Why Leaders Fail

7 Ways To Build High Performance Teams

Are you managing an organization and want to boost your team's performance?

Whether you are heading up a division of a major corporation, leading a governmental agency, coaching a sports team, starting a new company, or just took the position of President from your local Toastmasters, you'll need to know the secrets to building a great team.

Questions new leaders will likely face are:

How do we get people contributing unselfishly?
How do we create unity, a sense of community, and wanting to be part of the team?
What can I do to make an immediate impact?

You must have a plan. You must act. You must be decisive. You must be inspiring.

Fail to do these things and you likely will struggle to achieve your objective(s).

Questions may arise about your leadership capabilities if you do not answer difficult questions quickly. As someone who studies leaders, I recently completed a poll of the actions and strategies of great leaders who build great teams. In this study, I evaluated previous leaders of great nations, head coaches of winning franchises, and interviewed teachers and other local leaders in California. In sharing these qualities with you, the goal is to help each of us create better teams to lead to more empowered and successful organizations.

Here are our seven most successful strategies to build a great team:

1. Build a core nucleus.
2. Raise the bar of expectations.
3. Keep consistency in all things.
4. Have a singular objective, supported by three related objectives.
5. Promote people with performance success to leadership positions.
6. Recruit new winners to build around the core nucleus.
7. Create an atmosphere of fun, success, and being part of something special.

1. Build a core nucleus. If you want to build a fire, you will not succeed with one log. With two logs, you might get a fire to burn for a little while, but the fire will almost always goes out before the full energy of the logs are consumed. Yes, a fire requires three or more logs to burn efficiently. You cannot build a bonfire without three logs. So, start with your three "logs" and build a nucleus around them. Phil Jackson of the Chicago Bulls used the power of three in his "triangle offense" which featured Michael Jordan, Scotty Pippin, and Horace Grant. Pat Riley used the power of three with the Lakers' 80's dynasties with Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and James Worthy as his "showtime" offense. Bill Walsh and the 80's 49er organization used the power of three with Jerry Rice, Joe Montana, and Roger Craig. The Cowboys used the power of three with Troy Aikman, Emmit Smith, and Michael Irvin in the 90's. The power of three is the key to your nucleus, and it must start there.

2. Raise the bar of expectations. Did people fail before you? Is your organization in chaos? This is a good time for you to implement your program, as people are looking for leadership in times of chaos. In times of failure, we must learn. In times of chaos, we must lead. Leaders raise the bar of expectations. Winning is the objective. Building upon success is usually the strategy. So, find a small goal, set it, and achieve it at all costs. But raise the bar. The first year, set a goal for 30% improvement. The second year, raise it again. The third year, set a goal for 100% success, with 200% effort, and watch your success grow. Jon Gruden, Coach of the Raiders from 1998 to 2002, set a goal to beat division rivals in his first year. He did that in 50% of the games, a marked improvement upon his predecessor's record. The next year, Gruden aimed for the playoffs. He missed the playoffs but his team fought valiantly. The following year Gruden's team won twelve of sixteen games and went all the way to the AFC Championship before losing to the Ravens. The next year, the Raiders lost to the Patriots in a game many felt was a gift from the referees. A step back, Gruden left. The new coach kept his nucleus. He also kept the same workout schedule, the same playbook (with some new wrinkles), and the same great players (Jerry Rice, Rich Gannon, Tim Brown) and took the team to the Super Bowl before losing to Gruden's Buccanneers. Which leads me to our next key: consistency.

3. Many leaders fail because they are not consistent. If you have a plan, and you know it is a GREAT plan, then STICK to your plan. Use consistency to grow your team. In consistency, there are three components to success:

a. consistent habits
b. consistent location
c. consistent people

Consistent habits are important for individual performance, and also important for team performance. If you hold a meeting for your organization on Tuesday at 7pm, keep it at that time and don't change it unless absolutely necessary. Location is also important. My father is a Distinguished Toastmaster, which is Toastmaster's International's top ranking of achievement. He informed me that when he stepped down from President of his organization, the new President changed locations three times in one year. Their club went from twenty-eight members to eight. When the club drops to eight Dad says "that's when they start to fail." Well, I figure a DTM ought to know a key to consistency.

I once had a sales manager who frequently pulled salespeople out of one territory, then assigned them to a different geography. The team struggled under his poor leadership. The new manager assigned both geography and vertical markets to his team, and kept those territories 80% in place for three years. His team succeeded dramatically higher than the previous manager's team.

Consistency in people is the biggest problem organizations face. The pressure to succeed is enormous -- especially when you have been failing (missing quotas, missing playoffs, blowing budgets, etc.). New leaders often have such enormous pressure to win it all in their first season as coach. I've always felt there are two reasons why relationships fail: inability to communicate and unrealistic expectations. It is no different in leadership. Reasonable expectations, clearly communicated, should result in higher success over time. However, organizations with consistently poor performance usually have an unusually high record of "firing" or "replacing" their top leaders. Organizations that succeed keep their top leaders, keep their top players, and through that loyalty attract others to their winning ways. I've noticed the biggest key with consistency in people isn't so much the exact people or the people in what position, but defining the TYPE of person for each position, so that people can come and go, but because the system is established you still succeed. We've seen this success demonstrated with the Super Bowl team New England Patriots. They have a "team" system that creates opportunities based upon a network of inter-related events. When one person drops out of position, the next comes in with knowledge of the system to fill the gap. They're winning a lot of games, so clearly it works.

4. Not knowing an objective can sabotage leaders. Have a singular objective, supported by three related objectives. Great leaders almost always strive for a singular objective. In basketball, it might be to win 50% of games. Or, it might be to attain the playoffs. A winning organization might set a goal to win their top trophy and the big game. In government, an objective might be to eliminate wasteful spending and hit a new budget figure through innovations in organization. Whatever it is, figure out what is most important, and achievable, and set that as your goal. The very best leaders go a step further and implement a SYSTEM of success. Beneath that goal, there are usually three ways to focus on daily or weekly actions, which if succeeded will lead to success of the major goal. I look at it as the singular objective is your mission. The related objectives are the goals. Achieve each goal, mission is accomplished. Fail to achieve goals, you'll know where to adjust the next season.

5. Learn from failure. Promote your successful people and learn from your failures. It is okay to fail. In fact, many organizations do not appreciate the full height of success unless they first experienced the full despair of losing. The previous examples of the Cowboys and 49ers were both preceded just several years earlier with two win seasons, with twelve or fourteen losses. To put it mildly, they were ugly. The new coach first got a quarterback, then a running back, then a receiver. And they were on their way. The way the coach found those great players was by trial and error, at first, and the players who delivered in clutch situations were promoted to those key positions of leadership. It is the same for successful sales organizations. If you wish to achieve sales success, give each salesperson an equal territory. See which one performs the best during a test period of time, and you likely have your nucleus of performers. Or, if the nucleus is established, the way to figure out who will rise above the pack is to encourage each person equally, and place them with mentors. Make sure the mentors are informed as to how to "coach" their mentored teammate. The mentors will then let you know if their teammate will make it, and also help them succeed by teaching them their own secrets to success. If people do not succeed with mentors, they might require special handling, but promoting people who repeatedly fail is not likely to result in success. Learn from failure, promote from wins.

