Coach Kevin - Kevin Lawrence - Strategic advisor and business coach to CEOs and entrepreneurs

Hear directly from Google’s chairman on hiring, meetings and what he calls discord plus deadline

CoachKevin — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 05:34:18 +0000

McKinsey is featuring Google chairman, Eric Schmidt in a video series worth watching. You’ll have to register on the McKinsey site if you are not already registered. In the first clip titled: Hiring and Recruiting, you’ll hear Google’s perspective on hiring the best and brightest in the industry. Interestingly, they were conducting between eight to ten interviews with candidates and then not hiring them. So they analyzed the situation and determined that they could make a hiring decision in five interviews. Schmidt also shares how there must be “discord plus deadline” in meetings for them to be effective and to drive business results.

Check out the video on Hiring and Recruiting and then I would love to hear your thoughts. Would these concepts be useful in your business?

The Magic Of Action – a free eBook

CoachKevin — Fri, 20 May 2011 02:11:38 +0000

ADD-ON DOCUMENTS

Tackling Your Toads Worksheet (page 12 from “The Magic Of Action”)

Lick Your Toads Worksheet (page 16 from “The Magic Of Action”)

Make Tough Decision Worksheet (page 20 from “The Magic Of Action”)

Purge Unnecessary Things Worksheet (page 24 from “The Magic Of Action”)

You can’t win if you’re not on the same page

CoachKevin — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 16:36:50 +0000

Ten reasons why the One-Page Strategic Plan created by Verne Harnish, author of Mastering the Rockefeller Habits improves a company’s performance

By Kevin Lawrence (Coach Kevin)

Remember the back of the napkin – the one where you doodled your first business plan? Or perhaps it was a whiteboard in windowless room where you fervently scrawled your ideas on how to change or dominate your industry. Regardless, it was that one page that helped bring your business, or ideas to fruition.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a CEO at the helm of established organization or an entrepreneur who created a company from the ground up, I’ve seen many business leaders develop extraordinary ideas on the back of a napkin over lunch meetings – and probably more over a dinner late into the evening. The point is – there’s a remarkable sense of clarity that comes from creating a strategic plan that fits on one page.

Equally important, is what happens next – everyone leaves energized and on the same page, off to execute on the plan or idea with a clear purpose. And even if they don’t have the napkin in front of them, the image of that plan is burnt in their mind. The challenge for executives becomes how do you sustain the momentum?

For CEOs of smaller-sized companies who are not at the mercy of the bureaucracy and complexity of larger organizations, this is less of a challenge. But what happens when there are 10,000 different versions of that plan-on-a-napkin, representing every employee’s individual interpretation of the plan?

Oftentimes, business leaders are too focused on steering their ship through day-to-day hurdles, and as a result, they lose sight of company’s vision and goals. I also see many leaders who become extremely tactical and short-term focused, causing them to miss out on the opportunities that made them successful initially. This can be detrimental because when leaders lose focus, so do employees. The result? Everyone is executing his or her own version of what they think is the plan, which is absolutely scary and certainly not good for business.

Instead, winning requires leadership teams to create a strategic plan that is easily understood, communicated and championed. This is why I encourage my clients to use the One-Page Strategic Plan by Verne Harnish, author of Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, because it takes a laser-focused approach to capturing all the important business strategy components – from core values and measurable targets to who is specifically responsible for accomplishing the top priorities each quarter.

The One-Page Strategic Plan makes the difference between companies that prosper and those that unfortunately tread water and here are ten reasons why; business leaders who use the One-Page Strategic Plan:

1. Get clear on who they are as a company and where they want to be in ten years. For many leaders, it may seem like daunting task to develop a long-term vision but with the One-Page Strategic Plan, leadership teams work through smaller, action-oriented components, which in the end establish the company’s vision and the plan to get there.

2. Identify the biggest opportunities and obstacles ahead for their business. The only constant is change and if your company is not agile to changes in the market, it will become irrelevant. Putting a bunch of smart people in a room on a quarterly basis ensures that the biggest opportunities and obstacles are identified and debated regularly. This is crucial because you don’t want to miss opportunities or unexpectedly face obstacles.

3. Build a shared conviction and greater commitment to the strategy. Having a plan is imperative, but it’s also important that those executing it are in agreement and committed to making it happen. The One-Page Strategic Plan process helps business leaders:

Understand one another better, which improves camaraderie and contributes to diversity of thinking, greater collaboration and the generation of better ideas;
Break down barriers and silos that existed between them or their business units, leading to ideas that are less likely to benefit only one department, but instead improve the success and cross-fertilization of ideas across departments;
Establish a shared conviction and therefore they buy into the plan because they created it together in the first place.

This all leads to a greater probability of success, regardless of whether or not the plan is perfect.

