by Rick Baker
On Jul 9, 2014
The Thinking Behind The Tweet
1. There are lots of potholes where I drive and I listen to self-help CDs while I am driving.
2. Business Contains Only 3 Things: People, Process, & Situations.
Like roads, some Situations contain potholes.
by Rick Baker
On Jul 7, 2014
Sometimes it seems you just can’t win.
Sometimes, every action seems right and feels right. Yet, when we add all the actions together we do not get a productive result.
That, in a nutshell, is a common small-business problem.
Often, this problem exists because of one or more of the following:
- The small-business Culture is not aligned with personal Values
- The Rules are either not clear or not aligned with personal Values or not enforced
- The overall Goals are either non-existent or ambiguous
- The consequences for performance failure are either not clear or not taken seriously
- Personal accountability takes a back-seat, assuming someone else will do the driving
While sometimes it seems you just can’t win, that's simply wrong-thinking.
The ways to win are clear.
by Rick Baker
On Jun 23, 2014
From time to time, people say to you things like, “I didn't know” or “I didn't know how”. This happens, for example, when people fail to perform up to your expectations and you talk to them after-the-fact. When this sort of situation arises you have options…you have choices.
You can choose to argue with the person about what you believe they do know, about what you believe they ought to know, or about your opinion that they really do know how to do this or that. Or, rather than arguing or debating, you can choose to focus all of your efforts toward solving the problem.
Knowing you'll face this situation many times in the future, you can plan for it and design ways to focus on creating solutions.
That last sentence contains the word "design" because you have the opportunity to plan in advance exactly how you intend to address the situation. You can design he approach you will take.
Rather than attempt to argue with the person, which will simply escalate the problem, you can choose to approach these situations with a solution orientation.
Often, good questions provide the best routes to solutions. With this in mind, when people say to you things like “I didn't know” or “I didn't know how”, ask questions aimed at understanding why they are saying what they are saying.