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by Tom FoxPosted on Posted in Uncategorized — No Comments ↓

If you were asked to assess your Total Life Health the assessment might be made in three critical components: Mind/Body, Financial and Family. Anyone who’s ever gone through turmoil in any one of those three areas understands how linked they are to your true health picture. We all carry a general sense of what those are likely to be in the moment but the smarter among us won’t guess to fill in the blanks. An annual physical from a doctor will give us measurements on our body, when our mind is feeling challenged a professional opinion can make all the difference in rediscovering soundness. If you are lucky enough to have some money (or want to) you probably have a “guy” (or gal) who advises, after learning your needs and hopes. Goodness knows the health and happiness, or lack thereof, of our family and friends affects our life health as surely if the ails were our own. There is a clear parallel to business.

Self assessing is part of the obligation of every company’s leadership but just like we depend on professionals to help us assess our life health so to do we, if we are smart, have professionals help us assess our business health. Total Business Health® (TBH) is a process we use that is more like spending a couple of days at the Mayo Clinic as compared to an annual doctor’s visit–which some of us hardly do annually. Assessing our business can seem obvious from the bottom line view. Do we have money in the bank? Are we paying our bills? Are we growing? The obvious inquiries are certainly indispensable but a comprehensive look can change your perspective, alter your priorities and help better shape your goals.

3 Prongs of TBH

The three parts of business to analyze for TBH® that parallel our life health are Financial, Operational/Behaviors and Staff/Customers. Like your doctor’s EKG every business should have an expert opinion from an Accountant on the Balance Sheet and P&L for the business. These numbers should be given context and your Accountant should not only look at your year over year gains and losses but should also provide you context relative to your industry, your size, and, most important, your goals and budgets. Too many businesses and too many Accountants do not spend the time in conversation and review that they should. Your measurements are relative and, like your doctor, your financial professional has the knowledge to answer your inquiries, provided you make them.

The performance and well being of your staff and customers are always key. Many companies think they accomplish this with performance or comp reviews but if they are only backward or task-looking they miss half the opportunity. Knowing what will make an employee happy in their life and understanding how their job or career fits into that can make for a much better retention and performance management strategy but there’s a catch–you have to ask.

We’re often happy to have a customer that can pay the bill but their health and wealth can dictate future results beyond the invoice of the moment. Is your big client going broke? Are they getting so successful they won’t need you? Relationships with clients become key to many businesses and understanding their world beyond your interaction is not only good for your business health, it’s a fundamental value in sales and retention.

The third prong of this trident is understanding the connection between your operations and processes as well as your and your staff’s behaviors. You can look to optimize processes, be better at quality control or customer service or any of dozens of key performance indicators but every success is based on performing required behaviors. While motivation, attitude and skills and techniques seem basic to measure it is in the repetition, quantity and quality of effort toward those behaviors that will be most important to consistent and efficient positive outcomes.

Ultimately, your physical and mental health is likely strongly connected to your business or professional success. When one is bad you end with problems in both to address. Just as you shouldn’t be doing your own EKG analysis neither should you assess your business health on your own. Professional relationships with Accountants, Consultants, Trainers, Therapists and/or other support professionals are a mark of growing businesses. Having the discipline to do a check up on the areas discussed is analogous to diagnosing a lump or a spot…the earlier you discover it the greater your chance for a successful treatment strategy.

So find trusted advisors for your business just as you would your health. Measure and analyze together, review and plot strategy…and while we’re on the topic make an appointment for your annual checkup with your doctor too, especially if you stretch the term annual!

©2018 MyEurekaSolutions. For more BUSINESS THERAPY insights follow Tom here, on LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/tom-fox-a28b703/ or on Twitter @TomFoxTrainer.

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by Tom FoxPosted on Posted in Blog — No Comments ↓

www.toons.com

 

Before the headline-reading-only-trolls kill me for an inappropriate concept let me assure you of three things: 1) I make no recommendation, 2) Physical appearance is part of the “presentation” that job candidates or hired workers make and it surely matters, and, 3) I know my prospects should certainly hire me and I ain’t any kind of skinny! So what’s the point? It is a extremely useful to understand both what hiring managers do with physical and superficial impressions, where that comes from and to recognize what your appearance conveys about you?

Like race, creed and orientation, physical appearance should not be a discriminating point in either hiring or advancement of workers. Some allowed exceptions on the physical are made for positions like modeling (and surely you don’t hire a skinny person to be a plus size model). Physical fitness can also be a job requirement should agility and mobility be essential to the job–you aren’t hiring a big person to do a cave dive rescue! Instead, let’s consider the two fundamental sides of perception of physical appearance; how you are seen and how you see yourself–and while breadth of size is an example here the process is relevant to any physical characteristic or perception.

