Just because you have a bad outcome doesn't mean you made a bad decision, here's why

Skilled entrepreneurs learn how to separate decisions from outcomes and learn when they make a smart decision or just got lucky.

One of the hardest challenges entrepreneurs face is making decisions in the face of highly uncertain and risky situations. Often, these decisions can make or break a product or even an entire business. Lucky founders get it right and make it big once. Successful, serial entrepreneurs know how make calculated bets and are smart about learning from their mistakes.

One of the tools used by great business minds is a simple two-by-two matrix which compares decisions and outcomes. This four box tool helps them learn from both successes and failures and make better choices in the future. Using this matrix prevents them from falling into the trap of thinking that all good outcomes are the product of good decisions and bad outcomes the product of bad decisions.

To illustrate, let's use the example of a simple wager on a single roll of one die. Assuming a six-sided die, the chance of any one number is one-in-six or about 16.6%. Let's look at the outcomes.

Good decision, good outcome

Say someone gave you the following bet: you have to pay $10 to play, and you get $20 if you roll a 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5, but you get nothing if you roll a 6. That leaves you a 5-in-6 chance of winning $10 and a 1-in-6 chance of losing $10. The total expected value is $6.67. It's a bet worth taking.

You roll a 3. Congratulations! You've won $10. You've made a good decision and had a good outcome. The decision was not very hard and the outcome fairly expected.

Bad decision, bad outcome

Now, let's take that same scenario and change the numbers. Say it costs $10 to play and you get $20 if you roll a 1 and lose if you roll anything else. The expected value is $-6.67. It's not a good bet, but you decide to play anyway.

You roll a 3 again and lose. It was neither a good decision nor a good outcome, and it was also not surprising.

Here is where is gets tricky...

Good decision, bad outcome

Let's go back to the first scenario: $10 to play, you win $20 if you roll a 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5. However this time, you roll a 6. You lose.

Was it a bad decision? No, it was the right decision; the odds were in your favor. You just had a bad outcome. If that same exact situation came up again, you should take the bet and roll again. And you would probably win.

Bad decision, good outcome

Now, let's look at the second scenario: you take the bet at $10 to play and you win $20 if you roll a 1, but you lose if you roll anything else. Not a good bet, but you decide to play anyway.

You roll a 1. Winner! But was that a good decision? I would say no because the odds were against you. However, you had a good outcome. And therein lies the rub. The positive outcome would seem to suggest you made the right decision. Not so, you were lucky not smart.

Many times in business we end up with bad outcomes on good decisions and good outcomes on bad decisions. However if we fail to realize these types of situations, we risk taking away the wrong conclusions and making similar mistakes in the future. Skilled entrepreneurs learn how to reflect on decisions and outcomes and learn from those situations to decide if they made skilled decisions or just got lucky (or unlucky).

One of the best tools for developing this skill is a decision journal where you lay out your decisions, the options, your assessment of risk and probability, and then record the outcomes and reflect on your results. This allows you to see your bias, develop new skills for assessment, and clarify your goals for future decisions.

While real business decisions are much more complex than rolling dice, they often boil down to the estimated probability of two or more outcomes. Looking at possible options and likelihood of possible outcomes allows you to develop better strategies and make better decisions in the future.

This article was originally published on Inc.com: http://on.inc.com/2BWKKM1

David Reiss from Jane.hr, Using ‘cultural fit’ to find the talent you need

Contact information:
David Reiss, Chairman at Jane - dave@jane.hr
Bruce Eckfeldt, Founder/CEO at Eckfeldt & Associates - bruce@eckfeldt.com

Startups: how to choose a compatible co-founder

Selecting a co-founder is one of the most important decisions you can make in your business. You'll be tied to this person for many years and go through the best and worst times attached at the hip. Some say it's like a marriage. I say it's like a marriage, but you spend a lot more time together, and you make much harder decisions, and rather than a few kids you end up with dozens of employees.

Depending on your startup's focus and your professional background, you might struggle to find anyone willing to go into business with you or you may be flush with options. Either way, here are the key considerations before tying the business knot with someone.

1. Define your core values.

Whether it's hiring an employee, selecting a vendor, or choosing a co-founder, using a solid and well-defined set of core values is a great place to start. Your core values determine your priorities, goals and the decisions you're willing to make.

Are you super competitive or more of a collaborative person? Do you want work-life balance or are you thinking business 24/7? Avoid values like honesty, integrity, and quality as these are table stakes. Focus on the values that make you truly different from others. They should be who you are, not who you hope to be.

