What are the givens in your business? Are there things about your business that seem so definite and unchangeable?

I’ve been reading Killing Giants:10 Strategies To Topple the Goliath In Your Industry. It’s a very engaging read by my friend, Stephen Denny and the strategies he describes in the book run the gamut from gutsy to deceptively easy. Some of you may be considering taking a run at the giant in your industry. Others of  you may be wondering if you could just increase your market share and work around the giant. However, to move to the next stage in the business cycle, it’s important to know your capabilities, your limitations and the truth.

One theme that jumped out at me in Denny’s book was his question about what is a given and if it is constantly true. So, for you, are the givens really true in your business? Now that we’re entering a new quarter of the year, it’s a good time to review your strategic plan. Basically, check to see if you and your business are progressing well.

You’ve heard the phrase, “given the givens”? We believe certain things are true. Somehow they are immutable. What if they are not true? Maybe the givens are only partly true? Critical thinking is an important skill here. Imagine what would happen if you asked yourself what is true about your business. For example, who are your real clients? Sometimes small business owners are aiming for one type of client but they are actually paid by another. I’ll use my own business as an example. I thought I worked with entrepreneurs with small businesses. I really work with established small business owners who are transitioning from one stage of growth to the next stage in the business cycle..

 Another given people cite during planning sessions is the economic environment. It could be regional, national or even global. Certainly with the recent recession, memories are long. However, what is true about the economy you participate in? Even in the darkest days, there are businesses and industries who thrive and the opposite can be true when things are bullish.

And while we’re considering the  larger economic question, there is also being clear on what revenue streams are givens. What  really makes money for your company? Sometimes we believe that something is our primary moneymaker. Until you actually stop and look at all of your numbers and ask the question, you could easily assume something is set in stone.

A given is simply that…something we believe is set in stone. Maybe there are things about your competitors that aren’t true. Maybe there is something about you that’s not true. But you won’t know until you ask.

What are some givens that you believe need to be challenged?

You know you don’t grow your small business alone but so many of us get caught up in questioning how to ask for help. Truth be told, I’m just as guilty as anyone else. In a conversation with a friend and colleague, he asked me why professional women have a hard time asking for help. After thinking about it, I came away wondering if it is less about gender and more about our perception of our own competence and ability to solve problems.

It seems like you’re walking on a tightrope. How much do you say? How do you say it? There is a perception that if you show a weakness, people will perceive you as incompetent or that your business is fly-by-night. So that presents a dilemma. How do you ask for help without appearing weak?

We don’t know everything and we are not good at everything. There, it’s been said. We’re not superhuman.

It’s time to take advantage of our network. Is it a treasure trove when you need help with something? Sometimes our network inspires us because we spend time with people we aspire to emulate. Sometimes our network provides us with support when we share common experiences. Our networks also provide us with resources we aren’t aware of or have forgotten.

We create communities rich in connection. When we connect with others, we want to know what they think about, feel about, struggle with and celebrate. Typically, this is a reciprocal relationship. Think about the last time you were meeting people at a networking event. Who smiled at you? With whom did you laugh? Who did you really want to schedule coffee with right away? Within your existing network, who makes you feel good? My friend, Kate is one of those people for me. I don’t have to say a word about my business and I walk away feeling like a million bucks.

What would happen if you asked that person for help? It could be you need a referral for a virtual assistant, a lead on new clients, to hire additional staff or ask for business. Sometimes you need a simple sounding board or a good laugh.

So, what would happen?

What do you think gets in the way of asking for help?

*For more information like this live, check out my no cost webinar, “Achieving the CEO Mindset For Small Business Success” Thursday, March 31st, 7 pm BST/2pm ET. For more information and to register, go to Programs

As I read today’s SmartBrief On Leadership, I came across the results of their weekly poll. The survey question was “How closely do you think you will follow your strategic plan this year?” The results were thought provoking.

According to the poll:

We’ll generally follow the plan but expect a few major deviations   76.15%

We’ll follow it to the letter    11.62%

We may do a few things on the plan but generally ignore it and do something else   9.54%

We don’t follow it at all   2.68%

Is this happening in your small business too?

At the end of last year and the beginning of this year, many small business owners started thinking about what they wanted their business to accomplish in 2011. So, if we, like most small business owners, got the bones of our strategic plan put together. The three questions most associated with the strategic planning process are

1. Where are we now?

2. Where are we going?

3. How are we going to get there?

So you sat down and probably reviewed your organization’s overall mission, values or principles and what you envisioned for the year.  You probably did parts or all of a SWOT analysis. After this, you noted what big goal you’d love to celebrate on December 31st. More than likely, you identified what makes your organization special or even the specific advantage in the marketplace. You probably finished off with setting goals that will make these great aspirations reality.