6. Poor recruiting can be costly. Recruit new winners and surround them with winners. Sometimes we cannot promote from within. Either we are growing quickly and we must bring in new people, or the people previously in our organization left for other opportunities. Either way, we must grow from an atmosphere of success. I once was recruited from my college campus for the Businessland College Recruit training program. This program was loosely structured, yet worked on many levels. For one, my manager placed me under the supervision of the top salesperson in his branch. This was invaluable experience, as during my first three months the ace salesperson achieved the highest percentage sales success anyone had ever had in Sacramento. It was phenomenal to see the growth and excitement this success created. Other salespeople started selling successfully. Even the salespeople who struggled eventually broke out and found a way to succeed. Nobody was replaced without first shifting them onto other teams. This system created loyalty. But the old ace moved on to a new assignment. What would have happened if my manager had not recruited new people and surrounded them with winners? His success would have walked out when the ace salesman left. While he was with the branch, my manager also brought in other salespeople, and groomed the younger salespeople for success by partnering them with the veterans. It worked more than I'd have guessed. For when each previous top performer left the firm, the second or third highest performer would step in and succeed just as highly as the predecessor. A key to attract high performers is to let them know they are part of something special. If you're building something special, and the mission statement matters to the recruit, they will join your team.

7. Not having enough fun may cause you to lose top performers. Top performers like to have fun. Create an atmosphere of fun, success, and unique mission (being part of something special). If you want to win, you have to have fun. People don't have fun when they are losing. They also don't have fun if they are blamed for failures, backstabbed in communication, or treated poorly. So, eliminate poor methods of management and replace them with empowering methods of communication.

People will rise to the occasion when you empower them. How do we empower others? Let them know the expectation, create a sense of fun, urgency, and doing something special, and then coach them by letting them know they are believed in, supported, and will be looked after. How many sheep will stay in a flock where the shepherd drives one out from being in a bad mood? Like the good shepherd, look after your strays, bring them back in, feed them, and love them. Yes, love your employees. It goes against popular human resource opinion, but it is a core to ARRiiVEs mission. If we are to create more abundance, we must create more love. And love is an action word. What actions do we show? Care? Concern? Do we listen and know what makes our team want to perform? What are individual needs?

I once gained a new manager when my company merged. The old manager was reassigned to a new territory but left a short while later. Besides being affiliated with an Ivy League school, I never figured out why that manager was successful, because he never did anything to empower me or show me he listened to me or my concerns. For example, the company had failed to pay me rightful commissions because the personal in accounts payable had a bad attitude. She had decided I didn't deserve payment on the sales in question, and with my previous manager, that was as far as it went. This issue was worth $10,000 to me at the time, which was not a small amount of money to me. In my first meeting with my new manager, he asked me why I hadn't been performing much lately with my ability to sell services. I explained candidly that I was holding out on the company because the company wasn't showing me they cared about my efforts. The new manager stopped me, gained clarification, then asked for the name and phone number of the commission accounting clerk who had decided I didn't deserve payment. I then saw him pick up a phone, right then and there, and proceed to chastise this clerk for not paying "his salesperson" and asking "who are you and how could you decide to keep this man from earning his money at our firm?" She had no valid answer. I was paid five days later. My manager took care of my needs, and two months later I was at 500% of quota. I think his needs were met from that success, too.

Another manager could get people to jump through hoops for him. How? He created fun. I remember he once traded computers for box seats at a local sports arena. Yes, we took our clients there. We also took our friends and family to top notch sports events for free. It's fun to have perks from our job. It makes us want to work harder when we have fun on our job. How do we create fun? Through humor, special events, being a little goofy sometimes. The dot-coms were great at creating fun in boring atmospheres. Think about it: what's fun about computers? Not much. But what's fun when you get to work on new technology that helps people do more in new ways, and at the same time, instead of boring break rooms you can play Foosball or table tennis on your break? That's fun for many people. Some organizations launch special events, others install toys and games, others have company parties or bar-b-ques to let people know they're having fun. Sometimes, just being funny creates fun. Try putting up your goal, and explain it with humor, yet seriousness, and watch how much people embrace the new goal. As long as the humor isn't disparaging, it almost always works better than the dry approach.

As a manager of a company, show your employees that they are part of something special. At ARRiiVE, we aim to change the way business is done in the world. It sounds lofty, and people get excited about it. But if you think about it, you don't have to change 10,000 companies to change business. You only have to convince ten to change, and when they are wildly successful and when others emulate them, through the power of the "Jones" mentality, the world changes with them. How would you like to be part of a fun, exciting, successful organization who strives to make a difference? I sure do. So, I'm creating one here at ARRiiVE Business Solutions every day. Make sure to communicate what makes your organization special in each of your meetings and frequently at other times, and see how people respond.

If you are a new manager or have an organization where you want to create a great team, you now have seven tools to add to your bag of success:

1. Build a core nucleus.
2. Raise the bar of expectations.
3. Keep consistency in all things.
4. Have a singular objective, supported by three related objectives.
5. Promote people with performance success to leadership positions.
6. Recruit new winners to build around the core nucleus.
7. Create an atmosphere of fun, success, and being part of something special.

Create something special with your team and let me know about your success. I love to hear about winners and great teams. Make your team great, and you'll be considered a great leader.
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Post by Scott Andrews, CEO of ARRiiVE Business Solutions.

ARRiiVE Business Solutions helps executives improve sales, launch products and services, and build dynamic, cross-functional collaborative teams. For more information, contact info (at)ARRiiVE (dot) com or call us at 1 (805) 459-6939.

Copyright © 2007 by ARRiiVE Business Solutions. All Rights Reserved. You may republish this article only if you publish in WHOLE with the COPYRIGHT and ALL ACTIVE LINKS intact.

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What Is Collaboration?

People are so junked-up on new catch phrases in business. It seems like "collaboration" caught on as the big buzz back in the late 1990's, but it's re-emerging as something of interest. Why?

Because people will always find collaboration useful when they are building anything new.

Collaboration has been around since the dawn of time. In fact, I think of the Tower of Babel, the story in the Bible, where people from all over the world got together to create this massive tower touching the heavens. If you want to build massive projects, or communicate across various cultures, collaboration seems to be the key to making it happen faster, and more impressively. This may not always be a good thing, but we can hope to make it so. The Wikipedia definition of "Collaboration" drills deeper into the meaning of these teams:

"Collaboration is a structured, recursive process where two or more people work together toward a common goal by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus. Collaboration does not require decentralization. In particular, teams that work collaboratively can obtain greater resources, recognition and reward when facing competition for finite resources."

Let's look closer at Collaboration. Collaboration may not require decentralization, but to maximize it, a paradigm-shift to a new model of organizational structure is suggested.

Collaboration is another word for teamwork, in a sense. But moreover, a certain type of teamwork can accomplish almost any goal, and seemingly more effectively than people could do on their own, by utilizing the knowledge, talents, and resources of the collective group experience towards a common purpose.

I've been investigating the structure of teams for about ten years now. The most common structure of teams is to build the team from the top-down. This reminds me of the old playground system where two "popular" students pick other favorite students to be on their team from the kids standing there thinking "pick me, pick me!" Why teachers ever thought this was a good idea was beyond me. If you were picked first, you figured you were popular, while if you were picked last, you didn't even want to play (mostly due to the emotional damage to your self-confidence). But, this is exactly what business leaders, organization leaders, and education leaders are still doing to this day:

1. The people at the top of the pyramid get paid the most and have the highest and most "important" rank. 2. The people at the top pick the people under them, and so on, until you get to the ranks of sales, customer service, admin, and the mail room. And it all usually ends up in the mail room, doesn't it? Want to find out the health of a company, start there before reading the annual report. Anyway, looking at the top, everyone else in the pyramid has to answer to their direction, and either "get in-line" with the program or get out. It's not a very empowering situation, unless you're at the top. And, even if you're at the top, the experience is a bit like the Lord of the Flies, as described in the classic by William Golding, where the lieutenants often seek to tear down the chief at their first opportunity in their own greedy thirst for supposed power. As the cliche goes, "it is lonely at the top."