2. Decide on which tradeoffs you're willing to make.

Once you have your values, I like identifying "anti-values." These are things you're willing to forgo to get your values. For example, if transparency is really important to you, are you willing to give up privacy, or security? Or if meeting deadlines is important, are you willing to work late hours and change your personal plans? Making these choices upfront will communicate to your potential partner what your priorities are and what you're willing to sacrifice.

3. Assess your own strengths and weaknesses.

We all have strengths and weaknesses, it's a fact of life. The key is becoming aware of them developing good strategies for leveraging strengths and mitigating weaknesses. Highly successful people have dialed this in and figured out where they excel and where they struggle; then they surround themselves with the right environment and right people. While it might be tempting to find a co-founder who is just like you, it's better to find someone who compliments you in the right way to benefit the future of your company.

4. Decide what type of personal relationship you want to have.

Are you working side-by-side every day or checking in once a week? Are you grabbing drinks at the end of each day or having a partner lunch once a month? Either is fine so long as you're on the same page and fulfilling each other's needs.

5. Make sure the other person can check their ego at the door.

One of the key tests for a potential co-founder is making sure they can put aside being right in order to do what's best for the partnership. This can be tough when you're looking for someone very technical and knowledgeable. This type of person can be brilliant, but if they have little EQ, they'll be difficult to work with over the long haul. Being humble, open to new ideas, and willing to collaborate on decisions is key to making a successful co-founder.

6. Ensure you both have the same level of drive and motivation.

You don't need to agree to work 80-hour weeks or be in the office until 2am every day, but you want to ensure that both of you have similar commitment levels. If you both have families and want to be home by 5:30 each night, that's fine, just make that known and agreed upon upfront.

7. Discuss how you will deal with adverse circumstances.

Every business and every partnership will go through tough times. Fundraising difficulties, cash flow shortfalls, employees leaving, and clients terminating contracts will all happen and they will put strains on the partnership. Making sure you and your co-founder have a strategy for dealing with tough times and be able to weather the storm.

Discussing these topics upfront is a great investment of time. The best business partnerships are successful not because of the heights they achieve, but because of the lows they survive. While you'll never find the perfect co-founder, taking some time to ponder these questions will ensure that you find the best one in the time you have.

The return of the 9-5 work day and why (some) employees aren’t complaining

Ever since Marissa Mayer nixed Yahoo's work from home policy in 2013, executives and managers have been grappling with the balance between accommodating employees' personal schedules and lifestyle demands with organizational management and productivity concerns.

Working from home is still seen as a big perk for many employees: commuting to work in your slippers and bathrobe and having lunch at home definitely have some perks. However, many employees are seeing real and significant downsides. First of all, the lack of separation between work and home creates challenges. Many work-from-home employees say they work later in the day and more hours overall. They also find that work time at home is less focused and home time is often interrupted by work. The lack of separation means that each world bleeds into the other which causes problems.

Some employers are bringing back office hours and work-from-work policies. And many employees are glad. Here are some of the reasons why.

1. Greater separation between work and home life

While some employees can create good routines and structures to keep work and home separated, the majority cannot. While few people would suggest they like their commute, it does create a physical and psychological separation between the two worlds and allows people to transition mentally, effectively keeping a healthy space between home and work.

2. More focused work environment

Creating a focused environment is difficult and working from home can present distractions. The recent viral video of Prof Robert Kelly doing a newscast with the BBC when his two toddlers inadvertently come into the room behind him shows the awkward situations that can occur. While the office has it's own set of distractions, it can be more easily optimized for work activities.

3. Better tools and resources

For folks that love tinkering and troubleshooting wireless printers, work-from-home can be fun. But for those who don't want to be their own tech support team, working from home can be a challenge. Taking computers to be fixed, waiting for technicians to arrive and install equipment, sitting on hold for hours trying to troubleshoot modems can be a nightmare. Having a professional staff to maintain infrastructure keeps employees focused on value-add work.

4.More face-to-face communication with coworkers

Even though most people are aware that the majority of communication is nonverbal and typing can be slow and difficult, work-from-home employees do most of their communication via email, text, and messenger. This means that not only is the communication quality poor but it's also slow. Working together in the office means you have a much better chance of meeting face-to-face with your colleagues and avoiding miscommunications and delays.

5. Higher levels of team collaboration

A recent HBR study showed that the nature of work has been changing over the last two decades and that more and more employees are engaged in highly collaborative tasks. While video conferencing services and collaborative documents have improved tremendously, they still don't compare to being in the same room with stickies and a whiteboard. Collocated teams can get more done, faster.

