The Entrepreneur's Mentor

Focus

It is amazing how focus can evaporate. One moment you are totally focused on a healthy diet; the next minute you are two thirds of the way through a pint of Cherry Garcia. One moment you are in total workout mode, then you turn around and you have become a couch potato. And to make matters worse, this loss of focus happens in business just as easily.

More often than not, entrepreneurs have a laser focus- on ten things at once. But drop out of the top ten, and the idea, project, discipline- falls into a black hole. And try to find it later- needle in a haystack.

It is important to to know what is important and to act on it and to follow it rigorously- or have someone else do it for you. It is important to recognize what you know and what you don't- what you do well and what you don't.

All businesses require focus on finance, operations, sales, marketing and leadership. Someone has to think about the big picture, the present and the future. Someone has to manage the details day in and day out. Entrepreneurs need to know that those bases are covered. Delegate what you don't do well or what you don't want to do and stay focused on the rest.  Business is not easy in the best of times and we are far from the best of times.

Focus on your niche and fine tune the revenue streams within that niche. Build on your strengths. Be the best at what you are good at.

We all know what a lack of focus feels like. It is a slow drifting away from something central to our essence. And if we don't catch it we end up in uncharted territory. The way back is not clear.

Entrepreneurs need to make focus a clear and highly prioritized goal; a valued competency. Constantly focus on your clientele- why they should want to use you in the first place, why they should continue with you; why you rather than a competitor. Focus on why you are even in existence. WHy does the world need your business?

If you stay focused on those questions and continue to have good answers, you will do well. If you lose that focus, bad things will probably happen.

Making Your Organization a Sales Organization

Every business sells a product or service, hopefully one that is desired by the buying public. How they sell varies from industry to industry, profession to profession and business to business.But in order to achieve long term success, businesses must become sales driven. They must recognize that their sole purpose is to satisfy customer needs and desires on an ongoing, continuous, time after time basis. How do they achieve that purpose?

In theory, it is not hard at all. In practice, it takes focus and determination and strength of character and convictions. The first step is to have a clear vision of what you want to be as a business, what you want to achieve. As part of this an owner must clearly and consistently communicate that vision to the employees. Owners have to paint a clear picture of a believable future. And the future must be one that employees desire and believe in.

Part of what creates that belief is the values of the organization. They are the road the owner chooses, the path to completion of the vision. They say as much about what the organization stands for as anything else. And they are a major part of the brand. The values tell the employees, the vendors, the suppliers, the customers and the public where the organization's head and heart reside.

Do we want to achieve our success by trashing the competition, cheating our suppliers and scamming our customers? Or do we want to treat everyone with dignity, respect, honesty and fairness? Do we love nature and want to do what we can to preserve our environment or do we not care?  Our values as an organization speak to things like that.

Having great, strong values is very important but it does not end there. An organization must consistently exhibit behaviors consistent with those values. This means from the top down, not once in a while but every day. Employees look at their leaders and either believe or disbelieve in the values of the organization by the behaviors of the leaders. They must "walk the walk."

If the leaders model the right behaviors, employees will believe. And then they will be engaged. They will take pride in what they do and what the company does. They will be enthusiastic and they will be great representatives of the company in dealing with customers, suppliers and the public. They will be part of the company's brand, a very positive part.

Engaged employees lead to loyal customers. There is significant data to back this up. And to go one step further, they lead to more positive financial results.

So, step one in becoming a true sales organization is not to hire that "monster" salesperson. It is to build the foundation within your organization that makes good people believe in you and your company and want to work for you and serve your customers.

You can start that process today and begin paving the way for change.

Too Much at Once

Wow. Who would have thought six months ago that President Obama would be evoking such strong negative feeling for trying to solve the country's major problems?

But look at how he has done it. He has attacked many large problems at once. He has not provided the American people (his stakeholders) with clarity. He has not built consensus around his sense of urgency. He has used his political capital (i.e his authority) to push through what he wanted.  He left us behind and what lingers is a sense of a huge amount of debt, and instead of hopefulness, fear.

This is not a comment on whether he made the right moves or the wrong moves. It is more a look at what was wrong with his methodology. In a corporate setting, bringing about change is recognized as a process that takes time. There has to be buy in on a few levels. There has to be a carrot and a stick, rewards and accountability. There must be clear communication and there must be a vision of a believable positive future. Confusion cannot be allowed to reign- clarity is a must.

Well, who is clear on TARP? On the stimulus? On the healthcare reform plan?  Obviously, not enough people. How can we be so against fixing a system that doesn't work? It is because Obama doesn't own the conversation- he let opponents fashion the communication. Rumors, negativity, outright lies and a total lack of clarity prevail. All of this is on top of a prevailing environment of fear at the huge deficits we have incurred already.