The situation in schools, businesses, and government organizations is much like that of this quote by Shakespeare, within King Lear - "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods, — They kill us for their sport". (King Lear Act IV, Scene 1[1]). Isn't that how it feels when we're in a top-down organization?

I recall watching a political debate last week, the concept of "merit pay" for teachers being discussed. My parents, who were both teachers, were watching this debate with me. My mother said, "they were discussing this merit pay thing thirty years ago. It isn't a good idea. The teachers that kiss-ass the most would be the ones promoted to higher pay and administrative positions." Well, that's kind of what happens now, anyway, but it would just make it worse by putting money behind it, wouldn't it?

I've been evaluating a new approach: the concept of turning top-down systems inside-out(SM). I believe that if our spiritual strength is at our core, then that is how an organization ought to be structured. Everything goes out from there. Plus, this allows more natural concentric circles of movement to occur. Jobs become less about the functional descriptions and more about organically and properly distributed use of talent.

I just stumbled across a book that is discussing exactly this situation in schools, called Deep Change: Professional Development from the Inside Out By Angela B. Peery. In this book, Peery makes arguments that all the pressures to "horizontal-ize" teaching methods have come "top-down" or "outside-in" when the profession of teaching is an "inside-out" affair. Is it any different for any OTHER job? It is for me. I've always felt that if I'm not SPIRITUALLY motivated, I'm not that into it. More than that, if it isn't FUN, I'm really not that into it, no matter how much they're paying me.

In a quote from page 15 from this Deep Change book, the author quotes Ann Twigg, a teacher struggling with the movement to standardize teaching. Twigg, who is described as an "exemplary, passionate teacher in her 17th year of teaching," shows uncharacteristic dissatisfaction from the teaching community:

"I'm still tremendously frustrated by my feelings about standardized testing. . . sometimes the angry feelings turn into apathetic shrugs: I never thought I wouldn't care about what I am doing. I've been waking up prior to the alarm, but not wanting to get out of bed just because I don't want to face another day at school. Who wants a teacher with these feelings? I wouldn't. Of course, my teacher self takes over by the time I arrive in the parking lot, and I give it my all. And sometimes I'm not satisfied with that! Where's the fun?"

How poignant.

I felt the same way in my final days at EMC2. I remember feeling, "where's the fun?" I remember feeling distrust in the system and in the organization who employed me. After all, this is the same company that, according to my former CEO at Data General prior to the merger, had promised to keep the company intact, keep the same teams, and move forward with the Data General company as a positive move. Two months later, my entire line of command was eliminated in ONE DAY. I remember not wanting to be there anymore. Those feelings cannot help but overtake us at some point and affect the quality of our work.

It seems that a pressure is mounting from top-down organizations to continue to cling to a broken system. But there is another pressure mounting within these organizations that is aching to be set-free.

It is the system, not the person, who is at fault in the modern organization. Moving into a post-modern organizational era, life has become more chaotic, more unpredictable. The expansive movements of open-source, grass-roots, and global dynamics are making it difficult even for the shadow leaders to control what is really happening. Why?

We've moved into an information era. From the industrial age to an information-age, the shift has occurred to an era where simply "producing something" is no longer the primary goal. It is now about how we share ideas, and how we share what we've produced; with "share" being the operative word. And that is where the model is breaking down.

Pyramid models are excellent for creating marching orders and going off and executing them. Notice my words: they sound like words you'd hear in the military. Because that is how a pyramid feels: like you've been stripped of your individual rights and made to conform to a system for a common purpose. And, last I checked, the military isn't really described by most people as spiritually empowering, or even as fun. But, within the traditional pyramid, sharing isn't a primary directive. And, the nature of rungs in the ladder, along with functional hierarchy, and pay systems that support this pyramid, all reinforce the mistrust in whether sharing is wise or a good idea. Certainly, more than one executive has had an idea stolen by a peer, in order for that peer to get ahead in the system. Other creative-types get stagnated, frustrated, and leave to try to find something better elsewhere (often only to get more frustrated with the next pyramid-system organization). And, this is also why so many women are leaving to start their own companies. Believe me, most women agree that the system is broken. And, this is another reason why we must embrace a new system: women in the workplace need to be women and not have to act like men to get along in that workplace.

Isn't about time someone stood up and talked about the elephant standing in the corner of the room? Forcing women to work a male-dominant model (pyramid) is not healthy to women. Women need a new model, based upon a structure that integrates male and female energy.

This is why it is time for a change. The change we need is to move from top-down to inside-out. I've created a model that makes it easier to facilitate this transition. It takes more than HUMAN RESOURCE buy-in to initiate this process. Sales, Customer Service, or Operational groups can start the movement. But, the core executive must buy-in, too. Truly, it requires an executive approach, as well as human-resource approach, if the organization is to succeed in completing the paradigm shift.

Why is this change a paradigm shift?

Think about it: while trying to write about the change, I am temped to write, "it requires a top executive buy-in..." See the problem? If I wrote, "It requires an inside-out buy-in from the executive to the functional roles of HR, Operations, Marketing, to the outer fringes of Sales, Customer Services, and even the Mail Room, to succeed," that requires you to RE-ORIENT your mental picture, and how you perceive the organization. Literally, this perspective reorientation turns the organization from top-down to inside-out.

So, if you're an advanced, cutting-edge thinker, and you agree with me that "yes, we need this type of model in our organization," then why not engage me to help you implement it? I'd love to help. It is my calling in life to advise world leaders how to create more spiritually aware, more productive and powerful organizations, through facilitating this paradigm shift. I'm working on software to help implement this type of change, and other tools to make it easier for organizations to implement.

Collaboration is a buzz that becomes more important when we find ways to strengthen the circle that swirls through the post-modern organization. Work is becoming defined less and less from a functional role and more and more into ways to harness our talents and resources. This is what I've meant about empowering the individual, and empowering the organization. It truly is an exciting era. We can define how to make this new model even more powerful in the days ahead. The choice is ours to accept the old, outdated model of the pyramid, or to embrace turning the top-down inside-out with the Diamond-Circle Model (TM), and truly build more collaborative, productive, and powerful organizations.
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Post by Scott Andrews, CEO of ARRiiVE Business Solutions.

ARRiiVE Business Solutions helps executives improve sales, launch products and services, and build dynamic, cross-functional collaborative teams. For more information, contact info (at)ARRiiVE (dot) com or call us at 1 (805) 459-6939.

Copyright © 2007 by ARRiiVE Business Solutions. All Rights Reserved. You may republish this article only if you publish in WHOLE with the COPYRIGHT and ALL ACTIVE LINKS intact.

More useful than a cup of espresso: SUBSCRIBE to our feed to stay "in the know" with articles like this.

Top 6 Secrets To Success

Almost every person I know WANTS to succeed. Or, at least, they say they do.

Some people want friendships. Others want financial wealth. And others want to reach power or influence many people. Some just want to live a contented, happy, and simple life. Do you know what you want? What is success to you?

Here is my Top 6 Secrets To Success list:

1. Set and write down your goals. The 3% who write down their goals achieve more wealth, happiness, and success than the other 97%. Be one of the 3%.


2. Work a plan to achieve your goals. Do something EVERY day. Tackle some of the long-term goals every week.


3. Know your limitations. Then expand what you can do. Don't let anyone else tell you what your limitations are. Only you can determine this list.


4. Trust your intuition. Your gut feel is usually right. There is an "inner core" that you can drill into. And that core is whatever brings you closer to SPIRIT or the INFINITE CONSCIOUS ENERGY that runs through all things (some call this God). To the extent that you tap into this core, this is the "gut" that drives success in organizations.


