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

46 Secrets and Clever Strategies for dealing with the Recession

I was sent this pearl of wisdom and think it is fantastic. Take the points you need from it.

Tom Peters 46 Strategies

Tom Peters is being constantly asked for “strategies/‘secrets’ for surviving the recession.”

In his words "I try to appear wise and informed—and parade original, sophisticated thoughts. But if you want to know what’s really going through my head, see the list that follows":

Forty-six “Secrets” and “Clever Strategies” For Dealing with the Recession of 2008-XXXX*

1. You come to work earlier.
2. You leave work later.
3. You work harder.
4. You may well work for less; and, if so, you adapt to the untoward circumstanceswith a smile—even if it kills you inside.
5. You volunteer to do more.
6. You dig deep, deeper, deepest—and always bring a good attitude to work.
7. You fake it if your good attitude flags.
8. You literally practice your “game face” in the mirror in the morning, and in the loomid-morning.
9. You give new meaning to the idea and intensive practice of “visible management.”
10. You take better than usual care of yourself and encourage others to do the same—physical well-being significantly impacts mental well-being and response to stress.
11. You shrug off shit that flows downhill in your direction—buy a shovel or a“pre-worn” raincoat on eBay.
12. You try to forget about “the good old days”—nostalgia is self-destructive.(And bores others.)
13. You buck yourself up with the thought that “this too shall pass”—but then remind yourself that it might not pass any time soon, and so you re-dedicate yourself to making the absolute best of what you have now.
14. You work the phones and then work the phones some more—and stay in touch with and on the mind of positively everyone.
15. You frequently invent breaks from routine, including “weird” ones—“changeups” prevent wallowing and bring a fresh perspective.
16. You eschew all forms of personal excess.
17. You simplify.
18. You sweat the details as never before.
19. You sweat the details as never before.
20. You sweat the details as never before.
21. You raise to the sky and maintain at all costs the Standards of Excellence by which you unfailingly and unflinchingly evaluate your own performance.
22. You are maniacal when it comes to responding to even the slightest screw-up.
23. You find ways to be around young people and to keep young people around—they are less likely to be members of the “sky is falling” school.
24. You learn new tricks of your trade.
25. You pass old tricks of the trade on to others—mentoring matters now more thanever.
26. You invest heavily in your computer-Internet-Web2.0-“cloud” skills.
27. You remind yourself that this is not just something to be “gotten through”—it is the Final Exam of Competence, Character and, even if you’re not a boss, Leadership.
28. You network like a demon.
29. You network like a demon inside the company—get to know more of the folks who“do the real work,” and are/can be your most important allies when it comes togetting things done seamlessly and fast.
30. You network like a demon outside the company—get to know more of the folks“down the line,” who “do the real work” in vendor-customer outfits and can be your biggest allies and champions.
31. You thank others by the truckload if good things happen—and take the heat yourself if bad things happen.
32. You behave kindly, but you don't sugarcoat or hide the truth—humans are startlingly resilient and rumors are the real killers.
33. You treat small successes as if they were World Cup victories—and celebrate and commend accordingly.
34. You shrug off the losses (ignoring what's going on in your tummy), and get back on the horse and immediately try again.
35. You avoid negative people to the extent you can—pollution kills.
36. You eventually read the gloom-sprayers the riot act. (Gloom is the ultimate WMD ata time like this.)
37. You give new meaning to the word “thoughtful.”
38. You don’t put limits on the budget for flowers—“bright and colorful” works marvels.
39. You redouble, re-triple your efforts to “walk in your customer’s shoes.” (Especially if the shoes smell.)
40. You mind your manners—and accept others’ lack of manners in the face of their strains.
41. You are kind to all mankind.
42. You keep your shoes shined.
43. You leave the blame game at the office door.
44. You call out the congenital politicians in no uncertain terms.
45. You become a paragon of personal accountability.
46. And then you pray.

As many were quick to point out, this list works just as well in good times as in bad!

Taking a break

The old saying when the going gets tough the tough get going has certainly applied over the last year of challenging times. Sometimes as the business owners you have to roll your sleeves up and get dirty. For many this means putting in some extraordinary hours and grinding away to ensure that your company not only survives but thrives in a tough climate.

However, there comes a time when you need to refuel the tank. Working with a couple of business owners yesterday reminded me how hard we have all worked but also how hard it has been. They have come through an extremely challenging time in their business and have pulled through and are in a much stronger position now. As one of them said "We can see the light at the end of the tunnel and we are sure that it not a train coming". But they look exhausted.

One of the actions this week is for them to take some time and recharge. I had to swallow this pill myself recently as I had been busy and a long time between breaks. Took a few days off and come back charged. The world won't fall down if you take one too.

What's missing from business success

I was asked this morning what I thought was more important - having an effective strategy or effective execution?



To me the answer is obvious - Doesn't matter how good your strategy is if it does not get executed properly and effective execution is only effective with a strategy. Execution isn't the best thing it is the only thing!


While creating a well-formulated strategy is vitally important for business success, the biggest challenge for most business leaders is getting their team to effectively execute their chosen strategy.


- Consider the following alarming research:
–90% of strategies fail due to poor execution
–Only 27% of employees have access to their company strategic plan
–Only 5% of employees understand their company strategy
–92% of organizations do not measure Key Performance Indicators



We have just been trialling a execution tool called execution driver and I have to say it has been fantastic in my own team becoming more egaged and accountable for better execution of our strategy. Not only does it put a big tick beside each of the above statistics it has freed me up personally to concentrate on more of the things that I am best at.



Visit http://www.executiondriver.com/



Happy executing

Karl

Where is the Pain?

Right now Canterbury Business owners are looking at how they can survive a prolonged decrease in revenue. In a lot of cases the hard decisions to cut staff or overheads has been left too late and now there are not so many options as they could have had a few months ago as part of a planned approach.

On average it seems that revenue across most industries has declined by 30-40% and it is likely the market recovery is going to be slow. So how do you operate and grow in a consumers market where your competitors are competing on price? How do you get more productivity from less staff? How do you ensure marketing is effective given the fact you have a far smaller advertising budget?

Now the bad news.......there is no magic bullet that will solve this. It takes a good long term strategy, well targeted short and medium terms goals, a focused offering to the market with a unique point of difference and it takes good communication, staff 90 day goals, accountability across the company and measurement of the relevant KPI's.

That takes skill and planning and the real value is being able to execute these things and make them happen rather than simply come up with a plan.

Take some action and make it happen. Oh and have fun.....it is too easy to get lost in the doom & stress.

Karl

Results.Com

Many people ask us what we do? Many think we are one of the many Business Coaching organisations that seem to tout their wares around the town. Well we are not Coaches....we grow businesses, we provide Business Execution Strategy's for those we work with that allow them to grow. We transform business potential into extraordinary results. Our team delivering these results are Business Execution Specialists with a variety of backgrounds, experience and qualifications.

Even more excitingly as a company we are developing and will soon launch a variety of new services and options that will allow organisations to easily work with us in a way that best suits their requirements.

Currently and in this challenging economic environment our clients are growing and on average are achieving 26% revenue growth (*Perspective Insight (Independent Client Research) Annual survey Feb 09).

Karl (see our website)