4. Enrich their leadership capabilities. Leaders (and employees) get the chance to drive major priorities, giving top executives the ability to see how their key talent handles and delivers on major initiatives.

For example, one of my clients needed someone to drive a major project and when an employee volunteered, executives were skeptical because they didn’t believe he had the caliber of leadership required. Well, to everyone’s surprise this employee was stellar throughout the project, and in fact, established himself as one of the best leaders in the company. The perspective went from “yeah he’s a good guy” to “wow, he is amazing.”

Seeing who volunteers to lead initiatives is really quite important because:

Your future executives are typically the people who volunteer for strategic projects, which helps greatly with succession planning;
The executive leadership can witness their ability to deliver on initiatives, which provides insight into who is ready to move up the organization;
Future leaders benefit from greater interaction with the top tier; and
Employees who deliver, grow significantly in their leadership capabilities.

Now, some employees (and leaders) will not be able to deliver, but ideally, if this process is applied correctly, senior executives will be able to use project leadership as a litmus test to determine who is capable of assuming greater responsibility.

5. Inspire employees with a crystal-clear vision that reinforces why their efforts everyday matter. Employees have desire to be a part of something that is exciting in terms of the impact a company makes and the success it can generate. The One-Page Strategic Plan reinforces across the organization why the company matters, where it wants to be in ten years and what must happen each quarter to achieve that goal. This will without a doubt focus and energize employees.

Many leaders also engage their employees at a grassroots level to help determine how to accomplish priorities. For example, if the goal is to eliminate $10 million in expenses, by soliciting employee feedback on where to reduce costs, employees gain greater ownership in the goal. Additionally, the opportunity for success improves because employees are often the first to know where money is being used inefficiently.

6. Unleash a culture that empowers employees with responsibility and accountability. Human beings are easily distracted and generally have a hard time following through on challenging projects. Put another way – if you know you have a year to work on a project, typically, you will only focus on it during the last 30 days (that’s assuming you remembered to do it because you were given it 11 months ago and it’s amazing how fast things fall off our radar).

The One-Page Strategic Plan creates a culture of discipline because priorities are reviewed in 13-week intervals, which causes an innate urgency to get projects done. I have seen time and time again that companies get at least twice the amount accomplished when priorities are evaluated four times a year versus annually. Furthermore, if the plan is done right, employees will know exactly what the three to five priorities are, and ideally everyone will be associated in some way with the number one priority. Employees will also be empowered to say no to non-critical requests that are not tied to the company’s top priorities.

7. Eliminate priorities that simply don’t fit with the company’s strategic direction. If you don’t have a formal process for determining quarterly priorities, how do you know if your employees are working on critical initiatives that are actually moving the company ahead? Even worse, what happens if employees are working on initiatives that are detrimental to the business’ success? The One-Page Strategic Plan helps leaders identify quarterly priorities that are congruent across the organization, reducing the likelihood that employees just pick ones they think are important but that may not be beneficial.

8. Uncover hidden issues that are inhibiting success. After 12 to 18 months of executing quarterly priorities, many previously hidden issues become exposed and dealt with, which means the company can move into a position of greater strength because executives are able to notice new opportunities they didn’t see before. For example, I often see situations where newly appointed leaders join companies only to discover a plethora of issues, and the longer they are there, the more they find.

Creating a rigorous process for establishing and measuring quarterly priorities surfaces issues, aligns leaders and focuses the business, which over several quarters, results in less emergencies to address and fix. Consequently, leaders can capitalize on new opportunities leveraging the strength in what the company has built.

9. Generate momentum that is similar to the Flywheel effect – a concept introduced by Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, Built to Last and How the Mighty Fall. According to Collins,“Good to great comes about by a cumulative process – step by step, action by action, decision by decision, turn by turn of the flywheel – that adds up to sustained and spectacular results.

Considerable momentum can be achieved if every business unit focuses on making notable improvements on five key things each quarter. Additionally, imagine how incredibly powerful it would be to have every employee focusing his or her efforts on making a single, but significant, improvement for the business, for example, increasing units sold per month.

10. Communicate with clarity and engage in a consistent two-way dialogue with employees on the strategic plan. Once business leaders have a clear vision of the company’s direction, the opportunities and obstacles and the top priorities that need to be accomplished each quarter, they are perfectly positioned to engage employees in helping to achieve the priorities. Employees are typically hungry for information on the company’s goals and performance, particularly in industries facing ongoing change and competitive pressures. By improving the flow of communication, employees will better understand each individual, team and business unit’s priorities and contribution to the strategy. As a result, they will be more willing to explore ideas that benefit the entire organization rather than just themselves personally.

