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.

Attention MN Inventors: Fastest Market Research Ever! FREE!

Entrepreneurs – do you have the Executive Coaching to know if your idea will sell?

How can market research uncover what your customers really want?

How can you do this BEFORE investing any money in a patent or business plan?

The best answer I ever received came from Margaret Thorpe from the Univ of St. Thomas Small Business Development Center. Took her longer to explain it to me than to do the research and find out the answer.

1. Identify the industry you are targeting as your customer.
2. Find out the big trade assocation(s) in that industry.
3. Research their annual convention keynote speech (web or trade magazine).
4. In that speech there is always 2 slides…
A. What are our top challenges this coming year
B. What are our top solutions for these challenges
5. If your product or service fits in with B. you have a winning product or service. if not, try another industry.

As a business development specialist in Minnesota, I’ve used this to help lots of entrepreneurs know if they have a winning idea before they invest any money. I advise them to do this quick study first before they even apply for patent protection because it’s so quick to do.

If you want to discuss further, please don’t hesitate to contact me. My website has my contact information.

Leaders can be made. What roadblocks are you creating as a leader?

How do leaders make ‘it’ happen?

Hard way: do it yourself (not a leader)

Easy way: Through others.

What to do? Show them what you are doing and why. Leaders have sincerely told me that ‘you can’t teach people to ‘get it’”. It is often defined as the capability of ownership or initiative. Often called the essence of leadership. Once we explore what ‘it’ is, invariably we find out there’s a process for helping people ‘get it’ and it’s quite simple. Tell them what they don’t ‘get’.

I call the leaders attention to the process of simply telling others what they see and inviting everyone else to see it makes the entire process easier.

Does this work for everyone all the time? Of course not. Underneath this all requires a willingness on the part of the leader and the followers. If someone is unwilling to ‘get it’ or if a leader is unwilling to share what they ‘get’ then there’s not much chance of success, if any.

How exactly do people get it? The process of asking ‘why?” ‘Why would they say that?” “Why would they do that?” “What did he mean by that?” “Why is that important to them?” This defines context, creating purpose and meaning to the actions. The benefit of this is the ability to create leaders out of employees, regardless of their role in the organization.

Sometimes leaders ask how something so simple could be so effective. I invite them to notice that this is the exact internal process they use to spot challenges and opportunities. This makes ‘leadership’ much less of a mystery and art. It becomes a skill that can be transferred and taught.

If you are willing to experiment, try inviting your team to ask ‘why’ for 30 days. Before you do this, assess their current level of initiative on a scale of 1 to 5. Look for evidence of increased initiative during the 30 day period and then re-assess. You will notice that this simple technique is an effective way to make leaders in your organization.

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

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 

Work Life Balance (1 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 one of two

 

In the recent BNET article/blog titled “Be a Great Leader – and Have a Life,” the author talks about the importance of the four domains: 1) Work, 2) Home, 3) Community, and 4) Self.

If you label yourself as a successful leader: how DO YOU DO IT? What works for you? The article may work in theory, but does it work in practice? 

 

I have a different perspective than most.

 

First it requires we forgo the notion that amount of time spent in each domain equates to balance. Perhaps a person is most beneficial to society by spending most of their time as a business leader because they are positively impacting many more lives than that of their family.  Or perhaps they are more impactful as a father teaching one person how to golf (Tiger Woods).  I believe our balance should be measured in contributions, not time.

 

When I was a corporate leader I did what was necessary to support my team. Many long hours were required. What came of that investment was a perpetual mentoring program that continues to give employees the opportunity work to promote themselves on a technical path.

 

My work life balance came in the lessons I learned and the mentor skills I developed as a result of that time invested. Now I am able to leverage that investment of time with many other businesses, just like a programmer writes a program once and people use it many times over.

 

I find it more beneficial to impact many more lives as a result of having spent what some consider an enormous amount of time to obtain an ability to quickly give benefit to many customers. Did I have balance then? Some would say no because I spent so much time at work and not at home. However, what if I write an ebook of my lessons and share that with the world? Would the time that others save in their work so they can be with their family be considered a part of my ‘balance’?

I submit that balance has to be considered in the scope of an entire life. Our tradition in America is to retire at age 65. Why wait so long? Why not develop a recurring revenue stream (or several) based upon our experiences, regardless of how much time we spent developing them?  Then we would be able to retire whenever we want.  Would this be considered balance because you’re taking away time from your family?    

As an example, Bill Gates does not have to work for a living, but he spent a bunch of time building a company that we all benefit from. When you consider the time he saved us (forget about buggy software for a moment) does that balance out the time he invested?  Consider that he is now in charge of a foundation that positively impacts lives around the world.  Does that balance out the countless hours he spent away from his family? 

Conclusion: When you measure work life balance, weigh in the amount of future return you and others will receive for the balance of your investment in your life’s work.  Considering the return will help you determine if this time is worth the investment.

