There is a world of difference between managing a business and leading a business. You probably know this already. Even when you’re a sole proprietor or a small shop, you still switch hats between manager and leader. You want to have systems in place to avoid getting too panicky or too complacent. But maybe we’re missing a more important question?

Should you be the CEO (even if de facto) of your business?

It’s tempting for some to say “but I’m not a CEO“, particularly when you run a very small business. But that’s just shortsighted. You’re already setting the stage with your vision, your pace and emphasis on certain initiatives. The thing that may be missing here is trust.

Trust or no movement forward

No matter how much experience you have as a leader, trust plays a major role in how far your people will go with you. In such difficult economic times as we’ve experienced over the last four years, you need that trust to be strong. Given that change is an integral piece of the “new normal”, what resistance is present in your organization?

Trust is earned and some styles of leadership depend on it more than others. However, trust is not easily rewarded. Sure, just having a certain position gives you the basic level from most people.Titles do that.

So, you have to ask yourself, am I demonstrating…

• consistency in my words and actions?
• consideration for others’ schedules and abilities?
• respect for others when I have requests and directives?
• honesty in how I present myself?
• that I believe I have a good team in my staff?

 No movement forward if you haven’t built more than a baseline of trust

You probably have your own war stories of working for someone that you could trust to be harsh, confusing or just plain infuriating. How did this affect your productivity? Don’t be that guy! You already know how it feels. And it’s important to remember that how people perceive that you “feel” is what determines the level of trust you’re given.

What do you notice creates breakdowns in the day-to-day tasks?

What do you do that makes you a trustworthy leader?

Last week I attended a local chapter meeting of the ASTD (American Society for Training and Development) and had a very interesting conversation with a V.P. of Training of a local company. She was telling me how her company is discussing how to prevent talent (the employees) from leaving in large numbers as the economy starts to pick up. At least anecdotally, I’m hearing some anxiety about how much more employees will tolerate and what it will take for them to stay.

Is there anything to this worry?

There is a lot of data out there from Price Waterhouse Cooper, CLC Human Resources and Gallup about how employees are not happy campers in their organizations. Whether it has to do with being underemployed or a  high potential employee, there seem to be people who are checking out the job market and seeing if it’s the right time to jump ship. With economists forecasting that the US economy will improve, there may be turbulence in many companies as people seek new positions that fit their wants and needs more. However, it is also true that, globally, economic forecasts are not as rosy. It is possible that there may be pockets of employees ditching their jobs for greener pastures depending on the local economy.

Benefits matter

At least in the US, the rising costs with health benefits has certainly cause some unhappiness according to Gallup. That pesky work-life relationship rears its head in this category. People need to know that they will be treated with respect with how much out-of-pocket expenses they are responsible for. Benefits like vacation time and retirement plans matter as does how much on-the-job stress employees must put up with.

Leadership disconnected

If you visit Glassdoor.com, you can read reviews of what it’s like to work for specific companies. Sadly, you see a lot of complaints that work schedules are too taxing and that management is too caught up in the bureaucracy of the company. Sure, it’s easy to pick on large corporations which have behemoth bureaucracies. However, this can happen in small to mid-sized companies as well. For some organizations, there is a clash between “old” business practices and “new” practices. When the organizational leadership takes pride in not understanding social networking or using cloud computing or telecommuting, workers feel like they’re being treated as tools and not people. There are many trends that are emerging that are challenging leaders in organizations of all sizes (check out those mentioned in the  Hay Group Leadership 2030 research). Not paying attention to research, avoiding self-development and ignoring opportunities to involve employees in planning is tantamount to saying, ” go ahead and leave, we don’t need you.”

What else matters?

According to a recent OfficeTeam survey, 27% of workers reported that having opportunities to learn and grow encouraged engagement. While ASTD reports an upswing in how training is funded and used in organizations, this is still an category that gets cut when the economic environment is inhospitable. However, even in global trend research, training and development played a role in employee engagement.

