Fatigue, why am I hearing so many signs of fatigue?

In 2008, a perfect storm formed.  The largest recession/depression since 1929 hit the world.  At the same time, we all experienced the full fledged 10 year adoption cycle/impact of the internet.  Through the next four years, two trends emerged:  The markets required companies to do more, do it better and do it faster and all this with fewer people. 

We are now beginning to experience, individually and organizationally a sense of fatigue that comes from depletion.  When I was actively rowing, I learned a valuable lesson related to depletion.  In a rowing race, you start the race with a very intense sprint which immediately puts your body in to a state of anaerobic depletion (this state means that the rowers body is both attempting to take in more oxygen then is possible and is unable to convert fats/carbohydrates to energy…. So, the rower begins the race in a state of pan “pins and needles” in the legs, etc.).  By the end of a six minute race, a rower has performed the fatigue equivalent of playing, full out, two back to back basketball games. 

The lesson learned…. step away.  There are times that continuing a pace puts one, or one’s organization, in peril.  Now, for those who are ready to respond with “Yeah… and watch my customers go away and my progress melt away” let me offer that the purpose of stepping away is to focus on improvement and efficiency.  It is not about giving up. 

So, tell me… what would you do if you stepped away?  What would your team do if they paused and regrouped?  What would change about the spiral I see of faster, better, cheaper? 

Why are more and more people in business talking about vulnerability?

Please follow me.  I am watching the Seahawks finish off the Panthers.  One of the announcers says that Wilson, the Seahawk quarterback, visions the game before it ever happens and then manifests it.  Following the psychology of sports, I was not surprised to hear terms like “vision” and “manifest” spouted by commentators of today.  The other eight people in the room were surprised and commented on it. 

Soon, I began hearing other words about the vulnerability and trust developed for the level of teamwork achieved.  Now, I have to admit, unless you watched Oprah, then I imagine you haven’t heard the word vulnerability bandied about too often in a rough contact sport like football or in male dominated business meetings. 

Yet, there it was.  So, what is vulnerability?  I’ll give you my definition… pure and simple it is risking something or being at risk.  Applied to business groups, I believe it means placing oneself in a position where others may potentially have power over us. 

Patrick Lencioni in the 5 Dysfunctions of a Team starts from the position that many of us feel a need for safety and we equate this to invulnerability.  So, feeling vulnerable is not something we do very lightly. 

Risking is a first step to producing trust and trust is one of the foundations of creating a highly effective team.  So, what is it that needs to be risked?  That actually depends on each person.  Here are a few questions to ask yourself, or others and which, if answered honestly and with self-awareness would show vulnerability, risk: 

•  What is it that if I revealed it, I would feel that I looked less than good?
•  If my team new something about me, what do I believe would undermine my authority?
• Why don’t people like to work with me?
• What is my weakest skill and how do I shore up that lack of skill?

First, if you can truly answer these questions, even to yourself, you are a person worth getting to know.  Second, most of us can’t? 

•  "There is no 'I' in TEAM" ~ Anonymous
• "A single arrow is easily broken, but not ten in a bundle" ~ Japanese proverb
• "A boat doesn’t go forward if each one is rowing their own way" ~ Swahili proverb
• "Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success" ~ Henry Ford
• "One man can be a crucial ingredient on a team, but one man cannot make a team" ~ Kareem Abdul Jabbar
• "A group becomes a team when each member is sure enough of himself and his contribution to praise the skill of the others" ~ Norman Hidle
• "You don't get harmony when everybody sings the same note" ~ Doug Floyd

“Remember teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.” Patrick Lencioni

 

So, what would you risk in order to create trust?  What is it that you do that makes creating  trust more difficult? What actions do you take to create trust? 

Can Companies with fewer than 500 employees do effective training and should they?

Universally, companies with fewer that 500 employees are pretty poor at training employees.  The reasons for this are understandable and many, starting with flat organizations, populated by doers and a mindset that people are hired to add value. 

The reasons that training becomes more important to a company as it grows from 15 to 50 10 120 employees are just as universal: employees stop providing as much value if they are not challenged and developed; self-learners are extremely rare; companies whose employees, processes and systems don’t improve get stuck/complacent at points in their growth. 

