Leadership is the ability to influence

A leader who can not influence others can’t do the job. This is what you’ll need

Credibility – if people don’t believe the messenger, they won’t believe the message.

Conviction – to convince others, you must be convinced yourself.

Integrity – they must know there is one you, not two.

Confidence – You believe in the decision.

Knowledge – they need to know that you know your stuff.

Authenticity – you are real.

Communication – you do it well, positively, and often.

How would you rate yourself in these areas?  

Take your foot off the brake

Nothing limits achievement like small thinking.

Believe you can.

You should.

Can you be spontaneous?

If you are working harder and longer to keep up and meet the time demands your business puts on you, you can’t be spontaneous because you have little control of your time.  

Only the free are spontaneous. These leaders understand their priorities, have defined what their job is and is not, and have created a schedule that allows flexibility.  When we feel like we are in control of our time, we are happy, and when we feel we aren’t in control, we aren’t happy.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have an idea, or see someone you’d like to talk to, and be able to spend some time there without looking at your watch knowing you have to rush to get to something else that demands your time?

Redesign your job so you are not fully booked all the time. Leaders can’t do their job very well, or be happy otherwise.

Should we question our thoughts?

One estimate says we have 60,000 thoughts a day. 90% of them are the same thoughts we had yesterday.

Clearly we have habits of thinking, and those habits have led us to where we are now.

Shouldn’t we start questioning ourselves? Learning new things? Hanging around different people with different ideas? Leaving some old ideas behind in favor of new ones?

Long Term Planning Doesn't Work

The world is changing fast these days. Long term planning is to make too many assumptions (guesses). When you find any one is wrong, your whole plan is out the window.  

We can’t figure out the business in the board room. We have to get out there and try things. By trying, we learn what to do next.

What are you trying now?

Profit is just a "spread"

Net profit is just a difference between the cost of running our business to supply what we do for our customers, and what we charge/collect for it.

To make a net profit or more of it, we just need to increase the gap between them. We can lower cost or charge more.

To lower cost, we can lower our direct cost of producing our product or service, or lower our fixed cost.

Charging more may involve increasing our prices or producing more that customers will pay us for without increasing cost (much).

However we do it, we must make a profit while creating and keeping customers, or we are toast.

Investment or Consumption?

When we spend money that brings no future value, it’s consumption.  

When we spend money on something that either goes up in value or makes it easier to create value now and in the future, it’s an investment.

We should not be fooled or kid ourselves as to which is which.

The higher the ratio of investment to consumption, the better.

What should your job be now?

As an organization grows and the challenges change, a leader needs to ask this question from time to time.  If a leader doesn’t grow and adjust, and be the person they need to be for the challenge at hand, they will get stuck doing the leader job the old way, and not be able to meet new challenges.

What should your job be now?

"I know you've got a million things going on…"

Some people acknowledge that I am very busy and as they ask for a few minutes of my time they say, “I know you have a million things going on…”

Well, I guess it’s true I am busy, but not like they think. I’m not unavailable at times because I have “a million things going on,” like I am flitting about from one task to the other, trying to survive on hyper-efficiency. It’s not like that at all.

Instead, I am focused. Focused on my highest priority for the day – my project, my key task, my legacy activity – the one that will make a difference into the future. I am disciplined about getting on it and NOT being distracted. It’s not a million things – it’s a small number of very important but not urgent ones.

Focus, and defend yourself against distractions for as big a chunk of your day as necessary to get the highest value activities done.

How do I "get it all done"?

Highly successful people know that is the wrong question.  

You don’t get it all done. You don’t have to.

You just have to get the RIGHT things done.

The team does the rest.