Employees – Earn more – be worth more, break the rules

MN Employees: Do you want more money and a bigger salary or paycheck?

Teach yourself and your boss why you should be paid more.

The epic tale of the salesperson and the website that would not sell

I recently spoke to a salesperson for a global company.  His company still has not entered the Internet age.  They have a website, but they really don’t see the value in having people come to it, because they have no search engine optimization and no keywords – in other words, when you search for their service on google, they are NOWHERE to be found.  This means all the potential new customers go somewhere else.

Now, I told this salesperson that he needs to own responsibility to fix this problem.  He wasn’t convinced, so I asked him, how much would it be worth in additional sales?  He conservatively answered in the high 6 figures.  Needless to say if he made all these sales himself, it would mean a significant income boost for him also.

So then, the next question is, how much for search engine optimization?  Conservative estimates are in the three to four figure range.

So, um, let’s see, for thousands of dollars, he can receive a million dollar benefit? Or possibly more?

I told him that what he needs to do is own the responsibility for the website marketing in exchange for the leads.

Out of that, he could offer to give the additional sales to the other people on his sales force. Remember, we’re talking about him personally investing his own money in the marketing and promotion of the website for a 6 figure payoff.  If he wanted to, he could sell those leads to other sales people or take a percentage as a fee for managing the website.

But again, why not? Look at the math.  It’s worth it to him to start doing this immediately.

Will there be some challenges to convince his managers to let him take responsibility of the website? Probably. However, he’s a salesperson for pete’s sake. He needs to sell the benefits, which include the company no longer has to pay for a website that they really don’t care about and haven’t gotten results from.  They only care about sales, which is what his job is.  That’s what he offers.  “You give me control of the website, I’ll give you more sales.” Period.

It’s called aligning to common interests in sales-speak.

Now forget about him, let’s talk about you.  What do you bring that is of immediate value to yourself and to your company?  What do you bring to your customers?  Can you start bringing in more clients?  Would your company appreciate it? Would they appreciate it enough to pay you more?

If not, then would your company’s competition appreciate it more? IE would they appreciate it enough to pay you?  Maybe you’re working for the wrong company.

Never forget there’s more companies to work at than there are people like you who bring real value.

Learn more about leadership and value at http://srkinc.com and learn about making a difference at http://quantumcommonwealth.com

Alan Hill

(612) 819-1803

The Gift Of Adversity – Executive Leadership Trainer Shows You How

Business Leaders: Are you worried about the economic impact on your business?

Management Trainers: Is this your best opportunity to create value for your company?

“To whom much is given, much will be expected”

I always loved that verse in the bible.  But as you will see, I have a MUCH different take on it.

Most of us tend to think it implies those who have all the benefits of a wealthy income and lifestyle have an obligation to give back.  This is not a bad idea.  Trusting in someone to reach down to those who are disadvantaged is a great idea.

But what if you’ve not been given all the advantages?  What if you’ve only been given dis-advantages… what can be expected of you?

I have been given much adversity – how much will be expected of me?

Likewise, you may be experiencing some adversity in your business or work.  How much is going to be expected of you?

Here’s the point: What are you learning?  Some may learn “that which does not kill us, makes us stronger’.  That’s a great lesson, especially given some of the hubris of our last economic boom in America.

It’s also true that we learn a lot of value… real value… when challenged by adversity.  This might be expected of you to help your company during this economic downturn.

But what happens when you’re given more than just a little adversity?  Or perhaps more adversity than your peers?  What then will be expected of you?  How much more could be asked of someone in those circumstances?  Yet still, it rings out… “To whom much is given… much will be expected”

For me, a part of that answer is in teaching others to recognize the value of adversity.  To do more than just learn from challenge and change, but to go the extra mile and actively seek it out.  Welcome adversity and change.  A question I ask myself is: ‘How much a better person would I be if a little adversity is beneficial?”  And then “how much better would I be if there were more adversity?” and finally I ask myself “How much better would I be to others if I learned from THEIR mistakes and adversity, not just my own?”

