Great Executives Play to Their Strengths. Here's How to Find Yours

Focusing on your strengths will dramatically improve your success, but finding them can be challenging. Here are three key questions you can use to find yours.

We've all heard the adage, play to your strengths to win, but it's often easier said than done. Yes, it's better to pick a handful of skills and work on becoming exceptional than to try to be good at everything. Just like a business need to find a unique position in the market by becoming exceptional at a few things, executives also need to focus on becoming uniquely skilled and experienced in a handful of skills to become world-class professionals.

But how do you pick?

The challenge for many high-performance leaders is that they are good at many things. Often, they are the best person in their company at many things, which creates a lot of pressure to keep doing all of them. However, this will not only hold them back as individuals, it will hold back the company's growth as well.

To grow and advance, you need to let go of things that you may be quite good at to become uniquely amazing at a few more important skills. And to do that, you need to choose, which can be difficult. Here are the three key questions I give executives to help them understand the areas in which they should double down and focus.

1. What are you uniquely good at?

Start by figuring out what you're currently good at. Not just OK, but really good. What can you do that not many other people can do well? Start with comparing yourself within your organization, but also think more broadly about your market and industry. You might be the best public speaker in your CPA firm, but you might be below average in another industry.

The best way to do this is to get feedback from managers and colleagues. You might think you're terrible at something, but everyone else sees you as a rockstar. If you're getting surprising feedback, get curious and ask why, and get details about what you do that people see as valuable.

2. What creates value for your organization?

It's one thing to be really good at something, it's another to create exceptional value. The key with this step is that other people need to see it as valuable, not just you. Go through the things you do on a weekly basis and have people highlight the top two to three activities that they feel lead to improved business performance and results. This could be generating sales or revenues, optimizing the business or reducing costs, or developing talent or intellectual property.

Remember that value can be defined and identified in many ways. The easiest measure is money. Companies will pay higher salaries and better wages for more valuable services. Another indicator is autonomy. Generally, organizations give high-value contributors freedom around when and how they do the work. Finally, look for activities that get a lot of recognition and rewards. These are good indicators that an activity is important and contributes to organizational success.

3. What puts you in flow?

Finally, once you've found things you're good at and that drive value, look for the things that you are highly engaged in and motivated by. I like to focus on activities that naturally put you into a flow state. Originally identified by the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, flow is a highly focused mental state that leads to exceptional performance outcomes.

Good indicators that you're in flow include the feeling that time slows down or speeds up, that your focus becomes narrower and tighter, that you don't have to think that hard about the work, that it seems to come naturally, and you're feeling a sense of engagement and accomplishment.

Once you've identified the three to five activities that score well on all these criteria, focus on doing more of that work and less of everything else. Remove the other activities by delegating them to other team members, hiring support staff or services, or just stop doing them if you can get away with it. Over time, you can continue to hone that list and further concentrate and advance those skills.

As you develop your capabilities, keep watching general industry and market trends. Be mindful of how the value of different skills might change in the future. Being a world-class typewriter repair person is just not that valuable in today's market. And in the near future, new skills will quickly become valuable and in high demand.

Highly successful executives find ways to become uniquely valuable in their industries, and they learn to adapt to changing market needs quickly. Asking yourself the three questions above and focusing on the answers to guide your growth will be the difference between getting a 5 percent cost of living adjustment and getting that promotion you've been waiting for.

5 Simple Ways to Improve Accountability

Most senior leadership teams struggle with accountability. Here's how to fix the issue and improve productivity quickly.

The lack of accountability on leadership teams is not because you have incapable people or because they lack the right motivation. Most executives I work with are exceptionally skilled with great experience. They are high-driven type-A professionals who are hungry to succeed. The issue in most cases is a lack of the proper frameworks, clear communication, and effective decision-making processes.

Here are the five top fixes for leadership teams struggling with accountability and delivering results consistently. If you're having issues in your company, the solution is likely one or more of these areas of improvement.

1. Develop a clear strategy

Before you can make any sort of progress, you need to know where you want to go. Without a clear set of objectives and decisions on what you want to achieve (and not achieve), you'll spin your wheels. I like to say that you can climb any mountain you want, just not every mountain you want. And if half your team is climbing Everest and the other half K2, you won't get very far.

Make sure you have a strategic plan and a strategic planning process that allows you to collect key insights about your customer and competitors to craft a differentiated position in your market. Find a handful of attributes you'll be known for, and then focus your operations on delivering on those promises. More important, identify all those things you are not going to do so you can focus your time, energy, and money.

2. Get buy-in from senior leaders

Sometimes the problem is not the strategy but rather the commitment to the strategy. I've seen CEOs go off on solo retreats and craft smart strategies only to return to the team and struggle to implement them. Generally, the problem is that the key functional leaders either don't really understand the why behind the strategy or just don't feel ownership of it.

Strategy development should instead be a process that involves key stakeholders with unique insights. Smart, highly driven people want to have input and influence over their work and effort, and including the right people in the process will ensure you're working with the right information. This results in decisions and directions that everyone feels bought into.

3. Have clear role descriptions

It's impossible to win a game if you don't know the rules. Yet, too many executives are in roles that have no clear description of responsibilities or measures of success. This means both that they don't know what they should really focus on, and that nobody else knows what to expect from them. Good, clear role descriptions for everyone on the leadership team means that the boundaries and handoffs between executives are clear and accountable. Further, these must be reviewed and revised as the company grows and evolves. I like to review these roles quarterly and catch any gaps or overlaps quickly, well before they become a problem.

4. Set absolute priorities

A strategy is worthless without a good execution process. You need a system for taking strategies and turning them into sets of actions with timeframes. The challenge often is that there is always a lot to do in a business; usually, far more to do than there is time. To create focus, you need not just a list of priorities but an absolutely prioritized list.

Each quarter I have teams identify the top three strategic priorities for the company for the next 90 days, assigning clear owners for each. Then we have each individual executive identify their personal top three priorities in order of importance.

Everyone knows that they shouldn't work on a lower priority item until they have done everything possible on the higher priorities. Also, if someone is struggling with a key company priority, everyone should drop everything else and help them finish by the end of the quarter.

5. Clarify success criteria

It's impossible to deliver something when you don't know what done looks like. The devil is in the details when it comes to accountability. Creating clear and measurable success criteria is key to driving results. Don't just say "hire a new program manager" by the end of the quarter; clarify if that means they have an offer letter in hand, or if they have accepted an offer, or if they have started their first day. Details matter, and expectations need to be set at the beginning of the time period.

Creating a culture of accountability is not about rewards and punishments. It's about clarity and setting challenging but achievable goals for leaders and managers. It's a muscle that develops and improves over time. The trick is to understand that it's not just about hiring good people. Great companies learn that accountability is a process that can be honed and improved over time.