 

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 

Effective leaders create strong followers – MN Business Coach Shows You How

Are you a leader?  Are you a strong leader? Do you exhibit strong leadership?

That’s good.  My question is, ‘What’s better than a strong leader?”  If the opposite of strong leadership is weak leadership, my question is what do strong leaders create? 

 

Strong leaders often create weak followers.

 

Look at every strong leader through history.   From Alexander to Lee Iacocca, once the strong leader was out of the picture, who was equipped to take their place?  Who was capable?  Alexander lost the unity of his empire within a generation, which was about the same before Chrysler was bought by private investment firm.  Strong leadership – a trait too highly praised in America – promotes weak followers. 

 

Leaders, especially strong leaders, need followers.  More importantly, I have noticed that followers need leaders, the stronger the better.  I submit to you that as followers become weaker, they find fault with their current leader and begin to seek a different, even stronger leader.  Just like eyeglass prescriptions become stronger and stronger as our eyes grow weaker.  It’s not the fault of the glasses our eyesight has become weaker.  When the strong leader is gone, even temporarily, direction, vision and purpose cease to exist.  This is no way to create a business or organization that lives on beyond the leader.

 

Strong leaders are not bad, it’s just there’s something better.  Sustainable leadership.  Take a different approach and make the goal of an enterprise to create strong followers, not strong leaders.  Currently to find leaders one must ‘hunt’ them (headhunters, remember that term?).  You look for the mythical ‘right stuff’ and once you find it, entice them with golden handcuffs, not great metaphors or models for your business viability long term.   

 

Sustainable leaders create momentum by providing encouragement.

 

Imagine instead farming a field of strong followers, each growing up ready, willing able and equipped to lead/follow, able to do both simultaneously – at once, together.  Imagine leaders who do not need followers and followers who don’t need leaders.  This is not about empowerment, it’s about why empowerment didn’t work.  Weak followers do not WANT to be empowered.  First we must create the desire to be self-sustaining.

 

My purpose is to create sustainable leadership for a business, community, organization or country.  How?

 

By equipping followers to lead.  Not just giving them tools to make effective decisions but equipping them with the desire and inspiration to be strong, not looking externally for support.  Many leaders today lend their ‘strong leadership’ to an organization because that’s exactly what they were hired to do.  That promotes followers who are continually looking to someone else for their direction.  

 

Takeaway for you: Call it a lab exercise or experiment:  As a leader, REGARDLESS of your position in the organization, for 30 days, create momentum in your organization by simply providing one thing, encouragement and praise.  Use the words ‘That’s right!” or “you’re absolutely right” at least 10 times each day to different people.  Employees, managers, your boss, your customers, heck, even your competition.  Speak encouragement to their ideas, vision, desires, hopes and dreams.  What I want you to notice is how much momentum this creates for all the stuff that needs to get done and all the improvement that needs to happen.  You can doubt this will work, but you’ll never know it won’t work if you never take me up on this challenge. 

 

What I want is for you to respond with the changes that are made in your organization once you’ve tried this experiment. 

 

I invite you to notice how much stronger your organization’s followers will become.   

 

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  

 

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MN Business Owners: Create leaders in your organization

How do you create leaders? 

 

Technicians are built on skills (Engineering, science, architecture, computer programming), Leadership is built on character (Integrity, Honesty, Virtue, Service) and the importance of relationships.

 

Are you born with character?  Can character be taught?  Can character be created?

Can character be measured?  Can leaders transfer character to technicians and employees?  Can leaders transfer character to other leaders?

 

Yes. By using the right systems to do it.

 

In our society, educational systems transfer skills (School, University, On-The-Job training) while families and religious institutions are for creating character, which they do through stories – about family experiences or religious stories. 

 

Leaders are always assessing people’s character.  They understand that relationships are built on character and business is built on relationships – therefore, it’s critical to be able to assess character in a potential new hire, vendor or customer.

 

Imagine using the systems for transferring skills to create and transfer character.  Go beyond simply discussing ethics in a classroom and create a “character creating” course, designed to transfer character like honesty, integrity and service. 

 

What would the course look like?  The same as for a skills based curriculum.  Lecture on concept and applications, do a lab exercise and then test.

 

For example: a class on “Service”. Teach the importance of service to others.  Explain the concept of creating more value than you are asking in return.  Explain how it applies to sales or customer service.  Do a lab exercise in the workplace where the student applies the concepts to their job.  Track and test the results.  Do customers buy more?  Does the customer satisfaction survey show higher customer retention? 

 

The first step is to determine what character you want in your business.  Make a list of all the values that are critical to the success of your business.  Then determine how it will be measured (increased sales, greater customer loyalty).  Now it’s just a simple matter of creating the class materials.

 

If you would like a jumpstart, contact me for a FREE list of character values at (612) 819-1803 or email alanhill@actioncoach.com.

 

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  

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