5. Never quit. In the words of Sir Winston Churchill, "Never, never, never, never, never give up." Many people are on the verge of succeeding right about the point where they quit. It might make sense to adjust and modify a plan. But to quit is the definition of the person who stops learning, because failure ought only be a "learning experience" on the path to success.


6. Dream larger dreams. Often, people do not achieve great things because they don't reach for their larger dream. As much as we need to know our limitations, we also ought not limit our own greatness. There's enough obstacles to overcome without putting our own thoughts in the way. Think big. Then do big things.

There are other secrets to success, but these are the six secrets leaders ought to master first.
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Post by Scott Andrews, CEO of ARRiiVE Business Solutions.

Copyright © 2007 by ARRiiVE Business Solutions. All Rights Reserved. You may republish this article only if you publish in WHOLE with the COPYRIGHT and ALL ACTIVE LINKS intact.

More useful than a cup of espresso: SUBSCRIBE to our feed to stay "in the know" with articles like this.

Fear or Love?

Today, I spoke with a woman who has offered collaborative leadership team building coaching since 1970. She seemed quite "grounded" and centered in her approach to business and life. She was sharing her past, then I was sharing my model, business structure ideas, and collaboration tools I'm developing. We shared together for about an hour, when all of a sudden the conversation seemed to shift.

To what, you might ask?

To LOVE. She spotted the fact that I CARE DEEPLY about seeing organizations SHIFT.

And the challenge we started talking about is the biggest concern I have with anything I do at AspireNow or here with ARRiiVE Business Solutions:

How do we get organizations to STOP RULING WITH FEAR and START RULING WITH LOVE?

Isn't this our concern when entering new environments? Are they ruling with Fear or Love?

I've been employed in organizations whose leadership team literally made jokes about firing people on a weekly basis. Can you imagine that? I've been in environments where they talked about people hitting their goals or "the bosses would shut the place down" and lock the doors. Guess what? They NEVER DID shut the place down! It was just a fear-based message to try to motivate people.

I remember saying to that manager, "Fear doesn't inspire me. Love, on the other hand, DOES inspire me." He softened a little after that. The next boss sat there, smiling at the team, saying "I am here to help you succeed, make more money, and do good things for the team." The following day he told me, in confidence, that the entire team had to go, because they weren't typical for that industry (meaning, they wanted to stand for ethical business). His new methods involved using bait-and-switch tactics, something I don't condone. He lasted five months, before they brought in the next guy (who was worse, I'll add). This continued to get worse and worse until, finally, I got the heck out of there!

What was the final straw? I came back from vacation and my new boss (called affectionately by my peers, "Hitler") actually had the gall to accuse me of "not caring" about my work or being "lazy" because I'd been on vacation, took one sick day, and subsequently had surgery on an infected toe. This, all in one month. Of course, the day he accused me of these things, I was there at work, with my toe wrapped up in a bandage, on vicadin medicine just to get through the pain, doing my job. The only reason I was wanting to leave early was because I'd been invited to a wedding and it was incredibly important to several people that I be there at that wedding. He had approved my leaving early, then changed his mind as I was walking out the door! When I pointed out that I'd taken a larger share of responsbility than any other person there (I had the numbers to prove it) he told me to "get the hell out of there" and he'd see to it that I never worked there again. Keep in mind that I was his #2 salesperson at the time of this altercation.

I'll never forget how loving they were at the wedding. I said to my partner: I've never seen a more obvious example of the difference between fear and love in all my life!

The upper management later invited me back, "Hitler" later apologized, but it was too late. I never went back -- MY choice.

The type of environment described above is very toxic. At the point when I left that organization, my nerves were shot, I would wake at 3:00 a.m. in a sweat after a nightmare, and started grinding my teeth. It got ugly. If you are in an environment like this, I will encourage you to leave. Make sure you have a strategy to make money so that you don't go broke or hit hard times. But get out of there. Jobs and vocations DO EXIST where you CAN get treated right and make great money. Either start your own company or take one of those jobs. I believe that, ultimately, we'll make more money, and live longer, if we're happier and more loving.

We need to stand up for our right to BE LOVED AT WORK and TREATED WITH RESPECT FOR OUR CONTRIBUTIONS!

Why am I bringing this up? Because I believe we are spiritual beings. We are emotional beings. We are not intellectual robots who don't have feelings. Corporations must embrace this if they are to reinvent and become GREAT. It's what's required of executives to truly begin empowering their people: they must embrace both POSITIVE EMOTION and LOVING SPIRIT as part of the collective work experience.

I've been a believer for quite some time that powerful organizations have VISION. They ask better QUESTIONS. And they take ACTION. I used to describe this as VQA. But I'm going to go a step further and share that we need to add an "L" to the acronym. What does the "L" stand for? L-O-V-E. We need VQAL to have true success.

Does LOVE belong in the workplace?

Think about it. Which boss do you love the most? The boss who frequently threatened to fire you, or the boss who treated you special, listened to you, showed you respect, and led you to greatness through being a coach and a partner in your challenges? Tough question, huh!?

Which employees INSPIRE you the most?

Usually, they're the people who are most PASSIONATE or offer the most SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE. Am I right?

The people at work who've inspired me the most made me laugh. They hit numbers. They did it without lying or cheating. How? By being exceptional. My good friend, Grant Stellwagen, is the greatest salesperson I've ever met. What makes Grant such a great salesperson? First of all, he's funny. Second, he's sharp as a tack. Third, he understands the techniques of selling better than anyone else I know. He knows you have to give clients gifts to build stronger relationships. He knows you have to be creative and surprise people. He understands that you must ask intelligent questions to determine a prospect's needs. And he adds value and offers something different on every call.

Grant also knows that you can't win them all, but if you keep planting, watering, and fertilizing seeds, it is inevitable that at some point you'll grow some plants that will bear fruit. And he grew more fruit than anyone else at my company. To the tune of millions of dollars, in fact.

The last time I saw Grant, he and I stayed up until 2:00 a.m. talking in the hotel lounge and sharing ideas about what we felt was exciting about life at that time. I still remember that talk like it was yesterday. He showed me that he cared about me, my ideas, and what I was up to at that company. That's inspiring, isn't it?

Who inspires you?

I bet they are smart, fun, and loving.

If you're an executive reading this article, can I encourage you to put aside the old fear-based methods and embrace new ways to build more LOVE in your organization? It really is a better way.

In personal life, I will say that LOVE is the answer to what we're looking for.

Is it any different in business? In business, LOVE is the answer, too.
__________________________________

Post by Scott Andrews, CEO of ARRiiVE Business Solutions.

ARRiiVE Business Solutions helps executives improve sales, launch products and services, and build dynamic, cross-functional collaborative teams. For more information, contact info (at)ARRiiVE (dot) com or call us at 1 (805) 459-6939.

Copyright © 2007 by ARRiiVE Business Solutions. All Rights Reserved. You may republish this article only if you publish in WHOLE with the COPYRIGHT and ALL ACTIVE LINKS intact.

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Want To Stop Getting Treated Like A Number?

1324FU#4. Is that how your company sees you?

This article is aimed at employees, as well as employers, to help do something about employees getting treated like a number, rather than a fully-functional, smart, loving, spiritually-based human being. I'm writing this to share that I've been there and I care about changing how business is conducted in the world around me. Here's the burning question nagging at me:

Have you ever worked for a company and felt like you were just a number to them?

Examples of how companies make employees feel like a number include:

1. Your ideas are put-down, stolen, or put aside by management.
2. The company only utilizes you for one core function (sales, HR, engineering, operations, administration, etc.) when you have more expertise and many more talents to contribute. Why can't they see you for who you really are?
3. All the company ever asks you about is numbers.
4. In an annual employee review (if you ever got one), your general contributions were overlooked. Instead, "highlights" focused on how you could improve numbers.