5 Steps to Mastering Your Calendar and Increasing Your Productivity

Managing your calendar is a key skill for any executive. Here are five steps to running your days and weeks more strategically and productively.

The best strategy in the world is worthless unless the top executives have the time and focus needed to implement the required changes and initiatives. Too often, I find senior leaders overwhelmed with day-to-day operations, running around putting out fires and never making time to execute a strategic plan. And while everyone is capable and well-intentioned, progress just doesn't get made.

Here are five key steps I use to coach the executives I work with to improve management effectiveness and create space for new, more strategic tasks. While these five steps can take a few months to implement well, once you do, the effort quickly creates returns.

1. Know your highest-value activities

The first thing any executive must do is know where they create value for the organization. Maybe it's in developing strategic plans, maybe it's setting high-level technical architecture, maybe it's developing supplier partnerships, maybe it's selling to key prospects. Most executives have two to three fortes that create exceptionally more value for the organization than anything else.

This isn't what the executive spends the most time on. It's about value creation. Even if it's an activity that happens quickly and easily for the executive, it should be what directly or indirectly generates revenue and profit for the business. Often times this requires getting feedback from other senior leaders, customers, supplies, etc.

2. Discover your natural cycles

Humans are not machines. We have natural cycles of energy and focus, and interests. The most basic is the sleep/wake cycle that everyone goes through daily. There are other cycles that happen over the course of a day, the week, the month and even longer. Identifying, understanding, and optimizing these cycles is key to productivity.

Start by looking at your natural day. When do you naturally wake up and go to sleep? Are you a lark or a night owl? Then consider weekly cycles: are you naturally fresher on Mondays or do you hit your stride mid-week? You can also identify patterns around travel and other events. Maybe you get energized and productive just before a trip or maybe you know you're jet-lagged the day after a long flight and need to plan accordingly.

While you might not be able to completely change the external factors in your life, you can plan many activities according to these high and low points. If you're a lark, you might want to do your tasks requiring energy and focus in the morning. If you're a night owl, you might want to do these in the evening. Map the right activities to the right time and don't waste your high-value periods.

3. Create core time blocks

Start by creating blocks of time for your high-value activities and put them at the most opportune times in your schedule. This might be a few blocks in the morning early in the week or it might be afternoons mid-week. Think about the time of day, the days of the week, and what your ideal calendar should look like.

The point is to figure out your natural best times for focused work, meetings, exercise, eating, family time, etc., and then work to align your schedule and daily work plan to leverage these cycles, rather than trying to fight them. While it might take some time to iron things out, if you can create better alignment, you'll quickly see vastly improved results.

4. Protect your high-quality time

Once you've identified your high-value tasks and have put them in your highly productive time periods in your schedule, protect them ruthlessly. Do whatever you need to do to move everything else around those slots, and don't let things interfere and disrupt them.

I have executives who get a coworking office or go to a local coffee shop a few times per week to work on their high-value activities during peak performance times. They turn off their phone and put on headphones with focus music so they can't be found and don't get bothered. Most of them find that the three to four hours they spend in this mode creates 80-90 percent of their value for the week.

5. Delete, delegate, defer

With your task focus identified and your time blocks in your calendar, the next step is to get rid of everything else so you can free up more time to do high-value work. For all other tasks, and any new task that comes up, ask yourself three questions in this order: can I delete this?, can I delegate this? and finally, can I defer this until later? Being ruthless about these questions will remove many items from your plate.

Growing and scaling a business isn't hard when you have the right strategy and the discipline to focus on the right activities. What's hard is understanding and working within our natural limits and using that time strategically. It also requires us to prioritize key items and to say no to many things that pull our attention. Few teams master this quickly, but those who do will see the results and typically turn out to be the winners in their industry.

Taking Risks Is a Natural Part of Being in Business, Just Make Sure Yours Are Calculated

To maximize your chances of success, make sure the risks you take are the right ones.

Taking risks is a natural part of being in business. The key to dealing with them is to make sure you're balancing the downside with the upside. It's perfectly acceptable to take risks that give you an opportunity to make big wins. What's not acceptable is to put your company in harm's way when there's no upside. The challenge is that you can err both ways.

Here are a few key steps you can take to better calculate the tradeoffs of the decisions in front of you.

1. Brainstorm all possible risks

Once you develop a plan, the first thing is to brainstorm all the possible risks you might face. This includes internal risks associated with your ability to deliver on your tasks and efforts. It also includes external risks that might impact your ability to successfully complete your plan.

Like all brainstorming efforts, the trick here is to create the right context and mindset to explore all possibilities. Set yourself appropriate ground rules to allow for all ideas to get on the table, and suspend judgment and commentary in the beginning. Once you've created a sufficiently long and broad list, you can start to filter and prioritize.

2. Determine the likelihood of trouble occurring

Using the list you brainstormed, determine how likely each one of the troubling events is to occur. What most teams get wrong is that while certain specific risks are highly unlikely to cause a problem, categories of risk are actually more likely. While the chance of your facility getting hit by a tornado is low, having some type of weather-related event that disrupts operations is quite a bit higher. A solution here is to focus more on categories and types of events than specific scenarios.

3. Assess the impact on your business

Once you've identified the likelihood of each of these events happening, then assess how it will impact your business and project. Categorize the impact assessment on a similar scale as you did probability. This will allow you to see which events will generally have a low impact on your plans and which ones will have a more significant impact.

Once you've completed the likelihood and impact ratings, you can plot each risk on a chart that shows all risks brainstormed and how they relate to each other on these two axes. This will allow you to decide which actions to take for each situation.

4. Ignore all low-impact risks

The first thing to do is ignore anything that's low impact, even if it's a high-likelihood event, mainly because it's something I can just deal with if and when it occurs. Unfortunately, I see a lot of teams spending time and energy here. Usually, it's because low-impact risks are easier to deal with, and it feels good to solve them. But in fact, it's not a good strategic decision and will be a waste of your effort. You're better off focusing on higher-impact risks.

5. Create a plan of action for low-likelihood risks

For low-likelihood risks that have a chance to significantly impact the business or project, we want to make sure that we have a plan of action. We want to know what we would do should this risk occur and how we would mitigate and minimize its impact. This could be things like taking out insurance or having a backup plan or an alternate strategy in place. However, since this kind of event has little likelihood of occurring, I'm not going to spend much money, time, or energy mitigating the risk upfront.

6. Adjust your plans to avoid/minimize high-likelihood risks

The high-likelihood, high-impact risks are where you want to spend the bulk of your time, energy, and money. First, you want to look at how to change plans and strategies to avoid these risks in the first place. It's often easier and more efficient to just create a plan that makes these either low likelihood or low-impact right away. If you can't avoid these risks, you want to have a plan for how to mitigate their impact if they do occur.