Ultimately, “How much better would I be to the world if I taught this perspective to others… to learn from others mistakes and challenges as well as my own?”

What would the world be like in 10 years? 20 years? 50 years?

I have a lot to teach from my adversity.  What do you have to teach from yours?

Alan Hill

612) 819-1803

http://srkinc.com

http://quantumcommonwealth.com

Minnesota Leaders – Now you can easily teach teams to solve problems

MN Executive Coach reveals how to solve system problems

Did you know your business is a series of systems … all linked together?

This troubleshooting process allows you to perform each step in isolation.  Oftentimes problems in systems are intermittent, which may trick you into believing that you’ve solved the problem only to have it reappear later.

Requirements:

This process requires you have a system diagram of all component parts or at least a complete understanding of the parts of the overall system and how they integrate together.

You will also need an escalation list of people, teams, departments that are responsible for systems connected to yours.

Process

C – Confirm

I – Isolate

R – Resolve or attempt to resolve

V – Verify resolution has solved the problem

E – Escalate to another if resolution process fails

Confirm – This step asks you to ensure you can recreate the problem consistently. Once you can recreate the problem consistently you can more readily isolate (the next step).

Isolate – This step requires the system diagram.  Systems are usually designed in a linear or ‘chain link’ fashion, which means each component is linked to (or dependent upon) 1 or 2 other components before it.  This uses the old ‘garbage in-garbage out’ idea – if you’re having trouble with the output of a particular component, look at the components that are connected before that component and also component in question.

One easy way to perform this step is to temporarily replace the component or modify the procedure and then re-confirm the problem (the previous step) disappeared.

In human systems you can ask the person to ‘imagine… for the sake of argument…’ an alternative idea, feeling, response or thought.  This allows the person to ‘try on’ or ‘swap out’ one thought, feeling or response for another.

Resolve – Once you are sure you’ve found the root cause, replace the faulty component or procedure.  In business systems, this might mean you improve, change or delete the procedure.  In human systems ask the person to try a 30 day experiment – where they agree to act as if this new thought, feeling or response is a normal response.  The agreement is after 30 days if they don’t like the feedback they get from the new behavior then they can go back to the ‘old’ way of doing things.

Verify – This step is important and overlooked.  It’s more than just rebooting the system or declaring the ‘problem is solved’.  It includes monitoring for a period of time to ensure the system is stable.  If the system is not stable, you may either go back to the Confirm step or Escalate (the next step).

Escalate – Systems operate within systems – which means they have isolated inputs and outputs.  Therefore the entire system may be getting an input that needs to be fixed.  Computer systems may be getting incorrect data from a database.  Human systems may be getting bad information.  If the source of the fault is outside of the system, then escalate using the escalation list.

This process is a simple method for continuous business improvement.  You easily implement this by teaching it to your team with instructions to place blame on the process, not the people.  Teach them to use this method everytime there is an irate customer, a product delay or other business problem.

Here’s a secret, you don’t have to wait until something is broken to use this process and improve things.

Check us out at http://quantumcommonwealth.com for more great ways we can help you grow your business.

Work Life Balance (2 of 2) – MN Leadership Coach Shows How!

MN Business Owners - Can you be a Great Leader And Have A Life Too?

 

Work Life Balance Part 2 of 2

Years ago when I was in the IT field, I had just proposed a large nationwide email system implementation project to the CEO of a major construction company.  There were clear benefits to improving communication in his company, and at the time (late 90’s) the case for email had already been well proven, or so I had thought.

 

During the discussion the CEO hesitated.  When I inquired about his concerns, he told me something that I have found very insightful and eerily predictive of the way technology robs us of our time and distorts the supposed work life balance everyone seems to desperately crave.

