The Vegas Rule and 4 Other Proven Rules for Great Meetings

Successful teams have a high degree of psychological safety. Here are five ground rules to help you run more successful meetings.

I've been coaching for more than 20 years now, working with dozens of teams and facilitating hundreds of meetings, both large and small. Although each meeting varies with different people and different objectives, there are some core principles and practices I use in all of them.

One of the key meeting practices I use is establishing ground rules. Simply put, these are agreements that the team makes about how they will conduct themselves to ensure they stay focused, be productive, and achieve desired outcomes.

Here are five key ground rules focused on creating safety in the meeting, as safety is critical to addressing the real issues a team needs to discuss. Without these ground rules, a team is either likely to avoid the issues altogether, or if they do tackle them, they risk creating more issues than making progress.

1. The Vegas rule

The foundation of safety is knowing that what you say will be held in confidence. If you're worried that what you say could reach someone you don't expect or want, you'll quickly edit and limit what you say to protect yourself. Worse, if you assume confidentiality and it's broken, you'll likely never trust the person or situation again, killing open and honest communication.

Don't just assume confidentiality. At the start of every session I run with any team, we explicitly state the Vegas rule. We agree that what happens and is said in a meeting stays in the meeting. If anything comes up that someone needs to take outside of the meeting, they must get everyone's permission first.

2. Tackle issues, not people

While I want everyone to be nice and respectful, I also want them to address issues directly. I want them to lean into these topics and express what they think and feel. The challenge is if people make personal attacks or perceive things as personal attacks, then everyone will get defensive and likely counterattack and/or shut down.

The solution is to ensure people focus on the issue and don't make things personal. Comments and criticism should address the issues, behaviors, and dynamics, not the people. If something comes across as personal or someone takes something personally, we stop, reframe, and create safety until we can proceed productively.

3. Yes, and ...

Years ago, I took an improv workshop. While I didn't last long in doing comedy, I carried with me an idea that I've applied to the meetings I facilitate today. When doing an improv session with others, one of the foundational rules is not to contradict or negate the other partner's storyline. If someone says the sky is green, you don't correct them. You just build on it. This allows the scene to grow and evolve rather than fall flat.

In meetings, I have people remove "but," "however," "no," and "maybe" and have them use the phrase "yes, and ..." to start any response. Even if they are going to completely contradict the person, they just need to start with "yes, and ..." This keeps the conversation going and prevents things from shutting down and people clamming up. Give it a try.

4. Equal airtime

One key habit of the best teams is that everyone has a chance to speak, and everyone's voice is truly heard. Research shows that when everyone on the team speaks about the same amount of time during the meeting, team performance improves. Members regulated themselves from monopolizing the conversation and made a point of engaging and sharing their thoughts.

I encourage my teams to strive for an equal airtime policy. For some, this means they need to think about their point, be focused, and not ramble. For others, it's about speaking up, saying what they are thinking, and participating more in the discussion.

Generally, people know who is in which camp. If you want to get fancy, there are some fun apps and virtual meeting plugins that track talk time and will publish the data after the meeting. It's great feedback.

5. Enter the danger

Often, I find that teams want to avoid difficult and sensitive topics. Typically, they want to decrease friction or hard feelings. While keeping things pleasant is understandable, it usually leaves a team stuck and unable to improve. The issues that typically hold a team back are often complex and can come with some strong feelings. But avoiding them doesn't fix the problem.

By invoking "enter the danger," we agree not to shy away from difficult conversations or topics. I encourage members to check in with their gut. If something feels uncomfortable or gives someone a sinking feeling, it probably means we need to talk about it. By taking the risk and bringing it up, we create the opportunity for important issues to be discussed and resolved.

I have dozens of other ground rules I use in meetings to keep things focused and on topic, but these are the most important ones, and I always start with them. Without safety and ensuring we can really dig into the topics and issues that are holding a team back, we'll stay on the surface, and the team will remain stuck. If we want higher levels of performance, we need to dig deeper into the issues.

Budgeting Is a Critical but Rare Business Competency.

Planning projects and developing budgets are critical functions in all businesses. Don't wing it. Use this guide to help get the best outcome for you and your team.