No business is without risk, and if you were growing and scaling quickly, you'll be taking on more risk than other businesses. But that doesn't mean you need to accept a lower chance of success. By properly assessing all the risks you might face and categorizing them into the appropriate buckets, you can make smart plans to deal with them, or hopefully even avoid them altogether.

Want to Be a High-Achieving Executive? Do Fewer Things

The best executives know what they do well, and what they don't.

I've worked with hundreds of executives over the last two decades, helping them figure out how to grow and scale their businesses and build high-performance teams. And while I'm generally focusing on the overall business growth and success, I've learned that if we're going to scale a business, we also need to scale the people running it. If we don't, we'll quickly hit limits and ceilings.

The challenge in many early-stage companies is that the executives running them often don't have as much deep experience in critical areas needed for growth. Usually, the founding team is still learning and evolving their skills and depth of knowledge in the domain. This is good in the beginning when things are moving quickly, as you need flexible leaders who can quickly learn in new environments. But as you scale, you begin needing expertise and depth as well.

Here are three key questions I ask leaders facing the challenge of how to evolve and plan their professional development. These will not only help the business create the best leadership team; they will help keep people engaged and motivated throughout the growth process.

1. What drives engagement?

The first question to ask yourself is: What do you really enjoy doing that keeps you engaged and continuously challenges you? It's more than just liking something. You need to really be compelled and driven to get better at it over time to be able to maintain your focus over the long term.

Write down all of the tasks and work that you do. Now think about when and how you engage in that work. Find the three to five things that you notice a high degree of engagement in. Look for periods where you lose track of time or tend to push off other tasks, or even things like eating, to spend more time doing. Find those activities where you're totally engrossed in the work and forget about everything else.

If you can't find any obvious activities, find the ones that you have the most curiosity about and start carving out a little more time and focus to get into them and notice what happens. Does your curiosity increase or do you get bored quickly and want to move on?

2. What are you really good at?

It's not enough to just enjoy something. You need to be good at it too in order to create value. Something you love doing that you're not proficient at is a hobby, not a profession. Look for things where you get lots of positive feedback and things that people ask you to do frequently. If you can, get more feedback from colleagues and bosses about what they see as valuable skills and contributions. You don't need to be a world expert on something, but you want to be seen as having a high degree of skill and performance.

Focus on what other people think you're really good at, not just your own assessment. Sometimes, we know too much and are too self-critical. You may feel like you don't really know what you're doing, or know that there is so much more to learn, but someone not educated in the field may see you as brilliant. It's more about what others think, not just what you think.

3. What can nobody else do?

Finally, you need to look for the things that nobody else can do like you can. If everyone else is also going at something, there is little room for differentiation or to be seen as a unique resource. You want to find something that you enjoy, that you're good at, AND that nobody else can do.

If you can't find anything truly unique off-hand, start looking for ways you can add or combine skills and experiences to create a valuable and unique capability. Maybe you're really good at contract law, minored in environmental studies in college, and are a hobbyist rock collector. Can you combine them to focus on contracts involving public land use for mining and forestry?

Developing a niche is an excellent way to become highly sought-after and highly compensated. Don't be afraid to really carve out a unique domain; just make sure there are at least a handful of people and companies who really need that expertise.

Becoming a high-achieving executive is about creating unique and desirable value in your market. Focusing on these three questions will help you find something you're not just passionate about, but something that you can create a real niche around. As they say, the riches are in the niches.

The 5 Most Common Mistakes Leaders Make When Crafting a Business Strategy

Creating a simple yet effective business strategy is hard. Here are the pitfalls to avoid.

As a strategic coach, I've run many dozens of strategy sessions with businesses of all types and sizes. From early-stage startups who just closed their first round of financing to growth companies with hundreds of millions in financing and poised to go public. And while you would think that raising millions of dollars means you have your act together, most often, these companies don't.

The fact is that creating a solid and effective strategic planning process is exceptionally difficult, and few companies really get it right. Here are the top five mistakes I see companies regularly make when developing and implementing strategy.

If you find yourself making one or more of these, you're probably struggling to get clear consistent results in your business. Look to see which ones you might be making and learn how to fix them so you can drive better results faster.

1. Lack of a clear framework

A good strategic planning system includes a base framework that captures and connects strategy data and insights to key decisions and action plans. A strategy without a clear implementation plan is a dream, and an implementation plan without a clear strategy is a task list. Each component of your strategy planning system should feed the next component to allow you to trace key actions and decisions to insights around market opportunities.

I like to start with the big picture of why the business even exists and its core values, then drive towards a clear definition of your target market and analysis of your competitive landscape. From here, we can find areas for strategic differentiation and then create an operational model and roadmap for implementation. All of these will drive quarterly planning and accountability for the senior leadership team.

2. No meeting rhythms

Too many times, I've seen senior teams spend several days discussing and developing a strategy for the coming quarters and years, only to leave the meetings and get overwhelmed and wrapped up in the day-to-day running of the business. The best strategic ideas are worthless if they never get implemented.

The best companies have a clear set of meetings and dedicated time to work on and implement a strategy. Annually, they think big picture and plan out the next three to five years of key milestones. Quarterly, they update and evolve their plan and define their key objectives and drive accountability for completion. Monthly, they review and update their plans and respond to any new shifts in the market. And finally, weekly, they review progress, catch obstacles, and keep each other on track for the quarter.

3. Involving the wrong people

Teams get this wrong on both ends. Some teams involve too many people and gum up the process with too much discussion and too many points of view. Other teams don't involve enough people and miss key insights, failing to get proper buy-in from key business leaders.

Generally, I suggest thinking about two types of people to include. First are people who have unique insights, data, and understanding of the business and the market and who are needed to properly assess the opportunities and make key decisions. Second, are people with power and influence who need to truly buy into the outcomes and decisions developed in the process.

4. Too many priorities

A good strategy is basically a series of complex but important decisions which define the handful of things a company is going to focus on in order to be unique in its market. A good strategy also includes a bunch of decisions about what a company is NOT going to do.

Often I see teams trying to be everything to everyone. They prioritize everything and thereby prioritize nothing, watering down their position in the market and making it impossible for buyers to see any uniqueness in their products or services. This puts the company in a position to be a commodity and forces it to compete on prices, which is a painful place to be, especially for growth companies.

5. Missing action plan

Finally, a plan is worthless if you're not going to implement it in the business. So many strategic planning sessions result in a binder of documents that just sits on the shelf for the rest of the year. In order to avoid this fate, make sure your strategic plan gets translated into a set of operational priorities and a roadmap of key milestones that set clear objectives on a quarterly basis. Then use these when doing your quarterly planning and priorities.