Improving communications based on a clearly articulated One-Page Strategic Plan will also decrease the all too often experienced communications gap between the executive leadership team and front line employees who ultimately work every day with customers, partners and suppliers. I have yet to see an employee tell me, “my CEO communicates too much.” Instead, it’s usually the other way around with employees often sharing:

“I don’t know the strategy for our company or how we are performing against it.”
“We never hear from our CEO or executive leadership team. It would be great to see them walk the floor once in a while.”
“I wish they would ask me for my feedback; after all, I’m the one that works everyday with our customers.”
“It would help if I knew what our targets were each quarter.”

When I work with clients on the One-Page Strategic Plan, I strongly encourage them to develop a quarterly communications plan alongside the quarterly priorities where timeliness and transparency of information rules. I also encourage them to engage in a healthy debate and two-way dialogue with employees. Why? Well, if employees can challenge ideas or potentially bad decisions, two things happen. First, it builds a strong culture of collaboration and diversity of thinking beyond the senior leadership team, which means the generation of better ideas across the organization. Second, if employees contribute to the decision-making and idea creation process, they too will have a greater sense of ownership in the priorities and the outcomes.

The most effective way to plan and get plans executed

In my coaching practice, I have had the opportunity to use many different tools to help companies improve their performance; yet, I have voluntarily chosen the Rockefeller Habits methodology, created by Verne Harnish, because it is by far the best set of tools and techniques available to help businesses sustain positive and profitable growth. The One-Page Strategic Plan is also, in my opinion, the most effective way to plan and get plans executed in a way that improves a company’s performance.

All too often business leaders are so caught up in all the urgent but not important stuff that they lose sight of the company’s purpose and goals. Creating an action-oriented strategic plan based on quarterly priorities keeps short-term priorities top of mind throughout the organization, while helping companies achieve the long-term vision. It also reinvigorates and motivates employees by demonstrating how their day-to-day efforts matter and contribute to overall success.

Now, this is my perspective, but don’t just take my word for it. Verne’s book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits is filled with testimonials from executives around the world who have shared how these techniques have made a lasting difference in their organizations. If you’re serious about accelerating positive business performance, don’t miss out on the dramatic results that can be achieved using the Rockefeller Habits methodology or the One-Page Strategic Plan.

____________________________________________________________

Kevin Lawrence is a strategic advisor and coach to CEOs and executive teams across North America and internationally. Driven by a relentless passion for helping business leaders get what they really want, in business and life, Kevin has coached clients across a wide range of industries, including consumer packaged goods, manufacturing, luxury retail, media, automotive and professional services. He deeply believes that CEOs and entrepreneurs can have tremendous business success along with an enriching, adventurous and fulfilling lifestyle, taking their professional and personal accomplishments to an entirely new level.

For more than a decade, Kevin has helped clients overcome major obstacles, deal with tough decisions and capitalize on new opportunities to generate breakthrough results. Clients often turn to Kevin when they are faced with a frustrating and challenging issue, which causes them to seriously look at making a big change, quickly. His methods, style and savvy approach have helped his clients expand into new markets, build high performance leadership teams, attract profitable clients, improve productivity, and increase revenue and profitability. Also, with Kevin as their advisor, clients reduce their stress and hours worked so they have more time and energy to live their personal version of an outrageous quality of life. For more information, visit www.CoachKevin.com or call 1-877-564-6224

www.CoachKevin.com
inquire@CoachKevin.com Phone: (604) 313-2229 Toll Free: 1-877-564-6224

Expel the Elephants and 19 other insights to ignite business performance (the summary)

CoachKevin — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 06:48:50 +0000

By Kevin Lawrence (Coach Kevin)

When I started coaching CEOs and Entrepreneurs more than a decade ago, I expected to see some similar challenges and opportunities amongst them; however, little did I know at the time just how much the same issues, obstacles and opportunities would arise. It doesn’t matter whether or not my business-coaching clients are based in Vancouver, British Columbia, across North America or internationally such as Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. It doesn’t matter which industry they operate in, their stage of growth, or if they are a company with seven employees or 7,000, the same principles used to ignite business performance apply.

Here is a summary of the twenty top principles that inspire business leaders, motivate employees with the desire to be the best and help CEOs and Entrepreneurs get what they really want now. The complete ebook “Expel the Elephants” can be downloaded here for free.

1. The leader sets the tone

Looking inside many organizations you will find CEOs or entrepreneurs with a relentless commitment to win and an inspiring vision that motivates their teams. They know what they really want and they are ready to take on the world to get it. They are also energized because they are doing what they love, and as a result can easily infuse the desire to be the best in their employees.

Contrast this with leaders who are on a steady path to exhaustion and burnout. What sets the energized leader apart from the burnt out leader? The energized leader sets the tone for success and is clear and honest about what they want. They are also laser-focused on achieving results and taking decisive action to get things done. Are you a leader who sets the tone, or are you losing or original excitement and momentum?