6. Strong sense of culture and community

Many work-from-home employees find that while the flexibility and avoidance of a commute is great, they begin to go stir crazy after a while. Especially for extroverts, working from home can be a prison sentence, but even introverts are social creatures, and we all need interpersonal interaction to keep us engaged and stimulated. Phone and video calls don't make up for in-person, face-to-face time. Furthermore, many people end up getting out of the house to work at coffee shops or co-working spaces, but, at some level, this defeats the point of working from home in the first place.

Companies who are trying to build a strong company culture and team morale have learned that having regular office hours and being collated is core to their objectives. Often, the desire to work from home stemmed from toxic work environments, so rather than creating work-from-home policies, companies should focus on developing productive, engaging work environments and cultures.

While some time working outside of the office is needed to give people flexibility to live their lives, making work-from-home your core policy comes at a high price for both the company and the employee.

7 ways successful business partners stay together

Those who have been in business partnerships know that it's not always a walk in the park. Everything starts off with grand ideas and big possibilities, but often, as challenges and obstacles crop up, conflict increases and the energy that got a partnership off the ground begins to wane.

Even the most successful partnerships go through tough times. In fact, successful partnerships are defined not by the height of their peaks, but by how well they can weather the storms of the valleys. Great partnerships put systems in place to keep members aligned and focused on the same goals, actively work to address differences before they blow up into open conflict, and put in processes to ensure that everyone is being treated fairly.

Here are seven things successful partnerships do to ensure they last as long as possible and are highly successful for everyone involved.

1. Define your core values, purpose, and vision

All conflict resolution is based on finding a higher purpose to overcome differences. Without a strong set of values, purpose, and vision for the future, partnerships are forced to work from one short-term agreement to the next.

However, once you have the bigger picture well-articulated, it becomes much easier for bigger ideas, plans, investments, compromises, and strategies to develop. Partners who share a strong vision of the future can make bolder, longer-term moves because they are clear on the end goal and driven by purpose.

2. Separate initial contributions from ongoing contribution

There are many levels of involvement in partnerships. Some members may be involved on a full-time basis, some may only be contributing assets, ideas, or even just reputation.

Separating initial contributions from ongoing contributions allows you to more easily quantify and track everyone's investment and exposure. In this step it's also a good idea to separate ownership from management. Decide who is going to be working in the business and who is an outside advisor, and then compensate them appropriately based on market rates.

3. Focus on equitable, not equal

Many partnerships make the mistake of trying to make everyone equal partners, going through hoops and contortions to make things perfectly balanced. Instead, make sure everything is equitable.

Calculate what people contribute to the business and share equity, rewards, and costs accordingly. In my partnerships, we convert everything into points that are used to calculate equity. Money, time, ideas, assets, and reputation are all converted into points to define equity splits.

And as time marches on and people make additional contributions, additional points are allocated and updated. These can include or exclude control and decision-making rights.

4. Define your roles and measures of success

Defining roles and responsibilities are keys to the success of any business, but it's twice as important in partnerships. Good partnerships get super clear on who is doing what, how success in each role will be measured, and how to hold each other accountable for delivering on expected results. When someone comes up short, the team works to support him or her and, if need be, the team redefines roles to make sure the best and most qualified person is taking on the jobs that need to be done.

5. Decide how to decide

This is critical in large partnerships, but even in smaller ones, defining how decisions will be made is key to smooth operations. Great partnerships have a well developed and balanced governance process.

They have a documented process for who will be involved in which decision and in what capacity before decisions need to be made. This gives them a clear path to follow. And they know that too much formality will bloat the process while too little creates conflict and turmoil later.

6. Have a plan for when you disagree

Disagreement is inevitable. It's impossible for everyone to agree on everything all of the time. Have a plan for what to do when you reach an impasse.

For lower level decisions, you may agree that one partner or another will have the final say. For mid-level decisions, you might agree to bring things to a vote. For major issues, you can agree upfront to have formal resolution processes that uses third party coaches, mediators, or arbitrators.

Furthermore, I always suggest that partnerships have a clear and precise dissolution/buyout process that maximizes the value of the company in case you reach a deadlock situation.

7. Quarterly partnership review and plan

One of the best things you can do as a partnership is to review what's working, what's not, and what changes need to be made to keep everyone aligned, on target, and fully engaged. I do quarterly reviews with my clients where we actively encourage issues and concerns to be discussed so that we catch them before they exacerbate into conflicts.

We also use this time to celebrate success and recognize the important and valuable work which has been accomplished. These small course corrections can help avoid major issues in the future.

While no partnership is without differences or challenges, partnerships that last do so because they make a point to take the time and energy to stay together. Expecting that a partnership will just work on its own and take care of itself is a recipe for trouble. Partnerships take work, and the sooner you do it, the easier it is.