To no one’s surprise managers, hiring or promoting, like everyone else, carry personal biases that may be severe or miniscule. Size is not always one, I’d hope it’s restricted to a minority. But superficial characteristics have been statistically validated: men make more money than women, tall men make more than short men, and, yes, physically fit or attractive people do better professionally than the slovenly. That’s fact, that’s reality and no doubt it’s well explained–but not here.

Diversity, let’s remember, is a fairly recent professional concept. People are often more comfortable with people like themselves. That can go for education, attitudes, politics, experience or appearance. Many of these traits are mitigated by the job responsibilities. If your job is to code web pages from home then who’s likely to care about anything but the final product and schedule and communication, etc.? The larger, more variable evaluation, comes when a job is viewed by the manager as a reflection of the department, company or themselves internally or client facing.

Extra pounds can be made irrelevant in presentation through grooming, a positive and energetic attitude, education, intelligence and, of course, a positive track record of professional performance. Consider a hypothetical and suppose two job candidates seem to be equally qualified, does the superficial become a tie breaker? That may come down to how a manager translates and projects how appearance and performance are related. It can be due to experience with others in the past, or it may be influenced by the manager’s own superficial circumstances or it may simply be personal beliefs (or bias).

One may feel fat people are more likely to be lazy (or more jolly), unhealthy people will be out sick more often, be less energetic, less productive. Or even work in the reverse, I’ve been directly told by a manager that he wanted someone without a lot of outside life prospects because it kept their employee more attached to their desk. Lower self esteem means less demands for compensation, recognition or reward and he matched those desires to certain appearance.

Self-esteem is by far the most important projection a candidate can make. Who is anxious to hire a person that seems to feel poorly about themselves? Of course that extends beyond fat or fit, self-confidence (without arrogance) is a critical characteristic and those who make a poor showing of that usually find commensurate opportunities. Happiness presented is far more appearing than misery, polite more than rude and so on. The lesson being that while your Body Mass Index may be a challenge to change in the present, who you are inside can undoubtedly be displayed on any physical canvas, and you may have more control over that than you think…and you might want to work on that as hard as any job search or work assignment!

The final consideration about appearance belongs to each of us. With America at 50% overweight and 30% technically obese this is not an infrequent consideration. There’s blame in our culture for food value perceptions, portion size and our food industry’s penchant for creating addictive, desirable tasting packaged junk to make us unhealthy, but all of us need to care about what our mirrors say back to us before we have any thought to present our most fit face. Not what it says about our size, what it says about our character.

If your appearance, however presented, messages that there are “issues” defining your personal happiness, confidence, energy, trust, productivity, joy, sensitivity, then that is more likely to be your defining predictor of success whether in hiring or advancement. The message is really to make sure you feel good about what is inside you and the outside will show it. Everyone who is overweight has their reasons why but it is ultimately not how they look or how they eat that defines how they are perceived but how well they have found happiness in the body they occupy. Happy people after all not only get hired more, they live longer and are far more likely to consider their life a success, and that’s the real goal.

©2018 MyEureka Solutions LLC. For more thoughts on BUSINESS THERAPY follow Tom here or on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-fox-a28b703/, Twitter @TomFoxTrainer, or www.myeurekasolutions.com/thoughts

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by Tom FoxPosted on Posted in Uncategorized — No Comments ↓

Preparedness

A shortcut for me to determine how well a company, a department or a solopreneur business is managed I like to quickly ask, “What are you prepared for?” Before finishing these short paragraphs ask yourself that question. After you audit your business, ask the same question about your life.

While a “Preparedness Audit” can unveil the adaptability and flexibility in process, product and service being prepared is usually personal and/or cultural perspective. Simply put it’s one of three: tomorrow’s workload, next big project, or, “anything.”

In that last answer we get insight into the life question. Preparedness is essentially an expression of optimism, clarity and an anticipation and belief in finding positive outcomes. Preparing well takes away stress (provided the preparation doesn’t exceed the gain!) and allows for a calmness heading into every day uncertainty. The prepared haven’t bought into the notion that they are better when they are forced to react. They know the best comes when great reactions are backed by great wisdom which includes great preparation, so most reactions are already loaded and considered.

Ironically, there are those that are not prepared for things at a fundamental level and therefore can sabotage their own endeavors. If you are not prepared to be happy, to be successful, to be admired, to be followed, it’s a pretty sure bet you will prevent it from happening or self destruct in time.

Those without hope don’t plan…there’s no rational reason to.