Growing a business requires investment. To maximize the investment, good project planning and budgeting are essential. As a strategic business coach, I help companies formulate a clear strategy and identify the projects that need focus to drive growth. While many of the companies I work with have good project planning skills, budgeting often proves to be a challenge.

Here are seven steps to create a budget that is both accurate and useful.

1. Set clear success criteria.

The first thing is to establish a clear and objective set of success criteria for your project. Most teams miss this step and struggle to align themselves with a clear set of actions. This is because they all have a different vision for what they are trying to accomplish and different metrics that define success.

2. Determine an expected return on investment.

Every project should yield some form of return. This could be a direct financial return, but it could also be measured in other ways, such as increasing production capacity, expanding distribution reach, and developing intellectual property.

The point is to create a set of reasonably objective measures of return for the time, money, and energy you'll be putting into the project and to measure the results over time. This will allow you to monitor progress and make necessary adjustments.

3. Identify key risk factors.

Every project has risks involved. The only way to avoid risks is just to stay home and not try. The questions on each project are:

Have we uncovered all of the risks?

Can we manage and mitigate the risks?

How are we going to monitor risks to give us time to respond effectively?

Most projects fail not because they have a poor plan but because they fail to anticipate risks that could have been addressed and mitigated with some foresight.

4. Figure out major work efforts.

Once high-level goals, expected returns, and risks are identified, you can begin planning the work. Start with significant sections and phases. Find clear break points in the work streams and natural transition points in the process.

Begin to organize the work into smaller tasks and work plans using project management tools like Gantt charts and PERT--program evaluation and review technique--charts to figure out dependencies and the proper order of events.

5. Crowdsource work estimates.

Estimating may be the hardest part of a project; and often the part that is most poorly done. The only way to get a truly accurate estimate is to do the project a few times, collect data, and find averages and likely variations.

Given that this is impractical in most situations, you need to interpolate and extrapolate from other projects and experiences. One of the best ways to do this is to use real-time feedback from groups in a method called the wisdom of the crowds, an approach developed by James Surowiecki and described in his 2005 book by the same name. By independently collecting data from different people with different perspectives, you can analyze averages and spreads to gain a better understanding of the effort likely to be involved.

6. Calculate reasonable contingencies.

Rather than padding each task with extra time, estimate each task within an 80 percent confidence interval and then calculate your contingency at the overall project level. If you are highly confident in your estimates, you might only need a 10-20 percent contingency for the project.

If you're highly uncertain, you might need 100 percent or more in your budget. Dial it in based on complexity, risk, and familiarity with the tasks.

7. Set clear decision milestones.

Most project horror stories involved projects that have spiraled out of control and spent huge amounts of time and energy trying to save them. Eventually, they fail, necessitating a complete restart, often with a brand-new team. Instead, create clear decision points with progress requirements, and if you don't meet the milestone, stop the project and replan from the ground up.

Don't get caught in the sunk-cost fallacy and feel the pressure to keep going just because you've already spent time and energy. In complex, high-pressure situations, flip the process and assume you're canceling the project at each milestone and only continuing if all the milestone requirements are successfully met. It's better to lick your wounds and start over than bleed out on the field.

While there are all types of projects with their characteristics and challenges, these guidelines can ensure adherence to core best practices, increasing your chances of success. You'll run into issues and have setbacks, but great teams understand this part of the process and hit more base hits than strikeouts over time. You don't need to be perfect, you just need to be better than the competition.

5 Books on Sales Every Leader Should Read

If you want to grow and scale your business, you need to get sales working right. These five books will help.

When I founded my technology company, I thought I was brilliant at sales. I had closed several million-dollar deals at the company I worked at previously and was a rockstar. I figured it would be easy to find a few projects each month to feed the team we built and grow the business quickly.

I was wrong. I quickly began to struggle with finding good quality leads, and the leads I did find would stall and go dark or pull out at the last minute. The lack of sales quickly began to hinder the company’s growth, and I began to question my skills and value as a CEO.

I did what any effective business leader should do when they are stuck. I hired a coach. She helped me see that my problem was not my skills, my smarts, or my motivation; it was my strategy and process. To get effective and predictable sales, you need a system and a framework. Once I had these in place, there was no stopping us.