Where's The Money - William Lieberman

William Lieberman, Founder & CEO, The CEO's Right Hand

Mr. Lieberman is the founder and CEO of The CEO’s Right Hand, a New York-based consulting services firm that provides a full breadth of strategic, financial and operational advice to founders, CEOs and Executive Teams. As an experienced entrepreneur himself, he has served in various C-suite leadership and advisory roles across a wide spectrum of industries. Mr. Lieberman has participated in, as well as assisted on, fundraises for many early-stage growth companies using a variety of security types.

Where's The Money - Julia Pimsleur

Julia Pimsleur, CEO, Million Dollar Women

Julia has raised a combined $26 million in non-profit and for-profit dollars. Founder of Little Pim, the leading language teaching method for young children, Julia is also the author of  “Million Dollar Women: The Essential Guide for Female Entrepreneurs Who Want to Go Big” to help women learn to raise capital and take their businesses further, faster. Million Dollar Women is addressing gender disparity in fundraising by educating women on the “how-to’s” of raising capital, as well as digging into the inner limiting beliefs that often hold women back. Partnering with corporations, non-profits, and government organizations, her mission is to help one million women reach one million dollars in annual revenues by 2020.

Where's The Money - Tom Watts

Tom Watts, CEO, Chief Investment Officer, Watts Capital Group

Tom is an ex-McKinsey consultant who afterwards founded a telecom advisory firm which he subsequently sold. He subsequently worked as a senior investment banker and analyst at Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns, assisting high-growth companies in raising financing and completing strategic actions such as IPOs and sales.  He has a passion for working with entrepreneurs and helping them turn their businesses into large financial successes. Tom guides entrepreneurs through important business and life transitions, including capital raising, sale of ownership stakes, and the comprehensive personal financial planning that assures these strategic actions achieve their desired personal results.  Where appropriate, he assumes a long-term advisory role with his clients. 

Where's The Money - Peter O'Brien

Peter O'Brien, VP and CFO, Motivate International

Peter is an accomplished executive financial consultant CPA, with over 15 years of experience in finance, accounting, and strategic management. He is a proven leader, able to work fluently throughout all levels of business. He is currently the VP Finance and CFO at Motivate International Inc. and has worked with a wide range of early stage companies.

Where's The Money - Carl Gould

Carl Gould, President, 7 Stage Advisors

Carl Gould is an authority on business growth who advises organizations who want to grow to the next level. He is an entrepreneur and has built three multi-million dollar businesses by the age of 40. Carl has mentored the launch of over five thousand businesses. He has advised over 100 of the Inc. 500/5000 Fastest-Growing Companies, and currently works with the 9th fastest-growing company in NJ. Gould created the farthest-reaching business mentoring organization in the world, and his methodologies are in practice in 35 countries. He has trained, certified or accredited over 7,000 Business Coaches and Mentors since 2002.

Where's the Money - Brett Hickey

Brett Hickey, Founder & CEO, Star Mountain Capital, LLC

Mr. Hickey is the Founder & CEO of Star Mountain Capital, a specialized asset management firm focused exclusively on the lower middle-market. Star Mountain provides debt and equity capital directly to established, growing businesses and also participates in this market as a strategic fund investor. Star Mountain and its partner fund managers represent one of the largest non-bank small and medium-sized business investment platforms in the U.S. with a portfolio of over 200 companies. Prior to his 12 year career as a lower middle-market investor, he was an investment banking analyst with Salomon Smith Barney covering financial institutions. He is a regular investment industry expert speaker, member of select business organizations such as the Young Presidents' Organization and board member of multiple industry organizations, including the Small Business Investor Alliance.

What is a "Defensive Calendar" and How Does it Help With Productivity?

Most executives I work with who struggle with productivity complain that their schedules are overloaded and they can't "find" the time to work on their key priorities. They show me calendars which are full of meetings and phone calls scattered across the day.

While I have infinite understanding, I have little sympathy because one of the best tests of someone's executive skill is their ability to control their time and set their priorities. Executives who excel don't find time, they make time for important tasks. They do this by designing their optimal schedule and protecting themselves from unnecessary distractions.

Over the years, I've developed an approach that has helped many executives in this situation improve their time management. I call it the defensible calendar and it's created by designing an ideal day based on your high-priority tasks and your personal energy flow through your day and week.

Here are the steps to creating a system that will stand the onslaught of perpetual distractions.

1. Understand your natural energy pattern during the day and the week

Start by determining your natural highs and lows during the day and the week. Keep a log or journal for a week or two and track your energy peaks and valleys. Do you think clearly in the morning or evening? What do you do right before and after your best times? What contexts improve your focus and flow? What patterns and correlations do you notice? Understanding how your natural attention and enthusiasm varies over the day is the key to unlocking your higher productivity.

