Archive for the 'Management' Category

Jul32008

Did you actually grow up to be a firefighter?

Backdraft was a cool movie. Ladder 49 was pretty cool as well. Heck, being a firefighter might actually be neat…

Maybe you already are a firefighter and you just don’t know it. Curious? Read on…

fire

Do you spend more time during the course of your day putting out fires than anything else? Do you find yourself in reaction mode all the time?

If so, then the order of the day is: becoming proactive. (if you said no, then I think you nose might have grown an inch or two)

Surprisingly few people in the world are truly proactive. Few people plan ahead and put themselves in a position to accomplish what they need to do.

Most people are reactive, living in a constant state of having decisions made for them and being ordered to and fro. This translates over to the entrepreneurial realm as well. Many entrepreneurs and small business owners are constantly in ‘fire-fighter’ mode. Everything is an emergency. All the plates are spinning at 9,000 RPM.

How can you slow the plates (or even set a few of them down)?

It’s not an easy transition. Something in the human psyche love martyrdom. We love to be exasperated fighting the good fight. We love to one-up others’ stories of plight and hard dealings with our own (think about the last conversation you had with somebody…did you say something and then, immediately after you were done hear them say “well, if you think that’s bad, listen to what happened to me…). It’s no surprise, then, that people like to be constantly running around at mach 3 with their hair on fire. It seems that most business owners are quite content to run around without any real method to their madness.

The reactive entrepreneur is always putting out fires. They always have some problem they are dealing with, some distraction from the main focus of their business.

This commercial is a perfect example of what the life of a reactive entrepreneur is like:

The proactive entrepreneur, on the other hand, is almost always in control. They don’t operate from a permanent residence in crisis-ville.

How can you move from reactive to proactive? It will vary. For some, it will require a complete re-wiring of their brains and a complete change in their lifestyle. For others, it will be some simple changes in thought process and planning.

Some business models are set up to induce chaos for the owner. The owner is the centerpiece of everything and every decision hinges on them. This is a mistake. In other instances, ‘control-freakism’ on behalf of the owner is responsible for the owner not being able to escape any minute decision - critical mission failure again.

If you really want to stop putting out fires everyday, you have to:

a. Plan - clear up objectives and priorities

b. Simplify - eliminate, reduce and retread

c. Delegate - get rid of all the crap work you find yourself doing on a daily basis

It takes a while to reverse the chaotic inertia. When people are paralyzed relying on your decisions, when you don’t have simple and clear objectives, when you don’t plan your next moves you won’t be able to put out the fires - you’ll just keep running around with a fire extinguisher until you collapse from exhaustion. Then, you’ll get up, repeat the process again - unless you makes some simple changes.

If you work for the fire department, well, please keep doing a good job.

Published
by
Adam Davis
on July 3, 2008
in Entrepreneurship and Management
. 4 Comments
Jun232008

Tuesday Top 5: 5 Reasons to Ditch Your Blackberry

Warning: this post is written by a recovering crackberry addict.

I knew things were bad when I was in Las Vegas last summer and my friend was getting stitches in the emergency room (don’t ask!) and I was furiously typing emails and instant messages, oblivious to nearly everything going on around me (including my good buddy’s agony).

In the maddeningly fast paced world of global business, “on demand” has gone from being a tagline from an old IBM commercial to a mantra throughout all rank and file in the business world. I think entry-level college grads are even being given Blackberry’s as some kind of cruel, “thrown to the wolves” corporate initiation so that they can be pawns to their new bosses sadistic Sunday afternoon work whims.

My friends at Research in Motion (RIMM) are going to be gunning for me now (I’ll split the price on my head with somebody).

crackberry

“Crackberry’s” and their ilk, epitomize the perverse notion that we can make everybody happy all the time. The novelty effect is huge (did anybody ever get more done with “daytimers” or Palm Pilots?). At any rate, here are five reasons that I have come up with to help show you the light in ditching your Blackberry and the entire business paradigm they represent.

1. Your productivity will improve

“On Demand” business just doesn’t work for entrepreneurs. If you work for Big Blue, than so be it - bind yourself to the corporate leash. But, if you are an entrepreneur or small business owner, take it from me, the more you condition your customers/clients, suppliers, employees, shareholders, etc. to expect instant results from you - the moment you fail do deliver that instant gratification will mark the beginning of your fall from grace.