Here are five key books that I read early in that process that really changed the way I thought about sales and selling. If you’re looking to grow and scale your business and need more and better sales, I highly recommend these books.

1. To Sell is Human - by Dan Pink

I always start here. So many leaders say that they don’t like sales or that they don’t want to be perceived as a slimy salesperson. Boloney. Everyone sells to everyone every day of their lives. We just don’t always call it sales or think of it as selling. Get over it.

The sooner we realize and embrace that selling is a natural and fundamental process in our everyday lives, the sooner we can embrace the role and excel at it. Pink deconstructs our stereotypical notion of the pushy salesperson and shows selling is a natural and necessary skill for anyone, not just business people. He makes it approachable and palatable. Do I dare say, even honorable?

2. Challenger Sale - by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson

Matt and Brent break down what really works in sales organizations. Backed by real research and copious data, they looked at several different types of salespeople who drive performance in high-growth companies. What they find is a little surprising and counter-intuitive.

While individual performance will often go to the lone wolf salesperson who treks out into the world alone to stalk their prey and bring home the kill, the best sales organizations are made of challenger salespeople. These are the people who are consultative and help the client navigate the sales process.

The key is they are willing and able to challenge the prospect’s thinking and help consider new perspectives and criteria they may not have thought of initially. These challenger salespeople are not only highly effective, but they also work systematically using a process and tools that are repeatable and trainable. If you want to build a sales system and a sales team, this book is a must-read.

3. Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers - by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares

Not to be confused with the EOS book Traction, Weinberg and Mares outline the 19 key ways in which growth companies generate leads. This includes everything from SEO and SEM, tradeshows, affiliate programs, and gorilla marketing. It’s a useful and comprehensive list.

I have clients read through the strategies and evaluate them on three key criteria. First, what do you have content and materials for? Second, what do you like doing and are good at? And finally, which channels are your target customers likely to be using and open to a buying conversation? Find two or three that score well on all of these, and you’re off to the races with a few new lead-generation techniques.

4. New Sales. Simplified - by Mike Weinberg

Weinberg breaks down the complex and overwhelming process of selling into three basic steps. First, select the right targets. Second, create effective sales weapons. And third, plan an effective attack. While simple, most companies get these steps wrong. They fail to define their ideal targets. They create lackluster selling materials. And they go to market with a hope and a prayer, rather than a plan.

This book walks through all of these steps and gives tons of ideas and suggestions for how to make your sales process not only more effective but easier to build and manage. The goal here is to have a system you can use consistently and repeatedly to generate predictable revenues and scale your business. This book does it.

5. Spin Selling - by Neil Rackham

I read this book years ago when I first started my technology company. Until then, I sold based on rapport and luck. This book gave me a framework to think about the sales process and conversation and helped me understand the buying process and how I could structure it into a simple set of stages.

Rackham outlines the SPIN (Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-payoff) approach and gives you clear and easy-to-remember queues for each stage. By making sure you’re working through the key questions, you will increase your chances of success and quickly kill leads that are not ready or not a fit for your solutions.

Sales is a natural and necessary skill for any business person. However, if your job is to find leads and close deals, you need to become an expert. These books are a great starting point and will give you the foundations for becoming a high-performance sales superstar.

3 Ways to Stop Procrastination and Be More Productive

The key to getting important tasks done is developing effective strategies for getting started.

My role as a strategic coach is to help organizations figure out how they're going to scale more effectively and more efficiently. One of my primary focuses is helping the senior executives in becoming more productive and enabling them to accomplish more strategic work on top of their day-to-day responsibilities.

As a company grows, the complexity and number of tasks increase exponentially. Without a strategy and a clear plan, most leaders get bogged down on the never-ending list of urgent items. If you don't make time for strategic work, it will never get done and the company will never scale.

One of the challenges of strategic work is that oftentimes, the tasks are big and complicated. In these cases, many executives find themselves in analysis paralysis and end up just deferring to the urgent tasks of day-to-day work.

The best way to overcome this roadblock is to have effective strategies for getting started on the work even if it seems daunting and overwhelming at first. Here are some of the ways that I find highly successful leaders make quick initial progress on strategic work.