So, if you went to all of this trouble, why wouldn’t you follow your plan?

There are a variety of reasons why people don’t follow their plans. For some companies, the strategic planning process was an exercise in lip service. For others, they scare themselves with their aspirations and shy away from making these dreams into reality. Sometimes things  happen (natural disasters, personal crises, major market shifts, etc) that make the plan irrelevant.

The strangest number in the poll above is 11.62%. Why do so few business leaders actually follow their strategic plan? You have to wonder what is really happening in the planning process. On the face of it, it seems like a colossal waste of time to go through the whole process and then relegate the plan to a shelf somewhere.

What’s the deal?

Why do you think strategic plans are not followed?

*For more information like this live, check out my no cost webinar, “Achieving the CEO Mindset For Small Business Success” Thursday, March 31st, 7 pm BST/2pm ET. For more information and to register, go to Programs

When you were a kid and just going out the door, did your mom ask you “where are you going?” How did you answer? Did you say “nowhere” or “just up the street” or maybe even say the name of one of your friends? You had an idea of where you wanted to go when you walked out the door.

So what about your small business?

When you’ve been in business for a while, you know essentially where you going. There is a purpose to your business, right? Have you asked yourself recently, “where are you going?”

All businesses evolve over time. Sometimes by choice, sometimes by circumstance.  The people running them learn more about customer’s needs and wants or technology enables something to exist that couldn’t exist before. Someone comes up with an innovative product or system. The recent recession and economic recovery has caused some businesses to go back to their roots while other businesses are reinventing themselves.

All evolution.

With so much change, it ‘s easy to lose your True North.

Your business vision is your True North. How did you want your business to affect the world? One client I coached is committed to making it easy to communicate electronically. Another client sees her wealth management business as a tool for reliable, no stress retirements. For your small business, your vision provides the framework for the types of actions you take, the people you hire and how you stay motivated. It comes from your value system. Your vision is just over the horizon waiting for you.

To review your vision, ask yourself these questions:

1. What are your top 3 values right now?

2. What is the most important thing you want your business to accomplish and why?

3. How aligned are your current business goals with your business vision?

So, where are you going?

*For more information like this live, check out my complementary teleclass, “How To Use the CEO Mindset For Small Business Success” Thursday March 31st, 7 pm GMT/3pm ET

It’s always interesting asking small business owners to imagine themselves with different titles and words. In a recent in-person presentation about the CEO Mindset, I asked what words or phrases mentioned came to mind in reference to “CEO”:

• Chief executive officer          
• Buck stops here          
• Boss                     
• Money                                          
• Big                                   
• Big desk
• Big company 
• Coordinator                                                 
• Most responsible       
• Overseer
• Headaches                             
• Me                                          
• Mentor                
• Out of touch                              
• Working too many hours                         
• Them                                      
• Creative Force                                                    
• Leader

 So, what would Twitter folk say? Granted I was asking my followers so it’s not entirely random. However, you never know who is on and if they see what’s in your stream.

Barney Austen: Leader, Driving Force

Derek Edmond: Leader & vision

Celtic Seas: Most important role in an organization with or without a board

Gnosis Arts: leader, chief stakeholder

What does it mean to act as if you are the CEO of your small business?   With all of the different models of how to be a CEO, it make sense that some small business owners feel ambivalent about embracing or rejecting the title as CEO. If you look at larger corporations, you can see everything from criminal to inspirational. However, leading a small business is much more intimate. It is as likely that you will use your technical expertise while you are monitoring the greater organizational needs in any given day.

How about you? What words do you associate with the title of CEO?

What would happen if you chose to consider yourself as CEO of your small business?

*For more information like this live, check out my complementary teleclass, “How To Use the CEO Mindset For Small Business Success” Tuesday March 1st, 7 pm ET/4pm PT

Maybe you’re a little bored, a little itchy or exasperated with your busines lately. You often hear small business owners talk about going to the next level. What does this mean exactly? And what will happen if you do grow in size, sophistication or both?

If you had a crystal ball, what would your business look like in 1 year?

Part of what makes us ready for the next stage is having a vision. This vision does feed into our business’ basic mission. That doesn’t change. Remember your Hedgehog Concept? As you think about the new kind of customer you want to attract or the new line of services or products you’re designing, daydream what you would be doing differently.