I could go on. I've had each of these things happen to me as an employee. Frankly, it's one of the reasons why being your own boss is pretty cool. Of course, on the flip side, there's the numbers. Being your own boss is great, but you have to make money and often deal with the pressure of bootstrapping to be able to sustain being the boss. So, maybe you're not as excited as others about taking the path of the entrepreneur. And, you know what? That's okay. Entrepreneurialism isn't for everyone. If that's you, what can you do?

QUESTION: How do you make a difference in getting the company you work for now to treat you more as a valuable PERSON than a NUMBER?

ANSWER: By suggesting innovative structure and value of contributions through collaborative teams.

One need I've determined is that we need to build databases of our strengths, and then build teams based around those strengths.

Another problem I've magnified is that top-down management is going to become more and more archaic as people start to grasp the concept of SQ (Spiritual Quotient) in the workplace. When I founded AspireNow in 1999, I was a pioneer in the concept that we are spiritual beings AT WORK and not just AT CHURCH or in our spiritual discipline.

SQ Matters, as much as EQ matters, as much as IQ matters. In fact, to me, SQ means more. Why? Because when CEO's talk about how they made their greatest decisions, most of them will talk about a "gut feel" above the numbers. The numbers mattered, but the GUT mattered more. Q: What is our gut? A: Our body's physical tie to our spirit. We come into the world through our belly button.

A formula to help overturn being treated like a number is to suggest to managers implementing the following mantra in the workplace:

Success = IQ + EQ + SQ.

If our SQ (Spirit) is most important, then we ought to build organizations similar to how we, ourselves, are organized. Gut (spiritual core) in the middle, Heart near the gut, eyes and ears (field, sales, customer service, website, etc.) touching prospects, arms and legs touching customers, and so forth. In other words, we need to build organizations that are INSIDE-OUT, rather than TOP-DOWN. And, sometimes, people who are NOT the C-Level are the heart and soul of a company. Those people ought to be tapped as part of the SQ collaborative team, to make sure more opportunities and challenges are discovered and addressed most efficiently.

I am bringing a model to organizations to help them implement INSIDE-OUT Structure and help create collaborative organizations that recognize the ability to move, shift, and go to the hot-hand in order to capitalize on opportunities and the challenges facing the organization. This type of model will turn Top-Down problems over and demonstrate added value in structuring to capitalize on cross-functional skill sets.

What are your thoughts on this matter?

I believe the time is now to get the word out. If you agree, share this article with as many people as you can - especially those in Human Resources and Upper Management. Let them know they'll have MORE success by being real than by treating you like a number.

Once more people see the light, the shift will take form just as the as the snowball gains momentum down the hill until this concept hits critical mass.

Post by Scott Andrews, CEO of ARRiiVE Business Solutions and host of the ARRiiVE: Innovations In Business radio talk-show. ARRiiVE helps executives improve sales, launch products and services, and build dynamic, cross-functional collaborative teams. For more information, contact info (at)ARRiiVE (dot) com.

How To Build More Creative Collaborative Teams

There are ways to spur creativity amongst your teams. In fact, to spur creativity within your company, building COLLABORATION is critical.

A common myth amongst leaders is that competition fuels creativity. In fact, according to Teresa Amabile, who heads the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School, and one of the country's foremost explorers of business innovation, the opposite is more true: collaboration fuels creativity. It makes sense: people stop SHARING when they are competing. So, first of all, build COLLABORATIVE TEAMS to foster more creativity in your work environment.

Creative collaboration is a process to combine various team elements to facilitate the creative process and come up with better product ideas, strong service solutions, new sales techniques, and more. How do you do it?

Well, here is a list of 7 ways we suggest you can expand upon creative collaboration:

1. Opposites Attract. Hire people with opposing ways to looking at problems. Combine a "big picture" thinker with someone who processes "linear" thoughts. Combine the rational person with the abstract thinker. You may not have them agreeing on everything, but they'll come up with some interesting combinations.

2. Aliens Among Us. One of the beautiful things about the United States of America that I love most is the cultural diversity. While this is more obvious in major metropolitan cities than rural areas, nevertheless there is a wide diversity to choose from when making hiring decisions. My feeling: find people who come from different cultures, different backgrounds, and combine them to get more creative ideas. Asians think differently, in general, than Latin Americans. People from Russian think differently than people from France. Find people from different cultures, and rather the using that alien nature to divide, use it to find new explorations in service, product, and diversity.

3. Gender Bender. The most boring team I ever worked on was within a company where the management hadn't hired any women. I like women. I find their thoughts, ideas, and ways of thinking refreshing and even sometimes challenging. That's a good thing on collaborative teams. The movie "What Women Want" with Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt highlighted how entire marketing programs created by men have been dumped in favor of the way a woman might think, in order to embrace women. Embrace gender differences. It spurs more creativity.

4. Go Outside. Creativity is a two-step process that starts with collaboration. Start with a discussion with your team, your business partners, and people who can benefit the process you're trying to create. If you're finding elements of your team are competing, replace them with people who collaborate. Build upon the collaboration you start with. But beyond that, involve people who aren't normally on your teams. If you're in operations, bring in salespeople. Or, go an extra step, and invite customers and prospects to your planning meetings. You might be surprised by the refreshing ideas that occur - not to mention the empathy you'll gain from customers understanding the insights into what you're doing to meet their needs.

5. Plan Less, Do More. I'm not saying don't plan. I'm just saying plan only 10% of the time you spend on a project. Spend the other 90% doing. There are so many people who get stuck planning, and re-evaluating that they never do anything. In one job I found that for three months I was strategizing on the next way I was going to get my business. In the meantime, my co-worker signed $400,000 of business in accounts I'd previously called upon. Ouch. Get out of the office, drive out there and do what you need to do. If you want creativity, you can plan for so much, brainstorm to get things moving, then put things in action and find out if they work. It's the only way to know if you've got anything real.

6. Design Innovation. I once heard someone say that innovation happens spontaneously. Well, yes, this is true. However, innovation often comes from a spark from something someone has seen before. How do you handle a blank sheet of paper? In writing music, I find that usually, I'll start with something that feels good to me. Maybe a hook for a melody idea, or a rhythm on piano or bass. Perhaps I'll have a rhythm pattern on drums. But, I'll start with something. Do I want the song to feel Calypso? Do I want it to feel Gospel? I'll pick a genre, then try to create towards that. Some companies PLAN for innovation. Do you? Build elements that spur people to think in new ways in your own innovation teams. Is it round? Maybe square would be better. Is it red? Try making it yellow or blue. Is it faster? Maybe slower is more useful.

7. Remove Deadlines. People often think they work better under deadlines. Well, this isn't true. Just make sure people do something every time they meet to keep the idea moving forward. But deadlines don't spur creativity, they stifle it. Ever wonder why a musician can create a great CD, then once they are signed to a label, they must produce three albums in four years, and their music slips? It's because they're on a deadline. They HAVE to create. Someone is coming out with a new program enabling you to text in orders to restaurants to have your coffee or food ready when you get there. For people who like things fast, right? Well, for people who like to take their time with things, tea is better. Get your creative team in the tea modality and out of Starbucks modality. Take time with things that matter, such as creating.

You may find more ways to build creative collaborative teams in your own organization. But, for starters, try these:

1. Pair opposites together.
2. Pair different cultures, different ideas.
3. Put both genders together to spur creativity between the sexes.
4. Go outside your typical team and include outsiders.
5. Plan less. Do more. Plan no more than 10%, spend the other 90% doing.
6. Build innovation into your design. Plan ways to help spur innovation. Create tools, decorate walls, tear down closed spaces, or create labs where design or creative thought can more easily occur.
7. Remove deadlines. Give people the freedom to create within a structured environment on their own time.

