ThinkTank

Once again here we are speeding through the second half of 2011 and thinking about those New Year’s resolutions we made again. Often companies use this time of year to give thousands of employees so-called “performance reviews”, and I’ll save my comments about performance reviews for another article.

Many of us have already prepared and implemented strategies, plans and budgets for our businesses in 2011, but have we honestly debriefed our personal performances in 2009 and 2010? I believe this is a good time to truthfully reflect and ask some difficult questions of ourselves.

Here’s a great list to help get your action plan for 2010 started. And remember – be brutally honest with yourself. Exactly like the game of golf, if you cheat, the only one you’ll be cheating is you.

1. What have I accomplished this year? Be specific. Write it all down and take some time to celebrate your accomplishments.

2. What have I learned this year? What skills have you added? What emotional lessons have you mastered?

3. What got in my way? This is where your work might be focused in the coming months. Don’t forget that many times we get in our own way.

4. Who contributed to my success? What can you do to recognize these folks and promote them to stay on board with you in the coming year?

5. What mistakes did I make, and what did I learn from them? Write these down too, and keep them close by to remind you of what NOT to do next year.

6. How was my work consistent with my values? The answer to this is very powerful and will make you think about the inconsistencies going forward.

7. Where did I not take responsibility? Now that these events are in the past, it’s easier to see where you’ve been out of integrity. A truly honest answer to this one will help bolster your courage.

8. How would I rate my performance? Give yourself an honest ranking between 1-10 with 10 being absolutely incredible.

9. What do I need to let go of? Doing so can help you move much more lightly into the new year.

10. What was missing for me this year? We’ve all missed out on something or traded for something else in 2009. How can we be assured to avoid missing out again?

If you use the answers to the questions on this list as a foundation for your 2010 action plan, I’m confident that you will be more focused, more effective and much more successful, according to your definition of success, in the next twelve months. Remember, you make the choices regarding your performance each and every day. You have three: You can improve your performance; stay the same; or get worse. So, what will you choose for 2010?

Brian Howe is a professionally-trained executive and business coach, writer and speaker, who owns ThinkTank Coaching. He is also a Certified Mediator, and holds the highest human resource certification, Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR). He has worked with over 300 business owners and professionals, coaching and consulting with them on leadership development and other aspects related to people in business. He can be reached at (770) 922-6007 or via his website www.coachbrian.com

Too Many Goals? Try Setting One or Two at a time. Sound scary? Let’s explore this further.

At a recent speaking engagement, I was asked how a coach could help someone who consistently does not meet the goals they set for themselves. Well, to start with, my definition of a goal is that it is a dream with a deadline, not a ‘To-Do’ list.

So, the answer was pretty simple. Try setting fewer short, medium and long term goals. Otherwise, you are setting yourself up for failure – or at the very least, feeling like a failure or thinking that you’re just plain lazy.

It’s kind of like the psychology experiment conducted by Pavlov (you’ve heard of Pavlov’s dogs right?) where he rings a bell and then food drops into a bowl.  Later in the experiment, after the dogs are conditioned to hearing the bell and getting food, he stopped the food.  The dogs went right on believing they were going to get food and began salivating at the sound of the bell.

We tend to do the same thing to ourselves.  We condition ourselves to equating certain activities with rewards.  We set what we think is a goal, take action on it, accomplish it and reap the rewards.  So then, we set two goals, then three and before you know it, we’ve got a whole page full of them.  But somewhere during the process, we find out that our goals keep getting pushed back . . . month, after month, after month.  And we don’t even realize that we’ve morphed our goals – our dreams with deadlines, into a rather extensive ‘To-Do’ list.

If this describes you or someone you know here’s what you can do to remedy the situation.  Take out a piece of paper, or for those of you who are computer-driven like me, write down the one, two or three goals you would most likely accomplish in three years.  Make them big and specific, not just “I’d like to have more money”, but more like one I heard today from someone in my circle of influence, “I really want to spend more time with some of my elderly relatives because time is passing too quickly”.  That’s a great goal, because now he has the ability to focus on the strategic and action steps needed to get there and they include setting smaller goals in his business, personal, and spiritual lives.

I recommend that my clients take on goal setting like project management.  Once you know what you want to accomplish by when, you can move backwards in smaller, more manageable segments.  Action plans should have major increments, like one, two and three years, along with smaller segments of say, three months.  And they MUST be written down! 

A study conducted withPrincetonUniversitygraduates showed that in one graduating class, 17% of the class wrote down their long term goals while the other 83% did not, even though they pointed out that they had goals in mind.  These same graduates were contacted 10 years later and asked about their goal achievement.  Strangely enough, the 17% who wrote down their goals achieved them and the 83% who did not, were still trying.  By the way, almost all of the 83% still had not written down their goals!

After writing down those yearly goals, it’s then a smart next step to create A and B goals for each smaller segment that will permit you to reach the larger, one, two and three year goals – the really big dreams you want to make come true.

You’ll find that developing short and long term goals will not only better assure a higher success rate, but that you will accomplish much more than you are right now.  And life will be great!

Employers should prepare now for the “Millennials” – the youngest generation of folks ages 17-28, nearly 80 million, who are entering the workforce in large numbers, comprising 21% of current employees – because they are going to require a totally different style of recruiting, supervision and development.