Strategy is tough. But there are ways of making it easier and more effective. A good strategy guides priorities and decision-making at all levels of the organization. If yours isn't doing that, take a step back and make some changes before investing any more time or money in your planning.

5 Ways to Find and Celebrate Wins on Your Team

Finding and celebrating wins is critical to building a high-performance culture; here are five ways you can create a positive focus

As a strategic coach, one of the key areas I look for is an individual and team mindset. Is the team framing issues in the right way? How is their current perspective hindering their ability to see new solutions and strategies? Where are their positions and assumptions holding them back from better and deeper communications? Identifying these and helping the team create higher levels of awareness is one of my core jobs as a coach.

I work with high-performance teams in high-growth companies and they all tend to be driven, ambitious, and highly capable. The challenge lies in their tendency to also be analytical and highly critical of their own performance. Not a bad thing in itself, but without some balance, it can erode the team’s morale. Here are a few things I see great teams doing to create a positive counterweight.

1. Make it systematic

Great teams start by looking for things they are doing right that are leading to success. They find these patterns and nascent habits and then look for ways of baking them into their process, so that they keep on doing them. They also look for ways of repeating their success in other areas of their work.

Perhaps the morning huddle that is working so well to align the sales team could be used in the shipping department to catch late orders and expedite them to stay on schedule and avoid customer complaints? Reflect on your work, find things that are serving you well, and celebrate them. Acknowledge the team and individual efforts that went into the systems and habits that lead to good results. Reward the effort and make sure you keep doing the things that are working.

2. Use your core values

Celebrating positive actions and results that demonstrate core values creates a positive and effective reminder and reinforcer. Using core values to find wins shows they are not just pithy statements painted on the breakroom walls; they are a tool to guide behaviors and decisions.

I run an exercise with a team where they must tell me at least three recent stories of them living their core values. If they can’t, I make them take the core value off their list. (I’ve taped over words painted on walls to make the point.) If they can’t tell me how they are living a core value, then it’s an aspiration of where they want to go, not a description of who they are.

3. Volume over perfection

Great teams don’t spend a lot of time trying to find the perfect or the biggest win. It’s about developing a mindset and a habit of thinking positively and finding things that are going right. Once you build this muscle, you start noticing bigger and more important wins that will allow you to drive process improvement more effectively.

I have teams that have contests on who can find the most wins in a time period. In every quarterly planning session, everyone brings a list of wins, and people compete to see who can bring the biggest list. It can be humorous at times since there is no size requirement for the win, but over time, they will notice bigger and more important wins that can be critical to strategy and operational success.

4. Make them personal

When you’re celebrating wins, acknowledge individual efforts and contributions. Connect the action with the positive results to encourage and reinforce the behavior. In some cases (and for the right people) this can be done publicly, but private one-on-one feedback can be just as powerful. Consider the action and the individuals’ personalities and what they would best appreciate.

5. Announce them regularly

I start all of my planning sessions and workshops with a round of wins. It could be personal or professional, just something that is going well or recent positive results. This helps get the team into a positive and constructive mood and sets the tone for the session. I also suggest that company newsletters and other regular communication start with a handful of wins for the company or department. This will force leaders to look for them over time so they have things to write about.

While businesses are full of mistakes, problems, and challenges that need to be fixed and improved, it’s easy to get too focused on this and lose sight of the bigger picture. Making it a point to find and celebrate wins in your business or department will go a long way to improving your morale as well as giving you insights on how to create more success in the future.

Want to Develop Your People? Think Like a Coach. Here’s How

Developing your people is one of your most important jobs as a manager. Here's how to do it.

As a strategic leadership coach, one of my key jobs is to help increase the leadership capacity of the organization so we can grow and scale the business. The easiest way to do that is to level up the current executives and managers to handle bigger and more challenging responsibilities.

Developing the capacity of existing team members is easier and cheaper than bringing in new people from the outside. While it may be necessary at times to bring in specialized skills or solve pressing demands in high-growth situations, it's expensive to recruit and it quickly waters down the culture. Instead, smart businesses focus on professional development and training to scale their executive and management capacity.

To do this you need to dedicate time and resources. Every senior executive and manager needs to carve out time to focus on developing their direct reports and helping them grow with focus and intention. Here are seven steps you can use to work with your direct reports and help them step up their game.

1. Understand their goals

Before you give them a list of things that you want them to focus on, take the time to understand their goals and ambitions. While some of these might not fit your business objectives, it's important to really know what is driving your direct and what they want to achieve. In many cases, you'll find solid alignment with your objectives. In either case, taking the time and listening to them will make them feel heard and feel like an equal partner in the process. This drives commitment and dedication.

2. Establish desired outcomes

One of the key things I learned as a manager is to stop focusing on the "how" to do things and instead focus on "what" I wanted to achieve. Getting clear and agreeing on the desired outcome and definition of success gets everyone on the same page. Letting them figure out the process and steps will give them control and commitment to the process. Let them lead and give them feedback as needed and only when they ask for it.

3. Clarify success metrics

Along with the desired outcomes, it's helpful to add some key metrics and targets. If they are working on improving their public speaking, counting "ums" and "likes" is a great way to set objective measures about performance. While it's impossible to define everything, having a handful of measures will give you and your direct focus and the ability to review progress.

4. Identify work to be done

Once the end goal is defined, you can then brainstorm the work that has to get done. The trick here is to let your direct drive the process. Have them brainstorm what they feel needs to happen and don't interrupt. If you need to, you can then give some suggestions and feedback, but make sure you're offering ideas, not telling them what to do. Keep them in the driver's seat and let them own the process.

5. Explore potential blockers

Once you have a plan in place, start to poke holes in it and identify what might be missing or where you might run into challenges. Focus on the elements that are higher likelihood and impact. For each one, identify ways to avoid them or ways to handle them quickly if they come up.

6. Commit to an action plan

Make sure you clarify next steps, dates, and commitments. If you want to hold people accountable, you need to have clearly articulated and agreed-to action items. Make sure you also include milestones and check-in points that you need to ensure things are getting done on-time and accurately.

7. Provide support and resources

Once you have your plans in place, your job is to smother your direct in love and support. Commit yourself to doing everything you can to make them confident and successful. That doesn't mean doing the work for them: just support them in their efforts. A coach never steps on the field, but they can run up and down the sidelines cheering.

Stepping out of the player role and into a management role can be a difficult transition for many people. If you let your ego get tied to "doing" the work you'll struggle. But if you focus on coaching and training the people who work for you, you'll find an even greater sense of accomplishment and joy.