He may be doing everything right while he is communicating it and executing it all wrong.

Stop for a minute and think about instances in your business when you have been positive what you are doing is right and you haven't bothered to be thoughtful in the way you present it to others.

There are proven, successful ways to implement change. Take the time to do it right and do it well and your chances for success are multiplied. many times. Try to push it through just because you are the boss and have the authority to do so, and you will be dragging your team along unwillingly and the effort will wear you out and end up giving you a less than satisfactory result.

Multiple change initiatives pushed in the same timeframe are almost impossible to sustain unless your team is primed for them, incentivized and motivated. Typically, doing too much at once is a prescription for failure. It dilutes the focus on any one thing, making everything equally important or unimportant and therefore leaving no prioritization.

Do one thing. Do it right and do it well- embed it in your culture and then move on to the next initiative.  Too much at once will be lost on everyone.

Look But Don't See

How many of us really know- I mean really know- what is going on our organizations?  I think of the beginning of the David Lynch movie "Blue Velvet" which shows a beautiful, serene green field. The camera moves in closer and closer and starts to show what is happening within the green grass. There are bugs and beetles at war, dirt being churned up.

Things can look beautiful on the surface. CEOs and other leaders need to be careful not to accept this view as their only data point. They need to both zoom in and zoom out.

Zooming in means digging beneath the surface to get a sense of what is really going on. Are your employees really engaged in the work of the company?  Does your company have best practices? Have you examined your processes lately to see if they are still working? Have you revised your metrics to fit the changing times? Is what you and company leaders are communicating being heard the way you intended? Being understood? Have you spoken with your customers about how your company is measuring up to their standards?

Zooming out means taking a step back and looking at the business from outside. How does what we do fit into today's world? Are we still relevant? What direction is our market going? Are we ahead of the curve or behind it? Is the economy good for us or bad for us? What about our competitors? Do we have to re-define who they are?

A company is multi-dimensional. One look, one view does not tell the story. True leaders know their companies inside and out, because they have taken the time to explore them from all angles. They have opened communication into all sectors and are willing to hear all views and give them credibility.

There is a lot to see if you only look.

Is Our World Real?

As often happens during the summer, I have immersed myself in the exploration of new subjects by reading as much as I can. I have become fascinated by the subject of the "synthetic worlds." Synthetic world are crafted places created by software designers that are designed to accommodate huge numbers of people. They put ordinary people in a strange environment, where they can act as they do in the real world, or in a totally different manner. And interestingly, what they do inside this world can gave effects outside of it.

The author that seems to have the best handle on this subject is Edward Castronova. He has written "Synthetic Worlds" and "Exodus to the Virtual World."  It is fascinating to read how thousands prefer their online world to the real one. For them, the online world is more real.

By analogy, some business leaders live in their own virtual world. They create their own reality  They bend the facts to their own view and perceive things in a way that satisfies them. The essentially create their own customized vision of what is going on. But their connection to the real world, the one unhabited by their companies and their employees, may be tenuous.

In my role as an entrepreneurial mentor, I have seen many company owners go through life thinking all is well. They have constructed their own stories - and they don't let the facts get in the way of their happy story. Is this any different from living in a virtual world where we fight dragons, conquer Black Knights and capture the heart of the damsel in distress?

Some CEOs don't even listen to direct evidencer that contradict their view. In retrospect, everyone can see that Bernie Madoff was running a scam. Why was everyone blind to it, even when evidence was so strong? We believe what we want to believe.

If you believe your employees love you and will be loyal forever, you will not listen to those who tell you they are not engaged or not productive. If you think your customers have a great personal relationship with you that can survive anything, you won't be on the lookout for dissatisfaction. You are living in a very dangerous world.

Business leaders have to test their assumptions and beliefs. They must be in touch with the facts. They must look at what is happening in the world and must question how that impacts them and their businesses. They must learn to accept that their virtual world is a nice aspiration but not the reality of paying the bills, feeding the family, building a nest egg and developing something great.

Rose colored glasses have their place. But that place is not in the day to day of running a business. Business leaders need to choose the real world for their business. They can exist in alternative realities in their time off, be they online or purely of the mind. An owner can not afford to be a guru on a mountaintop spouting visionary epithets unless there are others managing the business in reality and yet others translating the language of the alternate reality into something strategically or tactically based.

They used to say "pick your poison" in the old movies. Now it is "pick your reality." Choose well, because there is a lot at risk.