1. Find simple first steps

One of the best things you can do when trying to get started on complicated work is to figure out a simple first task that will get you started. By breaking things down into small steps and figuring out one first step you can make that will give you traction, you will begin the process of building momentum.

Much like lean/agile product development, the goal is to figure out the smallest and simplest thing you can do to gain knowledge, information, and test out your assumptions. Once you begin the feedback flywheel, you'll quickly see new paths and be able to map out how you'll achieve success.

2. Create time boxes

As a writer, I know that writer's block is a real challenge and can be difficult to overcome. One of the most effective strategies is to commit to a fixed amount of time to just sit and write anything that comes to mind. By focusing on making a time commitment and not worrying about exactly what you're trying to accomplish, you can free up your mind and let your thoughts flow.

The same principleis true with complicated projects. By just setting aside 30 minutes and sitting down to think about the project tasks, they will start to reveal themselves and you can start working. The key to the strategy is setting up the right context and making sure your space is distraction-free so you can really sit down and think about what needs to get done.

3. Talk it through

One of my roles as a coach is to serve as a sounding board. In my work with executives, I often just let them talk through what they're thinking and the strategies they're considering. Often I don't even have to say anything; by just letting them talk they will begin to organize their thoughts and clarify their strategies.

If you're feeling stuck, find someone who's a good listener, and just talk them through what you're trying to do, what your goals are, and how you're thinking of approaching it. They don't need to be knowledgeable about the situation or the project, they just need to be good at asking clarifying questions and checking your rationale. In fact, you don't even need a real person, sometimes just talking to yourself or an inanimate object will give you the space you need to organize your thoughts.

Regardless of the strategy you use to get going once you get started on something, it's much easier to keep the momentum. Oftentimes, you just need to break through that first step to set everything into motion.

High-performance teams are built on trust. Here are 5 key techniques to increase yours

High-performance teams are built on trust. Here's how to earn more and increase production.

As a strategic coach, my job is to help senior teams develop a clear plan for creating a differentiated market position that will drive profitable growth and build leadership capacity for execution. And having worked with dozens of teams across multiple industries, I’ve discovered many common challenges that all companies face.

At the top of the list is a lack of trust in leadership. This can show up as apathy toward objectives, a lack of commitments or accountability, politics, and personal agenda, or even outright hostility and conflict. Left unaddressed, these will undermine team performance and create animosity.

Here are five things you can focus on to address the issues head-on and build trust. The sooner and more directly you tackle these issues, the sooner you’ll see better results and avoid bigger problems.

1. Get to know each other

The foundation of any high-performance team is the web of individual relationships. A team made up of individuals who know each other as people, appreciate their unique strengths and weaknesses, and know about each other's personal histories and lived experiences will have the connective tissue in place to weather any storm. Teams of people who see each other merely as co-workers, or worse: competitors, will never reach their full potential.

I start all of my strategy and planning meetings with team exercises. These are specifically designed to take members out of their normal day-to-day roles and force them to interact in new and different ways. The goal with all of these is to create common bonds and appreciation that can be taken into strategic exercises and day-to-day operating interactions.

2. Create psychological safety

Fear kills culture. If an individual on a team is worried that what they do or say will be dismissed, judged, or retaliated against, they will not only resist openly sharing their ideas and opinions, they will resort to engaging in these same destructive behaviors. This creates a vicious cycle that can be difficult to reverse.

A high-performance team will have a clear set of ground rules that set basic working agreements for creating a safe and open space for sharing ideas and opinions. Making sure that conversations are confidential, agreeing not to engage in personal attacks, and making sure everyone has a chance to be heard are core to any team’s list.

3. Clarify business and team priorities

One of the key things I do as a strategic coach is to help teams clarify their purpose and their biggest goals. Often I find that teams are struggling to align and work well together because they lack a common vision for the future and a clear set of shared priorities. If people are pulling in different directions, it doesn’t matter how hard they try–they won’t get far.

Alignment starts with a clear articulation of the company, team purpose, and BHAG (big hairy audacious goal), followed by a well-defined set of cascading objectives and key results for getting there. These may be vague at first, but through an iterative process of exploration and refinement, the team will build a common vision and plan for execution.

