What behavior do you want them to start, stop, or change?

Ask for it clearly and directly.

Sit in your call center and listen.

Sit in your call center and listen to how your company is handling calls.

What comes up?

Do you need to change something?

Do people need training?

Are there untapped opportunities?

Listen.

Get rid of “cultural cancers”

If there is someone on the team who stirs the pot, doesn’t follow the rules, is rude, causes a stink, or otherwise hurts your culture, get rid of them.  

That’s not novel advice or hard to do, right?

But what if they are a top performer in some area of your business?  What if they are a family member?  What then?

Ahhh.  Now it’s a more difficult decision, right?

Sit them down.  Talk.  Be clear.  Be firm.  If they don’t adjust their behavior (and they probably won’t), then let them go.

It’s not worth hurting your culture for one person no matter who it is.

The marginal performance you lose from the one person will be more than made up for by the buoyed performance of everyone else who is relieved they are gone.

“Advertising is the price you pay for being unremarkable”

I forget who said this, but it is an important idea.

If people don’t know you, they won’t call.  To get them to call you, you have to have your message in front of them at the right time.  That costs money – continually.

To get them to call you when they need you even if your message is not in front of them at that moment, they need to remember you from the last time you served them or the last time your message was in front of them.

This is what this idea is all about.

Are you MEMORABLE?  Is your name, tag line, or advertising so memorable that people only need to see it a few times to remember it?

This takes some serious thought, creativity, editing, and testing.  But when you get it right, you don’t have to do nearly as much advertising to get the same mindshare as you would otherwise.

Problems cannot be solved with the same thinking that created them.

We’ve all heard this.  Now let’s apply it.

What is your number one problem?

Are you applying the same thinking angle/process/people to try to solve it as when it was created?

Humility allows you to change.

I think we have all met a leader who could not admit a mistake, who blamed a lot, took all the credit, and could not change. 

If a leader thinks that admitting a mistake, shortcoming, or ignorance on a subject makes them look like a weak failure, they will strive to hold onto power while people around them are leaving.

The day you started your business or got promoted to manager or leader, you didn’t become all-knowing.

Humility allows you to change, improve and grow – and be a better leader.

Now this is leadership!

One of the best definitions of leadership I’ve ever heard was “accomplishing the goals of the organization by bringing out the best in other people”.

If you accomplished the goals of the organization but burned other people up or out or used them and threw them away, (like many private equity companies do) would that be a win?  Not for me.

Believe in the best in your people.

Want the best for your people.

Call out the very best from your people.

Win BECAUSE you brought out their best.

Is “Try Harder” your strategy?

The dead fly on the windowsill staked his life on trying harder to break the glass with his head to escape. 

But there was an open window in the next room that he never found.

There is nothing wrong with trying hard, and trying the same thing again.

But don’t forget to try something different, to ask other experts, to ask Chat GPT, to hire or outsource to a pro, to consider if it really needs to be done at all, to change your goal, or some other strategy.

Don’t die on the windowsill.

From the inner….

What’s going on in your mind?

Imagination?  Desire?  Vision?  Commitment?

A business is the leader’s elongated shadow.

From the inner, the outer.

Do you have a great company video?

A word tells a word.  A picture tells a thousand of them.  A video tells a million. 

A great company video that gives prospects and outsiders an inspiring look at what you are doing and why can make a big difference.

Here are a couple of mine –

Connecticut Basement Systems

Master Foundation and Crawlspace Repair