Even the most successful entrepreneurs occasionally discover that running a business is more challenging than they expected. If you're a business owner, you may often find yourself dissatisfied by a lack of control over time, the market, or your company. You may have people who don’t listen, understand, or follow through. Or perhaps your profits are flat, preventing you from taking your business to the next level.
In a recent session with a client, several leadership team members mentioned during their check-in that EOS® was “not working.” The Integrator expressed frustration that they were not making enough progress and worried that their investment in the process was not paying off.
Don’t you love the feeling of walking out of your Quarterly session with clear Rocks focused on solving the company’s highest priority issues for the next quarter? And doesn’t it drive you crazy when you get to your next Quarterly and realize that your team has only completed 40% of them?
Before implementing EOS® in my business, my number one pet peeve was repeating myself. It was frustrating to feel like people weren’t listening to me, and it also seemed incredibly inefficient to say the same thing more than once. And anyone who knows me, knows that I am all about efficiency!
During the check-in portion of a recent quarterly session with a client, several team members mentioned that their Marketing Strategy was “not working”. When I dug a little deeper during the V/TO review, everyone agreed that the Marketing Strategy was correct - they just weren’t sure what to do now that their 3 Uniques™ were defined.
I used to think of an executive assistant as a luxury that only high-powered CEOs in large companies could afford. It seemed silly to pay someone to do something I could do myself, and I figured that it would take more time to explain what I needed than to do it on my own. But as my company grew, I realized that delegation is not a luxury—it's a necessity.
Ever notice how everyone in a workplace knows who the bad boss is—except the bad boss? If you’re supervising others, and you’re frustrated with their performance, it’s possible that the problem isn’t your team. You could be the not-so-great boss.
Disengaged employees cost the U.S. more than $500 billion in lost productivity annually, and most of that disengagement can be traced back to poor leadership and management. From large corporations to small marketing agencies, the impact of a bad boss can have catastrophic consequences to morale, revenue, and customer satisfaction.
Meetings are often seen as the most useless part of business life, but they don’t have to be. In fact, meetings can be an important tool for driving your company’s growth, but they have to be run effectively for your team to get value and stop viewing them as a waste of time.
As an entrepreneur and advisor to business leaders, I always have a stack of books sitting on my desk that have been recommended to me by friends and colleagues. Each year, I compile a list of books that have either stuck with me year after year, or have emerged as new favorites in the last year.
As you build your reading list for the coming year, here are some books to consider adding to your list! I plan to buy all of them in bulk and regularly recommend them to clients and colleagues in 2017.
When I first started my company, I thought it would be all rainbows and unicorns. I had a lot of fantasies about how much better my lifestyle would be when I didn’t work for “the man,” which is probably why I spent most of my time depressed and anxious when reality finally set in. The financial roller coaster, the feast-or-famine nature of project work, and the loneliness of being a solo-entrepreneur was not what I had in mind.