You can avoid mighty falls by starting out feeling any efforts you do preparing for success, for happiness, for peace, or whatever your goal, is grounded in an acceptance–or better–a desire to enjoy those conditions of success and happiness. Of course, each time being prepared yields a positive result it should reinforce the idea that being prepared isn’t a stopping point. New challenges, new opportunities, new emotions constantly confront us.

After starting with the “you” and your psychological preparedness to align desires and results it’s a good idea in pursuit of preparation to determine what and how much, based on the potential impact to others. Use the insurance metaphor, when deciding how much of what we want it is the image of what our loved ones will need and feel that motivates our decisions. We imagine what is possible, maybe not even likely, for piece of mind.

The best may seem to spend time on every scenario but at a certain point preparedness is about knowing what to do when and why. It needn’t be instant but those unprepared linger in wasted time eventually, do you have that time to spare? Think what a staff would consider bad to tragic outcomes for them and their processes. Problems in a business are always felt first at the lowest level. That is always the best place to start looking for ways to be better prepared. That…and your mirror!

©2018 MyEureka Solutions LLC. Follow Tom here for more Business Therapy or at www.myeurekasolutions.com/thoughts, @TomFoxTrainer or here at www.myeurekasolutions.com/thoughts.

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by Tom FoxPosted on Posted in Uncategorized — No Comments ↓
exec sleeping on bench

Are we born lazy or do we earn our lazy time?

Were you born lazy, or did you earn your bouts of lazy? Lazy is a peculiar trait; sometimes a judgment, sometimes an obvious behavior–or avoidance! Is the simple solution motivation or can you be motivated similarly to be lazy? I’m glad I’m sorting this all out now, I’ve been meaning to write about it for a few weeks now…no, I haven’t been lazy, well, like I said, it’s a relative term!

Lazy business owners are another odd lot. The fact that one would choose the responsibility of ownership and yet have that fiddle for success with an inherent habit to find the shortcut. In some cases it may have seemed too much work to go interview for a new job. It turns out that dealing with lazy business owners has been key to growing my practice’s focus on Business Therapy and less on the concept of coaching. While coaching is invaluable, a Coach finds a way to create processes and tricks and behavior modification to get around the laziness while the Business Therapist gets to ask, “Why do you think you enjoy being lazy?”

A quick vocabulary review will help you sort whether you are Born Lazy or Earned Lazy:

BORN LAZY– “I can do it later.” Later: “It’s not urgent today.” 3 weeks later: “What was that I was supposed to do again?

EARNED LAZY– “I’m beat from my accomplishments, I need to take a break but I’ll reschedule it now.”

DOES LAZY EXCLUDE SUCCESS?

No, but it probably limits it. It’s like a restrictor plate. A little lazy on top of great skill and effort mitigates minimally. Of course, a mostly closed valve on a small pipe ain’t gonna flow a lot of fluid. The antitheses is when laziness is vigorously pursued, best exemplified by super villains. They want to take over the world but not so they can lead a new era of greatness, but rather for adoration, absolute authority and zero accountability. So, many super villains do get to be very successful even with absolute laziness as the reward for a diligently pursued goal.

I KNOW IT WHEN I SEE IT

Whether we’ve been to a DMV or discount department store we’ve seen laziness on full display in the workplace and it’s pretty easy to recognize. Mostly, we see it not as stillness but as a purposefully restricted pace of action, effort and minimal concerns outside his self. In these examples we see lacking: leadership, inspiration, motivation, engagement, energy…you get the idea. Where these things lack the next step is automation–there are no lazy robots!

WORN DOWN OR DISTRESSED?

Aspiring to be lazy, like going on an unplugged vacation or turning the phone off for an afternoon or binge watching instead of well, anything, certainly has it’s place as our own system of reward for having acted. In healthy people we use “shutting down” just like a machine that needs regular PM (preventive maintenance). In depressed, or distressed people, laziness can come from a sense of futility or for indifference to the outcome. If you are finding yourself being lazy because being otherwise doesn’t matter, that might be a clue for a conversation with a mental health professional. If you’ve been working it hard, or hard for you, and you want laziness to be a reward, like hammocks and piña coladas, by all means, you’ve earned your lazy.

