Next Level Success

Is Leadership A "Soft" Skill?

2012-01-31T11:10:00.001-05:00

Is Leadership A "Soft" Skill?

NO! Strong results are a direct effect of good leadership. An effective leader understands the connection between leadership, performance and people development. She builds a culture that promotes and rewards personal growth.

Lack of leadership commitment to people performance can have an enormous cost. An effective organization has a team of enthusiastic, motivated employees. What if some employees are not motivated and maybe even become demotivated?

Employees in an organization fall into one of four quadrants. Employees in each quadrant impact organizational results.

In his first day, a new hire is motivated but not yet competent. Through orientation this employee moves from quadrant 1 to quadrant 2. He is now a motivated, functioning member of the organization.

Unfortunately, over time many employees move from quadrant 2 to quadrant 3. They are competent but have lost motivation. They go through the motions but make no effort to improve and excel.

The extent of this problem is well documented. “A mere 14 percent of employees around the world are highly engaged in their work. In other words, roughly 85 percent of people at work are giving significantly less of themselves than they could.” From the Towers Perrin Survey of 86,000 employees around the world.

Employees move from quadrant 2 to 3 for numerous reasons, including no connection to the mission of the organization, weak supervision, confusing direction and siloed operations.

When these conditions persist some employees move to quadrant 4. They are demotivated, they lose interest over time, and they become incompetent.

This takes a person far beyond the lack of motivation we saw in quadrant 3. People in quadrant 4 complain in the parking lot with the fatal disease called ………….

Ain’t It Awful Here?

Their negative attitudes poison the organization’s culture and the work of others.

The lower productivity in quadrants 3 and 4 has an enormous cost. If 30% of employees in a 200 person organization with a $8 million payroll are in quadrant 3 and are only 60% productive the cost is $960,000. If we assume a product / service gross margin of 30% the organization must sell $3.2 million to recover the wasted payroll investment.

In addition to productivity costs, employee failure costs include time wasted by managers, the cost of repairing fractured team morale, and replacement hiring costs.

Effective leadership is key to employee and organizational achievement.

Effective leadership builds a results based culture based of enthusiastic, motivated, confident employees committed to achieving the organization’s vision. Employees desire to improve personally and to meet challenging goals. They feel valued and rewarded.

Effective leaders understand a basic truth: no company with unhappy unmotivated employees ever performed well. Ongoing employee development strengthens results and brings competitive advantage in your marketplace.

Thanks to Tom Northup, LMI and author of the book, "Five Hidden Mistakes CEOs Make;How to Unlock the Secrets that Drive Growth and Profitability" endorsed by Marshall Goldsmith author of the New York Times best seller, "What Got You Here Won't Get You There"and Mike Weaver, Achievement Associates, to whom he credits much of this material.

Helping Columbus LEAD for over 40 years.

Michael D. Diercks

mdiercks@lmi-columbus.com

614-823-8150

www.lmi-columbus.com

Success = Attitude + Habits

2011-12-30T14:59:00.002-05:00

SUCCESS requires CHANGE

in ATTITUDE and HABITS

Welcome to 2012! It's a bright new year, full of opportunities and enjoyment for those willing to embrace new ways of doing things.

The greatest bar to success is the inability to change. The old saying "If you only do what you have always done, you will only get what you have always gotten -- only less" is absolutely true.

Just as Dickens' Christmas Carol discusses the past, the present and the future, business leaders need to consider the entire continuum of time -- and decide how much they want success.

THE PAST

Your organization's past may not have been as positive as you wanted it. Many times, organizations fail to understand that they are "over-investing" their energies (as well as their cash) in only HALF of the "KASH BOX".

THE PRESENT

Every day, you have the opportunity to "turn the page" and make SURE that you spend EQUAL time with ATTITUDE and HABITS as well as KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS.

So, how much should YOU INVEST in YOUR ATTITUDE and HABITS? Consider the "TEBOW EFFECT":

"He just wins." "God doesn't win games for him, his attitude and his hard work are what wins."