 

Before I divulge what he said, I want to ask you if you’ve noticed manager level people with blackberries all text emailing back and forth.  If you ask them, as I have, who they are communicating with, it’s not their family, its their team.  Why?  It’s usually to keep informed on something that’s going on, or even in some cases, to make sure nothing is going on.  What does this say about that managers’ ability to have trust and confidence in their team?  What does this say about how they see their role in the company?  Are they a babysitter?

This CEO had commented that he wasn’t sure his company was ready for email, because he spent a lot of energy creating a company culture of self-reliance, of people who could be trusted and counted on to do their job and make the right decisions and were relied upon to do so.  His concern was that with email it’s far too easy to cc: your boss on any particular email. 

 

Once you start down that slippery slope as a company, you’re not too far away from getting the boss’s opinion before you make a decision.  From there, you’d better be waiting for the boss to get back to you on any decision.  So what do you do when the boss is away?  Whew!  Good thing someone invented Blackberries!  Now no matter where the boss is, home, family, flying, whatever, we can easily and confidently contact them. 

 

 

It would be better for us as a society and as companies that we have technology to instill backbones in our teams.  Then we’d have to change our focus from having strong leaders to having strong followers.  Perhaps we put autoresponders on all manager’s emails that say ‘I’m out of the office, you’re entrusted with this decision, what do you think is best? What do you believe I’d decide?”

 

Imagine a manager with a team that respects their family time on the weekend and does not interrupt them.  Imagine this team carefully considering what the manager would want in a particular decision and act accordingly.  What kind of powerful companies would we have then?

 

The essence of leadership is not an ability to make decisions.  Nor is it actions, nor is it vision, mission or influence.  The essence of leadership is to make leaders out of followers.  This is how leaders create balance, for themselves, their team, their customers, their company and their community.

 

Alan Hill is a business and executive leadership coach in Minneapolis, Minnesota with ActionCOACH, the world’s number one coaching company.  If you would like to learn more about him or to contact him for a private consultation, check out his website at http://actioncoach.com/alanhill 

Minneapolis Business Leaders, Become a Transformational Leader

Labor Dimensions

Leadership Dimensions

Multi-Dimensional Thinking

Develop instant leadership skills by asking great questions

Use the Transformation Matrix and become a transformational leader

 

Transforming from a manager or technician to a leader requires changing from having great answers to having great questions.  Questions designed to make your team think and inspire them to reach beyond the obvious answers.

 

I remember working with a CEO of a national construction firm.  During an initial meeting with a consulting group discussing ways to transform the company, the consultants made the mistake of stating ‘cheaper faster or better, you get control of your choice of two, we control the other one’.  The CEO ended the meeting rather abruptly by emphatically stating that in order to compete in his marketplace, his customer was demanding cheaper, faster, better AND more – and in order for him to be competitive he needed consultants ready to help him achieve improvements in all areas.

 

The simple solution for this CEO was to challenge his team to change how they perform their work to achieve gains in all areas – Cost (cheaper), Productivity (faster), Quality (better) and Capability (more).  These dimensions are the focus of technicians, engineers and skilled labor.  By creating trade-offs in these dimensions they create a balance of speed, performance, quality and capability.  What labor can’t do is achieve gains in all dimensions.

 

Leaders focus their attention in other dimensions.  Referred to as the ‘5 W’s of a leader; Who, What, When, Where, Why and how are the key dimensions great leaders relate to when considering any challenge or opportunity (see chart).  A transformational leader is able to combine these dimensions together to get powerful results.

 

Let’s say your team shows you a competitor’s new product that is significantly cheaper than yours.  Your team advises you that in order to match this, you’ll need to either decrease the quality or features or both and are asking for your decision.  What do you do?

 

Look at the combined chart.  Now you can ask transformation-based questions that cause your team’s thinking to expand.  Can you change ‘who” your customers are?  Can you change ‘where’ you get the raw materials in order to decrease your costs?  “What” additions can you incorporate into the product to increase the value?  “What” other uses are available for your product?  Can you change ‘how’ you manufacture the product by using different materials (plastic instead of steel)?  Can you change ‘where’ you manufacture the product – producing it on the customers premises – eliminating shipping and packaging costs? 

