Leadership Archives – Page 14 of 14

9 Jul 2009

Does Your Business Work For You?

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:26:51-06:00July 9th, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership, Mindset and Motivation|

Be honest. You don't have to share the answer with anyone but yourself and you are doing yourself a huge disservice if you deceive yourself.

Do you work for your business or does you business work for you?

You can work in your business (employee), you can manage your business (manager) and you can work on your business (entrepreneur).

You can have a business plan, cash flow, working capital, investors, products and services, customers and an exit strategy. You can be providing a critical service to society.

But that does not answer the fundamental question. Why are you in business in the first place?

To answer this […]

29 May 2009

Progression – Growth by Success

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:28:00-06:00May 29th, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership, Mindset and Motivation|

The worst thing you can do when developing your staff/team members is to set them up for major failure (the second worst is not bothering to develop them at all).

For instance, you hire a recent business graduate with lots of potential and then put them in a position far beyond their experience level. The person then messes up really bad, maybe loses a key account or mismanages the team such that productivity drops or key employees quit. You will have to "fire" them from their position. This can devastate the individual and quite literally ruin their level of respect in […]

4 May 2009

Guys with Sensitive Eyes

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-04T16:54:42-06:00May 4th, 2009|Categories: Current Events, Doug's Blog, Leadership|

I had to take a bit of a hiatus from blogging. Had a flare-up with the eyes and it was a bit hard to read or write much, at least without lots of grammar and spelling errors. But I did have lots of time to think and writing helps clear my thoughts and motivate me… so here goes.

Government Forms Can Cause Blindness

I didn’t know this either and it is not in the fine print anywhere… I found it out the hard way on Wednesday evening. Ok, I admit I procrastinated a bit on the personal tax returns and had […]

21 Apr 2009

Great Customer Service Example

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:30:42-06:00April 21st, 2009|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Leadership|

This morning I woke up with a very red and irritated left eye and decided to work from home. After lunch I realized it wasn't getting any better, so I decided to head off to the doctor.

Now I live between Okotoks and Calgary so I decided to head south to the Calgary Health Region's "Okotoks Health and Wellness Centre".

Now I always find it interesting how different a town is from a city, even when they are 15 minutes apart. We've normally found people in customer service to be just a little more friendly, genuine and less rushed (pound for pound) in […]

14 Apr 2009

The Art of Delegation

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-06T12:19:34-06:00April 14th, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Dream Teams, Leadership, Mindset and Motivation|

I’ve noticed something over the years that often happens to three categories of people in many situations:

Managers,
Subject Matter Experts, and
Suckers.

Managers

Team members that report to managers are either unable or afraid to make decisions and have learned that they can pass the hard part off to the manager, who will take the work back because they are too busy and frustrated to deal with the problem.

Subject Matter Experts

Team members come to the subject matter expert with a problem. Instead of looking for ideas in finding a solution, they pass the problem onto the subject matter expert for resolution. The […]

2 Apr 2009

Good Business Coaches

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-04T16:46:50-06:00April 2nd, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership, Mindset and Motivation|

An Example – ProCoach

I went to a seminar put on by Andrew Barber-Starkey of ProCoach Success Systems a number of years ago here in Calgary. The information presented in the seminar was decent, and of course it ended with limited time options to enter their program for a special price.

A few years later, I am still receiving newsletters from them. Sometimes there is a good pearl of wisdom in them. Recently, Andrew has started interviewing well-known authors and posting those interviews on his site.

Superficially, he appears to share a number of common business success principles […]

26 Mar 2009

The Show Must Go On

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:32:12-06:00March 26th, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership, Mindset and Motivation|

I think I've mentioned that I like to play Celtic and Maritime music as well as do Canadian step-dancing.

Well recently the band I am in (Get Reel) had two gigs scheduled, one at a church hall on Saturday and one Wednesday evening at a senior's residence with our step dancing class as well. We currently have three members in our band (Greg Black, Deborah Mandzuk and myself).

We worked up a really nice set with all of us playing our multiple roles.

Just before the weekend, Greg called up and told us that because of a tear in his retina and his laser […]

27 Feb 2009

Lessons from Survivor

By Doug Wagner|2017-04-03T12:33:39-06:00February 27th, 2009|Categories: Doug's Blog, Leadership|

Ok, I admit I might watch Survivor on occasion. The game in survivor is to manage to be the last person voted off. But it is as much a social game as it is a physical or mental game.

Among the biggest reasons for getting voted off are being annoying or being seen as a leader. The correlation between the two is interesting. Many leaders end up being annoying.

This seems to parallel the real world. One of the biggest reasons for employee dissatisfaction is a bad boss. The big difference is you can seldom vote out your boss in the real world.

How […]