4. Practice working through conflict

Oftentimes when I start working with teams, I actually focus on increasing the amount of conflict on the team rather than decreasing it. Teams often play too nicely. They avoid difficult questions and tough conversations. But until they get these critical topics on the table and start engaging with them, these teams will stay stuck.

Sometimes the topics are too big and complicated for the team’s current skill levels. In these cases, we can use exercises and tackle smaller topics while learning and practicing how to approach the bigger issues, framing them effectively for discussion, creating a safe and effective space, engaging in constructive debate, developing creative solutions, reaching compromises, and committing to actions.

5. Actively appreciate each other

Taking the time to give each other feedback is a core habit on all successful teams I’ve been part of and that I’ve coached. It not only feels good to hear what others appreciate about what you do and the value you create, it reinforces the behaviors and actions that drive impact.

At the end of each planning session I facilitate, I run an exercise where each person gives everybody else two key pieces of specific feedback. The key to both of these is to be specific with the behavior and the impact and to avoid pleasantries and niceties that are not actionable.

Through this exercise, everyone gets their feedback and basks in the glory of the wonderful things they are doing. They understand what they need to keep doing, and what they need to do differently. The point is for them to choose and commit to personal improvement.

Building trust is a function of understanding, respect, and safety. Without these, a team will struggle and deliver subpar results. And while these take time, the right focus and exercises can accelerate the trust-building process while minimizing the drama.

5 Things That Need to be on Every CEO’s Role Scorecard

Everyone in your company needs a role scorecard, even the CEO. Here are five things that every CEO needs to be measured on.

As a strategic leadership coach, I spend the majority of my days running strategy and planning sessions and coaching executives on performance and leadership skills. Every leadership team I work with has a focus on commitment and accountability. It’s the lifeblood of high-performing teams.

One of the key tools I use to create clarity around performance management is the role scorecard. I keep it simple and focus on the 8-12 key activities and results that each role in the company needs to execute well on to be successful. This applied to everyone. Even the CEO.

While there are many things that need to go on a CEO’s role scorecard, here are the five I generally make sure are on the scorecard of every CEO I coach.

1. Leadership team performance

The first thing I focus on with CEOs is the design and effectiveness of their leadership team. If they haven’t surrounded themselves with the right people doing the right things, the company won’t get very far. CEOs need to make sure they have crafted the proper set of roles with clear performance criteria. The right design and role details will be a function of the business strategy and the nature of the CEO and their strengths and weaknesses, so this will be unique for each situation.

The way that I put this on the CEO’s role scorecard is to average the role scorecard performance for their team. This requires them to make sure they have a clear role scorecard for each of their leadership team members with clear success criteria. The CEO is then scored on how well their team is doing. Generally, I give the CEO a green if 80% of their team is generally green on their scorecards and they have no reds on the team (individuals who are really struggling to perform).

2. Strategic planning effectiveness

One of the primary jobs of every CEO is to drive the strategic planning process and ensure that the company has defined an effective differentiated strategy and communicated across the company. A good strategy is key to business growth and success, and nobody is better positioned to do this than the CEO.

Generally, I focus on three things. One is making sure there is a strategic planning process in place that is being followed consistently. This includes the right set of meeting rhythms and planning documents and data sets.

Second is making sure that the strategy is implemented across the company. Here I’m looking for evidence that the strategic priorities are driving team and individual quarterly priorities and that operational decisions are considering and responding to strategic decisions.

Finally, I’m looking for market effectiveness. Basically, does the company have a well-differentiated position in the market that allows them to sell effectively and price their products/services at a premium level.

3. Talent development

Finding and retaining talent is crucial to every business, but doubly so for a company in growth mode. If you can’t identify talent needs quickly, find good candidates, hire quickly, onboard effectively, and develop and retain your people, you’ll struggle and likely not get very far.

As CEO, you should be on the lookout for senior talent that you need now or in the future. Develop relationships and connections that you can nurture over time. When you meet someone you think is a good cultural fit and has the skills/experience you’ll need in the future, make a note and maintain a relationship with that person.

4. Financial management

Managing cash and deploying capital effectively are the two key financial responsibilities of the CEO. Even if you have a strong financial lead on your leadership team, you need to know these two things intimately. Take your eye off this ball, and bad things will happen.

