Calculated Risks to Achieve Results

You cannot manage the future by looking forward. Businesses have to believe that they can manage the future by understanding the past. Most, if not all of our management reports, report the past; financials, sales, and market research. Businesses use this information to anticipate, forecast, and make decisions about future results. Running a small business requires an amount of experience, gut intuition, and a belief that they can do something different; something better.

Businesses will have some ups and some downs. Anyone can feel good about running a business when the company is doing well. It is easier to have a larger vision under these circumstances. The real challenge comes when we acknowledge we want to grow and scale the business and need to implement. It takes courage to act and implement based on the future goals and visions.

This challenge can destroy future goals and visions. It takes discipline, awareness, and ability to implement and take action. It is not easy to take the risks. If it was, everyone would be a business owner. But business owners take risks to achieve results.

Boredom is the Result of Ineffective Processes

There is no question that doing business can be more complicated than ever. But many owners and managers operate in a process vacuum. There's nothing more worthless than a perfunctory executive meeting where everyone just goes through the motions and no strategic decisions are made. Over the years, how often were there times when sheer boredom was the only item accomplished on the agenda?

Every business has their own style and culture, but some patterns of behavior inspire people to perform. Here are five real-world lessons to avoid the process vacuum.

1) Remove the blinders and see where you are. The most important part of a process is articulating the vision; where you are and where you need to be. In an effective business process, managers rise above the paperwork to have clarity of the process and navigate through the activities that lead to a specific result. 

2) Don't lose your sense of humor. There’s a huge difference between serious business decisions with big implications and taking yourself too seriously. People and teams are more effective and make better decisions when the mood is lightened.

3) Hard work is the best inspiration. Objects in motion are more likely to stay in motion. Nothing inspires great work more than working hard, accomplishing goals, achieving milestones, and winning business. Absolutely nothing.

4) Challenge people to excellence.  The best and most successful CEOs expect their people to be the best at what they do. Hold people accountable for their responsibilities, provide necessary resources and training, support decisions, and acknowledge efforts.

5) Measure and track results. Focus on measurable goals to track the impact of your work. Establish a continual process of asking questions so results are relevant and perceptive.

Effective business processes focuses on meeting the needs of the customer and delivering a good or service that will fulfill that need. 

Can Popcorn Improve the Bottom Line?

In business, when something is working or doing what it is supposed to do, we tend not to look at it. When it breaks, we will fix it. There are more pressing issues to focus on that requires our time and attention.

Take the self-service popcorn machine in the corner of the local pub. It’s been doing its job for many years; maybe decades. It makes popcorn. If the light bulb burns out or the stirring mechanism in the pot stops, you fix it. Although it may have seen better days, its working fine.

Let’s think about it as it is part of a business process.  

Outperform the Market with Purpose

I recently had a discussion with a business owner who challenged the necessity of identifying organizational purpose. From their perspective it was simple; to make money to survive. Business was a necessity to survive life, a means to the end and nothing more.

Making money is a result of doing good business. Purpose is why we are doing business. Organizational purpose is more than a goal that is completed and forgotten. It permeates and defines why we do, how we do, and what we do. When our focus – our purpose – is clear, the organization is aligned, engaged, and can thrive.

Science is increasingly validating what people have known about our individual selves: that purpose is a foundational core. Purpose dramatically affects our longevity and well-being, and it creates drive and passion. We change, our priorities and values shift; confidence grows, dissolves into doubt, returns; relationships evolve, form and reform; we have life milestones and events – all forming the complexity of life.  Our individual purpose is not discovered once and then we are done with it. It is reexamined and discovered at various points throughout life.

Organizational purpose is no different. The business changes, shifts, grows, and adapts; forming the complexity of business. Organizational purpose is the ability to have perspective, awareness, and be conscious of the opportunities and challenges and should be reexamined and evaluated at various points as well.

Propel Growth by Aligning Purpose

There is a renewed model of connection and leadership in business. Some folks do this naturally, and the rest of us require a little bit of practice. For those of us that require some practice, build a shared vision, a business PURPOSE that guides and propels progress. The most effective and remembered leaders of our time, and the most successful companies, will be builders of purpose, which inspire the people both inside and outside the organization.

Geoff McDonald, Global Vice President HR for marketing, communications, sustainability and talent at fast-moving consumer goods company Unilever, suggests that businesses with a clear purpose and that align leadership and infrastructure to realize and support that purpose will be able to create sustainability in the longer term.