I don’t know who to attribute this quote to, but it’s really instructive for businesses: “Excellence is never an accident, it is the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction, skillful execution, and the vision to see obstacles as opportunities.” Since Excellence is one of our 15 Points of Culture, we talk about this a lot.
High intention and sincere effort: You get what you focus your resources and attention on, and if you don’t focus (and define) excellence, the activities to get you there will never end up on your calendar or get started on.
Intelligent direction & skillful execution – if you don’t have a strategy (and plan that your team can follow), well, let’s just say it’s really tough to hit a target that you can’t see, and even harder to execute a path that’s not defined. The answer here is easy – get your business, strategic or succession plan done. Shameless plug – this need not take you 6 months of endless consultant meetings and cost a fortune to do your plan. You can get a $60k-caliber plan done with us and our Ascend software and program in 2 days for a fraction of the cost – less than $10k. Email me if you want more info; the next Ascend Planning Days are April 11 and 12th in Madison.
What I hadn’t considered as part of “excellence” before is the ” vision to see obstacles as opportunities.” Let me share a story on this one…
Prior to founding ActionCOACH in 2007, I had the opportunity to lead a tool company through a turnaround. The company made levels for the construction industry. They had amazing products, but were in pretty bad financial shape – had been losing hundreds of thousands of dollars every year for a decade as they tried to break in to the US market (it was a European company). We were $100,000 per day behind in shipping! Yikes. I didn’t realize it was that bad when I accepted the job.
For awhile I was in pity party mode. We sold to Home Depot and True Value Hardware, and Sears & Kmart at the time, and short-shipping by $100k per day was going to get us kicked out of those retailers – fast. So, what do you do? The company was bleeding cash, so I couldn’t dedicate any any more people to getting product out the door.
The problem with focusing on the problem, is that your brain can’t multi-process – to the extent that you are focused on the challenge, your brain physically cannot see opportunity. When I finally chose to seek out opportunity and take ownership and responsibility for fixing things, we found that one customer in particular was consuming the majority of my team’s time and energy… and, you guessed it – that we lost money on every product that we sold to that client. So, we exited that relationship – and were at break-even the next morning. Nine months later we were profitable and double the size, because my team had stopped wasting time with a D client, and had gained the bandwidth to focus on our A & B customers.
So, what does this mean for you and your company? Couple of things:
- Where are you focusing on the negatives instead of the possibilities?
- If you haven’t graded your clients A (awesome!), B,(good) C (shaky) and D (dead), do that now. Either move your C clients to B, or double their pricing so they go away. D’s – send them to a competitor.
- If you don’t have a current business, strategic or succession plan, contact me at susanthomson@actionCOACH.com. Imagine how much faster your team can run when they have the straight-line to the goal! And imagine how you’ll feel when you can step back because your team knows how to run your business without you having to be there all the time.
Susan Thomson- Schedule a complimentary 20 minute strategy call. We’ll ask you 3 key questions about your business and where you want to take it long term. You’ll get clarity on your next step.
- Work with our team privately: If you’d like to work with our team to take you from 6 to 7, or 7 to 10 figures… just reply to this message and put PRIVATE in the subject line. Tell us a little about your business and what you’d like to talk through, and we’ll start there.