3 Easy and Effective Ways I Overcame 'Imposter Syndrome’

Impostor syndrome is something everyone struggles with yet everyone thinks only they suffer from.

In 2009, the company I founded was named 241st on the Inc. 5000. When I started it, we were two guys in a borrowed office trying to crank out code for our first client. Five years later we were a team of two dozen with a long client roster, making some serious money.

You would think, as I walked from my table at the awards dinner to the stage--to accept our plaque from Norm Brodsky--that I would be beaming with pride and feeling on top of the world.

I wasn't.

Surrounded by hundreds of other award winners of amazing companies I felt completely out of place. Everyone there seemed confident and sure of themselves.

I, on the other hand, was thinking about all of the problems and struggles our growing company was having, despite its financial success. From my perspective, it was obvious that nobody was having these same challenges. After all, they had won an award to prove it

Then, after the awards ceremonies, I had the chance to enjoy a few drinks and talk with some of the other award winners. With our bow ties undone, sitting on the veranda of conference center, I mentioned my thoughts from the ceremony.

One by one, they all admitted that they, too, felt uneasy about the accolades. In fact, they commented that I seemed the most poised and successful of the group.

As we spoke, I realized that my own feelings of self-doubt were minor compared to some of the others' at the table. When we shared some of our war stories, I realized that my company was actually doing fairly well, relative to some of the nightmares I heard that night.

By the end of the night, I was able to remind myself and come to terms with the fact that I am my own worst critic. And taking that sentiment further, comparing my internal assessment of my success to how I see other people's success is a losing proposition.

How to overcome imposter syndrome

Years later, I came across an article in the Harvard Business Review by Gill Corkindale titled Overcoming Imposter Syndrome. I realized what I had experienced was something psychologist have known about for years, it had a title so it must have been more common than I thought.

It set in motion a great transformation in me.

As an entrepreneur, I became much more comfortable pushing new ideas and exploring new territory. I became less worried about how I compared to other people and became more open to sharing my concerns and doubts with others to get help and insight.

As a coach, I learned that one of the best things I can do is to share my own challenges, failures, and uncertainty with my clients. Sharing this vital information breaks down the barriers to deeper sharing and insight. It allows me be to be a true partner in the process and success.

Over time, I've found three easy and effective strategies for overcoming the impostor syndrome trap. These have worked well for both for me and for my coaching clients:

1. Call it out for what it is: bad thinking

The trickiest part of self-doubt is that it can be hard to realize it's happening. Your mind is an expert in convincing you.

The sooner you can catch that you're doubting yourself, the sooner you can start addressing it.

Get good at telling the difference between doubt based on external, objective concerns and those which come from your own inner critic.

2. Remember that even the most successful people have self doubt

Once you're aware of your own self doubt, remember that this happens to everyone. In fact, you can make it a badge of courage.

Knowing that even the greatest minds and most fearless leaders have self-doubt can validate that you're in good company. Try using self-doubt as a sign that you're on to something big and important.

3. Don't strive for perfection and make it okay to fail

Self-doubt is very hard to overcome if your internal expectation is perfection. A zero-tolerance for mistakes and errors will make it impossible to take action.

The solution here is to change your expectations; frame the situation to make failure an acceptable outcome.

One of the best ways to do this it to set up your actions as "experiments". That way, any outcome is a learning opportunity.

Great leaders and successful entrepreneurs need to be critical and careful to exam all options, in every situation, in order to make good decisions.

While you may never completely get rid of your self-doubt, spotting it--and acting despite it--will lead to more success.

How These 4 Questions Helped Me Make Better Decisions

Decision-making is a key skill for every executive. Learn these four simple questions that will improve your outcomes and results.

In business and in life, we make decisions every day. Most are automatic and unconscious so our brains are not overwhelmed.

The non-automatic type of decisions take energy and create what's referred to as 'cognitive load' on the brain. By developing good habits and heuristics we can greatly improve our decision-making, make our lives easier, and our brains less stressed.

Whether you're a new founder deciding when to start your business or you're Nintendo trying to decide if you should fire an employee for their personal views on child pornography, the process you use to make a decision needs to be both efficient and effective.

Throughout all of the obstacles I've faced as a founder and CEO, I learned that deciding what to do and how to do it in each situation is a complex series of problems. Even in cases where a part of the decision is clear--for example, an employee who steals needs their accounts suspended--the questions of exactly how to go about those decisions become very difficult.

There are four basic questions that I've learned to apply in these situations to make them easier:

1. What is the decision I need to make right now?

The first step is always to clarify the decision at hand. Often, this step is glossed over and leads either to "over-deciding" or "under-deciding" both of which can lead to problems.

In one case, I had an employee steal almost $15,000 from the company. Prioritizing the decision of turning off all access to critical accounts needed to be done immediately. Deciding whether to contact the police, however, was secondary and could wait.

This allowed us to gather some information and fully consider our options. Why did they steal? Should they be given counseling? Maybe they are in a personal crisis and they need emotional and temporary financial support?

It's a very different situation if the employee stole to pay for a drug habit than if they stole to pay for their child's chemotherapy.

2. When do I need to make this decision?

If you can refrain from making a decision right away, you leave room for new data or insight to surface that may help you make a better decision.

The trick here is figuring out the last responsible moment for making a decision. If I have time, I'll make a provisional decision and wait until I'm close to the final moment to finalize my decision.

In the case of the employee theft, we figured out we had to report the incident to the police within a week if we wanted to submit it the loss to our insurance company.

3. What are all the options at my disposal?

People tend to think of the two or three options that come to mind first and then they stop. This limits possibilities and outcomes. Once you've really clarified the decision you need to make, brainstorm all of the possible options you can think of and expand your options.

In one case, when someone plagiarized our job description, I took some time to consider my options. Rather than firing off a nasty email, I came up with the idea of reaching out to offer our services. This lead to a multi-million dollar project that lasted several years.

4. What criteria should I use to make the decision?

Once I have the decision clarified and the options created, I consider what criteria I need to apply, and in what weight and order.

After my divorce, when I was picking out a new place to live, I created a spreadsheet with several criteria. Then by monetizing factors such as how much a 10-minute reduction in my daily commute was worth in dollars, allowed me to compare different areas based on average rents.

While not all good decisions will always lead to good outcomes, applying these techniques can maximize your chances and allow you to be more confident in your choices. With practice, you'll become better at making decisions quickly and efficiently.

How to Kickstart Your Morning in Under a Minute

Research shows that finding things to be grateful for can change your mood and your resilience.

Life as an entrepreneur is difficult, at times.

A few years ago, I found myself simultaneously going through a marital divorce, a business divorce, and major back surgery. The stakes and tensions were high, especially with three kids and 50 employees impacted by the outcomes.