According to David Kelley, IDEO CEO, "The more you experiment, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you create." So make the effort to experiment with your teams. You just might be rewarded.

This article is by Scott Andrews, CEO and principal business advisor at ARRiiVE Business Solutions, helps executives build creative, empowered, and productive teams. Learn more about Scott's dynamic SEMANTIC COLLABORATION and CREATIVE COLLABORATION models and tools at http://www.ARRiiVE.com.

Team Selling in Enterprise Environments

Companies have been selling in teams since the dawn of IBM. But, with today's dispersed and global environments, an executive recently asked me: "Does Team Building work within enterprise selling environments, today?" My answer was "Yes, team selling can work, but you can only create the explosion of sales success by blasting away outdated systemic issues that block the natural flow of selling your organization to the client's organization."

I'm not providing statistics in this article. But I can tell you the challenges of selling in teams, and ways to overcome some of them.

Common problems with selling in teams include:

1. Structure of selling organization.

2. Problems with functional organization rather than team organization.

3. Job descriptions and the role of Human Resources aligning (or mis-aligning) human capital.

4. Compensation based upon functional output rather than team or cross-function output.

5. Focus on short-term results rather than long-term benefits to customer.

Now, if you drill down into each of these areas, I did a few searches on team building, and for kicks and giggles, came up with a few that I think illustrate my point well.

1. Structure of selling organization. Most problems in the business world, today, are systemic. You'll notice I said the structure of the SELLING organization, not BUYING organization. Why? Because the company you're selling to can structure however they want. A good sales team will be flexible and able to adapt to a variety of environments they sell within. The real issue is in how YOUR organization is structured to go to market.

Here (http://www.internetviz-newsletters.com/PSJ/e_article000415636.cfm?x=b11,0) is a URL with an article that is well-written, focused on team selling, and mentions key roles within the sales force team as:

• Specialist
• Market Researcher
• Business Developer
• Rainmaker

The problem with this list is it suggests team selling but only within functional roles of a the sales team function. It completely fails to consider that operations, services, administration, and management impact the sales process and half of the positions mentioned are not the mover/shakers who actually write sales deals or build customer relationships but the reporters/analysts who report on the deal or effect of the deal. The people who makes deals happen are the Rainmaker, and perhaps to a lesser extent, Business Development, but Research and Specialist are people who usually want to "see more" data before they'll move. One of the key people who can make a deal happen: Senior Executive, is missing from this list. The operations point-man and implementation expert is also not included here.

The author of the article went on to suggest bi-weekly meetings without stating an objective for the meeting. Rainmakers abhor meetings without purpose! This type of article is the reason for the problems in the current business environment with building cross-functional teams. They're only looking at the "sales" silo and missing the bigger picture. The author makes a good point about training the entire sales team, it just seems that training ought to expand outside the sales silo boundaries across the entire cross-functional team.

I've addressed this concern with my Sales Diamond Model which you can find at: http://www.arriive.com/sales_diamond_model.htm

2. Problems with functional organization rather than team organization. I came across this PDF, which is a reprint from a Sales and Marketing Executive Report from Darnell (http://baygroup.com/Articles/TeamSellingIsTodaysReality.pdf).

This article hits upon two problems I see: 1) Silo by organization function (sales, engineering, administration, etc.) when organizations try to get cross-functional, they haven't blended or created any type of system that enables teams across functions, (2) Lack of pay based upon team results. People are paid individual salaries based upon their job description. And the job description is, again, based upon function (sales, HR, Operations, Strategic Planning, etc.) without inclusion or consideration of payment for team performance or impact upon team's productive results. The other inherent problem within this is the fact that job descriptions are based upon general individual contribution within the function group rather than job description for unique capabilities and contribution to the whole, with a nod to the functional aspects. If companies were to shift this payment structure in their compensation plan, they will drive team-performance and create better cross-functional teams.

But if organizations create teams only within their functional groups, then they miss their opportunity to truly build an empowered environment. I once participated in a contest, and the Director of the project was brilliant to notice that EVERYONE wanted to participate in the contest. He made sure that each functional group got enough "points" from the contest to assure them a potential prize (i-pod, gift certificate) so that every employee felt the benefit of the contest. Yes, sales people had more opportunity to win than administrators, because they had more impact and pay scale, but every person came away with something for helping grow customers as a team. What I found interesting about the contest is that administrators started calling me with leads, operations people started to discuss ways to better help certain clients, and managers worked overtime with me to help me get certain deals structured to win for the customer. In short: it worked to drive more cross-functional performance, at least for a short period of time.

3. Job descriptions and the role of Human Resources and the utilization of human capital. As referenced in the article above, if job descriptions don't describe the accurate work that you expect people to do, then you'll get what you've asked for. It is about the law of attraction. If you point people at a tall building, tell them they have to sell your business services to the organizations in that tall building, then why would you be surprised when the deals they bring in are from the companies in that building? That's the whole idea, isn't it? Now, today's customers aren't all located in one tall building, they may be spread out over multiple cities, states, or even countries. In addition, it isn't just the customer's organization we're selling to within enterprise organizations, there also is the impact of outsourcing within the enterprise that affects how to go after deals. But, nevertheless, if your organization's job descriptions describe how people will interact with organizations you seek to do business with, then you're likely to produce a better result. I'm working on a software tool that will deliver a better team structure and enable organizations to track "jobs" or team projects by key words. That way, job descriptions may be re-written to include key phrases of the team and build better results.

4. Compensation based upon functional output rather than team or cross-function output. Now, this is always where the rubber meets the road, isn't it? If you have someone that you're paying to move a brick, and he grabs a hose and pours water instead, you'd ask him "Why didn't you move the brick?" Wouldn't you? I would. Yet, how many organizations are using the same re-tried compensation models promoting individualism, private results, and functional results? Almost ALL of them are using compensation models based around the results of individual or functional programs.

I tried to find an article discussing the impact on sales that EVERY function needs to own (administrative roles, operations roles, management roles, etc.) but couldn't find one. You know why? Because people have come to associate "salespeople" as the people who "sell" and the other people "just doing work" contributing to the company. It's a fallacy that has been created over time by sales v. operations battles, and as a result of bad habits. For example, it is a bad habit to think you don't have an impact upon selling by processing billing in accounts receivable. The billing people often find some of the greatest opportunities for a sales development. It's a bad habit to think upper management need not be part of the sales team. Upper managers want to meet with other upper managers. Use the cross-functional team but more than that ALL employees need to be actualized in the compensation process to also show the benefit to creating complete win-win solutions across the enterprise.

I see a need for compensation overhaul. If the client is measuring our success by delivering the benefits we promise them, then wouldn't it make sense to build our OWN compensation programs by delivering BENEFITS to the CLIENT? It's a whole new way of looking at compensation. I'm developing a payment description model and compensation model that rewards based upon client goals, rather than seller goals. It's exciting, and drives a considerably larger result to production with each employee.

5. Focus on short-term results rather than long-term benefits to customer. I dug around and found an article on sales teams that hit this problem square on the nose: the problem is FOCUS.

I think of the Buddhist and consider FOCUS to be part of the RIGHT THOUGHT structure of RIGHT THOUGHT, RIGHT ACTION, RIGHT SPEECH. Without RIGHT THOUGHT, none of the other desired results can happen. So, if you focus upon the right things, you ought to have the right results. This article (http://www.ivey.ca/publications/impact/vol3_22.htm) discussed the challenge that sales organizations are focused on hitting numbers. Those numbers are not numbers of benefits clients receive, but numbers of revenue dollars coming in from that account to the SELLING company's coffers. Focus on numbers might impact numbers, short-term; however, for the long-term it is the wrong focus. Yet, you'd be surprised how many meetings I've had with upper managers where all they look at is the NUMBERS! Crazy idiots, if you ask me. They ought to be focused on CUSTOMER BENEFITS. Because, if their organization delivers a high value of customer benefits, they'd likely hit MORE sales numbers as a by-product. Makes sense, doesn't it?