There is a mistaken notion in today’s business climate that instant service = good service. This is not necessarily the case. Often, if you have more time to think about a problem or situation, you can put together a better, more thought out response that will end up making you more money.

2. You will see some of your sanity come back

If you’ve ever heard of the stories of wives divorcing their husbands or relationships going into counseling because of crackberry addiction, they are probably all true. Rarely have I seen someone who owned a crackberry who had a good sense of balance (or even a sense of self about them).

When you are constantly ‘at the office,’ the lines between work, family and fun begin to blur. You are always at the office, even if it’s 10:30 on a Tuesday night or 7:30 on a Saturday morning. Not knowing where work ends and where you begin will slowly turn you upside down and inside out.

3. Your thumbs will feel a lot better

Although you may burn a few extra calories as you furiously scroll and type, your thumbs will be glad you saved them the numbing feeling of keying endless emails (who really reads them anyway?)

4. You will definitely look better

The crackberry as a fashion statement is a non-starter. Always has been. Always will be. Men shouldn’t accessorize in the first place, but when you throw the leather crackberry holster in with the business casual ensemble you just look like a guy straight out of ‘geek-fest’ magazine.

**For those of you crackberry heads out there, stop thinking you look important by having your crackberry buzz 50 times with incoming messages during a meeting and then furiously scrolling and glaring at it after the meeting lets out–spare me!!!**

5. Your business will likely improve

This one is from personal experience. When you stop thinking ‘instant response’ and instead think “quality response” you will see your level of customer satisfaction increase significantly. I am now better able to handle client responses in a thorough manner while at the same time being much more productive (getting more done in far less time) than when I was hooked on crackberry.

**Bonus** 6 - Your cell phone bill will decrease

Since we should try to look at all angles, I guess this one should have made the cut for the Top 5, but I didn’t like it as much as the other ones, so I added it here as a bonus. This one is really a no-brainer, because crackberry service puts additional cost on your monthly service plan and also puts you out the higher fees for purchasing the device.

Ahh…now, there it is…I feel much better. It’s theraputic to get things out in the open. As I turn around I am looking to be doused with ‘hater-ade’ like John Madden after a Super Bowl Victory. Let the debating begin and the comments reign in - I am ready.

(Just don’t offer me a free dose of crackberry)

Published
by
Adam Davis
on June 23, 2008
in Management, Productivity and communication
. 2 Comments
Mar112008

Tuesday Top 5: 5 Reasons Why I Would Hire a Kirby Vacuum Salesperson Over a Harvard MBA

kirby

harvard

Some of you might be shocked to read this subject line. You might be thinking: “He’s crazy, he’d rather hire one of those disheveled guys in white shirts that try to schlep vacuum cleaners door to door then someone with a Master’s degree from one of the most prestigious universities in the world?”

Yes.

I’d rather hire someone, for my company, who thrived making money selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door then someone who danced cum laude out of Harvard’s famous and highly ranked business school.

Here is the part where I need to tell you why, so let’s get it on:

1. I like people that are FEARLESS

This one is easy. In 2008, if you aren’t afraid to walk up to someone in their home and try to sell a vacuum cleaner to them, then you are FEARLESS. One of the biggest problems that I see in the world today is that the business community is rising up a generation of WIMPS - people that are afraid to sell. Now, I’m not talking about a bunch of used car salesman, but someone is isn’t afraid to ask for the sale.

We have too many entrepreneurs that think that referrals and soft marketing will bring in enough money to feed them. They might skate by, but I will blow past them in the market place, because my people won’t be afraid to be aggressive and strong, showing the customer or client that we can take care of them better then anybody else. Yes, marketing is the driver of this, but you have to remember that everything you do is a sale. You sell your ideas, your concepts and your vision to your clients and customers as well as your employees and stakeholders.

Fear has no place when you are moving to the top.

2. I like people who can think on the fly

Good salespeople are like good jazz musicians, they can improvise on the fly. A good salesperson will swim in situations where others would surely drown. There isn’t always time to consult a report or get the consensus of your colleague’s then there are hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars at stake. You have to make snap decisions and then ‘wing-it’ the rest of the way.

I can’t think of a better way to learn how to improvise then to be faced with a different type of customer with each sales call, having to make sure you are delivering the right message to each person. Talk about thinking on the fly.