The strain of keeping day-to-day operations running smoothly while juggling both weighty conflicts was not easy most of the time. And for the rest of the time, it was downright overwhelming.

After losing a lot of sleep, not having the energy to go to the gym, and gaining weight, I decided to do some research and find better techniques to more effectively manage the stress I was experiencing. I decided to reignite my meditation practice and reinforce my good routines for getting better sleep, both of which helped immensely.

However, there was one new thing I tried that made an even more remarkable difference and has had a lasting impact on my life.

Throughout my research, I stumbled on articles by Robert Emmons on gratitude. I learned that in times of deep hardship and despair, according to Emmons's research, finding things to be thankful for helps buoy our emotional state and increases our resilience.

One of the key points Emmons makes is that you don't need to feel grateful. He argues that you should find things in your life to be grateful for.

After a few conversations with some close friends, we made a Facebook group challenge to start our mornings by sharing five things we were grateful for each day. Our goal was to do this for 90 days and to not repeat any single gratitude during that time.

At this point, many of us have completed multiple 90-day gratitude challenges. We've invited friends and they've invited their friends. The group now has almost 2,000 people, with hundreds of postings every day.

As a result of getting into this habit, I've noticed several things that really impact my day-to-day frame of mind and general mood:

1. Specific gratitudes are more powerful than general ones

In the beginning, I was posting things like "sunshine" and "fresh air." Because we couldn't repeat, I started to get more specific: "Morning sunshine that casts a wonderful glow over the city in the morning" and "breathing in fresh air standing on my balcony as I drink my morning coffee."

I realized that these ideas and images were much more tangible and memorable. They stuck with me longer throughout the day. And some of them I remember months and even years later.

2. Gratitude changes how you look at the world

After a few weeks of posting, I found that I was seeing the world differently. Knowing that I was going to have to post five gratitudes the next morning, I began to look for things to be grateful for during my day.

Even simple things became aha! moments for discovering new posts. As a result, daily events that would have otherwise been monotonous became moments of appreciation.

3. Gratitude changes how you look at yourself

It's true that while looking out at the world searching for reasons to be thankful, you start to change your internal wiring.

You develop a muscle for learning from difficult situations and make change an opportunity to improve and rebuild because you are forcing yourself to see the good.

4. Gratitudes create amazing connections to other people

The Facebook group began with just a few people who all knew one another, and it grew from there. Seeing one another's posts, and those of hundreds of other people, gave us new insight into our lives and our minds. It was enormously powerful to see the posts of other participants.

Starting a gratitude challenge is great when you find yourself needing a mental boost--and it's just as powerful when you're on top of the world. Your mind needs exercise and training to perform well, the same way muscles need to lift weights to get strong.

Gratitudes are the free weights for your mind, which, over time, will build fortitude and resilience.

Why a Difference of $23,540,543 Means Absolutely Nothing

Revenues are not always the best measure of company performance. Look at these five numbers instead.

Of all of the measures of business success, revenue seems to be the one that people always ask about and the one that people brag about most. Many networking organizations, for example, use revenue as a bar for entry. Even the Inc. 500/5000 uses revenue to calculate growth.

That said, revenues can often be misleading. Hitting a high bar on revenue doesn't mean you're truly bigger, better or faster than a company in a lower revenue bracket.

It's an important number to know, yes. It's also just one of several key numbers that describe the size--and more importantly the health and profitability--of a business.

Allow me to illustrate. I have one client who has around $29 million in annual revenues. However, they also have almost $22 million in direct expense for materials and equipment, which they basically purchase and resell directly to their customers.

When you calculate their gross profit, it's only about $7 million. Sales, overhead, and management expenses come to just over $5 million. This leaves $2 million in profit and a profit percentage of roughly seven percent.

Compare this to another client who has around $5 million in annual revenues. While much lower than the previous client, they only have just under $1 million of direct expenses for the products and services they sell to their clients.

They also have around $2.5 million in sales, overhead and management expenses. This leaves them with an impressive $1.5 million in profit and a profit percentage of almost 30 percent.

The first client has a significant amount of revenue. But when you look at the operational performance and final profit of the business, client number two is a much more attractive company from an investment point of view.

Here are five things to look at beyond top-line revenue. This might get a little wordy--but knowing what these mean and how to calculate them is important if you truly want to accurately measure success.

1. Costs of good sold (COGS)

Many people forget about this important number. It tells you how much you have to spend to generate incremental revenue.

When you sell a product or project, or when you provide a service, COGS is the money you spend to provide that additional unit. For products, it's the raw materials or the wholesale price. For services, it might be the cost of additional freelancers or part time staff.

This figure does not include your full-time staff and expenses, which you pay for regardless of the sale.

2. Gross Profit

This is your profit after you account for your COGS. To calculate your gross profit, take your revenue and subtract your COGS. It shows how much profit you're generating against your core business costs.

For some companies, the COGS are very high leaving a very low gross profit. If you're a supermarket, for example, between 50-75 percent of your revenue will be COGS. If you're someone like Costco, your COGS will be between 85-90 percent of your revenue, leaving just 10-15 percent gross profit.

3. Overhead Expenses

Overhead is everything that isn't COGS, debt payments or amortization (capital investment charges). This includes things like management salaries, staff salaries, equipment, space, utilities, etc.

It also includes your general sales and marketing salaries and expenses. If you're doing detailed analysis, you can put these in different categories and see what's happening over time.

One of the key analysis of company performance is the difference in COGS and overhead expenses--especially once you start hiring full-time staff or investing in processes and equipment that can reduce COGS but increase risk if sales vary or start to lag.

4. EBITA

You often hear this term thrown around when listening to investment wonks talking about valuations. EBITA is a not a Spanish party island in the Mediterranean (though sometimes I wish). It's your profit, or earnings, before you account for interest, taxes and amortization.

For companies that don't have large capital investment requirements for inventory and the like, consider the EBITA an effective profit figure of the company. If your company has large inventories or investments in capital expenses--such as equipment--you'll need to factor those in to calculate your effective profit.

5. Net Profit

This is what's left after we pay debt obligations, calculate amortization and account for interest and taxes. It's basically the increase (or decrease in some cases) to the cash position of the company.

If you're growing your business, you'll need to make sure this number is positive--and, ideally, growing--to support the additional investments needed for scaling the company.

By getting a handle on these key financial metrics and seeing what has been happening with them over time, you'll have a much better idea of the current and likely future value of the business. You'll also be in a much better position to evaluate the performance of your company and your investment's risk and return.

How Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt, and Bill Gates Became Even Better CEOs

High-performing executives know the power of coaching and the three key values that only a great coach can provide.