However, it isn’t simply reducing one’s skills gap that engaged employees. The ability to further one’s career within the organization was a key piece. This is where organizations can lose their high potential employees. If you can’t move out of your position, then logically, it would make sense to go somewhere else to achieve your career and life goals.

Current trends are showing a downward direction in people leaving their organizations

There is still an immense challenge that organizations of all sizes face in making sure they keep employee engagement high. It’s more than a paycheck that workers desire. This is good news for  businesses with more limited resources. Dan Pink, in his book, Drive, focused on purpose, meaning and autonomy. At the end of the day, your employees want to be treated as grown ups with perspectives and skills that are necessary to your organization’s success.

What do you believe turns people off the most?

What trends do you believe decision-makers need to pay attention to the most?

*Join us in the this discussion on the Twitter chat, #kaizenblog on Friday, January 27, 2012 at 5pm GMT/12pm ET/9am PT . We’d love to have your observations and opinions!

Across many social networks and many blogs, you may have noticed a lot of discussion of SOPA. There is a clear explanation on CNNMoney but, in a nutshell,  SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) is a bill going through the US Congress that is supposed to eliminate copy infringement and penalize offenders. There are plenty of people out there with rogue web sites who steal innovative and creative products. These rogue websites are located outside of the US but they This threatens not only the competitive edge of the companies who has intellectual property and products stolen. According to a letter to the editor of the New York Times, the US Chamber of Commerce, it “threatens 19 million jobs.”

No one is advocating for online piracy

What is at stake is that the bill is poorly written in its current form. Fortunately this week, support has eroded and perhaps the sponsors of the bill will take the opportunity to improve the language so it actually targets these rogue websites. Artists, musicians, film makers, entrepreneurs and other content creators should have their copyrighted material protected. No question. It just comes back to how the bill is written and can it do what is intended?

Could innovation be stifled?

There have been discussions about how to regulate the Internet. As you know, there is everything on the ‘Net. But one of the things that makes the Internet so attractive is its openness. Now we have so many ways to communicate, collaborate and share with one another new ideas for business. We’re redefining how we interact on a personal and professional level. And this is changing how business is conducted. Not only are companies and partnerships formed but what is truly intriguing is the capacity to the varied ways people can connect to create and produce intellectual property.

Since there are provisions in the bill to shut down sites that are alleged to have violated a copyright. This means that sites would be blocked by ISP’s, be removed from search engines and be denied the ability to collect payment from online payment services (ex. Paypal). It is unclear how a site could defend itself from false accusations. So if a site aggregates information or users interact with one another, there could be an allegation of an infringement or intellectual property or the ability to enable an IP infringement. Result: the site just disappears.

What could happen globally?

It seems to me that a number of small and mid-sized businesses will not only cease to exist. Cloud computing, social media sites and many other advantages that the Internet provides an avenue for these smaller companies to compete, attract and serve their non-US customers with lower costs and easy access.

Non-US businesses may find that there are just too many obstacles to doing business in the US. SOPA could have a chilling effect as there may be fears that it is a form of censorship and potential legal issues.

Want to add your thoughts on how SOPA could positively or negatively affect how business is created and conducted?

Join us on the Twitter chat, #kaizenblog, on Friday, January 20th at 5pm GMT/12pm ET/9am PT. We want to hear what you have to say.

Certainly it’s clear that I have some grave concerns about SOPA in its current form so my bias is negative. The US House and Senate have to create a bill that will be cognizant of what is really going on online, what laws currently provide adequate protections, the types of products and companies that are created and how this could adversely affect how business is conducted. Still online piracy is a problem.

What would you suggest?

Have you ever caught a glimmer of how wise and remarkable a person you truly are? The experience can be disorienting, upsetting, humbling or awe-inspiring. It shows up in your work, your play, your leadership, truly in all aspects of who you are. And yet, there is such temptation to downplay what skills, talents and values we bring with us.