A positive attitude -- backed up by total diligence and hard work are what have allowed "a guy who shouldn't be in the NFL, let alone be starting quarterback" to have success. Tim Tebow isn't a "miracle," He just believes he can win and works hard at it.

What's the business lesson here?

Tebow has invested EQUALLY in both halves of his KASH BOX. He studies the playbook and he practices his quarterbacking skills, BUT he also developed the habit of focusing on a POSITIVE ATTITUDE and being faithful to his HABITS to win.

____________________________________________________________

THE FUTURE
What About the Future?
Is your business running at it's highest "value"? Not just efficiently or effectively but "valuable"?

HOW CAN YOU TELL if your business is performing at optimal "value"?

Selllability Score

It's Simple -- Always focus on the "sale" of your business.
Whether you think at the end of your run you want to sell your business or transfer it to family or employees or simply sell off the assets, you need to PLAN to build your business so you can SELL it when you want -- for the amount you want.

If you want to reap the rewards that come from balancing the KASH BOX investments YOU'RE making AND develop a business you sell -- you need to contact LMI Columbus.

We have the tools and the processes to help you not only BALANCE the investments you make in YOUR KASH BOX, we can help you get the FUTURE YOU WANT by enhancing the total ROI from them.

2011-12-01T10:52:00.001-05:00

Poor Leadership Skills =

Business Cost, Waste and Even Failure!

Here are three of the most vital areas of business leadership. Displaying adroit and well-planned efforts in all three will virtually guarantee success.

· Lack of leadership in one will cause issues of cost and

continuity

· Mistakes in two will have serious negative consequences

and jeopardize the organization’s long-term viability

· Mismanagement in all three will cause total failure – sooner

rather than later

Unhappiness is EXPENSIVE

Years of studies have shown that the number one reason -- 85% of the total -- BOTH customers and employees leave a company is – “They just didn’t care about me” – because of LEADERS who DON’T appear to care!

Unhappy Employees

Leadership Objective:

Cut Down Turnover

Skilled and experienced employees are vital assets. Not doing a good job of hiring, training and nurturing human assets can be VERY costly, and possibly terminal.

The expense caused by unhappy employees leaving is a CONTROLLABLE COST.

Employee turnover drains your organization of time, money, and talent. It costs employers 30-100% of base salary (depending on skill level and market conditions) to replace experienced employees.

Costs of turnover include:

· Covering the position while it is vacant

· Recruiting, interviewing and training a replacement

A study by the Saratoga Institute -- a leading turnover and retention research organization -- shows enhanced leadership skills can cut the costs of voluntary turnover by up to 1/3.

Unhappy Customers

Leadership Objective:

Retain Customers

According to research published in the Harvard Business Review every 1.3% increase (or decrease) in Customer Satisfaction scores = .5% increase or decrease in revenue.

Better leadership can generate a 3% to 4% improvement in customer satisfaction scores and a corresponding 1.5% increase in revenue growth.

UNPRODUCTIVE WORK HABITS

Leadership Objective –

Increase Productivity

Psychologists have estimated that most employees are using LESS THAN 30% of their true potential. That means they are WASTING around 70% of it on non-productivity activities.

Multiple research studies show that employees who have a POSITIVE attitude can increase productivity by at least 30%.

Happy, WELL-LED and WELL-SUPPORTED employees -- who have the right direction, the right tools and resources and who feel supported in their desire to do good work -- will, in fact, work more efficiently and produce MUCH more.

Want to know what YOUR costs may be?

Based on the research cited above, take a few minutes to discover the impact of turnover, customer satisfaction and employee productivity in your business.

** Calculate your potential turnover loss - multiply your average salary by 50%. Are you ready to pay?

** Calculate your potential customer satisfaction gain – multiply your sales by 1.5%. Do you know how to increase your Customer Satisfaction score by 1%?