So, what’s a CEO/Company to do?  Here are a few options that reduce risk, improve sustainable growth and provide size appropriate focus to the training that is needed:  Recognize training is important and that training is something you model; not what your company can train and what training it may not be able to provide. 

If you are an executive or business owner without a coach, then you don’t yet recognize that training is important or that it is something you model.  I know of no professional athlete who is without a trainer/coach.  Maybe they know something you don’t know?  If you are getting coaching ask yourself how much you are communicating its value to your team/employees?  Do you have goals for the coaching you receive and do you share those goals/KPI’s?  Do you include your key reports in the coaching process? 

As to training others… I have found that in most companies of the 15 and 50 employee size, that they are best at technical training, next best at operational training and usually weakest in training leadership, management and supervisory skills (soft skills:  communication, professional improvement, etc.).  These are important roles/skills and tools.  They should be a part of employees professional improvement plan and there should be some budget attached to the training involved. 

Back to the technical training…. If you make something, provide a service or distribute something, the knowledge base and tools to do it and do it better are likely to be within your and your employees wheelhouse.  Meaning that you have best practices, skills and tools that can be taught.  The companies that do this the best focus on three aspects of training: the provide training in very narrow areas and cross train; they train people to train and make the training a constant part of employee’s jobs. 

So, what works in your company?  How did you initiate training?  How did you make sure that training was a part of what everyone does? 

Can You Take a Punch

Today we have a guest blog from Dan Weedin:

I vividly recall being a member of the junior high football team. I was a skinny kid that probably looked pretty funny in my football gear. I was definitely NOT a fighter. I wasn’t ever looking for a tussle from anyone that was filling out their uniform and growing a beard at 14 years old.

One practice on a crisp autumn afternoon, we had a drill where the ball carrier was going to run through a gauntlet of teammates and practice holding on to the football at all costs. My turn as ball carrier came up and this was the first time I had tried the drill. As I made my way through the gauntlet with ball firmly tucked under my arm, I swiveled to the left to see if I could make my way out. WHAM! The next thing I know, I’m lying on my back and the absence of air (or the ability to even inhale) was palpable. My good buddy Eric had come out of nowhere and basically “blew me up” with a collision to my chest. It was my first experience of having the wind knocked out of me. After a few seconds (that seemed like hours) elapsed, Eric was helping me up so I could resume practice. To this day, I have no idea if I held on to the football or not!

I was blindsided by Eric because I had a huge “blind spot” in my process of running. What blind spots do you have in your business?

Football teams at all levels – from junior high to professional – run drills and practice in part to figure out their “blind spots.” They learn through drills to anticipate perils and to be resilient in the event of crises. For my part, I never more ran without my head on an allegorical swivel, to assure that I kept my breath where it was supposed to be!

As a CEO or chief executive in your company, you’d better have your head on a swivel, too. Just like Eric didn’t announce his impending presence to me, neither will a disaster send a calling card. You will have unexpected “collisions,” and without having identified, analyzed, and prepared for them, you may just find yourself flat on your back. You must then hope that someone is there to help you up!

The best way to avoid this is to take control yourself of the strategic work related to crisis planning, business continuation, and resiliency. This isn’t something that should be delegated away. The buck ultimately stops with you. So while you can delegate implementation, you can never relinquish the duty of being the strategic leader of your team. Only you can eliminate your blind spots. And the best way to do that is through planning, preparation, and practice.

It’s all about that action, boss!

DAN WEEDIN

Dan Weedin, CIC, CRM
The Crisis ConquerorP.O. Box 1571 / Poulsbo, WA 98370
http://www.TheCrisisConqueror.com
dan@danweedin.com
360-697-1058

Blog – http://Weedin360.com
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Inducted to the Million Dollar Consultant™ Hall of Fame – 2012
http://weedin360.com/2012/11/15/the-official-announcement

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The Power of “Not Yet!”

This winter, I am undergoing my usual:  I have a plan for improving my golf game.  It includes a certain number of lessons at an indoor golf range and practice sessions.  What I did not initially grasp is that it would require me to embrace the concept of “Not yet”. 

