Leadership

I am sure you’ve heard the expressions:

• "That which gets measured tends to improve."
• "If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it."
• "You get what you pay attention to."

In many ways in business you get what you measure.

What if you are measuring and focussing on the wrong thing?

Unfortunately, you will get that too.

How Most Do It

Say you are running a customer support or call center.

People call in or complete a support request online and the job
at hand is to resolve customer problems.

Since call centers are expensive and generally are […]

At a certain point of growth, every business needs to start formalizing "how things are done here". These are your processes and systems.

In "Predictable Success" by Les McKeown, he pretty much says outright that you can't get to predicable success unless you put enough (but not too much) systems and processes in place (plus some other things).

Too many people think formalizing processes and systems means taking all initiative and creativeness out of business and replacing it with lowest common denominator bureaucracy. Or they think it means everything is handled exactly the same. Or they just don't want to […]

Are you one of those people who chases every business opportunity you see hoping to cash in on the next great thing? Are you not finishing what you start because you are juggling too many things?

Stop it.

The people who make the most money over the long-term focus on one thing at a time and get it finished. They have a vision of where they want to be and single-mindedly pursue it through to success.

Real Life Example

Our business was recently approached with an offer to front another business in the consulting body shopping business and make some easy money on the […]

I was asked a question today. It was about our Manifast product which is aimed at allowing businesses to bring strategy, working on the business and developing your people to the same level of importance as working in the business; serving customers and fighting fires.

Roughly the question went like "How much effort is required to setup the tool and maintain the information in it? Is the benefit of doing all that stuff worth it?"

Aside from the context of the tool the question is really more fundamental:

"Is the effort of documenting, planning and executing your strategy, building your business and developing your […]

• Do you have a company culture of continuous improvement?
• Are you dedicating 10% or more of your time to working on your business?
• Do you delegate parts of your business and have a methodology for holding people accountable for performance?

If you are not, you are impacting your profitability in a big way.

As a business owner this is coming right off your bottom line. If you are losing $10,000 in costs (i.e. profit) and you have margins of 5%, you would have to earn another $200,000 in revenue to make that back.

Business advisors like Jeff Pallister can come into many businesses […]