently to achieve clarity, with everyone on the same page and appropriate actions defined. The frequency and length of your meetings will depend on the amount of communication to be processed. For most teams, we recommend meeting for 30 to 90 minutes weekly.
This one discipline will keep your team more focused and save you hundreds of unproductive man-hours each quarter. What will that do for your bottom line?
At this special time of the year, many of us will be hitting the pause button on our businesses to reflect, rest and spend time with family and friends. So, I also wanted to pause and thank all of you who are part of our EOS Worldwide family.
Thank you for taking so much of your precious time to read the things we write.
Thank you for working so hard to become your best and grow great businesses.
Thank you for all the value you create to make our world a better place.
Warm thoughts and best wishes to all as we celebrate our progress in 2011 and continue to advance together in the New Year.
It isn’t easy to get your team on the same page when it comes to meeting business goals and driving revenue. Without setting clear expectations and outlining your goals, teams often lose direction and focus, causing the wheels to spin out of control. Seeing and wanting the same thing for the whole team is just one step in the process – as a leader, you have to take it one step further to really get the momentum going.
It’s understandable to feel some level of fear about giving everyone on your team the whole story when it comes to revenue and profit, but in order to get the team aligned with the same goals, you have to be willing to open up. A healthy team is one that understands your business goals and shares your vision. This includes not just your immediate direct reports or managers, but everyone from the top down.
Having the right meeting pulse is the key to keeping everyone in sync. With a stream of open dialog and consistent communication, you can keep your people rowing together in the same direction toward the finish line. Channeling all of that human energy into the same focus doesn’t just benefit your bottom line – it’s essential to being a strong leader. To keep everyone on your team on the same page and in check with the goals of the business, try the suggested communications schedule from The Meeting Pulse™ :
- Annual Planning Sessions (Executive teams and Department teams)
- Quarterly Sessions (Executive teams and Department teams)
- Weekly Check-ins (Executive teams and Department teams)
- “Same Page” meetings (Visionary and Integrator, 1-3 meetings per quarter)
By providing these key touchpoints throughout the year, you can keep everyone focused, on the same page and ready to solve problems.
Some people are great at avoiding conflict in the workplace. All you need to do is keep your mouth shut or yield to the strongest voice in the room. If I am describing you, I want you to consider how damaging that behavior is for both you and your team. I also hope to give you some simple, practical suggestions for becoming a healthier fighter.
Conflict in the workplace is risky. I get that. It makes us uncomfortable, tense and our emotions can flare. But what should we expect from passionate teammates who are all fighting for outcomes that matter a lot? When we work with intelligent, creative, passionate people, we’re bound to have occasions when we see things differently.
So conflict in the workplace is not only unavoidable in a growing, healthy organization, it’s essential!
You’re team will never become its best without conflict. The BEST answer to almost every issue you face will be a composite of the creativity and knowledge of the various players on your team. If you aren’t contributing anything to those best answers by opening your mouth and sharing your insights – as risky as that might feel – you are doing your team a great disservice.
Here are my few suggestions for healthier conflict in the workplace, and this comes from lots of personal experience – good and bad.
- Face it. You’re not that smart. Set your ego aside and open yourself up to other thoughts. None of us has all the answers, and if you do, you need to surround yourself with new people who are smarter than you. To get to the truly great answers, we need to collaborate and mix it up with some great, passionate fighters.
- As soon as it becomes about you, you’ve lost. Self-interest leads to combative, destructive behavior, so just keep everyone focused on the greater good of the whole team.
- Attack the issue, never each other. Focus on resolving the root cause behind each issue. Even when the issue concerns someone’s behavior, identify the root cause behind the behavior and focus on resolving that.
- Take a break. When you get stuck or tempers have flared and it seems like you’re at an impasse, step away from each other and the issue for a short time, cool down, consider everything you’ve heard and then come back to see if the answer comes to the surface. It’s amazing how many times that has worked for me in the past. Sometimes it’s just a 10-minute break, sometimes a day or two. Just let it settle awhile.
The good fruit that comes from healthy conflict in the workplace is worth all the risk and personal discomfort.
Commit to being better fighters and see if that doesn’t produce a healthier, more prosperous 2012 for your team.