The quote that stands out to me from this article is:
"Developing a sales team can be very difficult in an environment unfamiliar with the team selling approach. The hurdle is shifting the mindset of an organization and its salespeople from lone rangers selling products to selling teams providing solutions for customers. 'Results from organizations who try this change actually show some organizations facing up to a 30 to 40 per cent turnover in their sales force,' says Barclay [the author of the article]. According to Barclay, organizations who implement true team selling must change to move from a short-term focus to a "continuous, evolving relationship with customers with the relationship building under the guidance of a selling team."

This is, in my experience, correct. Turnover may happen. But that type of turnover is healthy turnover if it results in a longer-term, more honest and responsible approach with the customer. This is the objective I've been working to implement with organizations through ARRiiVE Business Solutions (http://www.ARRiiVE.com). It's about the customer, it's about their needs, and the benefits they receive. Ah-ha! I've found a modern mantra for the modern businessman. Say it again with me: "It's about the customer, their needs, and the benefits they receive."

Top 10 Ways to Increase Customer Retention and Lower Turnover Of Valuable Clients

How good are you at retaining your customers and building customer loyalty?

Here's my Top 10 list of keys to maximize customer retention, lower turnover, and build bettter business relationships with your customers:

1. Send "Thank you" letters. Thank you letters boosted the former President Bush from a nobody to VP and eventually President of the United States. Think the 1,000 thank you letters he wrote a year made a difference?

2. Utilize better implementation. Project managers are key to success. If you don't have a project manager for each new customer, consider hiring someone dedicated to this function. It is key to all new launches. Statistics I've seen indicate that projects with a program or project manager (implementation manager) are 70% successful where those driven without this key person only succeed 30%, in general.

3. Handle complaints proactively. When a customer voices a complaint, ask them how you might ideally help them. If you don't have a solution, ask them what a suitable solution for them might be. Let them be in charge. Then offer them the solution, if you can, or point them to where they might find the solution. Do everything in your power to avoid customers remaining upset with your business. One negative customer can destroy twenty positive interactions with a prospect. You want to avoid toxic customer relationships, at almost any cost.

4. Get clear on what you want from each other. Avoid the common challenge of vague vision of relationship. If the relationship has not been clarified between your firm and the customer, you're running the risk of losing them to a competitor. People who can set the vision include the CEO, Salesperson, Operations Manager, Customer Service Representative, Greeter, Checkout, and more. I'm a big believer in this. To this end, I've been developing a model for Semantic Collaboration. Truly dynamic teams collaborate to deliver positive a experience for customers. So, if you aren't sure how to build cross-functional, dynamic teams, contact me and I'll hook you up with some resources.

5. Words matter. It's not just training people on what to DO, but also training to know what to SAY. Too often customer support agents, are thinking from THEIR point of view (as a seller or support person), not from MY point of view (as a buyer or customer who has a need that I want met). It's not about them, it's about me. If I have a concern as a buyer, it needs to be heard by the seller or agent of the seller. Why don't people get this? I suppose, it's because we're all dealing with our own point-of-view, yet when we transcend this we can truly deliver unique and wonderful customer support.

Training ALL employees on how to identify, meet, and communicate regarding customer needs is essential. If you don't have a program to do this, I can help you develop one rather inexpensively. Developing programs to increase customer loyalty and decrease turnover ought to be crucial to your long-term customer retention plan.

6. Hire and keep those who LOVE their job. (Get rid of the rest.) People that hate their job create dissatisfied customers. Why? They'll talk bad about the company, give a less effort, and deliver halfway results. How well are you empowering employees? If they are clock-watching, they're not loving their job! If they're staying overtime, they MAY be loving their job, or it might be culture coming from you, or from other managers. A WIIFM meeting usually won't determine how much people love or hate their work. People usually end up hating their work more after a WIIFM meeting than before it, from my experience. I'd poll people discretely, anonymously, every three months, then you can spot trends as to job satisfaction.

How many of your employees hate their jobs? 10%? 20%? It is kind of a harsh question, but can be even harsher if you don't know the answer. Go down the list of your employees and answer honestly. Are there many? Are there any?

What does this figure mean?

Actually, it means quite a lot. The implications of employees hating their jobs are significant to the extent that they affect the quality of customer service.

Employees who hate their jobs are most likely to develop the following behaviors:

* They are apt to quit at any moment. Many are highly sensitive and the slightest annoyance will trigger their leaving.

* Theft. When employees are not satisfied with their jobs, they see their actions as justifiable, however questionable they may be. Their justification may be that they feel they are owed or they may simply be vindictive and want to hurt the company.

* Rude. They are much more apt to be rude to customers--it's a way to act out their feelings of anger and frustration.

* Uncooperative. They will not be co-operative; they will not inform anyone about problems that they notice, ones that could be prevented and serve to improve the business.

* Their attitude will rub off on satisfied employees making everyone dissatisfied. This is a phenomenon that I find amazing. How can one employee with a bad attitude affect so many good employees negatively? You'd think it would be the other way around; many employees with good attitudes should affect the bad employee. Unfortunately, that is simply not so. The fact is, one unhappy employee can spoil the whole rest of your team. So, like a dead limb on a tree that needs pruning, so it is with your team.

7. Client maximization. It's 5 times easier to sell to the client you have than to add a new one and the last study I read indicated it costs 10 times more to sell to the new client than the existing client. How often do you ask your clients if they have any problems or concerns that you are NOT yet helping them with?

This will open the door to new opportunities.

Do you have a program to cross-sell to existing customers? Customer Retention programs are actually great ways to disguise this important selling method.

Are you up-selling people? Customer Retention offers the ability to up-sell people. Sometimes, if someone is unhappy, they have the wrong level of support. Sell them MORE and they GET MORE. Also, Customer Retention and Loyalty programs offer opportunities to ASK FOR REFERRALS (in my experience, the single most powerful sales tool in existence.)

Maximize your sales opportunities and grow your business through your Customer Retention program.

8. Evaluate your salespeople. If your salespeople are selling the wrong product or service, your customer can be very angry. I was once assigned selling to the Radisson Hotel, and when I called the controller, Frank, he was very upset with my company. When I dug deeper, I learned that the former salesperson had over-committed our ability to deliver product to him. And, when products were late, people would practically stomp on his desk out of frustration. Amazing he had any fingers left when I met him! Anyway, Frank explained the situation, and I learned that the former salesperson had set improper commitment levels. When I reset the commitment expectation to one that both Frank and I could accept and know I could deliver upon, Frank became a happy customer again. Customer Retention calls are opportunities to save lost business. They are also opportunities to learn if your salespeople are displaying bad habits.

Good salesmanship ensures you can deliver service that’s consistent with your value proposition and brand.

9. Measure trends. Are you using polls, trends, surveys correctly? Smart Customer Retention knows if various levels of support are getting better over time or slipping a little. If they slip a lot, you stand to lose a lot of customers!

Make sure you use polls and surveys to measure the lifetime value for different segments of your offerings. Also, use that data to improve your marketing to these segments, too.