You see, as I completed my fifth year of playing golf, I thought that I was going to be working on nuance and refinement of my swing.  (you can skip the next paragraph if you don’t golf)

I walked in to the first lesson and heard myself declare, “ I am hitting my driver 200-225 yards.  I may as well put it away and just hit my 3 wood.  I hit a 3 wood  about as far and more accurately.”  My instructor asked, how far I wanted to hit my driver and I answered by saying that on longer courses my second shot was not a 7 iron but a wood, or at best a rescue club.  This means that my strategy of being on the green in two is significantly reduced.  My accuracy and the likelihood of parring the hole go down if it takes me three strokes to get to the green.  To hit with better golfers, I needed to hit the drive 250 yards. 

What my instructor offered was to get me to hit my tee shot farther by spring and as, or more, accurately then I was when I hit it a shorter distance. 

What I have had to confront is failure.  I confronted the possibility that I can’t hit a golf ball longer.  To avoid the frustration of failing, I have undertaken a mantra, “not yet”. 

How many times have you said (or heard others say), “I can’t do that”.  The truth of the statement is self-evident and self-defeating.  By exchanging the above words for “not yet”, I get to take failure off the table. 

In business this is often critical.  To succeed, we have to try things that we have never done and have no data to support our accomplishing.  We have staff/teams who get stuck by saying, “We can’t do that!” and a simple substitution is to exclaim, “not yet!”. 

If you can get your teams/key employees to embrace “not yet” you are half way home to achieving a goal.  Your mindset will shift.  You still have to take action, accomplish your goal.  What is removed is the hurdle of telling yourself, as you work toward that goal, that you are failing.  Try it and let me know how differently you feel? 

What mindsets do you create to increase your and your team’s odds for success in a project or new endeavor? 

Customer Expectations

I always watch for trends and I am noticing something that is really disturbing me.  Many clients are indicating that they and their teams are feeling exhausted.  This is a recipe for disaster. 

Let’s talk about how we might have arrived at this point and how it is showing up and then I want to hear from you about how much you identify with this issue and what you are doing about it. 

Over the last decade, market forces have required businesses to operate leaner, while expectations by their customers is that they will run faster and with a higher level of quality.    All my clients are now doing more, doing it better and doing it faster (no matter what the “it” is). 

The result that I am noticing is that resilience is reduced.  They are less able to rebound from the unexpected (Black Swan events) and their energy is more directed, then ever before, on the tactical.  It also means that we are all depleted and more fragile, as people and organizations.

People are laid low by colds/flu’s and take longer to recover.  There is a frenetic pace to work and here, let me add that all my clients and the businesses I talk with are having record setting sales and margins are not a large concern.  At the same time, I get the sense that all these people are looking over their should and wondering, “How long will these good sales times last?”. 

The impact is that I see/hear less joy and less satisfaction from the accomplishments that people achieve.  There is more resignation than I can remember ever experiencing.  These attributes, unchecked, will leave anyone, or any organization, depleted and susceptible to being blind sided.  So, tell me, am I missing the boat?  Are things more positive then I am perceiving?  Based on your responses, I will develop my next blogs (either move on from the subject or begin to develop it and solutions).  Let me know.   

Market demands and the speed of business

While everyone talks about it, very few are doing more than survive it!  What is my subject today?.... speed!  Over the last twenty years Markets, customers and technology have led to unprecedented speed. 

Your customers expectations are:  1) You are simply waiting around with nothing to do, until they text, email, call or, as some Neanderthal still do, walk in; 2) they want it cheap; and 3) they want it immediately. This used to be the land of retail and now, B2B companies are feeling this pinch. 

So, what’s a B2B to do?  Let’s start with know thy self.  What does your company do and do you do it so well that no one else is your peer?  If you resemble this then why are you taking those customers/clients who suck you dry and reduce your ability to perform at the highest level? 

If you do it faster then you better figure out how to replicate that speed.  Again, who is it that sucks you dry and slows you down?  Do you have to specialize?  Not necessarily…. You do have to decide who is your target and who is not. 

If you are getting the distinct feeling that I think many companies try and take on customers/clients who are not in their wheelhouse, then you are getting my message. 

When is the last time you and your staff sat down and developed/updated your list or description of the ideal customer? When did you last sit down and made a list of who in your existing group of customers met the must haves on that list?  Who meets those requirements and is not your customer? 

The Power of “Not Yet!”

This winter, I am undergoing my usual:  I have a plan for improving my golf game.  It includes a certain number of lessons at an indoor golf range and practice sessions.  What I did not initially grasp is that it would require me to embrace the concept of “Not yet”. 