2. Create an environment that really helps you thrive

If your work environment is not structured in a way that helps you thrive, you will lose interest, shut down and look for something else to focus your interests on, guaranteed. To make it even more challenging, everyone in your business and personal life will suffer, not just you. Imagine what your work environment would need to resemble to be congruent with your personality, style and ambitions, and then structure your business (and life for that matter) in a way that fits perfectly like a custom-made suit.

3. Attract and retain A-mazing people

Exceptional talent is the lifeblood of organizations that embrace innovation, pursue customer excellence and have the wits to outsmart the competition. Why tolerate less than A players?

So what do you do if you don’t believe you have the right employees? There are two options. First you can communicate your performance expectations in a crystal clear and measurable way, and then give employees the chance to meet the bar. Second, if they are still underperforming then you need to let them go. It’s okay, you made a hiring mistake – it happens all the time. It may be the wrong company, role or even industry for them. Correcting the mistake now is critical before it becomes detrimental to your team, your customers and your company.

4. Earn the hearts and minds of your employees

How can you improve employee engagement and create a winning team? There are many low cost strategies including:

Acknowledging employees with a simple “thank-you” or note of gratitude.
Helping your A players’ achieve their career goals.
Giving employees performance feedback.
Celebrating your team’s successes?

5. Use email to boost performance, not hinder it

Email can help us save time and be more productive, but when we go on email autopilot – checking our inbox repeatedly, typing out messages rather than engaging in conversations, copying people who are only peripherally involved along with a host of other bad habits – email can make us more busy than productive.

Get smart with these email habits with the email habits found in Expel the Elephants. I have yet to see a job description that says ‘must have high competency in responding to email.’ People are not hired to respond to email, yet their lives become burdened by their inbox.

6. Encourage meetings that are magnificent instead of mediocre

Meetings can foster collaboration, innovation and action yet most employees gasp with frustration at the thought of another meeting. Stop encouraging meeting mediocrity and instead use every meeting to make things happen with these tips in Expel the Elephants.

7. Lick the Toad

We all know the story of the Princess and Frog where an unhappy Princess frees a handsome Prince from a frog’s body with a juicy, wet kiss. Imagine if she had avoided kissing the disgusting Toad; she would have missed a fabulous opportunity.

We all have nasty Toads in our life: every problem, issue and situation you would prefer to avoid but have to deal with is a Toad. They come in all shapes and sizes, but you cannot hide from them, even if you try and set them aside. In fact, when you hope they will go away, they just come back bigger, smellier and slimier. These Toads are not only distractions, but they also waste time and energy. You need to free up your mental bandwidth for more important and valuable priorities.

8. Do you really know what your customers want?

Many companies assume they know what their customers want. This is not the time to make assumptions. Customers have choice and information at their fingertips. To survive, you must know what your customers really want and what you can offer them that absolutely no one else can provide.

Have you asked your customers what drives them to do business with you? Are their experiences with you extraordinary, or indifferent? What attracted them to buy from you in the first place? Use this insight to attract similar customers. Don’t wait to ask their opinions until they leave – what a waste!

9. Have you eaten your feedback for breakfast?

Leading your business without customer, employee or supplier feedback is like driving a car with your foot on the gas but with no map, directions or idea of where you are going. This simply wastes time and energy.

Feedback is absolutely imperative to igniting and navigating your business to success. Otherwise you simply force your expectations on what your critical stakeholder groups want without really understanding the value and perception they place – or do not place – on what you have to offer.

10. Mobilize employees to achieve your #1 goal

Igniting your business to achieve outstanding results repeatedly is not an impossible feat particularly if your entire team is mobilized to succeed. Business leaders globally have used the ‘quarterly theme’ method from Mastering the Rockefeller Habits to drive one major improvement each quarter. Learn more about how to create successful quarterly themes in Expel the Elephants.

11. Master your ability to deliver on BIG promises

Many companies struggle to market effectively because they communicate messages that do not capture the attention or interest of potential customers. There are also companies who are marketing masters, yet they fail to live up to the great expectations they communicated, which lured customers in the door in the first place. Feeling misled, oversold and completely frustrated, these customers can do significant harm to your reputation by sharing their disappointment with other potential customers, actually ex-potential by this time.

Marketing mastery is promising to fulfill the core needs and desires of your potential customers, and having the entire business structured to consistently deliver on those promises. Every person and process in the company from sales and service, reception and accounting to the executive team and janitorial and security staff delivers on promises to your customers. Your business should not only be structured to deliver, but it also needs mechanisms in place to make sure – in a very clear and measureable way – that you are delivering what you say you will to your customers.

12. Drive your business by the right numbers

How do you know if you are driving your business by the right numbers? Just imagine. If you had to be out of the country for six months and were absolutely unable to communicate with anyone, what are the 3 to 5 numbers you would want people to focus on to guarantee strong financial results?