3. I like people who can take rejection, chew it up and spit it out

Have you ever seen an attractive woman on a date with a guy who you thought should not have a chance with her? That she was ‘way out of his league’. There is no real secret to this, except for the fact that the guy asked her for the date. Many guys out there asking: “Is it that simple?” I think it is, but I am not a date doctor. Where I see this principle ring true in the business arena is simply asking for the sale. In order to ask for the sale, you have to be willing to take a good number of ‘no’ answers before you get a ‘yes.’

Most of the Harvard MBA’s I have met have not had much rejection in their life. They are All-Stars. High achievers. Most haven’t had doors slammed in their faces, heard the word ‘no’ said to them 1,000’s of times and been faced with the choice of selling or starving.

4. I like people that can deal with stress and ambiguity

In my humble view, the ability to handle stress effectively and function well in high intensity situations is one of the most endearing qualities a person can have. President John F. Kennedy said it best: “a rising tide lifts all boats.” Meaning, that when times are good you don’t know which ‘boats’ will sink or float. I love this analogy for business, and life for that matter, because it captures the essence of what separates the leaders from the rest of the pack.

Ambiguity is part of life. Very rarely do we have a fraction of the information that we would like to make the best decision we feel we can make. The ability to function and make decision with small amounts of information are what define good business leaders. Call it good ‘gut instinct’ if you will. Gut instincts are developed by being in hand-to-hand combat situations, like being eye-to-eye with a customer who would rather spit on you then look at you, let alone open up their wallet and give you money.

You just can’t earn these stripes slogging through financial modeling and game theoy analysis over Starbucks coffee at 10a.m. Walking through strange neighborhoods and taking on angry glares before you even get to present to one house is something that will teach you to deal with stress and ambiguity like nothing else.

5. I like people that are willing to learn the hard way

Life would be great if we could get everything we needed from case studies, group projects and internships. Business would be wonderful all the time if all I had to do was slap some proformas financial projections through Excel and take it to the bank. But, alas, it cannot be so in the trench warfare of 21st century entrepreneurial business.

Those that develop the thickest skin will generally win in the end. Sometimes business success can be summed up to nothing more than a battle of attrition. Anybody that has taken earned their stripes fighting in the trenches will win more in my book than somebody who has earned their stripes in the boardroom.

So, there you have it. I expect this week’s Top 5 to stir a bit of controversy. And, yes, I fully expect to hear back from some Kirby salespeople turned Harvard MBAs.

Published
by
Adam Davis
on March 11, 2008
in Management and Success
. 6 Comments
Mar52008

Tuesday Top 5: 5 Reasons People Don’t Delegate (and why it hurts them)

Sorry for the belated Top 5.  I was in the middle of drafting this post yesterday when something important pulled me away from my computer and, lo and behold, Wednesday was upon me!

Most of you know that I preach “do what you do best and outsource the rest.” A lot of people understand this and believe it. However, putting this into action, that is, focusing on what drives the true results (e.g. profits) in your business and delegating everything else to 3rd party service providers seems to cause a big disconnect with most small business owners and entrepreneurs.

If you cannot delegate, your business growth will be limited.  Maybe not now, but at some point in the future you will find yourself spinning your wheels.

In this spirit, the Tuesday Top 5 for this week highlights the reasons I have found for why people can’t/won’t delegate. My hope is that you might notice a few of these traits in yourself and take necessary remedial actions.

1. Control Freak-ism

You know this when you see it. This occurs when people absolutely have to be the proverbial chief cook and bottle washer in their business.  This has been expounded upon by countless gurus (think E-myth by Michael Gerber) but it is still a defining characteristic for the American small business owner.

If you always think that you can “do it better yourself,” “nobody can do it better” or “good help is hard to find” you may fall into the category of control freakism.
2. Communication Deficiency

Effective communication (I discussed this in last week’s 30 second Thursday) is a huge reason that people don’t delegate.  For someone to do something for you, they have to know what needs to be done.  If you can’t tell them what needs to be done, or what you want to be done, then it won’t get done.  Herein lies the problem:  Being able to clearly communicate priorities, tasks, processes, what decisions need to be made independently and how problems should be troubleshooted.

If you cannot pour out of your head what you want and how you want it done, you may be hitting communication roadblocks that will prevent you from getting to the next level.