Perhaps your distractions are really upriver

There were two men sitting by a river when they  saw someone float by in the water thrashing and calling for help. One of the men jumped in and saved the person. Next thing they knew, another person floated by thrashing and screaming for help. Again, one of the men jumped in and saved this person as well. To their great surprise and consternation, more and more people coming down the river and needed help. After both men were catching their breath after saving these people, one man turned to the other and said, “We better get some help if more people come down the river.” The other man replied, “We better go upriver and see who is throwing them in.”

Loads of data to analyze and competing ideas to include in your business goals

It’s easy to get caught up in ideas or wishes of how we want things to be. There are so many priorities and distractions that we may forget to go upriver and see for ourselves. For yourself, you can use a Wheel of Life (WheelofLife PDF) which allows you to rate all aspects of your life. If you want to rate your performance as a leader of your business, you can use the Management/Leader Wheel (MgtLdrWheel PDF). These tools are great ways to get a snapshot of where you are in your life.

For your business, you can do a SWOT analysis,  PESTEL analysis or pore over your financial statements with charts and graphs galore. And you should. Otherwise you may as well be shooting darts at balloons. The key thing with getting the right information is checking out what is real.

What does wisdom or trust have to do with it?

It doesn’t have to be any fancy woo-hoo stuff to be wise. Consider how many times you follow a “feeling” or trust your instincts. When you’re leading during times of great change or just facing a challenging set of circumstances, it isn’t always clear what is your best choice. If you have a team to help you design a strategic plan, you already have a separate set of eyes and ears to interpret data with you. However, you still have to trust yourself (and them) to steer the business in the “right” direction.

3 tips to access your wisdom while goal setting

1. Know what you do and don’t want. Sometimes it’s easier to identify what you don’t want. Negativity is easy. The more interesting list here is what you do want. Go on, what do you really want?

2. Your wisdom needs affirmation from hard cold evidence. When outside stuff challenges us, it stirs up our inside stuff. Make sure you include some way to measure the progress of your goals. If you plan on increasing your revenue by 25% by year’s end, write it down and check it regularly (quarterly is good). This will remind you that you know what you know.

3. Don’t go it alone. As the leader of your business (and your life), it’s a tough environment to do business in. It may be tempting to isolate or get busy with day to day stuff among other things. Use your team. They are an internal resource of your design. having a confidant, mentor, coach or mastermind group can keep you in touch with your wisdom.

So,  what’s up your river?

What suggestions do you have for accessing your wisdom when setting goals for your business?

 *Join us on the Twitter chat, #kaizenblog this Friday, January 6th at 12pm ET/5pm GMT/9am PT as we have our 2nd annual Goal Setting Convo. We’ll be exploring the topic of goal setting and declaring our top 2012 goals to one another.

As someone who encourages business owners and decision makers to take a look at what is swirling around their businesses, it seems natural to take stock of what happened in 2011 and to take a guess at 2012.

What just happened? 5 of the many 2011 trends

1. Daily deals- This trend seemed to gain a lot of momentum in 2011. Many of the companies offering these deals got funding in 2011. Groupon, LivingSocial and Coupons.com have given both businesses and customers opportunities to meet one another. It certainly doesn’t seem to be a trend that is going away any time soon.

2. When I asked for trends from 2011,  Christina Giliberti of CG Online Marketing responded with enthusiasm on how video and podcasts grew in popularity over the year.

3. Another trend Giliberti pointed out was how local business groups formed groups to encourage support and business growth. One example of this is Small Business Can.

4. QR codes – Are you seeing these everywhere? I sure am. Some small businesses have them as part of their contact information and they are ubiquitous in print ads for all products. They may be abused as Jim Nichols posited in his post or maybe a transient trend.

5. Apps – Sticking with the theme of mobile devices, there are apps for everything and multiplying by the second! Amanda Webb of Spiderworking.com described them as the “new niche social networks.” Mobile applications like Instagram, Goodreads and iMapMyRun combine both an interest or activity with networking with others.

