How to enhance someone's experience of life

You know that sometimes when you come to work something extraordinary happens that reminds you of why you are passionate about what you do.

Our company purpose is "to enhance people's experience of life" and I have just finished a meeting with a client that reminds me of why I am so passionate about making that happen.

When we started working with her company she was working extremely hard, had great difficulty in taking time off and the business stress was affecting her relationship. It was a good company that was limited in its ability to grow.

3 years on and with less than 2 weeks notice she was able to leave the country and spend time with her daughters in Egypt. She has also sailed around the world with her husband and is a glowing representation of someone having fun who owns a business. So what changed?

It all started with a plan, this gave the ability to put in some key metrics to measure but this doesn't sound so different. In fact they had a lot of this in place before we started working together. What was different was that they were held accountable to execute their strategy, weekly meetings happened regardless and tangble outcomes were agreed to be delivered upon and issues were brought out when they happened, and there butts got kicked if they didn't do it.

This drove stronger communication, better visibility and most important of all accountability around execution of the plan. Execution has always been the most difficult part of achievement but also the most important. Tom Peters calls it the missing 98%.

The four fundamentals things to achieve greatness and freedom in business is:

- Write down a exciting compelling goal that engages your people
- Put it in a clear plan that everyone in your business can see everyday
- Have a clear and visible system of measuring results
- Have a system of accountability

I guarentee that it is this simple but it doesn't happen overnight. This story is an example where this stuff was put in place and three years later achieving a freedom goal that she thought would take 10 years.

Have we enhanced her experience of life.....absolutely
Am I excited about it ..... absolutely

"Straight Talking Through the Universe"

One of the values at Results.com we live by is "Straight Talk". This involves having the courage to be honest and tell people how it is. We encourage it amongst the team as we bounce ideas, discuss decisions, offer feedback about an individuals style, presentation or when we are peer reviewing client interaction.

Straight talk needs to exist in a culture where there will be no consequence for being honest and telling how it is. I think an organisation that can challenge anyone in the company in a safe and constructive way has more robust decisions. The team also knows they will be challenged if they are not achieving goals and likewise can challenge others.

Think about it. Hows your culture?

Karl

Living What We Teach

As a Practise we strive to live what we teach, in fact it is one of our core values. We measure our relevant KPI's to help drive the business and we hold each associate accountable for their "piece in the pie".

One of our main measures is to ensure our clients meet their quarterly goals because this is important for them and it ensures we as a team are adding maximum value to their team. To make this a robust process we peer review each clients quarterly goal for relevance in the yearly goal and in the 3-5 year plan. We also check that it is achievable, measurable and challenging.

Living what we teach is an important core value of Results.Com.

Karl

Not knowing What You Don't Know!

There is always an element of comfort when a business owner has owned and operated their company for a number of years. Not taking away the fact that it takes a huge amount of skill and perseverance to own a company built from scratch and to operate it profitably in a constantly changing environment! Many I meet make a lot of their key business decisions based on what they think is going on rather than the what data shows them.

One of the cornerstones of Results.Com is that as an organisation we base all our research and business best practise teachings on hard data. Opinions are like armpits.....we all have them, but when you can actually drill down into a problem part of your business and see actual figures, or measure actual outcomes achieved then you can make sound decisions. Now this does not have to be complicated, in most cases we are talking about making key figures visible so that trends can be monitored.

There is much that flows on from this practise such as having an ability to hold key employees accountable for their roles and goals, making sound decisions about overheads, budgets and of course the peace of mind of knowing that you are on track.

It is healthy to take a deep breath and step back from your business in order to challenge what it is you are trying to achieve and where you sit in the bigger picture. This means being open minded enough to accept constructive challenges to the way you go about things.

So really not knowing what you don't know is only an issue if you never take time to find out and if don't continue to learn and grow!

Karl (see our website)