LAZY MIND SYNDROME

Of all the iterations of laziness most are recognizably human. They may be familiar and harmless, they may be familiar and harmful, however they identify and present there is a definite difference between desiring minimal activity, or work avoidance, or blowing it off because you feel like it….All those are about actions. A lazy mind on the other hand will wither far faster than an un-exercised body! Those who intentionally avoid the opportunities to grow their minds, use their experiences, and those around them, to gain wisdom or keep open to new possibilities may just be too damn lazy to go through the bother of knowledge with self-examination. I can recall my AP History teacher’s banner reading: “Ignorance is no crime, failing to change it is.” If your preservation of ignorance is due to a lazy mind then you are doing no one a favor and will spend time finding comfort in commonality rather than clarity from investigation. Confidence is a great rationalization for mental laziness. Maybe you don’t care to lead you’d rather follow, quietly or boisterously… (Most Super Villain henchmen are lazy too.) Maybe that’s the saddest kind of lazy of all.

(C) 2018 MyEureka Solutions, follow Tom for thoughts on Business Therapy and success strategies here, @TomFoxTrainer or

https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-fox-a28b703/

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by Tom FoxPosted on Posted in Uncategorized — No Comments ↓
When you take off do you VACATION?

When you take off do you VACATION?

 

 

There are certain jobs that are defined as inclusive of 365, 24-7 and that could define almost every self employed or small business owner. But whether you are President of anything or just in charge of getting your butt to work there is a psychology at work about vacation that can affect productivity, happiness, focus, depression and self esteem issues for the rest of the year. There’s a reason for vacation, it’s both productivity and mental health.

Scheduling a trip or creating adventures are surely standard “vacation” planning, or “going on holiday,” if you’ve got a bit of Brit to you. We design them in advance to maximize the opportunity of time off. Of course, a good number of us may “go away” but we don’t unplug and whether we rationalize that we are avoiding a back to work landslide or a belief that it’s an important segment of the day to see to and then back to adventure we are taking care of “I” need to or want to. It’s when you don’t know how, when or why to intentionally dedicate yourself to NOT working that you fully benefit from the healing power of vacation.

I have often recounted an old Lee Iacocca story when he was President of Chrysler. One of his senior execs left he was interviewing internally for a replacement. It came down to two similarly skilled and accomplished company veterans, Iacocca said he asked each common questions including how they used their vacation. One finalist, with a sense of pride, explained he hadn’t taken vacation in two years, he was dedicated to the hilt he explained. Iacocca said he couldn’t hire an executive who wasn’t skilled or smart enough to schedule his own vacation. The value wasn’t not on endless work it was knowing that there is a life out there that we work to support. Family, perspective, rest, refreshment are all deserving of our highest loyalty.

Part of getting the benefit of vacation is to do more than appreciate what you’re NOT doing. “I didn’t have to get up…,” “I don’t have to deal with Soandso,” “Not missing the commute.” These are all worthy of celebration to be free of for a week or two but they are half the battle to optimal mental health when you go back to work.

For an Entrepreneur that process of properly not dealing with but also positively doing something: family quality time, focus on your significant other, feel a rush, get exhausted, play games and have fun can be the formula to free your mind for creative insights or come to clarity in a situation that seemed cloudy…it’s called finding perspective and that has a huge value to your personal health, and a company’s collective health.

Whether you run an empire or a spin about a cubicle the greatest express ride to vacation nirvana is to learn, or practice mindfulness. Simply, pay attention to each event, each consumption, each stimulation. How your children look; whatever the activity there is an ability for your eye and other senses to relate it to the big “I,” you. Acknowledging the beauty we have in our relationships, our ability to explore and fulfill our senses is part of a positive vacation experience and a person or a company who has great vacations may well have even better back-to-work productivity…with a little contentment thrown in.

Tom Fox is President of MyEureka Solutions and an active provider of Business Therapeutics to improve professional productivity and psychological wellness. Follow Tom here, www.myeurekasolutions.com/thoughts or @TomFoxTrainer, ©2018 MyEureka Solutions LLC.

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by Tom FoxPosted on Posted in Uncategorized — No Comments ↓

