One Saturday morning, I woke up in a complete sweat. I was scheduled to speak within the next two hours. I was frustrated. The bills were piling up. My employees were disgruntled. I had thought I would be in a different place in my business by this point and I wasn’t. Nothing seemed to be going right. I was in a panic.
As an organizer, I had come across a book, Drowning in Clutter: Don’t Grab a Floatie… Drain the Ocean by Dana White. I loved the concept of this book. I never read the book. To me, the title said it all. When you are drowning, if you have the option, you stop the flow of water and let it drain. That analogy works well when you have control of the ‘figurative’ water. When you have too many expenses, too much stuff, too many employees, too many policies, too many tasks, don’t add more. First stop the flow and then drain the extra out in order to find yourself on solid ground again. Simplify. Streamline. Focus. I couldn’t even see the floatie if I had wanted to grab it! I was drowning and I didn’t even know where the water shut off was. Things were murky. More and more, I am finding that business owners need a new floaty analogy. This time, when you are in the ocean, feeling alone, you need to grab the floatie! Often, you cannot see where the water shut off is until you grab the floatie. When you are paddling for dear life, just trying to keep your head above water, grab the floatie. I was that business owner, I couldn’t see that help was right in front of me. I reached out to a friend via Facebook Messenger. I had no idea if she would also be awake at 7am on a Saturday, but thankfully she was. I explained all the terrible things going on. All my woes. My ocean of worries, bills, frustrations, and failures. I told her, “I just want someone to swoop in and rescue me.” She immediately responded with Lisa Nichols’ video, “I am my own rescue.” I watched it. And the next link she sent as well. We laid out a plan of the priority activities to engage in to help me get ‘unstuck’. I kept that list in front of me and gauged every activity off of them. I was able to drain the ocean and get back on solid ground. Clarity You know that feeling. The one where the ocean is washing over you and you just can’t see. You need clarity. I’ve been there. I’ve been to that place that seems hopeless and feels like there is no help anywhere. The reality is that we are never alone and help is always nearby. Help was always right in front of me. The same is true for you. Are your eyes shut tight as you tread water and gasp for air? Don’t add another resource until you open your eyes and look for the floatie. Breathe. Look around you. I’d love to share the process with you that we worked through that morning. Email me at info@sappariconsulting.com with the Title, ‘Floatie’
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When you began your business, you were working from a mindset of all hands on deck. At least I was. And most of those ‘hands’ were my own. I was delivering organizing services, billing clients, developing marketing, speaking, ordering supplies, answering emails and literally every other task that needed doing.
I loved organizing and helping individuals solve their organizational and clutter challenges. I loved working with my clients and I was able to help them through challenging situations to be able to create an environment that support them. It was a great feeling and they got great results. But, when it was time to grow, I knew I couldn’t add any more client appointments to my calendar. I couldn’t be in two places at once. In order to serve more clients, I brought on and trained more organizers. I was doing everything I had been doing originally and training and managing employees. My plate was full. The money that was coming in I was using to pay my employees to serve clients. I was busy running the business. It got to the point that I saw almost no clients. It seemed like my business was growing because I was bringing on more organizers and serving more clients. But, I wasn’t growing. There were days that I would answer the phones or make calls for scheduling and the person on the other end had no idea they were talking to the owner of the company. That was a wake up call. I had outsourced my unique brilliance, working with clients and giving them outstanding results. I was busy just trying to keep the company running, doing all the little tasks that a company must complete to operate. How did that happen? Have you also found yourself ‘hiding’ behind your business? Have you ever outsourced your unique brilliance? I am not alone. In his book, Delivering Happiness, Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, describes a make or break moment in the history of the company. Zappos differentiated themselves on customer service which included accurate fulfillment of orders in a timely manner. But for a while, they outsourced this exact function to another company. For this company, it was just a ‘job,’ but for Zappos, it was their core competency. It nearly brought the company down. As soon as they realized what was happening, they brought their warehouse and purchase fulfillment back in house and applied their special process to it. You cannot afford to outsource the thing that makes you unique and sets you apart. Within your company you cannot delegate your unique brilliance. Everything else you can and should let go of. What can you let go of today to focus more on what you do best? Vision is seeing the future you are creating. It doesn’t matter what your current reality is, at least not for this exercise. The truth is you will create whatever you envision. So, see something good!