2. Inventory the work that you do and determine your personal priorities

The most productive people focus on the most high-value work that only they can do. To figure this out, first make a list of all of the projects you're working on. Now sort them by two criteria: 1) how much value that project creates, and 2) how critical you are to the success of that project. Your personal priorities should be on those high-value projects that only you can do. High-value projects other people can do should be quickly delegated. Low-value projects that only you can do should be your targets for training others to do as soon as possible. Low-value tasks that others can do should be delegated or outsourced to third parties.

3. Design your ideal day and week based on maximizing your productivity

Armed with your ideal week and your list of personal priorities, create an ideal week by mapping out what type of activities you should do during each hour of each day to maximize your productivity. For example, do you do your best thinking in the morning after the gym? Then that's your time to focus on critical work that requires you to be at your best. Are you braindead after 4:00pm? That's your time to work on non-critical tasks and answer emails.

4. Use time blocks to hold those key spots and defend them

Once you have your ideal map, create blocks of time in your calendar based on the type of work you should be doing during that time. I tell most people to go out one to three months since their calendars are typically full or they have prior commitments that are difficult to move. I suggest that executives have 40-50 percent of their calendars booked with critical work blocks. When someone asks for a meeting or call, the executive can then protect these times and instead slot the meeting or call in the spaces between.

5. Create blocks for distracting, but necessary activities

For things like calls and standing meetings, I suggest separate time blocks. For example, I schedule blocks for phone calls in the afternoons which are my low energy and low productivity periods. I know I don't need to be at my best for phone calls which are naturally engaging, so afternoons are a good time for me. I also create blocks for recurring tasks and meetings like prospecting, following up on social media messages, employee one-on-one meetings, etc.

6. If you must, move it don't delete it

There will be times when something comes up that conflicts with one of your critical blocks. The key here is not to just schedule over them or delete them. Rather, force yourself to figure out where to move them, and, if need be, move other commitments to get that block to fit in another place. The new time slot might be a less ideal time and I might need to cancel a subsequent commitment, but rescheduling that block of time reminds me that the work is important and I still need to do it.

These strategies--mapping your daily energy patterns, setting your priorities based on value, using time blocks, and protective scheduling--are all keys to developing a defensible calendar. Done well, you can dramatically increase productivity and engagement in your work.

These 5 types of good meetings can save your company

I've read many articles that rail against meetings and how they are a waste of time. And I would agree that many meetings held by most business are just that. However, it turns out that meetings are a necessary part of any business operation. People need to come together to develop ideas, discuss issues, make decisions, and coordinate activities. Without these meetings, people and teams would wander aimlessly and work at cross purposes.

Great companies who have grown quickly, easily, and with little drama, have developed not just good meeting habits, but great meeting rhythms. If you want to scale your business and do so with ease and laser focus, work on implementing these five key meeting rhythms.

1. Annual Strategy: 1 to 2 days, once a year.

Once a year take the time and step back from the business and think about your long-term goals. Traditional industries can look out up to five years. If you're in a more modern, faster-pace industry, focus on your three-year goals. For cutting-edge, quick-moving markets, focus on 18-24 months out.

Start by taking stock of the current situation of your business. What's working well and what is not? Then focus on understanding what your competitors are doing. What moves are they making? Finally, look at the industry dynamics. What broader business trends are underway? Use that data to look into the future to see where the new opportunities are likely to be. How you can position yourself to be in the best place possible to take advantage of those?

2. Quarterly Objectives: half a day to 1 day, every quarter.

Once a quarter decide which priorities and objectives will be most important over the next 90-days to move you towards your long-term strategy. The key here is to create focus. Choose the 3-5 things that really need attention from the senior team to drive the firm's strategy forward. This isn't about planning regular work; this is the strategic work that otherwise would not get done without dedicated effort.

3. Monthly Review: 2 to 4 hours, once a month.

The monthly review is simple: it's a status check and course correction forum. Don't make any changes to your quarterly plans unless something is seriously off or you realize that you chose the wrong objectives. The three key questions we ask here are as follows: What's working? What's not? What do we need to do to get things back on track?

4. Weekly Priorities: 30 minutes to 1 hour, once a week.

This is a key meeting for the implementation. This is where people make commitments to what they are going to accomplish over the next seven days. First, the team looks at the quarterly objectives and key results and then team members define--in specific terms--what they will accomplish in the coming week. In this meeting, everyone makes specific commitments for which they know they will be held accountable. Details are captured and written down and everyone leaves the meeting with a clear set of expectations.