You see, as I completed my fifth year of playing golf, I thought that I was going to be working on nuance and refinement of my swing.  (you can skip the next paragraph if you don’t golf)

I walked in to the first lesson and heard myself declare, “ I am hitting my driver 200-225 yards.  I may as well put it away and just hit my 3 wood.  I hit a 3 wood  about as far and more accurately.”  My instructor asked, how far I wanted to hit my driver and I answered by saying that on longer courses my second shot was not a 7 iron but a wood, or at best a rescue club.  This means that my strategy of being on the green in two is significantly reduced.  My accuracy and the likelihood of parring the hole go down if it takes me three strokes to get to the green.  To hit with better golfers, I needed to hit the drive 250 yards. 

What my instructor offered was to get me to hit my tee shot farther by spring and as, or more, accurately then I was when I hit it a shorter distance. 

What I have had to confront is failure.  I confronted the possibility that I can’t hit a golf ball longer.  To avoid the frustration of failing, I have undertaken a mantra, “not yet”. 

How many times have you said (or heard others say), “I can’t do that”.  The truth of the statement is self-evident and self-defeating.  By exchanging the above words for “not yet”, I get to take failure off the table. 

In business this is often critical.  To succeed, we have to try things that we have never done and have no data to support our accomplishing.  We have staff/teams who get stuck by saying, “We can’t do that!” and a simple substitution is to exclaim, “not yet!”. 

If you can get your teams/key employees to embrace “not yet” you are half way home to achieving a goal.  Your mindset will shift.  You still have to take action, accomplish your goal.  What is removed is the hurdle of telling yourself, as you work toward that goal, that you are failing.  Try it and let me know how differently you feel? 

What mindsets do you create to increase your and your team’s odds for success in a project or new endeavor? 

Can Companies with fewer than 500 employees do effective training and should they?

Universally, companies with fewer that 500 employees are pretty poor at training employees.  The reasons for this are understandable and many, starting with flat organizations, populated by doers and a mindset that people are hired to add value. 

The reasons that training becomes more important to a company as it grows from 15 to 50 10 120 employees are just as universal: employees stop providing as much value if they are not challenged and developed; self-learners are extremely rare; companies whose employees, processes and systems don’t improve get stuck/complacent at points in their growth. 

So, what’s a CEO/Company to do?  Here are a few options that reduce risk, improve sustainable growth and provide size appropriate focus to the training that is needed:  Recognize training is important and that training is something you model; no what your company can train and what training it may not be able to provide. 

If you are an executive or business owner without a coach, then you don’t yet recognize that training is important or that it is something you model.  I know of no professional athlete who is without a trainer/coach.  Maybe they know something you don’t know?  If you are getting coaching ask yourself how much you are communicating its value to your team/employees?  Do you have goals for the coaching you receive and do you share those goals/KPI’s?  Do you include your key reports in the coaching process? 

As to training others… I have found that in most companies of the 15 and 50 employee size, that they are best at technical training, next best at operational training and usually weakest in training leadership, management and supervisory skills (soft skills:  communication, professional improvement, etc.).  These are important roles/skills and tools.  They should be a part of employees professional improvement plan and there should be some budget attached to the training involved. 

Back to the technical training…. If you make something, provide a service or distribute something, the knowledge base and tools to do it and do it better are likely to be within your and your employees wheelhouse.  Meaning that you have best practices, skills and tools that can be taught.  The companies that do this the best focus on three aspects of training: the provide training in very narrow areas and cross train; they train people to train and make the training a constant part of employee’s jobs. 

So, what works in your company?  How did you initiate training?  How did you make sure that training was a part of what everyone does? 

Character Strengths of the Leader — Are you developing yours?

Today we have a guest blog from Marty Vondrell:

Do you know somebody in a leadership role that you don’t enjoy working with because of how they are being at times? Do they speak to you in a way that makes you want to move away from them or even do something worse?

And for the people that must work for the leader - Do you think they want to follow this leader?  Do they give them full effort?  Or do they give them the least amount of discretionary effort they can without losing their job?  Or worse yet, do they actively work against the leader?

Could this be the reason that the leader is less successful than their potential? Are they derailing their business success because of how they are showing up as a leader? Do you know this person intimately?  Could this person be you?