work drives you crazy

Let’s dismiss the PC yielding right up front. We’re going to talk about mental health and your work and how disguised and undiagnosed and unrecognized problems can be. So what is crazy? For this purpose it is not a poor euphemism for mentally ill but rather a synonym to take seriously. As two highly successful professionals chose to take their own lives this month, of course Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain’s suicides, the reactions were rightly alarming to the degree of distress and the usual symbols of success; power, position, wealth, had no concrete correlation to what added up to happiness and satisfaction. I’m sorry to say it this way, but life getting so unhappy you can’t bear to live it is just plain crazy.
So is your professional world a place of solace or a place of stress? Are the demands and challenges processed in wins and losses? Do the losses devastate you? Do losses create learning and future wins? Have you observed co-workers taking on worrisome traits? Would you recognize them if you saw them?
The two keys for self examination in this, highly non-medical, diagnosis of work making you crazy are about stress and depression. Both quite natural in life, professional and otherwise. Both can stimulate responses that lead to our great successes, and, both can be central in the demise of mental, and physical health, particularly if they endure without diagnosis and meaningful remedies.
Stress occurs whenever there is a challenge, it can be exciting and it can stimulate our adrenal responses in very positive and productive ways. Everyone reacts differently to stress, to different kinds, to different levels and there is no single formula for what is too much or too intense so we have to depend on our own consciousness and introspection to first evaluate. Physical symptoms are clearly the most apparent; do you have a headache at the end of the day, several days? Are you gaining weight, losing friends or not sleeping? Do you lack regular release activities that free you from the tension of stress? Do you lash out at others and find yourself regularly on edge or in a bad mood?
Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of stress is an over-acceptance of it’s necessity, without appreciating its gravity. “I hate this job stress but it’s what I have to do to get paid.” Sure, if it was easy it wouldn’t be called work but an acceptance of inordinate stress, or even “learning” to deal with it by suppressing or pretending to ignore it can take a direct physical toll in time but, just as devastatingly, can erode mental health in ways that may be hard to detect over time, may be rationalized as the “cost of doing business” or may lead to long and lasting funks, even dire consequences. The battle choices are about countering it, having satisfying release activities or avoiding it. The latter may mean employing behavior and career strategies ranging from avoiding certain people or paths to facing an honest evaluation of worth when it comes to what you are getting and what it is costing.
While depression can certainly be a vague form of destruction, who hasn’t had a spell? Here again the person who can best diagnose the early forms of seriousness are the person who can ask, and honestly answer, am I happy? Depression that lasts, that is easily triggered or becomes commonplace should be worrisome and should get professional diagnosis even if you want to convince yourself it will pass. It’s just this one person, or this one situation and if this then that will go away. Maybe, but the longer it doesn’t, the more depression recurs the more serious it can be. Self-medicating with the wrong “cures” or becoming comfortable as a victim or feeling helpless to find an alternative can avoid the self-confrontation that may be critical. You don’t need to hit the bottom to bounce back.
You may be responsible for managing people and while no one can require you being responsible for their happiness I think every manager has some responsibility for a staff’s well being, even if just for productivity’s sake. You’d think twice about having a person assigned to work in a building with a failing roof if you have a conscious, do you give as much consideration to their mental health as their physical well-being and how are you influencing that? Simply asking people in safe one-on-one’s how they are doing or sharing an observation of concern may well be a tipping point to allow a person to seek a professional evaluation (and returning a person to productivity or making a change of mutual benefit). Making that a safe, unstigmatized option can also be key.
Most insurance plans have mental health coverage and it is unfortunately far too often underutilized for many reasons. Would you avoid a doctor if you had persistent and disabling back pain? Never enable shame with gossip of dealing with mental challenges differently than you would a person dealing with being in a wheelchair. A level down we may need more meaningful engagement in valuable relationships that allow us to reflect and challenge ourselves in our choices. Finding that can be a major step to health and health to performance, performance to success.
I can remember scaling effort to staff in the past assignments by saying, “Don’t let it make you crazy.” Maybe now I mean that more literally than ever.
(C) 2018 MyEureka Solutions LLC. Follow Tom @TomFoxTrainer, or www.myeurekasolutions.com/thoughts or on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-fox-a28b703/

 

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by Tom FoxPosted on Posted in Uncategorized — No Comments ↓

Isn’t the dream of every seller to answer the phone and take the order? Or peruse the inbox and confirm all the credit card payments streaming passively from your web site or brilliantly composed social media strategy? What’s not to like about passive sales? We all want them and it’s probably fair to say most businesses need them as part of the mix for really hitting it big. Unfortunately, those sales channels can be more like lottery tickets but with more investment. Ignored too often are the three key active channels for selling that are almost always profitable with the right strategy, a little technique and a lot of planning.

Since the axiom of preferring to do business with people we know, like and trust is far harder to achieve virtually most businesses, and all sales people, would do well to target the three key selling channels in common to everyone and ripe with opportunity even in the leanest years. They are, targeted prospecting, referral process, and networking. All three live in the sales ecosystem but too often they become passive or taken for granted while we are aggressively waiting for the phone to ring. Here’s some ways to take charge of each:

1) TARGETED PROSPECTING

If you know your business then you should know what your best customer looks like. Sure, that’s likely a mix but having a strategy to manage the effort/reward ratio based on the longer term profitability of a client means identifying what that prospect looks like and following a strategy to land them. Once you know who you are looking for there are practically unlimited ways you can try to make the connection but you need to keep that list small, based on what’s been proven to you already. Follow success with more of the same. “Niche-ing” is an efficient way of targeting. If you know you do well with doctors or lawyers or Indian chiefs then go wide in the category. If your success is more statistically or demographically based than run across that game with all who play in that space.