5. Daily Huddles: 10 to 15 minutes, every day.

This is an incredibly powerful, but difficult-to-master meeting. The Daily Huddle (or Daily Standup as some people call it) is a very focused coordination and communication tool. Its goal is to let others know what you've recently completed, what you're working on next, and what' obstacles you're facing. Everyone answers three questions in a daily huddle: what did you get done yesterday, what are you doing today, and what's in your way. That's it. Anything else that comes up is taken off line and discussed outside the meeting. Don't be tempted to dig into the details at this time.

If you're having problems keeping your huddle under 15 min, there are a few things you can try. I like to have members write down what they're going to say on a small sticky note so that it's short and sweet. Standing up during the meeting can keep people from getting too comfortable. Also, have an object that each person holds when it's their turn to speak will prevent people from talking over each other.

While making these meetings well-oiled machines takes time and dedication, it takes just a few months most companies start to feel the rhythm. Keeping them short, sweet, and focused on their specific intent accelerates the learning and adoption of the habits until they become second nature. Once you're in the swing you can pick up the pace and use them to accelerate the rate of your business growth.

18 easy ways you can increase your productivity and focus

A recent UC Irvine study showed that it takes up to 23 minutes to recover from a distraction--so it's no wonder that work environments full of social busybodies and rich in shiny objects can drive down productivity.

People are inundated with stimulation and requests for their attention, leaving them with little to no uninterrupted time to focus on their work. In fact many company are now eschewing the open office in favor of less noisy and more focused work environments.

The likelihood of being distracted is directly related to the amount of pull something is having on your attention and indirectly related to the interest you have in your task. When you're completely engrossed in what you're doing, you'll shut out everything around you.

The professional basketball player at the free throw line, for example, can completely shut out the thousands of screaming fans. However, when you are only marginally interested in what you're doing, then you might turn your attention at the slightest prompt. Increasing your ability to focus will come from balancing those two types of interest level.

It's also important to know your triggers. For instance, I know I'm highly visual. I can be intensely focused on a task and not hear a sound, but if there's a television display in my field of vision, I can't help but look. Other people I know can have a wall of screens in front of them and not blink, but someone talking behind them can cause them to use earplugs.

If you're stuck in a distraction-rich environment, here are 18 things you can do to reduce the chance that your attention will get pulled away from the work at hand:

1. Wear headphones, but don't actually play any music. Headphones both cut down the noise and also serve as a deterrent from people bothering you. The bigger headphones, the better.

2. Put a sign on your door or on your desk saying "busy" or "I'm focusing" or "Do not interrupt" to let people know you shouldn't be bothered right now.

3. Hang a signup sheet on your door or next to your desk with your calendar including empty slots indicating when you're free to meet with them.

4. Establish office "focus time" for certain hours of the day or days of the week where everyone agrees not to bother or distract people.

5. Use a white noise system to provide background noise or music without lyrics to drown out other people's conversations and keyboard noises.

6. Turn off the notifications on phones and browsers for a period of time during the day. Use autoresponders to let people know when you'll get back to them.

7. Schedule your day so that you're working on projects that require the greatest amount of focus during naturally distraction-less times. If you have flexible hours, consider coming in an hour early to get some quiet time before everyone else arrives.

8. Use pomodoros to create a natural rhythm to you work and increase your mental capacity for focus.

9. Exercise or take a walk before sitting down to do important and difficult work. This practice increases your focus and energy level.

10. Try using deep breathing and meditation techniques to calm your mind before engaging in focus time.

11. If your mind is swimming with ideas or things to remember, try a mind sweep to get them on paper and free up your thinking space to focus on the important task at hand.

12. Breakdown big or difficult task into smaller and easier first steps to kick start your engagement and focus.

13. Find a partner and do a productivity challenge to see who can get more done in an hour or ninety minutes.

14. Go to a coffee shop or a co-working space where nobody can find you to get a few hours of distraction-free time outside of the office.

15. Get more sleep so you have the mental capacity and focus to stay alert and to focus on your work.

16. Redefine your goals and tasks to be more compelling and motivating so that you're more engaged in the work.

17. Set mini goals and rewards for completing focused work sessions throughout the day. Use completion targets to challenge yourself. See how much you can get done by a certain time.

18. Eat foods that will increase your mental focus and give you the energy you need to stay productive for longer periods of time.

While we can't always avoid every distraction, we can often greatly reduce our exposure to things that pull our attention away from our work. Knowing our weakness and putting in systems and devices to cut them off at the source is the key.

Two Examples of Weak OKRs and How to Fix Them

Seems like everyone is using Objectives and Key Results these days. Ever since Google started using OKRs in 1999, organizations of all sizes and shapes started OKR’ing their goal setting and planning processes. And it’s great people are moving towards using OKRs--I’m a huge fan--but many of the OKR’s out there are not quite up to snuff.

