I’m sure you’ve read articles about the importance of “culture” to shape the behaviors of your employees. One of my favorite descriptions of company culture was as “the invisible hand that shapes team behavior when there is no defined process or system to tell them what to do.” But understanding the concept of culture doesn’t…
How to Increase Productivity What’s Your Biggest Time Waster at Work? What is your biggest productivity killer at work? Is it: A. Phone calls? B. Meetings? C. Email? D. Staff interruptions? If you are anything like the 353 U.S. business owners my company Maui Mastermind surveyed you’re likely answer is “email” (57%), followed by either…
A recent article in the Harvard Business Review reported on an international study by the Center for Creative Leadership titled, Always On, Never Done?, which shows that professionals, executives and business owners in the U.S. and 36 other countries now work a whopping 72-hour week. The study went into depth explaining that one of the…
The world today is different in many ways, one key way is how the most successful business leaders have learned to break the chain between one hour of time worked and one unit of value created. Time cards and grueling days don’t help business leaders create value. We create value by what we do with…
Leading your company is never easy. A key function is for you to craft a clear strategy and map for the coming year. Here are my top 7 strategic planning suggestions to help you start your year off in the most powerful and profitable way possible. 1. Clarify the business you are trying to build….
In my last article on the power of your written trail to protect yourself and your company I shared the two key “filters” you need to pass your written paper trail through. I want to share more details on the nuts and bolts of documenting your business deals and relationships so that you see it…
I wanted to follow up on an earlier article on the ten stupidest things business people do that get them sued with a simple practice that will help keep you safer – documenting your files. In the old world this often meant crafting “cover yourself” memos for your physical files, but in today’s world this…
“David, you’re never satisfied with the work I do. It’s just like with my dad, you’re never happy.” Those were the words I heard from a key team member 7 years ago now, and they stung. I wanted to be an enlightened boss and saw myself as an empowering leader. But here was direct evidence…
Over twenty years now I’ve been coaching business owners on the value of building a systems driven company. But what about those situations that your staff finds themselves in for which there isn’t a clear system to lay out how best to handle it? This is where your company culture comes in. Your company culture…
I was talking with Jim, owner of a $50 million per year boutique private equity company that we coach about the coming year. As we clarified the most important initiatives and goals for his company this year what became clear to me was that every company needed to go through this same clarifying and focusing…