What Do You Value

Happy Thursday All,

If you sat down and listed the top 5 most important things you need to be doing each week in your job, what would they be?  Would your boss, internal customer, or external customer agree with your top 5?

What about your time commitment?  Does that agree with your top 5 most important things?  Each week, we all have the same amount of time, it's how we use it that creates value for our boss and/or internal or external customer.  If I believe one of my top 5 is to make sure we are producing and shipping product on the date we have promised the customer, and I spend 2 minutes per day looking at a work in process and working on hitting dates, and we are not hitting dates...well, that doesn't show my time commitment is in agreement with my priorities.

I want to challenge each of you to work ON your business instead of IN your business for one hour next week.  

• Get to a quiet place.
• List 20 things you think are important that you do on your job.
• Narrow it down to what you, your customer and/or boss would say your top 5 are.
• Do a brutally honest evaluation of what you have been spending your time and attention on.
• Make adjustments on your calendar for next week to make sure your focused time commitment is in agreement with your top 5.

If you keep a time log, you will see what you value.  What are you spending your time on?

Have a great Thursday,

Chris

Leader vs. Non-Leader

Happy Thursday,

John Maxwell says, "True leadership must be for the benefit of the followers, not to enrich the leader."  Are you a leader?  Do you do things to benefit the followers?  Or are you out for the benefit of only yourself?

Here are some points to ponder and to help you understand where you are on the Leader vs. Non-Leader scale.

• A leader - gives credit to others.  Compared to - taking credit and complaining about lack of good people.
• A leader - has MBWA (manages by wandering around).  As opposed to - not having MBWA.
• A leader - is honest under pressure.  Versus - improvising and not giving straight answers.
• A leader - good listener.  Non-leader - good talker.
• A leader - Admits own mistakes and comforts others when they admit them.  In contrast - never makes mistakes, blames others, and starts witch-hunts to identify culprits.
• A leader - is tough and confronts nasty problems.  On the other side - is elusive and is the artful dodger.
• A leader - prefers eyeball to eyeball instead of e-mails.  Non-leader - hides behind e-mails.
• A leader - delegates entire important jobs.  A micro manager - keeps all final decisions.
• A leader - is available.  Opposite - hard to reach from below.

Be brutally honest with yourself and look at which side you are on.  It is never too late to start making changes to your thinking or leadership style.  Take some of these thoughts and debate with your colleagues.  Find a book, possibly in the PAi Library, that will help you with a better understanding of a certain topic.  Or just stop and think about it, what makes you do what you do?  

Remember, it's OK to change your thinking.  It's OK to tell others your past leadership style is not your new leadership style.  Or heck, go out on a limb and declare all this BS above hogwash....now that could create some great conversation and help make us all think just a little different.

Enjoy your Thursday,

Chris

Decision Making

Happy Thursday All,

As a leader, are you prepared to make the hard decisions?  Can you make good decisions or does it feel you are making bad decisions?  What is it about making decisions that people struggle with?  Many times people don't make a decision because they are afraid of the outcome.  Making the decision should really be the easy part, gathering the correct information to make the decision is the difficult part. 

Here is a few points to ponder as you make those difficult decisions as a leader.

Do I have a clear, quality perspective?  Ask why over and over.  Dig into and get as much information from other people, my team, my mentor, etc.

What am I afraid of?  Where is my fear?  What is causing me to worry?  What is causing me concern? 

What options need to be removed?  Things like, "I'm not willing to make this decision if this happens.  I'm not willing to make the decision if that happens."  

What is the impact?  How is this going to impact my team?  Is this going to impact revenues?  Is this going to have a negative effect?  

Is this long term, short term, or a permanent decision?  Can the decision be changed if it's wrong?

What would happen if we don't make a decision?  Is not making a decision, a decision?

What is the worst thing that could happen?

How do I feel about the decision?  What is your gut telling you?  If you have asked all of the above questions and you still feel weird in your stomach about making the decision, then pull back.

As a leader, you have to make decisions.  I make a lot of bone head decisions and typically it is because I haven't gathered all the correct information.  As with all other Thursday Think Tanks, I write on this topic as I try to improve my own ability in this area.  I want to spark the conversation because that will help us all gather more information so that we can make better decisions about the topic at hand. 

Don't be paralyzed in decision making.  If you do your research and gather the correct information and ask the questions above, just make the decision.  

Have a great Thursday,

Chris

Outstanding Customer Service

Happy Thursday,

This week I want you to think about who your customer is.  Many of us reading this don't have direct relations with Paramount's customer...for example Nike.  Our customer might be internal...for example another department.  Think about it, who is your customer?  We all have a customer, and quite possibly both internal and external.

Now, the real thing is, how do you create outstanding customer service?  We are in a "YES" economy.  Are we empowered to say yes to our customers?  Have we empowered our people to say yes to our customers?  We should be able to say yes without giving away the farm. 

So how do we do this?  Customer service is all about communication.  Do you really know what your customer wants?  Do you build a relationships with your customer?  Do you build an emotional connection?

How about putting yourself in their shoes.  Ask yourself, what would I like to happen if I was on the other side?  Don't you want outstanding customer service when you are the customer?

One last thought on this.  Do you go beyond and beyond and beyond and when you are done, go beyond again?  That would be giving outstanding customer service.

Go out and make your customers day!!!!

Chris