Managing cash is managing your business's oxygen. Without it, you’ll die a quick and painful death. Make sure you know what your operating cash requirements are and have a good handle on incoming revenues and any accounts receivable issues.

Deploying capital is your second key financial priority. Knowing where you’re spending your limited resources and making sure you’re investing in the right areas of the business can be the difference between making the Inc 500 list several years in a row and burning through your hard-earned profits with nothing to show for it.

5. Company culture

Finally, every CEO needs to be driving company culture. This doesn’t mean you need to get into the dunk tank at your next company retreat, but you do need to have systems in place for measuring culture and reinforcing core values and standards.

One of the best things to do is catch people doing the right thing and publicly acknowledge them. Be specific and clear. A strong culture will attract the right employees and clients while also repelling the wrong employees and clients.

While there are many other things I will put on role scorecards for CEOs, these go on just about every single one. Not having these on a scorecard means that those less skilled and more poorly positioned will have to focus on them instead, or worse: nobody is doing them, which will lead to problems quickly and with far-reaching consequences.

5 Ways To Increase the Value and Get a Premium Price for Your Company

Before you think about selling your company, make sure you implement these five key strategies.

The best time to start planning for your exit is before you start your company. The second best time to start planning is now. Every leader I’ve worked with who has been through the process of selling their business wishes they had started much sooner. Even in my own exit, I wish I had done several things months or even years prior.

And while it’s true that planning ahead can save a lot of time and headaches, it’s never too late to start working on things that will increase the value of your business and make the selling process easier and faster for you in the future. Here are five key areas to focus on that will make a real and significant impact on the terms of your sale.

1. Make yourself redundant

Nobody wants to buy a business that can’t run on its own. If you’re critical to multiple aspects of the business that couldn’t run without you, it’s not going to be attractive to a buyer. The best case is that you’ll be stuck with a long and highly restrictive earn-out period where you’ll still be working hard on a business you no longer own.

Start by looking at the key functions of the business and the activities that put cash in the bank. For each part that you play in these critical functions, start putting processes and systems in place to do that work. If need be, hire people that can take over these tasks and get you out of the critical path. Make it easy for a new owner to replace these roles if people leave.

2. Remove key customer risk

If 50% of your revenue comes from one customer and they happen to be your college roommate, you’re in trouble. A new owner is going to be at risk of losing that account after a sale and will likely discount your valuation significantly to offset that risk. Ideally, you want to have no one customer make up more than 10% of your total revenue, and lower is better. If you can’t lower the percentage, make sure you have bulletproof long-term contracts and a pristine relationship with them.

3. Have a differentiated strategy

Strategy is too often overlooked when it comes to valuation. If you’re just like everyone else and only really compete on price, there is no real advantage for a buyer to purchase you over your competitor. If you’re selling a commodity, then your business is a commodity, and your valuation will reflect it.

However, if you have a unique and differentiated position in your market, then you become much more valuable for a new buyer who wants to grow and scale the business. Having key capabilities that are difficult for competitors to copy will mean that people will pay you more for your business. Identify and invest in systems, tools, and technology prior to starting the sales process.

4. Systemize your processes

You might pride yourself on being customer-focused by finding new and innovative solutions for each and every new customer. However, this flexibility will hurt your valuation. A buyer wants to own a money-making machine. That means you need a straightforward way to develop leads, sell your products/services, deliver them consistently with high quality, and collect money quickly to put it in the bank.

Bespoke services and one-off solutions don’t scale, and they can’t be optimized for profits. Define precisely what you do for whom and focus on creating a defined and repeatable product or service. This will simplify everything: what you sell, how you sell, who to sell to, how you deliver, who you need to hire, etc. Don’t let “innovation” be an excuse for not being disciplined.

5. Deliver consistently

Nothing gives a buyer confidence like consistent results over time. If you can show that you’ve defined your strategy, set reasonable targets, executed consistently, and delivered revenue and profits effectively month-over-month, you can almost name your price. On the other hand, missing targets and erratic results will make a buyer think twice and will undoubtedly reduce what they are willing to offer you.

While there are many factors that go into the terms of a business sale, these are some of the key ones. More importantly, these are some of the ones you can control as an operator that will increase your valuation. Every sale is different, but the fundamentals don’t change much. Focus on these to give yourself the best shot at a lucrative exit.