Getting to know and like you is, of course, a specific challenge but by playing within a niche space you can hyper-charge your trust factor since you’ll have proof that like-minded players can appreciate. Everyone thinks their industry is unique and despite the fact that few are, it serves you well to be seen as a knowledgeable resource serving a limited community rather than picking anyone who can say, pay their bills!

2) REFERRAL PROCESS

If you’re involved in sales then you have clients, or you won’t be involved with selling much longer. To that end we know that existing clients all have two great potentials for us, more work and knowing someone else who could use what we’ve got. There are three basic strategies to apply to existing customers. First is the check in. That is to say simply make contact with your clients with nothing to sell other than your concern for how things are going for them, asking if there’s more you can do, etc. For that you get liked for your caring and when the question gets flipped to how you are doing simply making your client/friend aware of your challenge often brings voluntary help, and you need to follow it up.

Second option is the “what we’re doing” tour where you make a point to see your clients and their key people and update them on the new things you are doing or planning combining that with fact finding on what the client’s challenges are and a brainstorm approach to solutions, cost savings, productivity, etc. Do this without “selling” them what you are doing and it will become clear enough if there is more to work together on but will also plant the seeds for who else they know, this is often better done at the end of the meeting between the top principles, exchanging aid as peers with common challenges.

Third is the “success tour” for when you do something successfully and you one-on-one with the right person “cash in” on the success you’ve done with a client by asking them a favor. Happy people who have been helped with their success are far more disposed to set you up with a helpful introduction. The bigger the success the more you can go for an in person intro, compared to a phone intro, compared to a digital intro. Treat your client to a meal or drink while inviting the other prospect (maybe even adding a prospect for the client you know) and make your own happy family where people become enamored with their power to help.

3) NETWORKING

Now that cold calling is practically criminal and email is more disposable than cigarette butts the old-fashioned but tried and still true method of meeting people is far under-utilized. That can be because the venues aren’t right so besides all the well known networking opportunities consider these options:

Make your own group. It doesn’t need to be dozens of people, a mastermind group of six people getting together for dinner has power. Either on your own or with a business partner consider being the subject matter expert that brings people together for 90 minutes on a subject of interest. Paying for a room and some muffins can be a great investment if you can talk to more people at a time. Finally, working trade shows or industry gatherings with purpose and goals and a follow-up plan means, again, putting yourself in a place where there can be many prospects, or referral sources, to exploit if you’ve got the plan and the follow up.

As we all search of the next great thing it often pays to make sure you’ve got your fundamentals down. That means having these three strategies in your playbook and on your calendar and taking them seriously in the hunt, the nurturing and the serving.

(c) 2018 MyEureka Solutions LLC. Follow Tom on Twitter @TomFoxTrainer or on  linkedin.com/in/tom-fox-a28b703

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How do you diagnose your problems

 

For anyone who manages business, whether it is a hundred employees or your own solo tasks, the responsibility is summed up in three parts: First is figuring out what to do to profit, second is diagnosing whatever problems come along to interfere with the first, and finally is doing the doing for either the first or the second thing. It is the doing of tasks, following required behaviors that gets us to our goals and problems along the way, be they mild bumps or major hurdles, are inevitable so problem solving is a critical part of our success formula. Unfortunately, we are far more inclined to look outside ourselves for cures as a reflex rather than risk dealing with some undesirable realization or recognition of part of ourselves that may be more part of the problem than we care to discover or admit. There’s no “I” in problem, but go beyond the spelling and there may be.

Much of the Business Therapy™ I do involves outlining what behaviors need to be done, how often, and how they can be most effectively performed, measured and continuously improved. Often the call comes because there is a believed known problem where solution help is sought. To get business plenty of consultants offer free diagnoses to find and assess problem areas and then hopefully engage with paid solutions. I’ve often told clients if you don’t know what your problem is you may need more help than a consultant can provide. But sometimes the problem on the branches of the tree are caused by the roots.

Most conversations about problems are usually about obstacles, be it a high level view of process sub-optimization or it may seem more localized with a lack of skill or training in mastering the tasks that need to be performed so investment in corrective steps follows. What is too often overlooked, or underplayed, in the assessment of problems is what the one with the problem might find with a long, healthy look in the mirror. But who has honest mirrors these days?