As you fill in the details of your daydream, this becomes the outline of your strategic plan for the coming year. Put it writing. Make it real for yourself. This is where you might notice some internal thoughts, beliefs or feelings growing in intensity.

What could get in the way of going to the next stage of your business? Your assumptions.

It’s that combination of being so excited about doing something you aspire to and feeling nervous about making it actually happen. What are your assumptions? For some people, it is about being expected to be extraordinary, give up more time out of an already demanding schedule or becoming someone you are not. For others, they assume everything will be okay and the changes will be minimal. It’s more likely somewhere in the middle.

Challenge your assumptions

• What do you really want?
• Which skills do you need to augment?
• What is so important about taking your business to its next stage?
• What would happen if your business stayed the same as it is now?

And an equally important question…

In a recent interview on Entrepreneur.com, Scott Eblin asked a crucial question for this process, “What is it that only I can do?” This question is essential for small business owners as they are often an integral part of the work of the business. When you increase the size, change business structure or work with a more preferred client, this makes different demands on the business owner. You can’t be as casual as in the startup days. More administrative tasks will take up your attention and time. You may find you need to conract certain jobs that you used to do or even hire people to do those jobs. Typically systems need to be formalized across the organization. For example, just this week I was talking with a client about his options for managing business development projects. Right now they are in his head but he’s finding that he needs to delegate some of the project management tasks to others in his organization.

What do you need to do to be ready for the next stage of your business?

*For more information like this live, check out my complementary teleclass, “How To Use the CEO Mindset For Small Business Success” Tuesday February 22, 7 pm ET

When you think about yourself as a small business owner, do you think of yourself as the chief executive officer of your organization? Surprisingly for many, the thought just doesn’t even enter their minds. The strangest part of this is that the responsibilities are very similar.  Sure the scale of the business is different but take a moment to think. What do you really do as leader of your company?

 Take a look at this comparison and see if it sounds familiar:

 Still think you’re not a CEO?

For some people, it feels too grandiose. Maybe you’re a sole proprietor or it just sounds like it ought to be in a boardroom of a Fortune 500 company. That would be a mistake! Businesses succeed when there is someone dedicated to planning and executing the business goals. Sure, there aren’t always other managers that will implement your strategy. And sometimes the business owner has to act as technical expert.

It’s not about the size of your organization.

Nope, it’s not about size or even your business structure. It’s not even about putting those three letters under your name. It’s about having the CEO Mindset. Small business owners who realize that they are more than simply the worker bee are better positioned for challenges and opportunities.

There three things that they do well:

1.  They understand and accept that their business is a separate entity.
2. They make time to imagine and plan for the next quarter, the next six months, 1 year or beyond.
3. They take care of themselves with solid advisors, healthy diet and rest.

How many of these things are you already doing?

You sure you’re not a CEO?

The beauty of #kaizenblog is how people engage with ideas. Sometimes an idea bubbles up during the conversation and a topic becomes identified. This past week, the topic of “creating demand” was suggested. It came out of a side conversation about the perception of being “sales-y” or pushy. Interestingly, there was a post by Mairead Kelly on Bloggertone along this same theme.

Creating Demand=Smarmy, pushy sales style?

I hear this dilemma from the micro-small businesses. They worry that they are lacking integrity if they ask someone for their business. One of the questions that really muddies the sales message is the offer to “help.” Okay, maybe it’s me and I’m supposed to assume that the help being offered has a price tag. However, it just feels like a mixed message. Are you offering your help or are you selling to me?

Creating demand is about creating want?

Apple has a way of making people want their gadgets. How many iPhones, iPads and iPods do you see in a given day? Do we need these things? Nope but we want them. Without the resources and mythology of Apple, sole proprietors and other small business owners have to discover other ways to get people curious and wanting what they offer. Some people will tell you that you have to develop a freemium (a product that has no cost like a white  paper, podcast or video that you give away). Other advice will tell you that you have to engage in social media or use public speaking to communicate with your customer. Other people will recommend that you research a market and develop a product or service that acts as an aspirin. Then there is always ploys like “limited time offer” or “only X allowed per customer”. Do you follow this person’s advice?

Swirling emotions, whirling thoughts

Between the distaste and worry that you might sound like a cheesy, stereotypical salesperson and which tools to choose from, it is easy to wonder about the process of creating demand. Clearly, you need customers or you don’t have a business. You’ve put a lot of thought into what you offer and it does provide a valuable solution.

But is creating demand really a cynical exercise that business owners must do? Or is it something else entirely?