When talent scouts look at young athletes they look for a host of factors: speed, strength, agility, reflexes, among others. These qualities determine their ability and potential performance on the playing field.

However, there is one trait that scouts look for above all others. What they look for is coachability.

The professional world is no different. When you're looking for raw talent and future leaders, what you're really looking for is people who can be coached.

Without the ability to be coached, all the talent and skill in the work will be for naught. Being able to take in feedback, be instructed, and to strive are attributes that lead to continuous improvement over time.

The world's best leaders were simultaneously exceptionally talented, skilled, determined, and aware that they could be better. And they understood the value of a great coach to help them improve themselves. Great CEOs like Steve Jobs, Eric Schmidt, and Bill Gates all sought out great coaches to help them up their game.

A great coach provides three key roles in developing highly successful executives. Knowing these can help you decide if and when coaching might be a good move in your career.

Here's why:

1. Great coaches see things you can't see

Coaches have a different perspective. Practically speaking, this allows them to literally see things you can't see.

It could be body language, reactions, or the impact you have on other people. With a slightly removed position for observing, coaches can catch important and insightful glimpses into a variety of situations.

Coaches also have a different emotional perspective. They are less likely to be attached to a particular approach or behavior, and are willing to question more boldly the assumptions and ways of doing things that you take for granted.

For instance, I once had a client who tended to communicate via email because he was most comfortable with writing. He didn't want to consider other modes of communication because he feared being uncomfortable.

As a coach, I didn't have that fear bias--so I was more willing to explore different options. Once this client was able to see that his email dependency was hindering his effectiveness, he moved out of his comfort zone and began holding more face-to-face meetings.

At first he was still uncomfortable. After some time, he saw positive results which pushed him forward.

2. Great coaches say things you can't say

I'm often brought onto teams who are struggling--usually, after several months of poor performance. Sometimes, executives are ready to give up and scrap the team and start over.

It's not uncommon, however, to see that there are conflicts or core issues that haven't been resolved on the team--causing the team members to grind away unproductively. Sometimes, it's because of personal relationships. Other times, it's power dynamics. Regardless, unresolved issues hold teams back.

As a coach, I can bring up these issues in a safe and neutral way. This objective approach allows for engaged and open discussion. Often, it only takes just a few minutes of conversation. Shortly afterwards, we're able to begin the resolution process and start affecting results.

3. Great coaches know things you don't know

Experienced coaches have worked with many types of people and have seen many different situations. They've seen what typically works and what usually doesn't.

Coaches certainly don't guarantee that all problems are avoidable and success is automatic, but they can help make sure you're not making the same mistakes other people have already paid the price for.

Many people expect coaches to be great sources of advice. However, the best coaches I know rarely give advice.

Instead, they share their experiences and the experiences of previous clients. This method allows clients to drive the decisions, making better use of the provided knowledge.

Knowing what makes a great coach will also allow you to choose your coach wisely. Beyond rapport and cultural fit, look for a coach who is focused on providing these three key points of value to the coaching relationship.

Is your daily huddle a daily grind? Try these 5 proven strategies to up your game

Keep your daily standup meetings short and to the point if you want people to attend.

Ever since Jeff Sutherland and Keith Schwebel presented their seminal paper on Scrum at the OOPSLA conference back in 1995, people have been trying to figure out how to run effective daily team meetings. Whether you call them standups, scrums, or huddles, these daily gatherings all face the same challenges.

And after almost a decade of coaching teams on Lean/Agile practices, I've seen my share of failures. The fact is every team I've ever coached--be it the highest level leadership team or a more junior development team--have all struggled with getting the daily team meeting right.

The daily team meeting is short, but it's extremely important. It's where the course is constantly monitored and corrected. Teams who are misaligned and don't continuously coordinate actions, run the risk of severe failure in performance over time. Checking in and making small corrections is the key to keeping projects and teams on target.

Over the years, I've seen several common problems and have developed simple solutions. Here are some suggestions you can apply tomorrow at your meeting to improve its effectiveness.

Start at an odd time

I've found that many organizations are lazy with their meetings. When someone schedules a 9:00 a.m. meeting, people will stroll in 9:05 without a second thought. Then people wait until 9:10 to actually get going on the agenda. For daily meetings, this is a killer. These get-togethers need to be no more than 15 minutes.

To break people's bad meeting habits, use an irregular start time. If you're thinking of 9:00 am daily meeting, make it 9:04 or 9:07. This will call attention to the time and encourage people to be there at the appointed minute. A few minutes after the hour also gives people a little buffer if their previous meeting finishes at 9:00.

Have everyone write down their updates

Nothing kills a standup faster than watching someone stare at the ceiling trying to remember what they did yesterday while everyone watches them scratch their chin. This will frustrate even the most patient of team members.

Avoid wasting the team's time by having everyone write down their updates on a notecard before the meeting. Have a stack of 3x5 index cards handy for people to scratch a few notes before things kick off. At the beginning of the meeting, instruct people to show their notes and only let people speak who have taken the time to organize their thoughts. Being skipped during updates will quickly change behavior.

Set a timer everyone can see

Everyone will naturally elaborate and want to dive into details. While some people understand the advantage of setting a timer, most teams have someone set a watch timer and then say something when the time is up. This leads to people being cut off or forced to quickly wrap up and cut out important information.

Instead, use a large, visible timer that everyone can see. I've had teams use big LED timers like in my local Crossfit box. The big red numbers counting down show everyone exactly how much time is left. Additionally, utilizing the buzz or beep feature on the clock avoids someone having to be the bad guy and interrupt the person currently speaking.

Stay focused on the three core questions

Rambling is a typical challenge. It's natural and, left unchecked, will continue to happen. The daily meeting is about coordinating and identifying issues. It's not for digging in. Delving into details is not part of the daily meeting and wastes the valuable time.

The fix to this, keep everyone to the three core questions: what did you get done yesterday, what are you doing today, and what's in your way. By sticking to these and keeping answers quick, you'll avoid the pull of the tall grass. If you hear someone going into the thicket, call it out and suggest that it be a follow up conversation right after the meeting. A good practice is to schedule another 15 minutes after the standup for those people that need time and space to dig into something. Let everyone else leave on time.

End on time, no matter what

Many teams who start doing standups spend way too much time in them. I've heard of new standups lasting 30 or even 60 minutes. At the end of the meeting, they all agree that they need to make it shorter. Then the next day it takes just as long, sometimes longer.

Instead, I suggest teams agree to a 15-minute guarantee. Set a 15-minute timer for the meeting, then when the timer goes off, the meeting is automatically and immediately over--no matter what. Even if someone is mid-sentence, end the meeting and thank everyone for coming. By promising to end the meeting in 15 minutes, people are more likely to attend the next one. The next time the team meets, everyone is acutely aware of the time and keeps everyone on task and on point. The challenge becomes getting the most out of the 15 minutes rather than trying to shorten an overly long meeting.