 

Using this matrix will allow you to lead your team to greater achievement in your marketplace.  Teaching this matrix to your employees and systematizing it’s use throughout your company will create a sustainable competitive advantage through continued innovation, which will turn your company into a transformational company.

 

Alan Hill is a business and executive coach in Minneapolis, Minnesota with ActionCOACH, the world’s number one business coaching company.  If you would like to learn more about him or to contact him for a private consultation, check out his website at http://actioncoach.com/alanhill  

MN CEO’s: Tired of IT Project Expenses?

Minnesota CEO’s –  change the employement game for your employees to bring more value

 

Problem: Frustrated, unappreciated technical talent that doesn’t understand their value.

Solution: Treat them like the talent they are, like top producing movie stars.

 

I believe that the troublemakers are the ones that bring opportunity.  Someone who’s frustrated in their work is frustrated because they believe it can and should be better – they just may not be able to express the desired change in a way that others are able to understand and act upon.  For example, I heard the story of a manager at Sun who many years ago complained to the owner that he was frustrated and leaving.  The owner asked exactly what he felt needed to change and received quite an earful.  The owner told him something to the effect of ‘looks like you have a big job to do implementing these changes, you’d better get busy’.  The owner knew how to change the frustration into action.

 

The story about the coming to a particularly ugly head of the bitter dispute between network admin Terry Childs and his managers (see http://www.cio.com/article/444526/Tech_Workers_Smoldering_Discontent), is about a frustrated employee and a supposed ‘incompetent boss’.  I believe the question is how to change the rules of employment so as to prevent frustration.  This is a similar situation in many ways to the labor movement in the US that created unions.  Employees felt they were being taken advantage of and so they unionized in order to create a better work environment for themselves.  Today technology workers are experiencing similar frustrations yet they reject the notion of unionizing, they perceive themselves as different from the ‘union mentality’.

 

Where then, is a workable solution to this quandary?  In the entertainment industry there are talent scouts – they ‘lock up’ the best talent by securing an exclusive representation agreement.  Interestingly enough, the way top talent is ‘sold’ is by reputation and by potential draw power, i.e. this star has a phenomenal box office draw and the movie will make you more than what you pay them.  Imagine bringing this model to the ‘frustrated tech industry’.  

 

If I were a recruiter I could package up a superstar team of the best database analyst, best web developer and the best Project Manager etc., pick a target company and ‘sell’ them.  The pitch is this team is able to get the job completed in ½ the time because they already have the experience and code components ready to go.  Now I’m selling the best solution economically, not just a body or a team.  Repeat this process for an entire IT shop – now IT workers are finally focused on delivering real hard dollar business benefits instead of chattering on and on about buying more IT hardware for no clear or understandable purpose.  They are finally able to show they are worth more than they are being paid. 

 

However, just like in the entertainment industry, if an entertainer doesn’t want to do the project then they don’t take the gig.   It’s up to the talent scouts to find the best replacement.  No more frustration for the IT worker, they pick the companies they want to work for. 

Smart IT talent would understand that the code they create is theirs to license out to their employer.  As they grow their experience they also grow their application base.  They can then offer reusable components and start selling those to other companies.  This would have to be negotiated, hence the value of the talent scout to the formerly frustrated IT worker. 

 

For example, a company may want to expand internationally.  They turn to their IT department managers and hear a bunch of IT speak on language conversions, database redundancy and security, etc.  The CEO turns to the talent scout who says ‘yes, I have a team that’s developed international applications and they have most of the application you need already designed and coded.  It will take them less than 3 months to deploy (one business quarter)”.  “Oh, yes, this team already works for you on contract but I own the rights to them and their code’.  Would you like me to have them move forward with this new project?”