5 Execution Mistakes That Challenge Most Leadership Teams

If you want to grow and scale your business quickly, avoid these five execution mistakes that trip up many leadership teams.

Having been an Inc 500 CEO and now a strategy coach to dozens of growth companies, I’ve seen what it takes for successful companies to grow and scale a business quickly and effectively…and many of the ways companies can fail. And while every company is in a unique situation and requires a unique strategy, there are some common core principles.

At the heart of any business is a leadership team. They set strategy, make decisions, evaluate trade-offs, calculate risks, and place bets on how to win in their market. The best teams are critical strategic thinkers, but they are also masters of execution. Putting plans into action and successfully navigating the fog of the day-to-day business is where the hard work is done.

I’ve seen many teams create innovative and brilliant approaches to winning in their market, only to flop on putting their plans in place. Here are five key areas I see teams getting wrong, and how to avoid them in your business.

1. Lacking a clear strategy

Driving your car as fast as you can into a brick wall doesn’t make much sense. Yet I’ve seen many teams driving—spending vast amounts of time, energy, and resources—into a business model that doesn’t make sense and has no clear differentiated position in the market. Without a clear understanding of what customers really want, what the competitive landscape looks like, and where the unique position is that will drive profitable growth, you’re likely going to have to compete on price, which is a bloody and painful war to try and win.

Instead, take the time and effort to really understand your customers and the competitive landscape. Find a set of attributes that will set you apart from the crowd and allow you to charge a premium price. Then, focus your operational processes and talent strategies on becoming excellent in a handful of values that truly differentiate you in the market.

2. Poorly defined roles and responsibilities

I run an exercise with all new timers where I ask them: who owns what? I have them work individually or in small groups, and when we come back to the table, there are always vast differences on what the roles are and who is in charge of what area of the business. Different names, multiple names, no names, and wrong names all reveal the underlying lack of role definition and clarity on ownership. This leads to duplicated efforts, conflicts, and dropped balls.

By carefully designing the senior leadership roles and clearly mapping out areas of responsibility and handoff points between functions, we create an effective map for everyone to follow. Assigning responsibilities to one and only one owner makes accountability much easier to manage and resolve. Everyone knows what they need to focus on and where they can depend on a colleague to execute. And as the business evolves, so can the roles evolve in a clear and comprehensive manner.

3. Unclear metrics and targets

Every game needs a goal and a way of keeping score. Yet most companies haven’t defined their desired success in objective terms and measurements. Most of the time when I ask teams to define success, I get vague statements about being a great place to work, making an impact, or having happy customers. And while these are great things to strive for, without an objective measure of what “great” or “impact” or “happy” really mean, everyone is left guessing and will likely be working toward different goals.

By defining success in clear and specific terms and using key metrics to measure progress, we create a means of evaluating actions and results that anyone on the team can use to guide their efforts. Knowing that freemium conversion rates, on-time delivery percentage, and project gross margins are key areas of focus will make decisions easier and faster to make. A business that has defined and agreed on its key metrics will have few arguments on which strategies and actions are working, which are not, and where to invest in the future.

4. No meeting rhythms

It’s great to set goals and make plans, but if you put them on the shelf only to look at them at the end of the quarter, you’ll never make any progress. Many teams I’ve met with do a great job of setting objectives, but they fail to put in the weekly reps to do the actual work and measure progress.

Running a high-growth company means there are always a thousand things to do and never enough time to get everything done. But if you want to be strategic, you must set aside time to meet and do the actual work. The best teams have a set schedule for meetings and dedicated time to work on strategy. It’s in their calendars, they have a clear and effective agenda, and they show up on time and prepared. Execution is about discipline and being proactive, not reactive.

5. Lack of leadership accountability

Many times when I work with companies, I have to increase the level of conflict on the leadership team. In an effort to be nice and be a good team player, teams shy away from disagreements and different opinions. The problem is that they’ve created a situation that lacks true buy-in and commitment which will then make it impossible to create a culture of accountability. Trying to be nice leads to nobody being held to task.