Daily team meetings are not easy, and teams that do them well have worked hard on perfecting the process and the timing of the agenda. By following these suggestions, you'll avoid the common pitfalls and get better, faster.

Stay in the zone longer by using these 18 techniques to avoid distractions

Improve your focus and your productivity by trying one of these techniques to create a distraction-free work environment.

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.

It's Pretty Easy to Set Company Goals, But It's Much Harder to Finish Them (Unless You Follow These 3 Steps)

A good goal-setting process is critical for business success, focus on these three criteria for driving results.

Setting good company goals is one of the most important--and one of the most challenging--things a leader must do in his or her company. Without goals, it's impossible to drive strategic change and significant innovation on your products and services. Without goals, you are lost at sea and at the whim of the currents so to speak.

There are many strategies and acronyms for goal setting in companies. Many of them are good, some are less so. While some teams have used the classic SMART goals (Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-bound) to get good results, I have found these to be overly complicated. I've seen too many teams spend hours contorting themselves to make their goals fit this model with little to no benefit after doing so.

Many times I see teams develop elaborate and complex goal-setting systems and processes, only to find out later that they haven't followed through with the implementation and they have abandoned their plans altogether. This goal neglect leaves employees feeling frustrated and disappointed.

Instead, the best leadership teams I've worked with have made sure their goals include these three simple things to drive results consistently:

1. Make your company goals measurable.

Overly-general goals do not work well; specificity is the name of the goal game. The best way to make a goal specific is to define how you'll measure success to determine whether it is completed or not. Without specificity, you create confusion: your people will be working towards different outcomes based on their own interpretations.

When setting goals I have people create a definition of done. I ask, "if we pull some random person off the street, what instructions would I give them to confirm that a goal is achieved or missed?" Define the tool they would use to measure success. The point is to leave no doubt whether a goal is reached or not. Often this exercise will drastically change a goal for the better.

2. Make your company goals compelling to everyone on the team.

One of the biggest deficiencies of SMART goals is that a goal can be each of those letters and still be utterly boring. Goals need to be exciting, fun, and maybe a little scary to drive engagement.

People want to find meaning in their work. Goals that are not compelling will not get the investment and the attention they need to be achieved.

One of the best ways to make your goals more compelling is to add "so that" to the end of the goal. Articulate the benefit of achieving the goal. For example, you can turn "hire a full time marketing person" to "hire a full time marketing person so that we can increase leads and grow the business." Articulating the why creates motivation.

3. Align your company goals with your strategic priorities.

Finally, great goals need to be aligned with a company's strategic priorities. This ensures that your goals are stacking up to move the needle on the growth and the development of the business. Without considering alignment, goals can end up working against each other and competing for resources. Don't create goals that pull in different directions.

Making goals measurable, compelling, and aligned with your strategic objectives greatly increases the chance that these goals are realized and accomplished.

5 Meetings Every Company Needs to Master If They Want To Thrive

Everyone loves to hate meetings, but get these five right and you'll see the power of coming together with purpose.

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.

Want To Create Better Ideas In Your Company? Look At Who’s Sitting Round Table

While increasing diversity will fuel innovation and increase the competitiveness of your company, it's not as easy to accomplish as you might think.

Recently, I had the honor of moderating a panel of senior executives speaking about diversity and innovation at a leadership conference in New York City. The main thesis of the panel topic was that companies can increase the quality and volume of insights and ideas by increasing their level of diversity, an idea that seems simple at the surface but complex after digging in.

I learned a lot from the panelist over the ninety minutes we had together. It turns out that while increasing diversity does increase innovation--thus making a company more competitive--there are still two big challenges associated with actually changing the makeup of an organization that must be addressed.

The first challenge is that like attracts like. An organization will naturally find and attract people similar to itself. People tend to interact, gravitate, and gel with people like themselves. Without conscious and concerted effort to seek and recruit different, things won't change.

The second one is that the biases that influence diversity in our companies are primarily unconscious, not conscious, so it's not enough to just say to ourselves, don't be biased. Moreover, we've generally moved past the days of overt segregation and discrimination. Therefore the biases we need to grapple with now are the unconscious biases. And by definition, we can't think our way out of this problem. Instead, we need to find outside systems, techniques, processes, and guidelines that structurally prevent or offset these unconscious biases.

Below are five strategies you can use to counteract the natural like attracts like phenomena and unconscious biases we have which will increase the level of diversity in your organization.

1. Increase the diversity of your recruiting team

Because like attracts like, consciously making your recruiting team more diverse will tend to attract candidates who are more diverse. Different members from diverse teams will still tend to seek out people like themselves, but that also perpetuates the diversity. Candidates in turn will feel more engaged and willing to consider a company with a more diverse recruiting team which will also carry on the value of diversity in these teams.

2. Fish in different pools

Einstein was the one who said that doing the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. So if you want different people, you need start by looking in different places. Search for candidate sources that have a high concentration of your target demographic and diversity makeup. When you find them, disproportionately push job openings and attend recruiting events in these new pools.

3. Use objective criteria for evaluation

Develop and weigh interviewing criteria that use objective measures and exclude bias. Don't use questions such as "does it feel like a good fit" or "would you put them on your team?" to evaluate candidates. A better approach is to have one group do the interviews and collect the data, and then another group make the hiring decisions only after being scrubbed of information that contains bias. For example, remove and/or replace names that suggest sex, race, religion, orientation or age.

4. Make hiring decisions as a group

Collective discussion and debate will be more likely to uncover and challenge biases. Because candidates are discussed based on rational discussion, it's less likely that they will be hired on a hunch or a feeling. Train hiring decision makers to bring up bias-thinking traps and how to confront each other constructively.

5. Give extra credit for diverse candidates

Before you scream "quota" or "affirmative action," my point here is that candidates who have been a minority in a given environment and have achieved a high level of success have had to over perform relative to non-minority candidates. Basically, they have to be better than the other to overcome that bias. They also have had the persistence, resilience, and fortitude to not just survive, but excel in their positions. This often means that hiring the minority means you're getting a better candidate.

Changing the diversity profile of your company is not easy, but tackling the challenge using processes and techniques that counter natural tendencies and unconscious biases can begin to make progress. As with many change efforts, slow and steady wins the race.

Keeping This Kind of Calendar Can Help You Become Highly Productive

High performance executives are masters of their priorities and schedule; here's how they do it.

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.

How to Avoid Conflict and Make Your Business Partnership Last Longer And Have More Fun

Use these best practices to improve your business partnership's success, longevity, and enjoyment.

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.