 

Same thing for support teams.  Clearly identify how they are providing more value than they are charging in the form of their paycheck.  These people are now sold as an insurance policy against downtime.  Keep metrics on their downtime and return to service metrics – now when the discussion comes to ‘lets make support cheaper’ you have a value metric.  Team A has this downtime metric, Team B has another downtime metric. Cheaper equals this much more additional downtime risk.  Is your business ready to assume that additional risk?   It also gives a competition metric for the support team. How well do they stack up against global support?  What areas do they need to improve upon?  How much have they improved system uptime?  Is that trend increasing or decreasing? What about new systems, are they deployed faster and more stable? 

 

Compare this to the revenue this system brings in.  Now business owners and managers have a way to appropriately size support.  High revenue systems get high value support and less downtime risk.  Low revenue systems get low cost support and take on more downtime risk.

 

As these support teams create innovative support solutions, automated support tools and a knowledge base, these are owned by the team, not the company.  This would require a talent scout to negotiate on their behalf so that the value is retained by the team. 

 

Business owners would finally be able to quantify the value of their IT team and they’d be able to finally have an IT group focused on creating real business value.

 

Really smart companies would lock up the rights on their own talent before they ‘unionized’ by signing exclusive representation agreements with talent scouts.  Imagine your Human Resources team out there ‘locking up’ the rights to the top IT talent.  Not just hiring them but getting exclusive representation rights (yes, a contract). 

 

Bottom line, IT workers are not able to sell their value.  It’s why they need someone to negotiate on their behalf. 

 

Alan Hill is a business and executive coach in Minneapolis, Minnesota with ActionCOACH, the world’s number one business coaching company.  If you would like to learn more about him or to contact him for a private consultation, check out his website at http://actioncoach.com/alanhill

Are You Ready to Have a Values Based Business?

 

As an executive coach I have a fun exercise that I walk business owners through.

First we define their personal, business customer and employee values.  This helps them build a sense of community.

 

Then I twist it on them and ask them where is the business system that supports that value.  After the blank look I press further and ask, “Well, it says here you’re a fun company, where is your system for fun… your ‘fun’ system”?  “I see your accounting system, your payroll system, your customer tracking system, but I don’t see a fun system.  How then do you ensure your business is living the values you represent?”  As an aside, this gets really fun when customers have list ‘hard work’ as a corporate value.  “Really? Well where is your system that makes sure work is as hard as possible?”

 

I worked through this exercise with a local chiropractor.  He actually listed fun as a company value.  After we discussed it, I asked him to imagine having a ‘virtual bucket’ of fun things to do.  I told him he was responsible for defining what ‘fun’ is and documenting that for his company.  His employees are responsible for filling up this bucket with items: prizes, coupons from local merchants, free meals at restaurants, etc.  And since we’re working on creating a business that works without him, his employees are primarily responsible for rewarding fellow team members and customers whenever they see something fun happen. 

 

At that point I told him he’d then be able to keep metrics on exactly who is creating fun in the workplace.  Tracking that against his revenue increases will allow him to measure the difference of having values based systems means to his business.

 

The point is, when you are ready to have a values based business you have to design and create value systems that ensure those values are being performed.  It’s not about having a values statement that you hang on the wall and hope customers and employees ‘get it’.  Business owners that succeed are willing to create the values they want and systemize it so those values continue without the owner being present.

 

If you’d like a complimentary values worksheet, contact me.  It could begin to make the difference between having a values statement and a values based organization.

 

Alan Hill is a business and executive coach in Minneapolis, Minnesota with ActionCOACH, the world’s number one business coaching company.  If you would like to learn more about him or to contact him for a private consultation, check out his website at http://actioncoach.com/alanhill.

 

Employee Leadership Training Designed to Create Experienced Employees

Where have all the leaders gone? Employee leaders get results!

They haven’t been given permission to become leaders yet.