 What’s coming in 2012?

1.  Social media- This is a large topic but there are a couple of trends worth noting. Influence sites, such as Klout seem to be gaining currency as a measure of one’s expertise and ability to engage with others. Some people are even including their Klout score on their resumes.

2. Gamification is another social media trend of people adding games as a marketing tool. One example of this can be seen at Sage Ireland.

3. Another emerging trend is the shift from ownership to access to goods or services.  ZipCar, Airbnb and cloud services allow you to have something you want without the details of ownership.

4. But it’s not just marketing, goods or services or even social media that has emerging trends. The workplace has some changes that could very well become sticky in 2012. One trend that seems to be gaining ground is working remotely. As mobile devices and networking sites (including Skype) make it easier to stay connected to the office, collaborate with colleagues and get work done, more people will opt to work from home or other off-site locations. Deborah Busser has some other interesting predictions for 2012 in this post.

So what do you think?

In this week’s Twitter chat, #kaizenblog, we’re going to take a look back at 2011 and try to peer into the future of 2012. Please join us on Friday at 5pm GMT/12pm ET/9am PT and share your observations.

Happy New Year!

What trends did you notice in 2011?

What trend surprised you the most?

What didn’t happen in 2011?

What do you see emerging in 2012?

Do you focus on the long horizon or the short horizon? There are limits to doing either strategy exclusively. However, the short term business vision of 1 year is a building block to making your overall vision an everyday experience. How do you make sure that your current actions will lead to the big prize?

Using a PESTEL analysis or a SWOT analysis is a great way to highlight what is going on in and around your business. You need the data. It is easy to assume that the data will point out just the weaknesses or challenges. It also illuminates the strengths and opportunities.

This is the stuff that affirms your organizational vision

When you see what is working, it reminds you that you are on the right path. It’s that simple. Staying aware of the overall vision of your business is part of your foundation.

Take a moment and make the lens a little smaller. What about 2012?

See, when you engage in strategic planning for the coming year, you’re really articulating your vision for that year. Done right, it provides a stepping stone to making your overall organizational vision an everyday experience.

To make your lens a little smaller, start by answering the following questions:

1. What will be accomplished as of December 31, 2012?

2. Why is this so important?

3. Why now?

“Because the business is supposed to make money” is not an answer.

That’s a given. Any business can say that. Well, any business should say that. You have a a variety of choices of what you can offer, which service or product gets a certain focus and how you will market and sell your services and products. Why are you and your team making the specific choices you’re including in your strategic plan?

What do you see for 2012?

How is this part of your overall vision for your whole business?

*If you would like to learn more about the Ability Success Growth approach to strategic planning for your small to mid-sized business, please contact Elli by going to the Contact page or by telephone at +1.781.258.9952. Start your new year with growth in mind!

This post is by guest blogger, Nick Allen of  Spring Ventures, a multi-stage/multi-strategy venture fund that invests in novel information technology and cleantech companies. He has a great deal of experience in clean tech and on Wall Street. He is passionate about the potential for capital in in private and public markets to revolutionize broad sectors of the economy like transportation, energy and the built environment. He is our guest host on this week’s Twitter chat, #kaizenblog. Please join us to explore Collaborative Consumption this Friday at 12pm ET/5pm GMT/9am PT on the Twitter chat, #kaizenblog.

Join us as I guest host on the Twitter chat, #Kaizenblog Friday at 9am PT where we will discuss the very cleanweb concept of collaborative consumption – the massive rise in sharing/trading/renting of goods and services enabled by information technology and peer-to-peer market places. While an unfamiliar term to many, collaborative consumption is part of a widespread cultural shift in how we interact with others, our stuff and our surroundings.