Business problems are too often treated with the traditional triage approach of Western medicine. We look at the symptoms and implement “solutions” to counter and avoid them. The positive of this is that changing behavior and prompting intelligent conversation about challenges and solutions can often find noticeable improvements and get the ball rolling faster, better, cheaper…and isn’t that usually the point?

Today, better Western medicine approaches incorporate the Eastern paradigm. Example: You have diabetes, the cause is diagnosed as diet, stress and genetics. The prescription is medication, exercise and changes to what you eat and drink. Does it work? Sure, it can. The missing diagnostic, the focus of Eastern analysis is why did this occur in the first place. How does the way you feel about yourself or others or the world dictate what you eat and drink? Why do you experience certain things as unhealthy stress and how does that manifest in behavior? In short, it is about putting the “I” before any “it.”

If you want something to be different in your business, whether it is a process problem, an employee’s performance or any other kind of external obstacle it makes sense to have a deeper introspection before the external inspection, as frightening as that might seem. A band-aid and aspirin are quick, agreeable treatments but there’s a reason they both come packed with many to the box and bottle. You have to look honestly inside yourself, at your actions, thoughts and feelings to understand how you got there–and how to stay away. For a process issue it may be that the requirements you’ve set out as necessary for you promoted the growth of a problem. For an employee it may be as basic as why you hired, or keep, that person. While it’s normal to try and change things it’s a thousand times harder to try and change people, ourselves especially, but that change can be dynamic rather than incremental.

By honestly looking first at yourself you can identify causal links and find motivation for making lasting improvements–it flows downhill from the top (brain to body and boss to actions)! When first we are open with ourselves and view that openness as opportunity for positive change rather than guilty condemnation we create an attitude primed for holistic personal and business growth. The next time you are looking out to fix your problems it might make sense to first understand why they came to be, how you contributed and what behaviors or thoughts you can control that will make the solution stronger and last longer. Find the “I” in your problem and you just might find the $ in your $olution!

© 2018 MyEureka Solutions LLC. For business therapy insights go to www.myeurekasolutions.com/thoughts or follow Tom on LinkedIn or @TomFoxTrainer. Feedback, sharing, thoughts welcome.

 

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by Tom FoxPosted on Posted in Uncategorized — No Comments ↓

It is paradoxical that even working on a floor full of people you can feel lonely. It’s equally unsurprising that many solo entrepreneurs or small business owners who work independently can feel isolated. Myth tells us it’s supposed to be lonely at the top but what it doesn’t tell us is that more than 40% of working people deal with feeling lonely according to a recent study. That kind of negative vibe makes achievement even more challenging as anyone who has ever been depressed can attest.

What might be most surprising is that in work situations there is an inverse relationship between the amount of education a working person has and their likelihood to feel lonely. Those with Masters degrees are lonelier than those with Bachelors degrees who are lonelier than people with no college. That brings us to why. Perhaps the focus on trying to match self-image expectations with the complexity and winding path to success initiates introspection that actualizes a sense of isolation. Is it possible that more educated people think too much?

No one should suggest that having uneducated workers, or not seeking to make yourself a little smarter every day is a sure-fire recipe for happiness and productivity. We have, however, re-positioned education and an expectation for self-worth. Our country has a dearth of skilled tradespeople. Having been indoctrinated to believe that one must get a college degree to have new work force skills and appropriate income many have missed out on the satisfaction of working a trade where the money can be quite good, and the happiness and sense of success can be quite high.

That opportunity may not make much difference if you are already sitting at your desk, staring at your diploma, sighing and wondering why you feel lonely. One thing that is clear is that being lonely is not about whether or not you are surrounded by people or even if you are regularly interacting with them. Loneliness most often stems from a lack of connection with people. Whether it is intellectual or emotional having strong connections with people helps you feel communal. Whether you are the boss, an entry level worker or an independent contractor if you want to feel less lonely you don’t need to become less smart, just better connected.

3 Lonely-Busting Tips

Communication – When you communicate are you connecting? If you don’t feel anything in your communications you can’t expect any reward and communication is the straightest path to overcoming loneliness.

  1. Your computer doesn’t love you so don’t hide behind electronic relationships. Emails and social media have their place but not when it’s a hiding place. If you can call instead of email, do it, if you can talk face to face instead of call, do that. The more efforts we make to have personal communications the more opportunity we have to feel good about the relationship involved in eye to eye, handshake to handshake connections.
  2. Learn to listen. No doubt you have reasons to communicate and getting quickly to the answer you want or the message you feel you have to give can seem to be a productivity step. Deeper connections come when you really listen, allow appropriate time for empathy and touch (handshakes, pats on the back…yes, it can be a minefield so goodness sake don’t confuse this with inappropriate touching to make another uncomfortable).
  3. Choose wisely. While you can always make efforts to have connections understanding some will be slight and some significant build connection relationships you can depend on where you might stroll when you feel the lonely draft beginning to breeze. The wrong connections can mean people who suck the life out of you, the complainers, the whiners, the angry zealots. Find positive people who reciprocate a connection and think of it as a candy store. You have a lot of choices but you know where your desires and rewards are.