Lee Iacocca’s book about where have all the great leaders gone made me remember my time in corporate as I created mentoring systems – systems designed to create talented, experienced employees. One of the things I realized is people need permission in the United States. It’s in our culture. We’re taught in school to follow rules, wait for permission, etc. Then that carries out into our workplaces. Employees wait and seek to be given direction.

Natural leaders of this generation

The current generation of leaders never gave permission to anyone to be a leader. When I speak with them, they say ‘power is taken, not given’. That’s one way to look at it. That will allow you to spot those with ‘raw talent’ and ‘passion’ and ‘drive’ (insert your own trite phrase here) that make up a natural leader. However, if you want to grow a company (or a nation) of leaders, they must come from employees. We have an abundance of those. If you want employees to do anything you must either give them an incentive or give them permission.

Creating leaders in your company

Try this experiment. Find people who ask ‘why can’t it be better’, and then give them permission to be a leader. Say it just like that “I give you permission to lead”. Add all the other encouragements you want “that’s a great idea, I think you’re onto something here, etc’ and be genuine of course. But make the core message, “I give you permission to lead”.

No? ok then, I give you permission to be a creator of leaders. You have my permission to lead others. Next time, you won’t need my permission and neither will your former employees need permission. They’ll all be leaders.

Alan Hill is a business and executive coach with ActionCOACH, the world’s number one business coaching company, ActionCOACH.  If you would like to learn more about him, check out his website at http://actioncoach.com/alanhill. If you would like him to help you train your employees to become leaders, give him a call at (612) 819-1803

Business Rules and How to Change Them Effectively

Rules of the game

Once you learn the ‘rules of the game’ you can change them and get a different, better result.  For example, when I was an enlisted soldier in the United States Army, I learned they had a lot of rules.  A fact my Drill Sergeant seemed all to eager to impress upon me (thank you Drill Sgt. Fitch).  As time progressed, I became aware that if I had to follow the rules, well so did everyone else.  Now I was not a rule breaker, or even a rule bender, but I was able to learn how to use the rules to my advantage. 

 

Cover Your Assets 

I learned a rule called CYA (cover your ‘assets’).  I saw it applied by a fellow soldier in a creative and unique way.  He created a ‘little black book’ that anytime he saw other soldiers performing behaviors that could be considered ‘against the rules’ he recorded what behaviors he observed, the dates and times.  Why?  He had been getting harassment from his superiors about his behaviors.  They had singled him out – if for personal vindictiveness or to make an example of him, I don’t know. 

 

The ‘rule’ that applies here is you can’t talk back to your superiors.  In order to have good discipline in the Army, you have to have this rule.  If they say ‘charge’ you can’t have soldiers saying ‘no’ or ‘I don’t want to’.  So, each time a superior came to this soldier and chastised him for his behavior, he would politely apologize, agree and pull out his little book and say something to the effect that they were right, and they’d have to go after these other people also, because on this date and time they were observed breaking this exact ‘rule’.  As you can imagine, they soon backed off and left him alone.  He had effectively used the rules to his advantage.

 

 Company rules can be used to your advantage

Once I left the Army, I learned companies had rules too.  Most were ‘unwritten’ and were embedded in the culture.  Probably because I worked in many different companies, I saw that some of the rules are different and the rules can be changed.  This was indelibly written into my brain when I was at a large electronics retailer.  We were continually being asked to take on more computer support work, so I developed a simple and effective transition process to make sure instructions were clearly documented, expectations were agreed upon and the necessary passwords and permissions were granted. 

 

I was asked if I wanted to do that role permanently.  I declined.  They found someone else to do it.  I trained this person and they followed the rules and procedures I wrote.  Years later, it became necessary to update the process.  This person actively resisted any changes to the process because they believed in following the rules.  My big “ah ha” moment was that these were the ‘rules’ I had written, not some mindless corporation or otherwise brainless boss.  I had done it on almost a whim, without more than a second thought, because I knew I could change the procedures (or rules) as needed.  I had not counted on someone else investing so much of their work identity into these rules.

