If you want to ensure your business is solid from top to bottom and from bottom to top, consider building a solid 3-layer pyramid:

The first layer to build is: Solving Problems. There are 3 major considerations:

1. People: you and your people must have the right attitude and the right strengths...analytical, creative, experiential, etc
2. Process: you and your people must have access to good problem-solving systems and tools...as one example, P=2S+O 
3. Situations: you and your people must be able to not just analyse but also anticipate situations 

Thought Tweet #564 Seeing the forest and understanding the workings of the veins in the trees' leaves: that's genius at work in business.

The Thinking Behind The Tweet

Many people possess skills for understanding and doing the technical details of business.

Some people are visionaries...they accurately see the big-picture of their business.

Few people, perhaps less than 1% of people, possess the ability to do both.

Here's a link to the first 14 CHANGING FOR THE BETTER Thought Posts.

And here are links to other articles about Change: Making Change, You Want to Make Some Changes at Your Business, Change is Only Constructive When People are Comfortable, What Does Change Mean To You?, and Change or Die.

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I write a lot about change. And, I read a lot about change. I do these things because when it comes to business change is pervasive, underestimated, ignored, and mishandled. And, those are just some of my mistakes.

Change is a topic worthy of life-long learning. Change affects every aspect of our lives. It is very personal, yet it defies being contained so it spreads from person to person and it affects one and all...in different ways.

A solid understanding of change, how it affects self, and how it affects others is an essential piece of leadership knowledge.

Without a good understanding of these aspects of change a leader is not and never will be much of a leader.

So, I study change. I select wisdom from various authors, scientists, leaders, and heroes and I do my best to understand that wisdom and use pieces of it to improve my understanding of change, how it affects me, how it affects the people I work with, and how it affects the people I serve.

Here is an excellent sample of such wisdom, an excerpt from John C. Maxwell's 'The 5 Levels of Leadership', (2011).

"Change in an organization is always a leadership issue. It takes a leader to create positive change. And the best way to start working as a change agent is the same as when trying to build a relationship. You need to find common ground. Any leader who wants to make changes is tempted to point out differences and try to convince others why change is needed. But that rarely works. Instead, focus on the similarities and build upon those. To get started, look for common ground. In the following areas:

• Vision: when the vision is similar, you can bet that the people are standing together and they have the same view. If their vision is similar to yours, you all see it clearly, and everyone has a strong desire to see it come to fruition, you can probably work well together.

• Values: It's difficult to travel with other very long if your values don’t align. Find out what others stand for and try to meet where you share the same standards.

• Relationships: Great teams have people who are as committed to one another as they are to the vision. If you've done the work on level 2, you should already share common ground in this area.

• Attitude: If you are going to get people to work together for positive change, their attitudes need to be positive and tenacious. If they're not, there will be trouble ahead.

• Communication: For change to occur, communication must be open, honest and ongoing. When people are in the dark they start to speculate about what’s happening. And their assumptions are often wrong. Inform people so that everyone is on the same page."