We all need to develop our character strengths.  Nobody’s perfect.  The research results are clear that character traits or emotional intelligence are the key to leadership and success in business. 

Fortunately, character traits are developable.  Unlike other factors of your success, you can develop them with a little work.  The key is awareness.

Leadership character traits are made up of polarities.  Developing strength in each end of the polarity is crucial to become a conscious leader.  The first step is to become aware of the contradiction and balance it within yourself. 

For example, one dimension of a strong character trait is the ability to take bold action in the face of scrutiny and disagreement.  At times, a leader must be able to do this.

At the same time, a leader must be considerate of other views and let followers be heard.  If a leader never listens or considers others views, the leader will have no real followers.  The employees will be coerced into action.  This will not get the discretionary effort any good leader is looking for.

Do you see the power in the possibility of improving your leadership in this way? — If you are willing to put some conscious effort into developing your character traits, you will see amazing positive changes in how people relate to you and fight for you.

Where do you start? —

•      Become conscious and observant of your own presence. 

•      Utilize a leadership model to become aware. 

•      Play the witness role in some of your interpersonal interactions. 

•      Without judgment — observe yourself.  Be honest with yourself about how people are reacting to you and the results the interactions produce. 

Where could you improve? How are you “being” with people?  What do you like and what could get better?

The next step is to pick one thing.  Pick one trait that you want to improve.  Don’t work on more than one but only work on the one thing you choose to improve.  And work on it ferociously.  Stretch yourself. 

Push yourself to the extremes of that character trait, both over and under doing it at times, to see how people react.  This is the work that will make you conscious about your character traits.  And it will bring out the extraordinary leader in you.

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Today we have a guest blog from Shannon Bruce:

Every now and then I find a book that “cuts to the heart” with provocative truth. The title of this blog is actually one of those books. It’s written by Greg McKeown and is, what I believe, a “must read” for every Executive.

Essentialism isn’t about getting more done in less time. It’s about getting only the right things done.

Imagine that you had a life where you spent your time focused on what’s most vital, and that you “ditched” the remaining 90% of your “to-do” list. Consider the impact this would have on your productivity? Your aliveness? Your results?  Your impact? Your relationships? I want this sense of enthusiasm and ease that a “less but better” approach will have for you—the opportunity to be fully present, engaged, alive, playful, having fun and getting results all at the same time!

Let’s see if you could benefit from the disciplined pursuit of less. How would you answer the following questions?

·         Have you ever found yourself stretched too thin?

·         Do you simultaneously feel overworked and underutilized?

·         Are you often busy but not productive?

·         Do you feel like your time is constantly being hijacked by other people’s agendas?

If you answered “yes” to any one of these, read on!

“The way of the Essentialist means living by design, not by default. Instead of making choices reactively, the Essentialist deliberately distinguishes the vital few from the trivial many, eliminates the non-essentials, and then removes the obstacles so the essential things have clear, smooth passage. In other words, Essentialism is a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution lies, then making execution of those things almost effortless.” Greg McKeown

So where do you start?

The answer is simple and extremely difficult at the same time. It all starts with your calendar!

Go grab your calendar. When you look at what is currently scheduled, what do you notice? Is it filled up with appointments, meetings, events, and activities?

Do you have any unscheduled time that you use to breathe, explore, think, process, or reflect?

My hunch is that you have “zero” margin time in your workday, and yet this time is critical if you want to create a “less but better” approach to life and work.

In the book, the author talks about the CEO of Linked In who schedules two hours a day of unscheduled time in 30-minute increments. This same concept was recently reinforced by Brian Turner, the former CFO of Coin Star who currently serves on 6 for profit boards of directors and is a well-sought out speaker. Excell Puget Sound, along with several other sponsors, hosted Brian Turner as our keynote speaker at our recent Impact 2014 Annual CEO Retreat. Brian’s comment, “you need to have two hours in your day of unscheduled time just to think”. It’s fascinating that 2 executives are pointing to the same idea of scheduling 2 hours of uninterrupted time in your day! Coincidence? I don’t think so. The time has come for “Essentialism”.

I know what you’re thinking…”Yes, but….”

I know this to be true because I’ve heard it from myself and many of the Executives I coach. “That won’t work for me. I’ve got too many things on my plate,” or “It sounds good in theory but there’s no way that will ever work.”