More and more our idea of an ownership society is giving way to one where we value experiences and access over ownership.  No longer do we need to own the vacation home, the car, the CD, or the DVD. We want the experience they provide without the hassle, cost and inefficiencies of ownership. Yesterday’s vertical business practices and centralized distribution systems no longer serve the needs of a culture that is highly open and highly networked. Collaborative consumption flies in the face of traditional consumer culture and replaces it with the efficient and social use of products, services and resources. The result is a sustainable, improved and lower cost experience.

 A few questions to ponder ahead of Friday’s tweet chat…

 What are some examples of collaborative consumption?

 Buildings: There are 260, 80 and 2.4 billion square feet of residential, commercial and storage space respectively in the US. That’s over 1,100 square feet for every man, woman and child in the US. Using this incredible asset base more effectively and efficiently is a key theme of collaborative consumption. Companies like Airbnb and Homeaway are displacing the need for costly and energy intensive hotels by facilitating home share and rental between individuals.

Transportation:  Cars sit idle 95% of the time. The average person spends 35 hours of year in traffic at a cost of $115 billion per year in wasted time and fuel. Peer-to-peer car sharing networks like Zip Car give the benefits of ownership without the hassle.

Goods:  The average power drill is used for a combine total of 20 minutes. Craigslist and EBay were the first to connect buyers and sellers and give life to products otherwise destined for landfill. The greenest of products are the ones that never need to be manufactured in the first place. This idea has been extended more broadly through companies like Rentcycle,  FreeCycle  and ThredUp.

 Finance:  Banks and credit card companies have long controlled the purse strings. Social and peer-to-peer networks are opening up lower cost ways for consumers to get loans and investors to put capital to work by cutting out the costly middleman. Solar Mosaic allows anyone to invest in solar, Angel List is connecting startups with much needed early stage capital, and Lending Club and Prosper are getting consumers better terms then they ever could from their credit card companies.

 How big can this concept be?

As I mentioned above, collaborative consumption spreads across every industry. It’s not just a business practice but also a secular cultural shift that is impacting broad segments of society. And it’s not just happening in the US, but abroad as well. I’m not kidding when I say this is a mutli-trillion dollar movement.

 A NY Times article from early October talked about how barter networks were surging in Greece as economic crisis gripped the nation. This is collaborative consumption replacing a major currency!

 What are the cornerstones of the movement?

 Trust:  Companies and brands have spent enormous amounts of time and money building trust with their customers. We want to know that the products we use will perform as expected and will be safe. The level of trust for collaborative consumption to work is even higher. It’s more personal in nature and challenges our ideas around privacy and ownership. My hope is that we see new services arise that increase trust between parties and further accelerate peer-to-peer.

 Critical Mass:  Convenience drives the modern world. Zipcar works because it’s local and there when I need it. The swapping of goods is very local as well and needs a balance of supply and demand.

 What happens next?

Mobile is going to make collaborative consumption more and more on demand. The ability to use things when we want and how we want is only going to increase. Trust networks built by social media and our online presence is going to further meld with our physical lives allowing greater use, flexibility and efficiency.

 Where can I find more information?

The Mesh, Lisa Gansky

What’s Mine is Yours, Rachel Botsman

http://www.collaborativeconsumption.com/

Skip the whole half-empty or half-full glass.  Economic news is so mixed that it is easy to paint everything with the same paintbrush. Depending on where you are, you could be optimistic that things are looking up or be convinced that the economy will never improve.

However, that’s unlikely to make your strategic plan useful. You can’t write, “It just all stinks” in big letters (even if it does). As you do a SWOT analysis, how can you get a grip on all of the factors that have an impact on your business?

Use a straightforward tool to take a snapshot of your world

That’s all a PESTEL analysis really is. You may already be familiar with this analysis as PEST, STEEP or STEP. Or maybe you do this informally within your SWOT analysis. Given all of the turbulence small to mid-sized businesses have encountered over the last 3 years, staying aware of your business environment can help you prepare for changes in regulations, respond to your customers more readily or identify emerging trends that your business is well suited to capitalize on. And like a lot of my recommendations, keeping it simple and straightforward is best.