*Join us for the Twitter chat, #kaizenblog, as we discuss “Creating Demand: Selling To People or Cynical Exercise?” this Friday at 12pm ET/5pm GMT/9am PT

Perhaps in Ireland doom and gloom is just too easy. Sure the Celtic Tiger is long gone, the government is a mess and the banks, well, I suppose the least said the better. However,  I keep coming back to the same thought…what is really going on with small business?

So does Ronan Lyons have it right? He lists “Eleven Reasons To be Cheerful” about the Irish economy. That’s all well and good but what how can you tell on the ground? Where do the small businesses fit in and what are their expectations? If you can believe the Business + Leadership article, less companies are going bust but then in Business World, there is an article about a business survey identifying that Irish business owners have a variety of attitudes that trend to pessimistic.

Where does entrepreneurship fit into this? Lyons didn’t list this in his eleven reasons to be cheerful. It makes one wonder if Irish entrepreneurship is completely separated from small business. It is part and parcel of being entrepreneurial to be optimistic and work towards a better future. Sometimes small business owners get caught up in the day to day, particularly if it involves survival. When you get caught up in the minutiae, it can undermine your attitude, your motivation and your ideals.

Most business owners are working for something beyond the money. Some are working to make sure that they and their families have financial security. Others are seeking to make sure others have a need met. There are other business owners who are motivated to provide something luxurious or pleasuable. This is where it is more than just about the money. These are the ideals that can be hard to keep in mind when the future is looking bleak.

So could 2011 be the year that Ireland can become prosperous and cheerful? It depends on where you are in the economy. Sure various industries recover at different speeds but does size matter? It can since larger organizations can have resources to ride out problems. When a small business has to let go of employees, it is usually someone the business owner knows. Asking employees to take on more work but with no pay rises can be taxing.

So do Irish small business owners have reasons to be cheerful?

Could there be a mindset shift happening and small business is missing out?

The recent horrible shooting in Tucson, Arizona and the subsequent questions asked by the media and public figures about language got me thinking about the words we use in our business conversations. There are so many analogies and words we use to describe the competitive nature of business. There is a segment of business who see the practice of planning and strategizing as if they are planning to go to war with their competitors.

Is this true for small business? Is it really true for any size business? Let’s be very clear…if you are in business, you are in competition with someone. In some industries, this competition is fierce and other companies will exploit any weakness you may have. But is this war?

War includes carnage and destruction. Read books like On Killing by Dave Grossman or All Quiet On the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque to get a better picture of what war entails. When you talk about your market or your competitors, are you seeking to destroy them or just beat them? Leaving a trail of destruction seems to be antithetical to running an ethical business. Yes, I know not everyone has the same value system but destruction? This is a desired result?

Language makes a difference. Take for example, the word, target. If you look at most of the definitions for this word, it involves something to aim a weapon at or hunting something or someone. We often describe our most ideal clients as our target market. Are we really hunting them? Are we aiming and shooting something at them? Even the word, strategy, has military connotations primarily. So, if you are considering that business is really some masked war we wage upon each other, then the way you will implement your business plan is a series of attacks on your competitors and preferred clients.

There is a growing movement within business that is seeking an alternative. Instead of targeting their ideal customer as a form of prey, businesses are seeking to develop relationships. Recent sales training adaptations focus on listening to your prospect and answering their concerns. Even some businesses are seeking collaborative relationships (not mergers) with their colleagues. Dan Pink in Drive and his other work focuses on our desires for autonomy, meaning and purpose. Seth Godin is encouraging us to start our own Tribe. People are not willing to tolerate the old way of “command and control type” of leadership in business organizations. This style is  necessary in military organizations but they have a completely different mission than a business.

Language matters. I talk about this a lot and I have focused mainly on how we talk to ourselves. However, it is time to  think about how we talk about our businesses, our goals, how we want to achieve them and our competitors overall. What would happen if you changed your use of “target market” to “desired market”? Pay attention to how you talk about the position of your business, your competitors and your customers. Is your lanaguge action-oriented in a combative way or a competitive way? Are there words worth keeping?

There is nothing wrong with being highly competitive! If you want your business to be successful, it is important to get into action and work hard using highly effective practices and the best technology you can afford. Maybe it’s more of the idea of “playing hard and playing to win.” The trouble with taking a combative stance with your competitors and your customers is that you bring that style into every aspect of your life. Being on guard becomes a habit in speech and behavior.

What words do you find in your business vocabulary?

What happens if we reject the “business is war mentality” and think about competition in a different way?