I want to challenge your assumptions. I believe it’s not that you can’t, it’s that you don’t know how. Chances are you don’t have this uninterrupted time placed into your calendar because you say “yes” to too many other things and there’s no room because you’re overcommitted. And if you did have it on the calendar, you probably dropped it the minute someone needed you to do something because you don’t know how to hold appointments with yourself as “sacred”. I also believe the biggest obstacle to getting and keeping this time in your calendar is that you have no idea on what would you spend your time doing because your focus is on forward momentum!

If any of this resonates for you, and you have a spark of hope and desire drawing you to focus on the vital few, it’s going to require a different approach. So where do you begin? Consider the list below:

1.    Schedule an appointment with yourself. Make the time in your calendar so you can put energy and attention to plan, think, dream, breathe and explore. And hold this appointment “sacred”. My hunch is that you show up to all of those appointments that are specifically scheduled in your calendar for others. Whether it’s a doctor’s appointment, a meeting with your team, or a strategy session to discuss the current initiative, you’re there without exception, right? Offer this same level of commitment to yourself.

2.    Challenge everything you have in your calendar. Stay curious as you contemplate: Why am I doing this activity? Is it essential? What are the benefits? Is it still necessary? Remove at least one or two of those trivial and unimportant activities from your calendar.

3.    Challenge your “yes”. For every person or activity you say “yes” to, you are saying “no” to someone or something else. Identify one “yes” that you can turn into a “no” and do it! Focus on the BIGGER yes you get to embrace when you say “no” to the trivial.

4.    Filter your choices for long-term success. With the insight and awareness from #1 - #3, measure each activity and “yes” using a “good”, “better”, “best” approach. From here, take a look at each “good” activity and pick one you will stop doing. With the activities in the better category, proceed with caution about continuing these—stay aware as this could be your next opportunity to free your time. Redirect and focus your attention on the “best” activities that produce the greatest results.

5.    Fill the void. When you go from an overcommitted, “stretched too thin” schedule it’s impossible to just “sit and contemplate”. So fill the void with an activity that allows you to be reflective yet active until you can become comfortable with a slower pace. Examples—go for a walk/run and listen to something positive that energizes you. Better yet, get and read the Essentialism book.

So what’s your next step? If you don’t start now to focus your energy on the vital few so you can let go of the trivial many, when will you? As the title says, it takes discipline and today is the best day to begin.

SHANNON BRUCE

Shannon Bruce, PCC is a Professional Certified Coach and current President and CEO of StoryBridge, Inc. of Kitsap County. She has been in the professional coaching industry for over 11 years working in many capacities as an Executive and Leadership Coach, Team Coach, Facilitator and Trainer. Her diverse background also includes 13 years as a CPA with Ernst & Young, Corporate & Regional Operations Management in the wholesale distribution field, and entrepreneurship launching multiple business start-ups.

Shannon considers herself a Catalyst for Culture Change who is an “out-of-the-box” thinker looking for new and life-giving ways to enhance business results and team relationships. With her corporate background and coach training, Shannon understands the needs of both “people” and “profit” to help companies produce more with less. Her true passion & mission is “going into companies” to “create communities”.

Living in Bremerton, WA with her 13-year old daughter, Shannon enjoys quality time with family and friends in addition to reading, exercising and hiking.

Do You Taste Like Chicken?

Today we have a guest blog from Dan Weedin:

If your business looks, tastes, and smells like any other business or competitor, why would someone work with you? Uniqueness is critical for businesses trying to influence new customers and clients. It’s easy to slip into “same old, same old,” which ends up the equivalent of “tasting like chicken.” This article will show you how to spice up your business.

I remember attending a Wild Game Dinner fundraiser several years ago replete with exotic hors d'oeuvres featuring animals that I was most familiar watching roam the prairies and jungles on the old television series, Wild Kingdom. They served antelope, wild boar, alligator, and cougar. The one thing that I most remember of the experience was hearing the servers proclaim about almost all the offerings, “Don’t worry…. it tastes like chicken.”

That adage has become a part of American culture, whether you’re describing frog legs, kangaroo, or cane toads. Chicken has become the generic standard that we base all other meats to. If it tastes like chicken, we are “safe.”

Here’s the problem. If everything tasted like chicken, it loses that joy of adventure and curiosity. It becomes stale and uninteresting. It’s just chicken.