** Calculate your productivity improvement – multiply your total employee salary by 10%. Do you know how to find that wasted productivity?

Checklist for Lasting Leadership

2011-06-01T09:02:00.000-04:00

Checklist for Lasting Leadership
by Michael Diercks
Managing Partner, LMI

I have been involved with leadership consulting for years, and have frequently witnessed the frustration of men and women who have been unable to get traction on lofty, conceptual descriptions of "leadership."
After someone has read a book or gone to a seminar on the ever-elusive topic of leadership, they will call or email - sometimes even buttonhole me in person - and ask the question - "What does this mean - especially to me? What do I have to actually DO to become a successful leader?"
My response is always "If you feel that what you are doing isn't working, you have to do something DIFFERENTLY." Over time, I have developed a ten-point checklist of things to do DIFFERENTLY to get different results.

1. Do I have a clear VISION of what I, my team, and my whole organization want to become?

2. Do I have a detailed PLAN - including quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily benchmarks of what I want to achieve?

3. Am I openly and genuinely OPTIMISTIC about my role and the organization?

4. Do I have a clear understanding of my role, how I am viewed by the other people in the organization AND am I willing to listen to criticism, even when I don't want to?

5. Do I VALUE my employees and colleagues as people, taking time to get to know something personal about each of them, rather than as just "workers?"

6. Do I try to catch people doing something RIGHT? Have I offered praise and thanks to SEVERAL of them TODAY?

7. Do I LISTEN fully and completely to others - regardless of the issue - BEFORE speaking?

8. Do I share information PROMPTLY - even if it's not all good news?

9. Do I view conflict and disagreement as OPPORTUNITIES to learn rather than being unpleasant and disagreeable?

10. Do I exhibit INTEGRITY in all aspects of my life? Do I stay the course - no matter how rough or lonely - when I know I am right? Can I be counted on to live up to all my promises?

You might want to print out this list and keep it handy to remind you of what leadership requires.

Do You Possess the Discipline to Lead?

2011-05-03T09:00:00.001-04:00

Do You Possess the Discipline to Lead?
by Michael Diercks
Managing Partner, LMI

Do you FEEL it? Do you have it? It's that single-minded focus that's driven by something seen in your mind, felt in your heart, but not visible to the eye.
Do you have the fortitude to stay the course in spite of adversity? Do you have the determination the sheer will and grit -- required to lead your organization through all types of situations with your eye on the prize -- long-term survival and success?
The bottom line is: Do you have the discipline to lead?

John F. Kennedy wrote, "The life of the artist is, in relation to his work, stern and lonely. He has labored hard, often amid deprivation, to perfect his skill. He has turned aside from quick success in order to strip his vision of everything secondary or cheapening. His working life is marked by intensive application and intense discipline"
An artist sees a masterpiece where others see only a blank piece of canvas. He creates an ordered work of art, a picture that transcends "just drawing." The disciplined leader sees structure when others see only chaos and an untidy bundle of unrelated problems and creates a successful organization.
Unfortunately, the need for truly disciplined leadership is not always clear to others. This lack of vision is even more pronounced in today's business environment. Today, we refer to the "New World Economy" and the "Information Age" as if businesses just "happen" like falling in love does in a Hollywood movie.
We saw the dot com millionaires as high-profile geniuses but what about the dot-com failure? Weren't they all about "right time, right place" then "wrong time, wrong place?" In point of fact, today we live in a world of increased competitive pressures. Pay-at-your-laptop M.B.A. degrees and webinars in and of themselves are NOT going to produce the next great business leaders. Great business leaders are disciplined, but the concept of disciplined leadership is fading away.

That picture has faded because of the worldview of business leadership. Instead, the world sees business leaders such as Lee Iacocca and Bill Gates as if they were Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods. These businessmen are high profile and highly accomplished. We see them on television. We read about them in our local newspapers. They always seem to be in the public eye. That is the world's picture of today's business leader: charismatic and combative, aggressive and arrogant, and powerful and omnipotent. But each and every one of these men has failed they failed whenever they stopped being disciplined.

