Here’s the takeaway: Finding your organization’s inward-facing core values is crucial to establishing your company culture. Your core values will define who you are as an organization. When you’ve identified those values, you can hire, fire, review, reward, and reprimand based on those attributes. When I work with leadership teams, we focus on identifying the…
Here’s the takeaway: Identify your organization’s core values by discovering within your own employees. When we go through the process of creating and identifying an organization’s core values, those values come from the behavior that drives your company culture. They are who you are; core values are the soul of the organization. The nice thing…
Here’s the takeaway: Each role should be accountable for three to five responsibilities, not 87. As leaders, it’s our obligation to make sure that everybody knows what they’re supposed to do. If two people are accountable for an organization’s function, nobody’s accountable. Only one person can be accountable at any one time for a task….
Here’s the takeaway of this post: An Integrator is a great filter between a Visionary and the team. As we build an efficient structure for this company, the general intention is that we go through and start with structure, what it is that people want. Then, we build the right structure of what it should…
Here’s the takeaway: Design your company structure with clear roles in mind. In my last post, we outlined how visualization is the key to creating an efficient structure. First, your leadership team should imagine that they’re high-paid consultants for another company in any distant but similar city (for Omaha, I often use Austin, Texas). This…
Here’s the takeaway: Hire yourself as a consultant, and begin with structure. For many organizations, it is not uncommon for customized seats to have been created over time for specific individuals in those seats. Sometimes, this happens because it is the path of least resistance. Other times, individuals have crafted unique positions for themselves by…
Take a Look at Traction was originally published in The Firm Review: Talent Edition All businesses get “stuck” or hit the ceiling at one point or another. This process is inevitable and is actually part of the life cycle of every business. As human beings we innately know how to survive our growing pains, but…
Helping others embrace that done differently does not necessarily mean done wrong is one of the most fun parts of my job. The reason many folks have a hard time delegating is that they inevitably know how to get it done better or, they believe no one knows how to do it right. This, of course,…
One of the most consistent things I see with younger and growing business owners is that even when they identify what to give up, they often have a hard time letting things go. Just as a business owner may have a hard time letting go of a task because they know they can do it,…
If you’re like most business owners who have started their business from scratch, or if you have seen a big growth spurt and you’re acknowledging that you can’t do it all, it’s time to learn to delegate. While in startup mode, you likely did everything. (And I mean everything!) You had your hands in the…