The very same problem can happen to you and your business. If your customers and target market consider you to “taste like chicken,” then you’ve sunk into the abyss of ordinary and generic. You’re boring. When that happens, your viability is as threatened as a chubby chicken wandering aimlessly in a poultry farm. Dead meat walking.

How do you know if you “taste like chicken?” Consider these 3 signs:

1. You have no new clientele. The same people and businesses use your products and services, yet nobody new seems interested in your work. This appears to be success, yet it’s a fatal trap. No new blood means no energy, no interest, and no sustainability.
2.  You haven’t produced anything new in years. Whether yours is a service or product, stagnation is a killer. The world renowned speaking coach Patricia Fripp has said that sameness is the enemy of a speaker. Sameness is also the enemy of a business. No innovation leads to decline.
3. You live in a culture of “same old, same old.” If that’s your mentality when you get up and go to work; if it’s the mentality of your employees; then you’ve got a serious problem. In the rapidly moving business world brought about by escalating technology and global thinking, being in “same old” mode will get you run over. That chicken trying to cross the road today can’t take the same path he did 10 years ago or he will be road kill.

If any of these signs pervade in your company or in you, then you’re probably beginning to smell like the chicken dinner your grandmother used to prepare. Here are 5 strategies and tactics that you can implement immediately to mix up the menu to bring new flavors and add spice to your world and to your customers:

1. Create new intellectual property or products. Remember what I said about “sameness?” I don’t care what you do or what industry you’re in, you can create something new and exciting to offer your target market audience. It might be a workshop; a newsletter; a free webinar; or a new product that you created to help them when they didn’t even know they needed help! It doesn’t matter initially how successful it is. What really matters is that you have something new to talk about. Do something different than what everyone else is doing!
2. Boost your marketing. In the height of the recession, many small businesses hunkered down and hoarded cash for fear of running out. One of the areas they stopped was marketing. It should have been where they placed MORE resources. Boost your marketing by utilizing more technology, ask for more referrals, send out more press releases; seek out more interviews; and attend more networking events.
3. Fix Your Own Swing. My golf swing is terrible right now. I’ve been golfing for over 30 years and it’s time to get it fixed, so I need a lesson from a pro. Regardless of how long you’ve been in business. You can use your own “swing fix” from a professional coach or mentor. In fact, the longer it’s been since you’ve had one, the more you will need it! You can’t be brilliant or as creative by yourself. Seek help and utilize it to maximize your talent and opportunity. It’s worth the investment.
4. Get Out of the Office. We’ve become too tied down to our desks due to technology. Email has changed how we communicate in good ways (speed of information) and bad ways (stopped actually talking to people). Get out and see people face to face. Visit your best clients and customers. Make phone calls to those that you can’t readily see in person. Business is still about relationships. Remind them of what you look like.
5. Change the Culture. If the chicken taste has seeped into your workforce, it’s time to shake things up. How do you do this? Simple. Make work more fun by challenging your employees to create new things; help them grow personally and professionally; and offer mentoring to them to help them more rapidly succeed.

Bottom line ~ if you are perceived to be chicken, your goose is cooked. The business world demands difference and innovation; speed and accessibility; and technological sophistication and savvy. These are now becoming the new normal and those norms will continue to change and evolve just like menus in the finest restaurants in the world do. Does your business taste like chicken? If it does, don’t despair. You can always change the menu as long as you have the courage to do so. 

Who’s hungry?

© 2014 Dan Weedin. All Rights Reserved

Dan Weedin, CIC, CRM
The Crisis ConquerorP.O. Box 1571 / Poulsbo, WA 98370
http://www.TheCrisisConqueror.com
dan@danweedin.com
360-697-1058

Blog – http://Weedin360.com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/danweedin
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Inducted to the Million Dollar Consultant™ Hall of Fame – 2012
http://weedin360.com/2012/11/15/the-official-announcement

“Dan’s guidance helped us crystallize our somewhat vague ideas about what we would do in the event of a disaster, into a well-thought out (and written) Crisis Prevention & Disaster Recovery Plan.  We appreciated Dan’s ability to combine his subject matter expertise with an easy to work with approach.  Hopefully we will never experience a disaster, but there is great peace of mind knowing we have a plan in place for that eventuality.” ~ Steve Richardson, CFO AEC, Inc. (Portland, OR)