10. How focused are you on retention? Are you using retention as a major focus of your marketing efforts? Every three months I go through my emails and look for problems, missed opportunities. You'd be surprised how many times I've created a customer by using this practice to self-monitor my own customer retention. If you've overlooked a question, you may have an opportunity. If you missed a chance to resolve a negative, take action and fix it now. The last time I did this, I ended up getting more business the next week. Is retention part of your annual plan for customers?
Make retention a built-in part of your marketing plan. Go the extra mile, and figure out ways to utilize this list. I've also been building a customer satisfaction survey, which you can find through the resources link at http://www.ARRiiVE.com. If you find this useful, let me know.

We care about your concerns, and I hope it shows. If you care about this article, please pass it on to your CEO, VP Sales & Marketing, VP Operations or COO, and Human Resources people. Help us get the word out so that we can all experience better customer relationships.

Time Wasters in Corporate America?

Every now and then an article comes up that catches my eye. Today, an article on wasting time in corporate environments lit up - because I hate wasting time. Time is the one resource we can never get back once it is gone.

The interesting thing about this report, sponsored and published by AOL and Salary.com, is the disparity between the amount of time employers (or HR) thought employees waste, and the amount of time employees actually admitted to wasting.

The report, originally published in 2006, quotes the following:

Average hrs. American worker actually wastes is 1.70 hrs.
Average hrs. American workers are expected to waste by HR .94 hrs.
Difference between expected and actual time wasted = .76 hrs.

That is 197 hrs. per year wasted MORE than HR people think is going to be wasted. Multiplying that out by the Average American worker's annual salary $16.86 per hour = $3,321 x the total number of American workers (non-farm) 135 million = $448.4 Billion cost to companies.

Wow. Okay, does it really matter? To a lessor extent, in every company, yes, it does.
Time wasted, to me, means one of three things:

1. Employee is bored, lazy, ADD, or underutilized.
2. Manager is not paying attention to how employee spends their time.
3. Employer is not structured to empower their employees.

Number one is somewhat rectifyable. Even lazy people will work harder if they are motivated. It is up to an employer to utilize their people's skillsets. Although, if you're an employee reading this and you're just not giving your best because, well, no reason at all, then shame on you. Get it together, work hard, do your best no matter where you are. But, the reality is, I think most employees actually DO want to contribute.

So, let's look at #2 and #3. #2 Manager is not paying attention to how employee spends their time. Well, if the manager is wasting time, too, this may be part of the problem. But, deeper than that, managers ought to know, at least to some extent, what employees are up to. There are ways to know: telephone reports, cell phone expenses, lunch expenses, customer reports, one-on-one meetings, etc. If a manager doesn't look at these to know that (a) the employee is actually doing work, and (b) the employee is putting the production or not, then the manager is in the wrong job. A manager who is motivating their team and utilizing their talents to the fullest will generally be the most successful manager. So, aim at ways to motivate and empower your team so they can make you the successful manager you want to be.

Last, #3 - Employer is not structured to empower their employees. This is the problem most organizations in America are struggling with today. EMPOWERMENT. Why? Well, they structure like a pyramid -- almost all of them. And, pyramid structures are great for creating an army of robots, but they aren't great for enabling people to be creative and innovative.

The solution to that problem? Structure in a new way. We're working on a structure enabling Semantic Collaboration to occur. Semantic Collaboration is a term we coined after reading about Web 3.0 Search becoming "semantic search" and relating what we're doing to build collaborative teams. Semantic Collaboration builds dynamic teams based upon skills and abilities rather than job description and title. It is a refreshing way to treat people. And, from our research, people respond with more innovation and higher productivity when semantic collaboration is embraced by an organization. So, for many organizations, structuring more creatively would allow far more innovation and productivity. I've published an article on a model of collaboration I call the Diamond-Circle model, which is the first step to implementing semantic collaboration in your organization.

The last key to avoiding waste of time is to promote an atmosphere of collaboration, contribution, and creativity. People ought to be able to waste *some* time if it is how they recharge their batteries, create friendships that allow higher quality of work, and build teams. So, that type of time may actually not be a waste, at all.

If you're in HR and wondering how to deal with these challenges, reach out to organizations focused on improving structure, process, and collaboration. If you're in upper management, avoid focusing solely on numbers. People ought to be rated for their human factor, too. But consider structuring from the inside-out, rather than top-down, to enable more collaboration and go to the "hot-hand" to meet the challenges and opportunities for your organization.

Last, if you're an employee, for pete's sake, either find a job that you love, or create one that you won't want to waste your time away -- after all, your time is your own. And, as Shakespeare once wrote, "to thine own self be true."

Are you struggling with high growth or massive change?

Have you noticed that most organizations are structured like a pyramid?

While the pyramid is useful to get many people following specific orders in a short amount of time, there is a problem with the pyramid stifling innovation and leaving people wondering "what else is there?" about their job.

Have you ever thought up an idea that could make or save your firm a lot of money, then sent that idea to your boss, then only have that boss "steal" your idea and claim it for their own?

I have. I know the feeling.

How are you keeping abreast with change? If you're like most busy executives, you're not able to cope with the massive amounts of information hitting your organization. We studied this and through evaluating usage of a business model we call the Diamond-Circle, we believe our results indicate your organization can not only stay on top of the biggest challenges and opportunities facing you today, but also move from being REactive to PROactive in tackling your biggest obstacles to growing a succesful organization.

How does it work? Well, the Diamond-Circle is quite simple, actually. Much like the "Triangle Offense" utilized by Phil Jackson, Head Coach of the Los Angeles Lakers (winner of SIX NBA titles on two different teams), the Diamond-Circle enables you to build teams around "hot hands" within your company. Your core is in the middle, not the top. Functions and Staff evolve around this core, depending upon skill set, not job title or category. The idea is to build a skills database that allows your team to respond to new opportunities, react to competitive threats, and build new programs based around specialized knowledge, skill sets, and other key contributing factors we've determined are useful in building interactive organization teams.

While the database might need to be tweaked by the type of organization you are operating within, there are basic functions that are always replicated across teams.

The value in utilizing a structure like this is that you build more empowerment. People's ideas on the teams are highly valued, and they can contribute in a safe environment without risk of termination, idea-theft, or other nasty things that typically happen in a pyramid environment.

In addition, your organization's ability to innovate is turned back on. Since when does the "your suggestion here" box work in a modern organization? Every "WIFFM (what's in it for me) meeting I ever intended was a way for a company to determine who was the squeaky wheel and get rid of people, rather than actually gather true innovation. Sound familiar?

I care about making a difference. I care about seeing human resource managers actually DEVELOP their employees, rather than just being the screener/protection/firing agent that HR represents in most organizations today. If you think I'm generalizing, well, then prove me wrong. I've lost count the number of "nice" human resource agents who entered HR to make a difference, only to find that all they do is "process" people, corporate rules, and firings. Isn't it nice to get smiled at when you're being "down-sized?"

Sarbanes-Oxley just made it worse, too. It seems to me that Human Resources managers would jump at the chance to truly make a difference and get teams working in their organization the way they envisioned when they entered their profession. HR isn't alone. Sales VP's struggle to motivate their teams to do more than take orders. CEO's struggle to stay on top of challenges to their organizations. Operations managers struggle with creating new ways to delivering solutions in the face of risk that a competitor will innovate and develop a way to beat them.

Innovation is an organization-wide issue.

By turning your organization from top-down to inside-out you dramatically change the way you can relate as teams. We're developing a software model to make this system even easier to implement. Want to get involved? Email me and I'll send you my non-disclosure agreement. In the meantime, I'm helping organizations build structure that sets-up innovation from the get-go. We've got to get innovative in a global economy. It's the only way to truly succeed in the face of high growth and turbulent change.

What do you think? Could the Diamond-Circle help your organization? Are you struggling with change? High growth? Ways to stay ahead of quick-and-nimble competitors? I welcome your feedback on this matter.