Most people are completely in the dark with their numbers, both professionally and personally. Why drive your business blindly? To ignite your business, you must create an insight-driven organization by identifying, monitoring and benchmarking the key drivers of your business – the leading indicators.

13. Decisions * Actions = Results

One of the benefits of being an entrepreneur is that you do not have to report to anyone. Yet this benefit becomes is a significant liability for exactly same reason – no one is holding you accountable to achieve results.

You also need to set goals and commit fully. Decisions alone are great, but they need to be followed through with actions. Actions alone are great, but if they are not based on a big decision, results can be elusive too. For example, if you make one decision with ten actions, you get a result of ten. If you make ten decisions with ten actions each, you get a result of one hundred. How is your formula working? Are you making more decisions, taking more actions, or doing both?

14. Expel the Elephants

Companies can unwittingly be a safe haven for problems, personalities, belief systems or behaviors that are so obvious yet no one wants to address them. These elephants in the room are detrimental to business performance if they are not purged from the organization.

Are you harboring elephants in your hallways and boardrooms? If so, identify them and begin methodically expelling them from your business. This may involve difficult decisions but harboring elephants will only hold you back while simultaneously frustrating talented employees who will simply come to believe that substandard performance is acceptable.

15. Debate vigorously but come away as friends

Building high performance executive teams in situations where leaders cannot come together to agree on strategies is deeply frustrating for CEOs and entrepreneurs. These conflicts are also more than apparent to employees and generally signal a lack of co-operation, consensus and camaraderie, which is detrimental.

Often the lack of alignment amongst executive leaders is due to conflicting personality and communications styles coming to fruition during the decision-making process. It can also be due to a deep-rooted lack of trust, which can hinder ongoing working relationships. Debate is critical for good decision-making and in fact it is essential if you want to benefit from the all minds of the different people on your team.

16. Slash the Knot

What does Alexander the Great have in common with Richard Branson, Michael Dell and Jim Pattison? Alexander the Great lived only 33 years but in that short time he forged the greatest contiguous empire the world has ever known. At the age of 20, Alexander arrived in the city of Gordium, a long forgotten city near the present day capital of Turkey. Upon arrival, he faced a seemingly insurmountable problem — the famous Gordian Knot — a knot so large and complex that for generations no one had ever been able to undo it. In fact, the prophecy was: “Whosoever undoes this Gordian Knot will rule over all of Asia.” Alexander studied the knot for a few moments; there were no ends visible or even a place to begin unraveling it. Yet he was a man of decisive action and in an instant, with a single stroke of his sword, he slashed through it.

Alexander the Great, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Richard Branson, Jim Pattison, Michael Dell and a host of lesser known but highly successful entrepreneurs all share this one significant trait: Whenever they encounter a major obstacle – a Gordian Knot – they act decisively and instinctively, and slash it.

Are you slashing through your Gordian Knots? Learn more about Gordian Knots and regular knots in Expel the Elephants.

17. Five steps to uncovering your Gordian Knots

Find out what is standing in the way of your goals rather than blaming other people and ignoring the real reasons; be honest with yourself.
List all of your current knots (problems) and determine their root cause. In most cases, the Gordian Knot will either be a fear or limiting belief that causes you to persistently face obstacles.
Look at the types of things you avoid dealing with and then find the fear or limiting belief; ask other people to list the things you tend to get stuck on the most.
List out the goals you previously had, but have not been able to achieve. Look at all the fun things you wanted to do but have not even begun to accomplish. What is holding you back from achieving your goals and enjoying an outrageous quality of life?
Gordian Knots often relate to something that has been following you throughout your career and life; it is usually way easier to determine, understand and overcome Gordian Knots if you work through them with someone else.

18. Stopping is just as important as starting

CEOs and entrepreneurs are driven to spark ideas, innovation and action, but it is equally important to consider eliminating things to make room for new business opportunities. Plan now to stop a whole bunch of things to make room for new and exciting growth opportunities.

19. Dare to play, explore and be inspired

CEOs and entrepreneurs usually run into major obstacles when they do not take enough time off personally. Everyone needs downtime to think, to be inspired and to reinvigorate our minds and bodies. Give yourself permission to make time to play, – sometimes on company time – enjoy friends and family and do something completely different and fun. You do not stop playing because you grow old, you grow old because you stop playing.

20. Give back

CEOs and entrepreneurs thrive when they do things that excite them everyday. They strive for their goal of creating a more enriching and rewarding life. They have huge goals and tremendous desire to do what it takes to make things happen. Often in pursuit of these goals, they become habitual workaholics, always working, always squeezing deals. Hopefully, they are not too busy working to forget how good it feels to give. The rewards from giving back will last a lifetime, certainly far longer than another hour of work.