3. Process Breakdown

Not having well documented processes and/or methods for performing tasks in your business will prevent you from being able to delegate and/or outsource these functions.  This is one of the biggest stumbling blocks that I see entrepreneurs trip over.  Many people get caught up in thinking that they need to develop complex flow charts and manuals in order to have effective processes.   However, I think that having a document with bullet points or numbered steps and checklists can be just as effective.

4. People/Vendor Selection

If you have been burned at all by a bad hiring of vendor selection decision, you can quickly develop an aversion to letting other people handle business tasks that are important.  Trust is important in any business relationship, whether you are delegating inside or outside your business.

I encourage everyone to carefully evaluate outsourcing providers before engaging in long term relationships.  The same should be true with employees (think 90 day probationary period).  The ultimate solution to this is to make your processes system dependent, so that you can plug in vendors or employees.  This will help mitigate (but not eliminate) your people risk.  The bottom line is that there are going to be people and vendor problems in your business, the only question is how well you can deal with it and not let it divert your focus.

5. Laziness

This one shouldn’t surprise you. How many people do you know that say things like: “nah…I’ll just take care of it myself.”  This boils down to mental laziness, and reverts back to “control freakism” in a way.  If you are mentally lazy, you won’t take the time to document what you do, what you want done, how you want it done and how you will measure success or failure.  It’s much easier, at first, to say “I’ll just do it” instead of creating a system that allows you to delegate the task to someone else so that you can focus on your core business and enjoying life.

Well, there we have it.  I hope that you can take these things to heart and evaluate them against your own practices.  Incremental improvements can add up quickly.  Make sure you stay a step ahead of your competitors and add more value to you customers by focusing on what you do best and outsourcing the rest!

Published
by
Adam Davis
on March 5, 2008
in Management, offshoring and outsourcing
. 0 Comments
Feb282008

30 Second Thursdays - Volume 7 - Communication and Delegation

If you want to take your business to the next level - outsourcing more and more and working less to make more money - than you need to become progressively more efficient and effective at communicating.

One of my mentors once told me that: “most problems in the world are problems of information or communication.”

Here is this week’s 30 Second Thursday with more to say on this subject:

Published
by
Adam Davis
on February 28, 2008
in Management, outsourcing and time management
. 0 Comments
Dec212007

Running a Space Age Business

George Jetson I am not…at least not yet.  Although having the life of a space-age family has kind of been a vision of mine since I was a kid.  Speaking of that, aren’t we supposed to be going to and fro in flying cars by now?  Anyway, the reason I am bringing this up is that I was just recently struck with the thought of how running a business today would indeed seem ’spage-age’ to someone transported to 2007 from, say 1957.

Jetson1

 A prime example of what I am talking about was when, a few months back, I was able to run my business completely from by Blackberry for over a week, with no hiccups.  The week of August 27, 2008, I was at the MAGIC Marketplace in Las Vegas.  MAGIC s not a David Copperfield show; it is the biggest apparel industry trade show in the U.S.  I was there with my friend, Chris Reynolds, helping him with his revolutionary sportswear company Flip Your Lid Wear (BTW, if you have not yet seen Flip Your Lid Wear, check out www.FlipYourLidWear.com).

At the show in Las Vegas, I had everything I needed in the palm of my hand.  I was able to talk to my team in India in real time, via instant messenger.  I was able to get all of the pertinent email informaiton I needed in real time and I was able to field all neccessay phone calls.  The darndest thing happend during this time, though.  Even though I had the ability to do real time business at my fingertips, I hardly had to answer an email, had about 5 calls all week (that I had to answer, at least) and just had brief chats with my team in India for about 25 mintues total throughout the day.

Now, this didn’t quite hit me until I was getting ready to go home and I was giving my wife an update on my ETA.  As I looked at my phone’s call log to pull up her number, I noticed that I had not even filled the que with recent phone calls. 

 I am going to drop the other shoe on you now.  I want to tell you what made this ‘miracle’ of my trip possible.  One word: outsourcing.  Let me tell you how amazing it is to know that your business can function without your own personal daily micromanaging and input.  All of the problems that I thought could occur simply did not.  Sure, there were a few minor corrections that needed my attention when I got back home, but nothing that stopped or even slowed the business down.