Begin with this simple vision process:
A few things to remember:
See the future you are creating. Vision. Today's message comes from Ryan McShane, of HRevolution, LLC. Enjoy! When you vibe with someone, the relationship interactions have the characteristics of being natural, flowing and complimentary. When you’re not quite “vibing” with others the interactions are forced, uncomfortable and typically lead to more confusion. This brings us back to the article’s title, “How can you put more vibe in your tribe?” Work can be one of the most fulfilling undertakings in life! When alignment of skill, passion and environment (culture) occur, one is most likely to be fully engaged. Fully engaged employees will apply every effort to obtain defined results, while unengaged employees will only provide as much effort as will enable them to be compliant and fly under the radar. Interestingly, active dis-engagement literally creates sabotage amongst the workforce. Actively disengaged employees must be identified and addressed immediately to avoid significant financial and relational harm across the workforce. However, when we are vibing with our tribe, we operate as a synergistic team, whereby each individual makes a contribution to the whole and each contribution is complimentary to others within the team and to the designed purpose or overall objective. Simply put, the tribe that vibes, accomplishes more! We can put more “vibe in our tribe” when we identify and address 3 engagement factors across our workforce: Focus, Motivation and Energy. Put More Vibe in your Tribe with: 1. Focus: Create greater focus by ensuring all roles within the team or organization have a thorough understanding of how their respective duties and relational interactions impact the purpose and mission of the organization. Each position from bottom to top in the hierarchy needs to see the connection between their role and overall accomplishment of purpose. Otherwise, the role begins to lack meaning; resulting in a lack of focus on details and outcomes. Note- the younger generations of talent are highly altruistic, seeking to work for organizations making a difference in the lives and wellbeing of others. Focused engagement of talent requires continuous alignment of function to organizational purpose. Where these are aligned and well understood, great focus and engagement typically exist! 2. Motivation: By identifying the extrinsic and intrinsic motivators of your workforce leaders are able to guide staff to operate productively, efficiently and aligned with organizational values and purpose. Some may be motivated by money, titles or perks, while others are motivated by autonomy, flexibility, alignment of passion to purpose and other “feeling” based or intrinsic motivators. Leaders are charged with understanding how their employees are motivated and reach each single person, as well as motivate the whole workforce under their charge. While we know one size does not fit all when it comes to motivation, it remains necessary to identify just what does motivate each and ensure those elements are present for each. Relationships developed through 1-on-1 meetings between supervisor and subordinate are a great way to uncover motivations and values and begin using these personal motivators to leverage talent’s capabilities and impact to organizational purpose. 3. Energy: Staff will provide as much discretionary energy in equal relation to the amount of engagement felt individually and collectively across the organization. In other words, energy corresponds to engagement! The more engagement the more energy may be released conducive to contributing to achievement of individual and collective goals. One of the single best ways to engage (and therefore focus energy on achievement) is to provide flexibility in how accomplishments are achieved. Providing a “say” in the “how”, enables employees to take ownership in the “what” of what is achieved. When the tribe vibes, members are focused, motivated and energized to achieve their purpose. A clear focus, understanding of motivations and attention to energy are 3 simple steps to avoid confusion, lack of commitment and most detrimental, lack of accomplishment. Want to put more vibe in your tribe? For support in team building, effective supervision, leadership, on-boarding, recruitment and selection, leadership development, career support and more contact your local HR small business resource, HRevolution, LLC at 410-688-5054 or RMcShane@HRevolutionllc.com. Ryan McShane is the Principal & Founder of HRevolution, LLC, a resume-writing and human resource consulting firm. He has created and implemented various Human Resource Development programs such as Knowledge Management, Knowledge Management for Project Management, The Continuous Learning Committee (CLC), career coaching and many other organizational development initiatives. Ryan is passionate about maximizing human potential to meet career and business objectives. He especially accomplished in creating dynamic, systems-driven organizations that capture and share knowledge across hierarchal levels and generations to advance business outcomes. |
AuthorBeing an entrepreneur and business owner is hard! Once you have your business up and running it's not uncommon to hit a few snags: scalability, staff retention, launching growth projects, getting enough sleep! Archives
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