Advice for control freaks

This advice is for leaders who think they need to be the smartest person in the room because they are the leader.

“We don’t need to hire smart people and tell them what to do.  We need to hire smart people and have them tell us what to do.” – Steve Jobs

The leader can tell the smart people where we need to go or what we need to accomplish, and the smart people can figure out how to do it.

Who are your “smart people”?

Poor choices close down your options.

If you made a poor choice in 2012, you could be paying for it now.

If you make bad choices now, your options in the future will be more limited.

Reputation, finances, health and more – if you make poor choices now, the effects may last a lifetime.

If you make great choices, the same is true. 

Employee first

There is a direct correlation between employee engagement and productivity.

The employee experience and the customer experience are linked.

Are your employees having a good experience?

When trust is high, resistance is low.

When there is little or no trust between a team member and a leader, they resist.  They automatically look for ways the leader is wrong, or how they can go around them or get out of doing what the leader asked them to do.  They do not want to cooperate or go along with new ideas.

The same is true when a leader does not trust a team member.  They are always questioning their actions, assuming the worst.

Once a person’s credibility is lost, it is very difficult to get back.  

That’s why a leader needs to maintain credibility and trust between them and their team.  

When trust is high, things are easy.

Keep your problems fixed

Leaders are “problem solvers in chief”.

But fixing problems and keeping them fixed are different.

Anyone can fix a problem for today—put a patch on it, like calling an upset customer to smooth things over.  

But solving the root of that problem is much different.  Putting a system in place or providing proper training and incentives or tracking so that it doesn’t happen again is far more meaningful.

Work once, get paid forever……what problem can I solve in a way that will provide benefits to my customers and company far into the future?

Fix it permanently – that is high-value work.

Doing and done are different.

What needs to be finished in your business?

Transfer ownership of the problem to your people

You have this problem.  The solution will require the participation and commitment of your team.  

How do you know what the very best solution is?  How will you get them to go along with the solution and stay with it?

Rather than asking those questions, what if you gave them the problem?  What if they saw it as their problem that is affecting them negatively or was their gateway to them doing better?

Can you frame the problem to them?  Can you explain the consequences for the team if the problem gets solved or not?

Can you make it personal?  Can you ask for their help – their best thinking, ideas, and action on the problem?  

Can you offer an individual or group incentive to solve the problem?

Can you set up brainstorming sessions for them, give them space and resources, put up scoreboards and encourage and celebrate their progress?

You are the leader, but you do not have to have all the answers or solutions.  You shouldn’t care where the answers come from.

Facilitate, and use the minds and thinking of the people you have to solve your most pressing issues or biggest roadblocks.

What are yours?  How can you get your team meaningfully involved?

Your to do list does not have YOUR name on every item

Do you use a TO DO list?  I do.  I write it in my Jim Rohn Success Planner. That works best for me.

But it’s easy to fall into the trap that if something needs to get done and it is on your TO DO list that YOU need to do it.

No you don’t!  You just want it to get done – right? 

Try this.  Ask WHO can do these things for me, instead of HOW can I get all these things done?

If I think of it this way, I can make a phone call to this one or that one and ask them to do it.  Many things can be taken off my plate this way.

I am the leader, not the doer-in-chief.

I need to act like it, and not hire myself for every task.

It may be hard for you because it’s habitual for you to do things, and you are probably good at many of these things.  But if you want to graduate and leverage your time and scale your business, you can’t be doing all the things all the time – because you only have so many hours in a day, and that will be your limiting factor. 

The more things I don’t have to spend my time on, the more new things I can initiate or other problems I can face to unlock the company’s potential. 

How about you?  Whose name can you put on your TO DO list items?

Problem?

Problem?

What system is missing or broken that, if fixed, would prevent this from ever happening again?

Decades ago, I was having problems with my crews doing work fast enough and well enough.

I couldn’t micromanage them.  I had to create a system where it got fixed and stayed fixed.

It turned out to be my greatest invention, and ultimately allowed EVERYTHING ELSE that came after it to happen.

Problem?

What system is missing or broken that, if fixed, would prevent this from ever happening again?

It’s who you become that matters.

I was at one of my offices and saw this poster with a quote from this guy named Larry J something or other. 

It said “Success is not what you get, it’s who you become.”  I’m pretty sure he got it from Jim Rohn or something.

I had seen the quote before, but it was a great reminder.

We aren’t taking anything with us.  Maybe whoever dies with the most friends wins – or whoever had the most lasting positive impact on others wins.  But it’s not a competition with anyone else.  

We do all this to see who we can become through it.

That’s why.  

It’s the personal challenge to see how good of a person we can become.

For all your efforts and goals, wins and losses – who are you becoming?