If you don't know what OKR's are, here is an article I wrote a couple years ago that gives a good overview.   This article dives deeper into the process of creating OKR's offering a checklist for well-written Objectives and Key Results.

Objectives define direction and create strategic alignment

First, Objectives define a directional choice and focus. They are qualitative in nature. They say, "We are focusing on this area to develop and to become better in it."

Second, Objectives need to be aligned with and support a particular strategy. By making progress on an Objective, you are implementing a strategy. Objectives certainly shouldn’t run counter to a strategy. The best Objectives are highly aligned and move along a strategy as quickly as possible.

Finally, Objectives need to be motivating. They should have meaning. They need to be interesting, inspiring, and challenging. “Waking up early” is a boring Objective. “Starting each day watching the sun rise and setting your intentions” has meaning.

Key Results define discrete work efforts

First, KRs are “doable”. They have clear definitions of done with completion criteria. A third-person should be able to “see” that a KR has been completed. Could be a checklist, could be a document, could be that they push a button and a light goes on. Conversely, you should be able to tell when a KR is not done.

Second, KRs are independent from one another. KRs shouldn’t be a list of steps in a project. If so, the last one is the KR, the rest are milestones. You should be able to complete one KR without completing the others and the failure to complete one, shouldn’t impede the others.

Finally, KRs shouldn’t include your standard work. OKRs are designed to move strategy forward, not define your day-to-day list of responsibilities. KRs should be above and beyond the day-to-day. They represent the strategy work that needs to be done that wouldn’t get done without this focus.

Here are some examples of poorly written Objectives and Key Results and what you can do to improve them.

Example 1:

Objective: Wake up earlier

Key Results:

• Set an alarm

• Go to bed earlier

• Write down things to do

Let’s start with the Objective, it could be more compelling. Let’s change that to “Wake up earlier so that I can be more productive and focus on my long-term goals.” This gives it more why.

• The Key Results need to be a little more specific and “doable”. Let’s re-write them to these:

• Set an alarm for 5:30 AM and put it on the other side of the room to that I have to get out of bed

• Set an alarm for 10:15 PM to remind me to start my bedtime routine

• Each night, write down the six things I need to do the next day to make progress on my long-term goals

These have more detail and specifics that allow me to track if I really did each of these or not. It’s also more clear how they connect to my Objective and help move it forward.

Example 2:

Objective: Improve customer service

Key Results:

• CSR training

• Improve phone system

• Improve call script

This Objective can use some clearer direction. There are many ways we could improve customer service and we should clarify which one we want to focus on. Both “Improve customer experience so that it reduces that time they take to get their problems solved” or “Improve customer service so that we don’t get as many unsatisfied ratings” would both be better and specify a clear direction. 

The Key Results in this case lack a clear “definition of done. Let’s set up some better measures so that we know we’ve accomplished the task at hand.

• Ensure each CSR has had a least two coaching sessions to review recent problematic calls by EOQ

• Upgrade the phone system to version 4.5 and hold two webinars with staff to review the new functions

• Research and identify the top 10 service complaints and develop one-page call scripts for diagnosing each of these issues

Hopefully these examples give you some ideas on how to improve your OKRs if you’re already using them. And if you’re just getting started, use them as a guide for getting off to a strong start. If you have some that you’re grappling with and would like some feedback on, email them to okrs@eckfeldt.com and we’ll give you our thoughts.
 

Why Grow?

I occasionally run across business owners who questions the need to grow. Maybe it’s because they’re tired of the work or that the organization has become large and unwieldy, or maybe they’re making more than enough money and they just figure that it’s greedy to make even more.

Whatever the reason, they start making the case that a flat year isn’t such a bad thing. Wrong. A flat year is bad. Very bad. In fact, a flat year is a really a “down 10-20%” year. Here’s why.

The key resource in the vast majority of businesses is people. And people can't stay flat. We need to grow. Early in life, that’s physically, but later in life that’s emotionally, intellectually, and socially. People are growing machines and when we stop growing, we start dying. Same is true for your business.

Here are a few reasons why your business needs to grow and what you can focus on to make sure your growth is positive and enriching for everyone. Including you as the business owner.

People Need Career Advancement

Everyone wants to move to the next rung. Beyond financially, people need to be challenged. And as they master their current work, they need a place to go that will give them greater challenges and new opportunities. A business who is not growing isn’t creating new opportunities for the people who work in it. Stop growing for too long and people will find their next challenges somewhere else.

Customers Need New Products and Services

Customer are hungry for things that are better, faster, and cheaper. While your latest and greatest version of your product might thrill the customer today, it might not tomorrow. Giving them the same old products and service will eventually shift from innovative to out-dated.