Oh, don’t misunderstand, these people have plenty of skills, and broadly varied interests, but not unexpectedly they are wired quite differently than the communities of folks in their thirties, forties, fifties and sixties. In fact, every generation has differences, but it becomes more and more difficult for older workers to “put themselves in the shoes” of those from younger and younger generations. And I speak from experience – my three daughters are millennials – and I’m a “boomer”!

It’s important to understand what each generation expects out of work, and that should drive your people strategy. If you don’t recognize and deal with the issue, you may be faced with difficulty in recruiting and retention, not to mention dealing with conflicts, misunderstandings, communication clashes and reductions in productivity, customer satisfaction, sales, profits, and – well, I think you get the idea.

So lets talk about what you can do. First, realize that millennials have a strong connection to their parents, where many of whom have dual careers and often been directly affected by downsizings. They have more technology, more time savings devices, more structured activities, and more comforts than any other generational group.

Many have been so-called “latchkey kids” who came home after school to an empty house. This gives them a far different perspective about work and certainly a skepticism about the wisdom of management. Instead of “poo-pooing” the idea that a young man wants to build custom motorcycles, you might want to remove the blinders and take a look at the market potential for those vehicles. One thing is for certain, they are looking for work that is not only interesting, but meaningful – and hopefully fun.

As an employer of millenniums you must also understand that their parents involvement is still intact, and even though it’s not quite the same as soccer, swimming or spelling bees, and some companies have chosen to collect information that allows them to include parents in recruitment and career activities.

Millennials also come ‘hard-wired’, where almost 100% have gone to colleges with wireless, or at least wired, computer networks. They are multitaskers, and will work at the office, from home, on an airplane, or in a hotel room. This means that if your business isn’t as technologically advanced as they are, you’ll have more difficulty in finding and keeping the best workers. And these are the next wave of employees who you will need in order to bring innovation, creativity, and productivity to your business which means that you will be a much stronger competitor in your marketplace.

I’ll bet you’re asking “What about this ‘generation gap’? How do I overcome it?” Well, I think it’s fairly easy. I believe that most of these young folks listen carefully to what information or skills they can glean from “more experienced” workers – especially if they are effective communicators. And finally, they have a built-in process of staying in touch with those close to them – personal networking – through technology, whether it is via cellphone, email, or text-messaging. Oh, and by the way, (or in mobile-speak, BTW) they loath cubicles because they prefer to readily share information. It’s how they learn.

Brian Howe is a professionally-trained executive and business coach, writer and speaker, who owns ThinkTank Coaching. He is also a Certified Mediator, and holds the highest human resource certification, Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR). He has worked with over 300 business owners and professionals, coaching and consulting with them on leadership development and other aspects related to people in business. He can be reached at (770) 922-6007 or via his website www.coachbrian.com

Everyone in business has myths related to marketing and selling their products and services. It’s too expensive. Customers can find it cheaper on the web. It takes too long to get it. Your competitor has given me a better deal. You charge me a restocking fee. You’ve likely heard these and countless other ‘myths’ about your business.

Sure, our businesses are changing (i.e., Who Moved My Cheese), and we must be agile in anticipating where the ‘new cheese’ is going to be found. But it’s more than that.

Years ago, when I was training with a company to market and sell slide, video and multimedia presentations to both large and small companies – long before PowerPoint was invented – I came across a plaque outside an advertising agency in Chicago (the name of which now slips my mind).  It described the three key things attached to marketing and selling any product or service to customers and prospects.  It said:

Price, Quality, Speed

  – Pick any two

Think about it.  Now, substitute Service for Speed, which just makes it a little broader application for most businesses. 

So what does all this mean?  Well, customers often believe they have the control over the levels of all three keys — price, quality and service but actually, the sales or marketing professional, business owner or corporate executive knows that to succeed, they must control ONE of the three key factors.

An example: 

Your company makes and sells custom widgets – very high quality, lifetime guarantee widgets.  And your market research has indicated that your prospects and customers want them produced and delivered very quickly.  So you have a larger than normal staff, and the best and fastest equipment available to accommodate the orders, which allows you to price the widgets at a premium. Along with that there is a great market for your premium priced widgets.  In this scenario, your customers are asking for quality and service (speed), while you get to control price.

Now, what if you discovered that there the market for widgets was priced sensitive.  Prospects and customers wanted virtually the same quality product, or even one at lesser quality, but at a more economical price.  Is there a way that this ‘formula’ can work for you?  Sure there is.  If your prospects want control over quality and price, then you control the service level, or speed.  The high quality widget company realized that it had lulls in its production cycles and could fill orders for customers willing to wait a little longer to get lower prices.

But what if the market were driven solely on price and speed of delivery?  The ‘profit’ formula still works.  The widget manufacturer may ultimately have to reduce quality in order to meet the demands of pricing and turnaround.

Some of the things effective marketing should focus on:

1. What your prospects are currently buying.
2. How your products/services will meet their needs.
3. What value your products/services provide versus those of your competition.
4. How you will tap into that market.

You wouldn’t want to see your product or service to become the next ‘New Coke’.