“Good example is followed. A single act of kindness
throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and
make new trees.” Amelia Earhart
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April 2009
Your daily productivity is a very important element in your business’s overall results. What you do with your own time, attention and energy will make or break your entire team’s business building efforts.
So let’s take a look at 3 of the biggest and deadliest mistakes that entrepreneurs, professionals and business owners alike make, and then what to do instead.
Big Mistake #1 – Going with the flow. Because we live in a society that rewards risk taking and responsiveness, I usually see people running businesses start each day with their focus on the squeaky wheel. The problems that shout the loudest get the most attention, even if they are not the most important factors in the business’s success.
What to do instead – Start each day and each meeting with a clear purpose. Make that purpose the stated vision and goals of the business and evaluate the issues that come up for their fit with those success targets before you put time or resources into solving them.
Big Mistake #2 – Giving problems the first call on your attention. When a business is primarily problem focused motivation goes right out the window. For a team to pull together, and even for you to want to get out of bed and go build that business each day, you can’t keep ringing the “what’s gone wrong” bell.
What to do instead – Focus everyone’s attention first on what’s being accomplished. Help your team see what they’ve done well and you’ll have them motivated to take their enthusiasm and creativity into fixing breakdowns with glee.
Big Mistake #3 – Letting externals design how you do business. There is nothing more deadly to productivity than watching the clock. Forget the notion of setting meetings for an hour. The issue you’re working on might only need 27 minutes to solve, yet everyone will spread the work to fill that hour. No one will speak up and say “can we take care of this quicker?”
What to do instead – Decide on the agenda of your meetings before you sit down at the table. State it clearly, and let people know that the meeting will end in 12, 27 41 minutes – however long it takes to get clear about the exact next steps to be done, and who will do them.
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“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act,
but a habit.”
Aristotle
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