You Need to Keep Up With Competition

The fact is, everything else is growing. The economy, industrial markets, populations. Everything around your business is growing and increasing. If you stay flat, your share of the market will, in fact, shrink. It’s like inflation. While you might have a dollar in your hand, what that dollar can buy is getting smaller and smaller.

All of these point to the need to keep expanding and building the business. I tell my clients that 5-10% is the minimum they need to grow just to keep up. 15-20% is where you start to move the needle. And if you really want to put the peddle down, stretch to growth 25-50% a year.
Growth is not just a vanity metric, it’s necessary for a business to keep its people and position in the market. Of course, it can make the owners more money too, but college tuitions are growing.

My top reading picks from 2016

Each year I finish with a personal retrospective. It’s a chance to take stock and reflect on the highlights, lowlights, and what I’ve learned last year that I might apply to the coming 12 months.

A key part of this process is looking at what I’ve learned. As a business coach, education and improvement is not only a personal value, it’s my job. And one of the key ways in which I learn is through books. Many of the books I read, and others I listen to. They all provide me with insight, ideas, and perspective.

This year was a good year in the book department. Looking through my bookshelf, my kindle list, and my audible account, I found the top 25 books that influenced me in 2016. The entire list is too many to review in detail so here are five that deserve special mention.

To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others, by Daniel H. Pink

Dan Pink does it again.. As he’s done with Drive and A Whole New Mind, he takes the subject of selling and turns it into a universal skill that everyone in business, no matter what their role, must master to be successful. By thinking beyond the stereotypical used car salesman, Mr. Pink shows how we’re all selling in all parts of our professional and personal lives. He shows that we not only sell things, but ideas, methods, concepts, and even ourselves just about every day. In the book he also outlines the half-dozen key traits of successful selling and describes how and when to apply them. Check out the book for the details.

The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate The Three Essential Virtues, by Patrick M. Lencioni

Patrick Lencioni is widely known for his work on team performance. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team is one of go-to texts for making teams great. His follow-up digs into the key individual attributes that make a great team player. By looking for, and developing, these characteristics you can make sure you’re selecting the right people for your teams and finding focused goals for personal development that will make for better team performance. 

Getting to Plan B: Breaking Through to a Better Business Model, by John Mullins & Randy Komisar

For those of you in the product development space, I’m sure you’ve all read The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries. Some of you may have even read the book that Eric based a lot of his work on, The Four Steps to the Epiphany, by Steve Blank. If you dig one level deeper, you’ll find Getting to Plan B, by John Mullins and Randy Komisar. This book explains why, in early stage ventures, your first plan is guaranteed to be wrong, you just won’t know how. These authors show how to learn from the failings of your plan A so that you can get to plan B faster and make plan B better.

Managing The Professional Service Firm, by David H. Maister

If you’ve ever been in a consulting firm, or owned one like me, you’ll know that professional services industry is its own beast. Finding clients, finding people, and developing services is an art that take time and practice. While many people can make a marginal business out of it, it takes true focus and alignment and discipline to really get it right. David’s book gives you a guide to designing your business and tools to make it operate smoothly.

Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, by Sydney Finkelstein

My favorite book of the year was Superbosses. Sydney Finkelstein does an excellent job at looking at where great managers and great leaders come from and discovers a rare and often overlooked species of boss: the Superboss. These are people who are not just great bosses themselves, but also create many great bosses under them. Sydney shows 20 of the NFL’s 32 head coaches trained under Bill Walsh from the 49ers, and illustrates how 9 of the 11 executives that worked under Larry Paige at Oracle, went on to be CEOs, chairs, or COOs of other companies. If you want to know if you are, or work for, a Superboss, read the book and learn about the key traits—several of which are quite surprising—of these rare and unique leaders.

And with that, we’ll call 2016 a wrap and look forward to making 2017 a similarly good year. If you found those five summaries interesting, check out the books themselves and the rest of the books on my list.

Culture of accountability

Highly effective organizations are able to make the right commitments and follow through on them. They develop a culture of accountability. However, despite being so focused on results, these organization lack micromanagement and overbearing managers. How? By creating a culture of "self-accountability" and making it an intrinsic value for everyone in the organization.

Giving feedback

Feedback is one of the core tools managers have to impact results. The challenge is that feedback can come in several forms and mean different things based on the context. In this episode, learn the best and most effective ways of giving feedback for you and your directs.

Setting clear expectations

Communication research says that it takes six times before someone really understands a communications. Most managers stop at just one. Further, they fail to have a concise and clear definition of success. By clearly defining expectations and effectively communication them, management effectiveness will improve markedly.