RESULTS.com - Business Execution Blog

Many of us have heard about the so called “secret” or "law of attraction", and many popular self-help books suggest that merely dreaming, thinking, and willing something to happen can make it so. That is, if we imagine ourselves achieving our goals, it makes them magically happen. 

Companies who are highly effective at business execution follow a disciplined hiring methodology. This ensures you only hire “A-Players" for every role in your company, as described in our previous article “No more hiring mistakes". Hiring is too important to get wrong.

Many managers I've met think they're better at communicating than they really are. Communication is hard. It doesn't just happen. It has to be deliberately designed. Here's a couple of suggestions mistakes to avoid, and how to be a better communicator (and therefore a more effective leader): 

Looking back over my management career, the worst experiences were without a doubt, having to deal with poorly performing or badly behaving staff members. I remember the stress, anguish, not to mention the loss of sleep thinking about the tough conversations I needed to have.

While there’s much about leadership that remains constant over time, there are profound strategic changes occurring in many industries, and the pace of change is only increasing. Leaders need to display certain attributes to deal with these changes. This growth tip was inspired by an article that featured in the Management Excellence blog. 

Ideally, we proactively contact our customers to assess their level of satisfaction (or better yet their level of advocacy) with our products and services and take action to resolve any issues that are raised. Seeking customer feedback needs to be a regular discipline, as the dynamics of the relationship can change over time.

If you are a regular reader of these business growth tips, you will know that we strongly recommend that business leaders follow a disciplined strategic decision making process, and a disciplined business execution process – that is, if you really want to maximize your chances of business success. 

One of the best things about working at RESULTS is that we get the opportunity to meet and hang out with many of the thought leaders on the planet. It is a chance to understand their thinking, discuss ideas, hear how they apply ideas and concepts and to just get to know them.

Business leaders tend to be incredibly busy individuals. “Busyness” should never be confused with effectiveness however. We need to switch from being busy, to achieving results.

A friend of mine recently pointed me to the State of the Business Owner research project. This project is undertaken each year and surveys hundreds of small business owners to collect their opinions and to capture data about what is working and what is not.