Discover much more insight in Expel the Elephants. Go ahead and share this free ebook with your friends and colleagues. Post the link on your own website, blog or online social network profile, such as LinkedIn or Facebook.

____________________________________________________________

www.CoachKevin.com inquire@CoachKevin.com Phone: (604) 313-2229 Toll Free: 1-877-564-6224

The next 90 days

CoachKevin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 07:11:25 +0000

By Kevin Lawrence

Well, you are now off to a good start: you have drafted your One Page Plan, have an inspiring (and scary) BHAG as well as 3-5 Key Rocks for the Quarter. The workshop is over; you’re back in the office, now what?

This is where the rubber hits the road, or you just spin your tires. This is the real test of your leadership: executing and accountability. In many cases this is actually the end of the road, because the CEO or perhaps the executive team becomes buried in the daily firefighting (urgent but not important things I call “distractions and drains.”) What’s more, the intentions contained in their One Page Plan are forgotten. This is the sad reality for too many.

So what about you…are you going to win or lose?

Here are a few specific steps you can take to ensure you make positive progress and at least increase your chances of winning.

Remember this is an endurance race

Yes, you need daily focus, weekly commitments and a quarterly sprint, but it is more than a 90-day competition. You are in an endurance race of weekly / quarterly priorities cycling quarter after quarter – pace yourself.

Those who are over-ambitious and try to shoot the lights out in the first quarter often fizzle out and are out of the race in the second quarter. Stay focused on the 3-5 rocks you picked and avoid the temptation to take on anything else…until next quarter.

Bump into your Quarter Rocks daily, if only for 45 seconds

Think about it this way: there are 100 things that you could work at any given time but just 3-5 that REALLY count. Those should be the 3-5 rocks you picked for the quarter. Take 45 seconds each day to remind yourself what the heck they are – and let them influence what you pay attention to today and tomorrow.

This may sound obvious to you, but you know how easy it is to get distracted with everything else going on around you. These distractions are so often urgent but not important — and dangerously interesting too.

Make this 45-second review part of your day when you wake up, get into or out of your car, before you check your email, or even in your daily meeting.

Review your Quarterly Rocks every week, without fail or excuses

There are only 13 weeks in a quarter, which means only 12 times to correct the course on any individual rock. If you miss one or two check-ins, you dramatically decrease the odds of completing a rock on-time.

Yes, the rock owner will tell you that he or she is on track and will likely believe that to be true. But in my experience, many people are overly optimistic about their priorities. How to solve this? Review the steps on their Rock Action Plan. Now to do this, they needed to have a good plan in the first place – which you reviewed and approved before they got started. Literally go through each item in their Rock Action Plan, confirming that everything that should be completed up to and including today is actually 100 percent complete. Watch out for shifty eyes, vague responses, or comments like, “Yeah, we’re pretty much done that.” You want proof that they are on track and done what should be finished by now.

The intent here is to help them be more accountable and honest with themselves. In the event they are on track or better yet, ahead of plan, acknowledge their success. If they are behind, let them feel the pain of disappointing you and them, and then, get them to commit what they are going to do to get back on track by next week’s meeting.

Coach Kevin’s Tip: Creating Commitment

Write down every word people say when making important commitments and then read it back to them verbatim (Use the Who, What, When (WWW) format for this). This does two things:

Shows them that you take this seriously (without having to make a scene).
Gets them crystal clear on what they committed to doing. This makes a difference because rather that skipping over it, you focus the attention on them keeping their word.

By the way, use the same technique on yourself in front of your team if you miss a goal or are off track. Show them what accountability looks and feels like.

Have powerful weekly meetings; make your meetings indispensable

Weekly meetings can make or break the potential of a company. But, to leverage the value of a weekly meeting, it takes forethought and preparation. Most weekly meetings would put both of us to sleep. Not ideal when you want to inspire your team to take the next step towards greatness.

Remember that weekly meetings are designed to get everyone on the same page, review feedback, KPIs, and create more accountability around the quarterly rocks and weekly commitments. Not everyone is going to love them – and that’s okay. Like with a personal trainer, sometimes it hurts or is frustrating, but it is good for you.

So what would work for you? Each company has different values and style. What does work in general is having a conversation and reviewing the data for your company in the points below.

My challenge to you is to take this template and rework it to suit you. After practice and tweaking you should come up with a weekly meeting that is an 8-9/10 most weeks.

Weekly Meeting: Sample Agenda

Start on time and meet for no more than 60 minutes

1. Wins/Brags/Good news of the week
2. Review value of the week: Define & Examples
3. KPIs & figures for previous week
4. Feedback:

Customer Feedback/Issues
Staff Feedback/Issues: Star performers for CEO to acknowledge?
Competition/Market updates

5. Update on Rocks vs. Action Plans & Quarterly Theme
6. Last Week:

Review WWW from last meeting
Individual Key Projects Committed to Deliver

7. This week’s focus:

Key project to deliver this week (track publicly)
How to improve (Make some item or process better, cheaper or faster at least 1% this week)

8. Drill down on the Big Issue for 15-30 minutes
9. Summarize commitments/who, what, when (WWW)
10. Wrap Up: What’s most valuable, and what are you looking forward to?