 

This person was the ‘transition manager’, in effect they were telling themselves and others they WERE the rules.  They had become the rules.  My attempt to change the rules was impacting their very work identity.  Here’s the big secret.  I made the rules, which means I also made this person’s identity.  This made me wonder what else (and who else) I could create in this manner. 

 

Knowing the rules and understanding how to change them

So how does this apply?  Well, look around.  Everything is affected by and subject to the ‘rules of the game’.  Once you know the ‘rules of the game” you can understand how to change them to your advantage.  Why? Because the biggest rule of the game is there are no rules.  The only rules are those we make.

If you’d like to learn more about making your own rules, check out my ebook “Applying Transformation Principles”.  And by all means I welcome your feedback.

Alan Hill is a business and executive coach with ActionCOACH, the world’s number one business coaching company, ActionCOACH.  If you would like to learn more about him, check out his website at http://actioncoach.com/alanhill.

Crisis Equals Danger Plus Opportunity (C=D+O)

I’ve been told the Chinese ideogram (or word, if you prefer) for crisis is made up of the symbols Danger and Opportunity.  This is similar to the old saying “there’s a silver lining in every cloud’.

This didn’t really ‘click’ with me until I realized this is an algebra equation.  Here’s what I mean: if Crisis = Danger + Opportunity…

 

…Then wouldn’t Danger = Crisis – Opportunity?

In other words, if there was no opportunity in a crisis, that would be dangerous, right?

 

Then what is Opportunity? A crisis without danger. (Opportunity = Crisis – Danger).

Think of that… how many times have you heard this story… something in the news about some major crisis and then someone was ‘smart enough’ to profit from the situation?  They were able to look at the situation objectively and determine a way to minimize the risk to themselves and for others.

 

Why wasn’t that you?  Probably because you weren’t alert to look for the way to minimize (or eliminate) the danger to create an opportunity.

 

I first realized the power of this formula when I read a book about George Soros, the international financier.  One of the themes throughout his book was his approach to situations.  He always looked for the opportunity by minimizing the danger.  For example, he watched as international banks loaned money to many countries in South America.  The ‘fatal flaw’ he saw was these banks were crediting the cash from other banks in those countries’ ‘ability to pay’ calculations, and loaning more money.  This was a danger for the banks.  How did he find the opportunity?  By betting against the stock values of those banks by using a ‘put’ stock option strategy.  Imagine if someone was obligated to pay you for a stock that went down in value.  This is a stock market instrument that allows George (and you) the right to ‘put’ the stock to someone at an agreed upon price, even if that price is lower than expected.  When their stock price went down, he made an incredible profit.  If you want more info on stock option strategies, check out Wade Cook’s books, they’re a plain talk explanation on how to use them.

 

Another example from one of my clients – They have to shut off the air conditioning and inconvenience the homeowner for 2 to 4 hours while they clean their ducts (Danger).  Instead I had them create an opportunity by partnering with local merchants – nail salons, hair dressers, spas, etc. and they create a pamper package.  Now when the homeowner returns my client has cleaned their ducts and returned the air climate to a comfortable temperature and the client has been on a pampering expedition.  Meanwhile some lucky local merchants have the benefit of potentially getting a new client from a great referral source.

 

Practical exercise:  Think of a current crisis situation in your business, personal or work life.  What is the danger?  What is the opportunity? How can you minimize the danger and take advantage of the opportunity?  By asking these questions of yourself, you’ll make things work when others only see a crisis. 

 

Perhaps for example your company is receiving negative press on the Internet for your customer service policies.  Is there an opportunity to change your customer service approach and create a unique niche for your company?  Target stores did this (though it didn’t take negative press to do it).  If Target sells it (or sold it) they’ll take your return even without a receipt.

 

Alan Hill is a business and executive coach with ActionCOACH, the world’s number one business coaching company, ActionCOACH.  If you would like to learn more about him, check out his website at http://actioncoach.com/alanhill.