What factors are identified in a PESTEL analysis?

Political- This is how the local and national government might intervene with tax policy, laws, trade policies, subsidies for certain industries, industry-specific regulations, infrastructure and political stability.

Economic- It’s a given that whatever economy (or economies) that you do business in is a factor. Other things to identify within the economic factor are interest rates, changes in taxation rates or policies, inflation and currency exchange rates.

Social- Spells out demographics (age, gender, race/ethnicity, location), employee/career expectations and tolerances, population growth and national cultural trends. Keeping track of these may point to customer wants/needs or finding potential markets.

Technological- This factor includes how quickly technology changes and how your customers use technology to buy from you, technological options (mobile device applications, cloud computing, collaborative tools) that make it easier for you to get the work done internally, social media, e-commerce, research and development and manufacturing practices.

Environmental- There is an increasing emphasis on using more environmentally friendly practices and products. It may be important to your business and your industry to keep track of weather or climate changes.

Legal- Awareness of consumer laws, health and safety regulations, employment law, competition laws, international law, electronic data laws and privacy laws among others may be necessary for your business.

Not all of the factors will apply to you

As you go through each area, you and your team will notice that not everything included in each factor is applicable to your business. This is to be expected but still well worth having a complete picture of the business environment in which you are involved.

Highlights questions you need to answer

 Reviewing each factor supports finding what you and your team don’t know. It’s not unusual for a new regulation to be put in place and questions about compliance and potential penalties to come up in discussions with your team. When it comes time to do your SWOT analysis, you will be able to just plug the information into the Opportunities and Threats categories. This snapshot of your world will remove the emotional overtones and make it easier to design your strategic plan and determine which goals to act on.

*If you would like to learn more about this analysis and the Ability Success Growth approach to strategic planning for your small to mid-sized business, please contact Elli by going to the Contact page or by telephone at +1.781.258.9952. Start your new year with growth in mind!

It is my pleasure to introduce you to guest blogger, Joe Sanchez. A great member of the Twitter chat community, #kaizenblog. Joe Sanchez has served as an Army officer and business and information technology consultant in the private, public, and non-profit sectors.  His interests are making a difference in organizations, communities, business, and government via leadership, strategy, communications, marketing, performance management and the effective application of technology to solve problems.

 Risk management is discipline that should be viewed as an enterprise core competency. This means that organizations should review how they manage risk at the project level.

Gartner Group stated @ http://ht.ly/5Ek30 that “a ‘new normal’ business environment is emerging, and most organizations are misaligned in some way.”  The key to succeeding in this new environment is to “balance IT cost, risk and innovation to drive business growth.”

Project risk management plans are developed to mitigate risks to projects.

Usually the risks are identified, assessed on their probability and impact, and mitigation actions identified.  At this level, it’s important to recognize that risk management is not a one-time identification of project risk.  Just as a project’s business case should be a life-cycle document that is regularly updated, the risk management plan should be updated on the same schedule.

Risk management plans should receive inputs from other sources as well like the project’s change management plan.

A change management plan addresses organizational structure, communication, training, and incentive actions, to name a few – all focused on addressing an organizational culture that will enable the achievement of the project’s goals.  Numerous studies have shown that projects often fail, not because of technology issues, but because of cultural ones.  Hence, what are the risks inherent in the change management plan that should be factored into the risk management plan?

Another source of risk management input should be an organization’s lessons learned. 

Ideally, these are in an information repository.  If not there, there may be people in the organization who have had experience with similar projects.  One of the first actions for any project should be to review these lessons learned – ideally for projects that have had a similar scope and scale.  That review may identify potential risks that that project should consider.   Two excellent articles that discuss this approach are “Strategies for Learning from Failure at http://ht.ly/4o6rt and “The Danger of Missed Warnings” at http://ht.ly/4o6ru.  A key point here is that if an organization has a knowledge management / sharing program in place, that project should support how the organization manages and mitigate project risks.