To summarize, in the next 90 days, you can make a marked improvement in the strength of your company for the short and long term – if you can stay focused on your top 3-5 rocks, and ensure you are still ready for the race next quarter. Avoid the temptation to try too many things at once, and make the mistake of burning out yourself and your team.

So, to make the next 90 days successful, what are you going to do today?

_____________________________________________________________

www.CoachKevin.com inquire@CoachKevin.com Phone: (604) 313-2229 Toll Free: 1-877-564-6224

CEOs and Entrepreneurs are jumping into 2010, ready for new challenges, but are your employees ready and engaged?

CoachKevin — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 05:29:24 +0000

By Kevin Lawrence (Coach Kevin)

Inevitably, through my travels across North America and globally, CEOs and entrepreneurs have shared their exasperation over the many economic, competitive and corporate challenges they faced during the last year. Indeed, for many, 2009 was an interesting year; however, we must not lose sight of our ongoing efforts to ready ourselves, our teams, and our companies for the new opportunities in the year ahead. Here are some effective strategies to help you as you navigate the first half of 2010.

First, embrace time to reflect upon your accomplishments over the last year. Many CEOs and entrepreneurs have been so consumed by cutting costs, optimizing teams and realigning strategies that they have not taken time to pause and reflect on the successes, and then share those successes with their employees. In a recent survey by Adecco Group North America, employee attitudes have shifted from a year ago with only 72% of U.S. workers loving their job just as much or more than they did in 2009.[1] Adecco also notes that there is “heightened speculation that the year ahead may bring about a renewed war for talent and that the job market will start to see a shift in power from employer to employee.” Business leaders must move from solely focusing on cost-containment to considering their talent retention strategy.

Express your gratitude to your employees for their considerable contributions over the last year, communicate the entire team’s achievements internally, and take a much needed moment to personally share in your team’s successes. Fostering a culture of recognition, even after a difficult year, will go a long way to ensuring that your A players remain with your organization in the years ahead.

Second, evaluate your corporate strategy and strategic priorities against the current business landscape, your organization’s performance over the last year and the new competitive dynamics that are at play in your market space. Companies can gain a significant advantage over their competitors with a solid and differentiated strategy in place that is clearly communicated to the entire team. Equally important, your corporate strategy must be well understood, memorable and easily articulated; after all, your employees, customers, partners and community stakeholders can be the biggest ambassadors of your company’s brand, products and services so why not equip them with a memorable strategy that can be shared to an even greater extent.

Some organizations are going beyond just fine tuning their strategies at the executive leadership level; instead, they are actively engaging their teams in the decision-making process to help build an even greater competitive advantage. Gallup’s extensive research on employee engagement shows that “beyond the significant differences engaged workgroups show in productivity, profitability, safety incidents, and absenteeism versus disengaged workgroups…that engaged organizations have 2.6 times the earnings per share growth rate compared to organizations with lower engagement in their same industry.” [2]

Additionally, Gallup’s research – alongside the research of many other firms that survey engagement – shows a strong correlation between high engagement and superior job performance; two questions on Gallup’s 12 question survey to measure feelings of employee engagement include:

At work, do your opinions seem to count?
Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important?[3]

Personally, I have seen strong success in companies that actively engage their employees in the decision-making process and if you create a work environment that fosters the opportunity for employees to express opinions, particularly on the priorities in year ahead, your team will be more likely to rise to the challenge of delivering strong results, differentiating products and services from the competition, and taking responsibility for the success of your company.

Finally, have you established your personal plan for 2010? What are your top 5 personal goals this year? Are they outrageous, adventurous and fun-filled? Do they support your personal interests, or even better, uncover new ones?

Coach Kevin’s Challenge:

Compile and share your company’s successes with your team. Watch them become energized for ongoing success.
Establish a culture of recognition. A simply “thank you” goes a long way.
Articulate your corporate strategy in an easy and memorable way. Make sure your employees understand the strategy.
Actively engage employees in decision-making.
Do a status check on your personal plan. Do you have one? Are you on track to accomplishment your goals?

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[1] Adecco Group North America, American workers no longer see their jobs as a “Labor of Love” http://www.adeccousa.com, February 12, 2010
[2] Gallup, Employee Engagement, http://www.gallup.com/consulting/52/Employee-Engagement.aspx
[3] ezine articles, “How to Measure Employee Engagement – Gallup’s 12 Questions (Q12)” http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Measure-Employee-Engagement—-Gallups-12-Questions-(Q12)&id=1173919

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www.CoachKevin.com
inquire@CoachKevin.com Phone: (604) 313-2229 Toll Free: 1-877-564-6224

Are you having a customer experience today?