Here is a summary of what happened when I was gone:

  • Marketing (lead generation, direct mail, e-marketing, etc) initiatives were all being administered with care
  • Sales (closing prospects, working existing accounts) did just fine - we even picked up some new business
  • Operations (processing, administration, payroll) didn’t miss a beat

rosie 1

Sure, George Jetson might have had a talking robot (and a talking dog), but he still had to go to Spacely Sprockets and push that button all day long.  For those of you leery about delegating any of your business functions to anyone outside, I encourage you to give just one small sliver of some of your mundane business tasks over to outsourcing.  I promise you’ll get to enjoy the Las Vegas sunshine a little bit more!

Published
by
Adam Davis
on December 21, 2007
in Management and outsourcing
. 1 Comment
Nov142007

Analysis Paralysis

We have all suffered from it at one time or another: analysis paralysis. The symptoms are quite common: constant number crunching, re-hashing the same information and facts over and over again, lying awake at night, constant distraction and gross inability to make a decision and take a clear direction forward. Analysis paralysis is found to occur most frequently in the face important decisions, decisions that impact your bottom line.

Analysis paralysis is one of the leading killers of business deals. It is often easier to do nothing at all than to make tough decisions.

The prognosis for analysis paralysis can vary among those afflicted. Some suffer indefinitely, never being able to make timely decisions and move ahead in their businesses. For others, it is a temporary condition that provides a stepping stone toward bigger and better things.

The good news is that analysis paralysis can be cured relatively easily. The next time you feel the onset of analysis paralysis, try the following cures:

-Get a fresh perspective
Talk to somebody outside of your daily grind. Have a trusted advisor, mentor or colleague that you can call that will give you an outsiders’ look at your situation. Quite often, you are so close to the problem, that you can’t see the forest through the trees.

-Reconcile the deal with your business goals and objectives
It’s easy to get caught up in the moment. Dollar signs can do funny things to your thinking. If you are hesitating to do the deal, it may not be the right fit for the direction you want to go.

-Set Deadlines
Deadlines keep you accountable. If you impose a deadline on yourself, you open the door to indecision, because you can more easily justify delay and further consideration.

-Trust Your Gut
Trusting your instincts would seem to be a no-brainer. However, many people think that business decisions must all be counter-intuitive. If you get a bad feeling from someone you are considering doing business with, there is usually a reason. Some business owners go about endlessly justifying and rationalizing different options when they could have simply gone with their gut instinct from the beginning and saved themselves a lot of time and hassle.

I think the best way to avoid or overcome analysis paralysis is to take some words of wisdom from Theodore Roosevelt: “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

Published
by
Adam Davis
on November 14, 2007
in Management
. 0 Comments
Nov92007

Corporate Stink Think

When I was working for a large multi-national company, I used to daydream often about the businesses that I was going to start and the money I was going to make once I mustered up the courage to fire my boss. Having several friends that were entrepreneurs, I had gained valuable insights into the problems they were encountering and how I could solve these and other problems on a larger scale and make a viable business model out of it.

After I gave my boss the boot and launched out onto my own, I quickly came to the realization that the education and experience that I had gained in Corporate America had grossly ill prepared me for the rigors of business on my own. I had developed a ‘corporate think’ mindset (Those of you that work for big companies will know what I am talking about more so than others).

I couldn’t understand why my customers did not appreciate my ‘value proposition’. They didn’t care about the nice spreadsheets and power point presentations that I put together to show how becoming a ‘strategic partner’ with me was going to give them a ‘scalable business.’ Sitting in front of my computer and endlessly tweaking my website or spending 15 minutes trying to articulate the most eloquent email was not correlating to increased zeros in my bank account. How was I supposed to make decisions in only 2 minutes instead of calling a meeting and having a 10 person sounding board?

The small business owners that I was targeting only cared about one thing: MAKING MONEY. After several dozen sales calls, I felt like I had been chewed up and spit out. After being regurgitated by a few veteran entrepreneurs that I was pitching, I came to realization that, while my corporate and career IQ were reasonably high, my street smarts were far below passing grade.

The bottom line is that nothing; no books, no seminars, no courses, no websites nor college classes could have prepared me for the butt kicking that I took (and still routinely take) in the business trenches. Nothing can prepare you for being a business owner other than becoming a business owner. You learn to walk by falling down. You learn to ride a bike by falling off and getting back on again. At the end of the day, the only school with a degree that matters, when you are in business, is given by the school of ‘Hard Knocks.’ Corporate ‘stink think’ WILL SINK you when you are in business for yourself.

Published
by
Adam Davis
on November 9, 2007
in Management and quitting your job
. 0 Comments