The increasing use of data and analytics is also resulting in management focusing on three categories of data projects:  Generate additional revenue, reduce costs, and mitigate risk.  As organizations develop their analytics capabilities, they should also focus on how to use data to mitigate risks at the project level.

Risk management also drives innovation. 

As Mark Johnson states in “Risk Management and Innovation” at http://ht.ly/36Xeg, “How an organization conceives of risk management will in large part determine how effectively innovation is pursued. … the core competency of the most effective and successful innovators is risk management. … They approach risk management not as a safety procedure but as a learning process.”

Adaptation and learning are the new business imperatives per  http://ht.ly/7MqWi  – more important today that ever before.  This applies to how organizations adapt to managing risk and learning from that adaption.

What are the most frequent risks to projects in the current biz environment?

How would you describe the connection between risk management and change management?

How do you use risk management as an opportunity to learn?How does your organization manage project risk that may be different than what is in today’s post?

What is the relationship between risk management and innovation?

Ready to close 2011 and prepare for 2012?

It’s likely that you’ve already started thinking about how your small to mid-sized business will perform in 2012. Planning is an act of imagining what could be and letting go of what is. Are you coming to the planning meetings full of confidence or dread? Or maybe somewhere in the middle?

Weirdly, any of these attitudes could create a rose-colored strategic plan.

You know this already but how you see the world influences how you act. That’s why a paradigm shift feels so powerful. The very essence is that you have to change how you act.  Our mindsets create expectations, blindspots and beliefs that color what information we absorb and which we ignore or downplay.

• Overconfidence leads to oversights or simply blindness to threats or opportunities. “We don’t have to worry about that”
• Dread leads to analysis paralysis, self-doubt and focus on possible threats. “This has got to work”
• The balancing act gets skewed by the day-to-day duties and not making time to maintain a global perspective. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”

See through a clear lens with these 5 tips

1. Business analysis. Schedule quarterly reviews including a SWOT analysis so you can take a step back and be more objective about how your business is performing.  With the new year almost upon us, you may have to comply with changes in regulations or other variables that require adaptations. To make this easier, use a PESTEL analysis to more clearly identify potential threats and opportunities. Another possible analysis that will illuminate how your business is functioning within economic turbulence is Ansoff’s Strategic Success Model (check out page 3 for chart).

2. Communicate clearly and often. Make time to speak with your team and/or business partner as a group. This avoids wasting time running from one person to another to give the same message. It means you stop and listen to what they are actually saying. This is  your opportunity to gauge the morale of your organization as well as getting information for the business analyses. Even a 5-15 minute group meeting can be very productive when you keep it focused on 1-2 topics and schedule follow ups when issues need more attention.

3. Mentors, coaches, mastermind groups and/or trusted confidant. No matter the size of your organization, it helps to keep your head clear. As a leader, it is important to have a safe place to sort out your thoughts and feelings. Mentors, coaches, mastermind groups and/or a trusted confidant gives you that space so you can interact with your employees, vendors and customers effectively.

4. Know the difference between “nice-to-have” and “must-haves”. Sometimes strategic plans become wish lists. While taking audacious ideas and setting them as targets is desirable, it is also crucial to keep your “bread-and-butter” targets active. You can use the things that produce a steady revenue stream as a means to invest in your next “nice-to-have”. The tried and true parts of your business are the foundation. Be aware of how much energy and resources are needed for your newest offering so you can plan for them appropriately.

5. Take care of yourself. Thinking and the ability to keep emotions in check deteriorate when we don’t eat healthy foods or get enough sleep. Lack of sleep alone can lower your cognitive abilities. When we feel run down, it’s tempting to go with what makes us feel good. Exercise or just simply moving more is a great way to clear your mind so you can cope better.

Avoid the rose-tinted strategic plan.

The willingness to seek accurate information and use it to create your strategic plan will pay off. It all starts with your desire and commitment to see your business as it truly is.

 What tips would you add?