If the price of success was loneliness and isolation, depression and anxiety I would strongly make the argument you need to redefine your definition of success. Feeling connected to people, whether working or in the non-work spots of your life lets you appreciate the joy of being alive. Misery has no place in the success formula. Loneliness is only tolerable if it is in a brief burst, it is recognized, and we know the pathway out. Following that path is where true success really lies.

(C) 2018 MyEureka Solutions LLC. For more business and success articles go to www.myeurekasolutions.com/thoughts or follow Tom on LinkedIn or @TomFoxTrainer on Twitter.

 

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by Tom FoxPosted on Posted in Uncategorized — No Comments ↓
Is the best thing for your business to work on you or the best thing for you to work on your business? Only your Business Therapist knows for sure!!

Is the best thing for your business to work on you or the best thing for you to work on your business? Only your Business Therapist knows for sure!!

Why isn’t my business getting the results I deserve? Why aren’t I making what I should be making? Why is hard work so frustrating? What’s wrong with my team? What’s wrong with me? All good questions we hear a lot when success is elusive. Sometimes we’re sure we know the answer about what needs fixing. Sometimes we even admit we need personal help but diagnosing a lack of personal and/or professional success is not as easy, or as complicated, as you might think.

I’ve recently had a change of description for my role in my company (Master of the Universe didn’t score well in focus groups). Where for many years my three-word answer has been Strategist, Trainer, Teacher. Today, I feel like Business Therapist is more apt to describe what is most needed for executives, business owners and sellers. Not that there’s been a seismic shift in business psychosis or that fundamental analysis of process and improvement implementations aren’t still valid, they are. What is more apparent than ever is that complexity in success formulas is driving a better understanding of both the person and the process, so I put myself on the couch to realize that to create lasting, effective change it starts with the person not the process.

Today’s organizational problems do have a far greater range of “soft” issues than ever before. By accident or design diversity is upon us and culture is no longer a nice thing to have, it is who you are. If there are any toxins it can bring down the best of processes, poison the environment, hinder productivity, delay or deprive success.

Most organizations and most leaders benefit by constant analysis, incremental changes and upgrades and confirming measurements. That said there is often much effort and resources put into process only to find that a leader or worker’s traits usurp the intention. Everyone can quote the truism that doing the same thing over and over and expecting difference is insanity. Unfortunately, that also applies to constantly making changes when there are underlying issues with the person responsible for leading, implementing, or executing those changes.

Once upon a time psychotherapy was seen as everything from quackery to taboo. You never see a cowboy on a therapist couch, and such (pre-Brokeback Mountain). By the 1980s pop psychology had turned therapy into a status symbol. Big corporations invest in both human and process development but rarely have they been integrated. It makes sense today for companies big or small, salespeople or business owners to recognize personal introspection begets opportunities for outward improvements.

In today’s culture it makes sense to examine success more broadly. This means an honest inspection of not just what and how you are doing but understand the why and why not connected to required success behaviors. Every piece of success is ultimately tied to behaviors. Our attitudes, fears, concerns and joys related to behaviors are far more likely to drive their successful execution than the best process flow chart.

When you want to have more success for you or your company ask a couple of simple questions: Have I tried to implement change before? Did I change myself first or try to change actions? How do I really feel about change? How about when then change is about discovering if I am my best self? Am I willing to do the work on myself before I demand it of my processes or my team?

Maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who would simply benefit by confirmation that you’ve got the right thinking about yourself, a willingness to be honest and an earnest intent to drive positive, measurable change. Business Therapy in that case lets you focus on the how, what and when of self or team behaviors from a solid foundation. Sometimes you need to recognize while you are good, the process is good, someone else subverts the efforts, likely not even intentionally. So, if you find yourself with hopes of doing better, doing more, achieving, influencing or attaching the term success to your life’s journey without disclaimers then you might look outside for a new perspective on who you are and who you can become. Let someone help you see you, become the change, do the work and you may just find process improvement falls far more easily in place and you’ll appreciate success and yourself a little more.

© 2018 MyEureka Solutions LLC. Follow Tom on Twitter @TomFoxTrainer or online at www.myeurekasolutions.com/thoughts. Comments and feedback always welcome.

 

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Tom Fox