All posts in Leadership

Crafting a Mission Statement!

Mission statements are those inspiring words chosen by leader to clearly communicate the direction of an organization.  This is a great method to communicate your intentions and motivate your team to a common vision.  With a mission statement you can define your organization’s purpose and objectives.  The key point to remember is that the primary function is internal not external.  Your mission statement need to define the key measurements of your organization’s success.

Here are some tips in defining your mission statement:

1. Work first to identify your businesses “winning idea”.

2. This is the idea that will make you stand out from the competition and it becomes the reason your customer’s come to you and not your competitors.

3. Identify the key measures of your success.  Makes sure you choose the most important measures (and not too many of them!)

4. Combine your winning idea and success measures into a tangible and measurable goal.

5. Refine the words until you have a concise and precise statement of your mission that expresses your ideas and desired results.

Crafting a mission statement first comes from defining your winning idea.  It takes a lot of effort to find, shape and test but the benefits far outweigh the cost and energy it requires in communicating your winning idea!

When YOU get better, your business gets better

Last month I heard Michael Allosso speak and as part of his presentation, “You on You Best Day”, he gave us a checklist of daily activities to make it your best day everyday.  Here is a list of great questions to ask yourself daily:

1.  Have I really been “present” at every meeting?

2.  Have I contributed?

3.  Did I help someone do their job better?

4.  Did I do some sort of physical warm-up today?

5.  Did I like my physical appearance today?

6.  Did I arrive to work early?

7.  Did I state my objectives for the day?

8.  Did I try a variety of tactics to win at my objective?

9.  Did I greet people as I passed by them today?

10.  Did I include a smile when I passed by them?

11.  Did I listen before I spoke?

12.  Did I offer a concrete suggestion to someone to upgrade their performance?

13.  Did I “check in” with someone on a personal basis?

14.  Did I take one break today?

15.  Did I raise the stakes a little higher than I normally would?

16.  Did I have fun today?

17.  Was everyone with whom I came in contact today a little better afterwards?

Learning, Leading and Lasting

training

I wanted to give everyone a preview of my new webinar series, “Strategy Execution”.  In researching high-performance organizations I’ve found 3 attributes:

1.  Top Performance Organizations are Learning

Learning is the pathway to continual mastery in any endeavor.  It’s only through learning that we continually re-create ourselves.  A learning organization is one that continually expands it’s capacity to create the future.

What are you learning?

2.  Top Performance Organizations are Leading

One of the most difficult decisions a leader has to make is choosing what they can be great at.  This is a question of focus.  Focus is hard because it eliminates options and holds us responsible.

What can you truely be great at?

3.  Top Performance Organizations are Lasting

As an organization grows it becomes more complex.  The ability to build structure to handle complexity and predict the future is a major attribute of lasting organizations.  Your capacity to grow is directly related to your pain tolerance because no organization can rise above the constraints of it’s leadership.

How much pain are you willing to endure?

Keep Learning, Keep Leading, and Last!  The prize is worth the price!

Why do you need to grow?

team

I spent today in Pennsylvania with New Castle Lawn and Landscape and I was asked the question, “Why do I have to grow?”  People normally discover that even though they say they want to grow, they don’t understand the price they have to pay to grow.  There is no growth without change and there is no change without pain.  This is why people usually grow only to their pain tolerance.  Many times I’m called in to assess personal capacity and one of the main questions I ask myself is, “How much pain is this person able to endure?”  Not a fun question, a valuable one to ask ourselves.

The critical reason is summed up in the phrase I call OUT-IN-OUT

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