High-performance teams are engaged in lots of constructive conflicts. This doesn’t mean they fight; rather, they are willing to express different opinions, are critical of strategies and plans, and are willing to challenge each other to get to better ideas that are highly resolved. By really voicing their minds, it means they can truly embrace the conclusion and plans. This drives commitment and accountability. Without this rigorous debate, you’ll never get to higher levels of performance.

While mastering these five areas will not guarantee flawless execution, failing to master them will make it very likely you won’t. In the end, teams need to have both a clear strategic plan AND the ability to put it into action effectively.

The Best Peer Groups Allow for Deep Sharing and Learning by Embracing These 5 Habits

The best peer groups allow leaders to share challenges and get unvarnished feedback.

As a strategic business coach who’s worked with dozens of companies and hundreds of CEOs and business executives, I’ve seen the power that peer groups can have on professional development and leadership effectiveness. I’ve also run dozens of mastermind and peer groups and know firsthand what it takes for a peer group to be effective and impactful.

While every group is different in its focus and format, the best groups share a common set of values and habits. These values and habits allow members of the group to share deeply, provide important and meaningful insight about themselves and their situations, and create a context that fosters support and learning.

Here are the top five that I’ve seen which drive the most worth. If you’re in a peer group or thinking of joining one, consider how well you and your fellow members embrace these practices.

1. Show up and do the work

The first thing you need to do is show up, both physically and mentally. This means arriving with energy and focus, not tired and bedraggled. Get a good night’s sleep, work out, eat well, etc. Doing so will ensure that you’re able to pay attention and contribute to your utmost ability.

You also need to show up mentally. Rushing into these types of meetings from the office or a meeting with clients doesn’t give you the time and space you need to decompress and clear your mind. Take some time before your peer group meeting to relax and make the mental shift.

If you’re still processing a difficult conversation or your mind is racing from all of the follow-up items from your previous meetings, you won’t have the mindset to engage properly with your peers and the discussion topics.

2. Be vulnerable

The point of a true peer group is to get open honest feedback on your most pressing challenges and most important decisions. If you aren’t able or willing to really put everything on the table, your peers won’t be able to give you the input you need.

Obviously, this isn’t easy. Oftentimes, our biggest challenges stem from personal weakness, fears, and previous poor decisions. Admitting that we’re flawed and have internal shortcomings is not easy, but it’s the key to growth and development.

One of my favorite quotes from Brené Brown, the Harvard Business School expert on vulnerability, is “vulnerability is [seen as] courage in other people, but weakness in ourselves”

3. Speak from experience

If you’ve been part of organizations like the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) or Young Presidents' Organization (YPO) you know they follow something called Gestalt Protocol. This ground rule says that you can’t give other members advice. Instead, you are encouraged to share the learning experience that you’d had that relates to the person’s situation. While this can be a little awkward, it’s a great way to keep the conversation open and safe for everyone involved. This approach is great for any peer-group program.

By sharing experiences rather than telling people what they should do, you avoid making people defensive and keep them from feeling judged by fellow members. You also keep the person in control of their decisions and outcomes since they get to decide what to take away from your story. For everyone else in the group, they get to hear your learning and wisdom and can apply it to their own situations and challenges.

4. Give before you take

Too often I see people join these types of groups expecting immediate benefits and value. And while you will often get new insights quickly, you need to appreciate that it takes time for the group to develop and for people to get to know each other. When I run mastermind and peer groups, I tell everyone that they need to expect to be giving to the group before they can expect anything in return.

In fact, the more you focus on giving early on and without expectations, the sooner you’ll inspire others to give in return. And while there are no guarantees, giving generously and early will speed up the process. f you don’t get anything in return after a reasonable effort, then it might not be the group for you. In which case, it’s better to know sooner rather than later.

5. Practice gratitude

I find that these types of groups tell you what you need to hear, but not always what you want to hear. It can be hard to realize that your challenges stem from your own flawed thinking, ineffective skills, and inexperience. And while you might not like the feedback you’re getting, you need to welcome it and appreciate it. Practicing gratitude for everything you’re getting from the group will keep the lines of communication open and insight flowing.

Masterminds and peer groups are a unique and highly effective way to develop your leadership skills and business strategy. However, they can vary and present different experiences for many. Keeping these five key habits in mind will help both you and the others in your group in adding to and gaining value from the experience.

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.