CoachKevin — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 06:32:59 +0000

Jim Skinner, McDonalds Vice-Chairman and CEO, leads a company that has seen a dramatic increase in results in the last few years (quadrupled their dividend to $1.2B over the past four years and raised the stock price from $25 to a peak of $65). Jim started out as a McDonald’s restaurant manager trainee in 1971 in Carpentersville, Ill and worked his way to the top job. Jim stays connected to his company, employees, and customers by eating a McDonald’s lunch every day – that’s right every day.

Skinner says “The moment of truth is the moment we interact with our customer.” He’s proud of the fact that he’s the same guy that went into the job. Yet Skinner has been leading a lot of change at McDonald’s, engineering a major turnaround and proving to Wall Street and to Main Street that the secret to peddling more Big Macs, McGriddles and Happy Meals is as old as the business of sales itself: Give the customers what they want.

Coach Kevin’s Challenge:

Most business leaders lose touch with the customers they serve. Try these solutions for getting a first-hand customer experience for your business:

• In a retail environment, talk to people coming in and out of your business who bought or didn’t buy something (ask outside the hearing range of your employees)
• Phone ten customers who purchased from you in the last week
• Email the last ten customers and ask them about their experience
• Talk to people in your service department to get feedback about people in sales
• Talk to people in sales to get feedback about people in service (with the appropriate filters)
• Make sure that you are using your own products or services and if possible, be a customer of your best competitors

What have you done today to have a customer experience with your products and services?

Make sure new people fit and bribe the rest to quit

CoachKevin — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 06:27:25 +0000

Zappos takes fanatical customer service and a high energy culture to deliver more than shoes over the Internet. Zappos CEO Tony Hsich is committed to an organization that constantly amazes their customers. He understands that companies don’t engage emotionally with their customers – people do. The Zappos senior management team is transperent in their thinking allowing employees to be free to do whatever it takes to make a customer happy.

The Zappos corporate culture is bursting with personality. To continue creating the legendary stories about Zappos staff and their customers, Zappos management must hire people who fit their culture. They have introduced an innovative way to help weed out those that don’t fit early in the process – a small practice with big implications.

Every new Zappos employee must first take an intensive four week training program that immerses the new emplyee in the Zappos’ strategy, culture, and obsession with customers. A week after completing the training session and working at Zappos, new employees are called into a meeting and offerred a payment for the work they have done with a $1,000 bonus to leave. The new employees who do not fit the corporate culture take the money and run — about 10% of new call center employees take the bonus offer and leave.

The new employees left are the ones who work for the love of the customer and the experience of working with incredibly committed and high energy people. If you want to create a memorable company, you have to fill your company with memorable people.

Coach Kevin’s Challenge:
Knowing what you know now, who are the people on your team you would be happy if they told you they were leaving today. Why tolerate having those people on your team and what can you do about it?

Try bribing people to quit instead of bribing people to stay.

Catching Zzzzs: Your Sleep Tips

CoachKevin — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 06:22:33 +0000

Here is an article from CNN Money.com called, Catching Zzzzs: Your Sleep Tips. I was happy to be able to contribute my own personal tip on getting a good night’s sleep.

Optimizing email: Stay productive, not busy

CoachKevin — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 06:58:03 +0000

By Kevin Lawrence (www.CoachKevin.com)

Does email boost or hinder your performance? It all depends on how you use it.

Email offers us countless ways to save time and be more productive, but when we go on “email autopilot” – checking the inbox repeatedly, typing out messages that should be discussed, copying people who are only peripherally involved, and other bad habits we’ve picked up along the way – email can make us more busy than productive.

The problem with email is when we don’t contain it; our field of attention becomes fragmented. When attention is constantly shifting over to email, one’s ability to focus on work is severely compromised. The interesting thing is, professionals rarely recognize the degree to which email hampers performance.

In 2005, a psychiatrist at King’s College in London administered IQ tests to three groups: the first did nothing but perform the IQ test, the second was distracted by email and ringing phones, and the third was stoned on marijuana. Not surprisingly, the first group did better than the other two by an average of 10 points. The emailers, on the other hands, did worse than intoxicated people by an average of 6 points.1

Yet, in a recent survey of 320 professionals, 17% check a few times per hour and 68% check email more or less continually – constantly breaking their focus on the primary task at hand.

Thanks to the Blackberry and other portable devices, millions of people can’t go more than five minutes without checking email… and we’re doing it everywhere we go:

Inbed-23%
In class – 12%
In business meetings – 8%
At the beach or pool – 6%
In the bathroom – 4%
While driving – 4%
In church – 1%

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