The real picture of the truly disciplined leader shows continuing and constant courage and consideration, intellect and integrity, and determination and dependability. This style of leadership captures the essence of discipline. You can see it. You can feel it. You know what it is. You know what it is not.

Discipline is a structured system of rules governing conduct or activity, not a quick fix leading to instant fame. Leadership is the directing of activities, not the manipulation of the press. Disciplined leadership is about long-term, endurable success, not quick profit. A disciplined leader uses a structured system of rules to govern the directing of activities. The disciplined leader is not a performer.

Disciplined leadership requires the kind of resolve that results in years, even decades, of continuous success. In the Harvard Business Review, consultant and author Jim Collins calls this disciplined leadership "Level Five Leadership." Philosopher Peter Koestenbaum, writing in Fast Company, calls it "transformational leadership." But they both are talking about the same thing: Long-term, sustainable leadership through personal humility, authenticity, professional competence and will combined with personal and professional integrity.

This long-term, sustainable leadership requires that structured system of rules to govern its behavior. This type of leadership possesses the character described by Collins and Koestenbaum. This type of leadership requires the discipline described by President Kennedy. This is the type of leadership of a disciplined leader.

Do you possess such a structured system of rules that governs your leadership behavior? Do you have the unquestionable character described by Collins and Koestenbaum? Do you have the intense discipline described by President Kennedy?

And do you really have the discipline to lead?

Why Leaders Fail

2011-04-05T09:14:00.001-04:00

Why Leaders Fail

by Michael Diercks
Managing Partner, LMI

FAILURE! It's every leader's greatest fear. Whatever the reason for a career fall, it's considered shameful and causes scarring. Yet, nearly every leader trips as he or she moves along in life. In a study of nearly 200 executives, virtually all had suffered "hardship experiences," from missed promotions or opportunities to firings and business failure.
What causes the problems - why DO leaders fail? The prime reasons --

1. Unable to Get Along Poor interpersonal skills - relationships and communications - was the single largest reason for failure, and the most crucial flaw to recognize and remedy. Leaders can't inspire and keep loyalty with their "underlings" because they aren't good listeners, don't give and take criticism well and view conflict as something bad instead of something that is inevitable that has to be handled to succeed.

2. Failure to Adapt Times change and those who don't change with them fail. Clinging to a once-successful management style long after it stops producing results -- what worked in the 80's and 90's -- is another fatal flaw. Failing to "keep up" has caused scores of leaders to fail and led to organizations restructured, acquired -- or closed companies.

3. The "ME ONLY" Syndrome Every leader wants to recognized and rewarded for his or her efforts. BUT some are too preoccupied with the themselves. Their overriding concerns are much credit they're getting, how much money they're making and how fast they're moving up the corporate ladder. Leaders have to be authentic team players in today's lean environment.

4. Fear of Action Halfhearted leaders may be limited by their inability to put themselves on the line. They be diligent workers with great new ideas, BUT they lack the passion or conviction to sell them to their superiors or workers. Underlying this commitment is fear of failure. Such leaders try to prevent a fall by avoid action, but actually hasten their own demise by doing so.

5. Unable to Rebound Leaders who succeed early in their careers but then are unable to weather a setback aren't that much different than those who reach the top. Both groups are incredibly bright and ambitious and make many sacrifices. BUT those who don't rebound from failure tend to become defensive, trying to conceal their failure or blaming it on others. But the successful leaders admit where they've erred and work to correct the problem.

And The Survey Says...

2011-03-08T10:45:00.001-05:00

And The Survey Says...

by Michael Diercks
Managing Partner, LMI

We just got the results of a major survey of managers and executives conducted in the middle of February this year.

The topic was "What is the greatest challenge ahead of your organization in 2011?"
We believe that ALL businesses will have to find a way to deal with these issues, IF they want to be successful.

The First Issue Respondents mentioned was "We need to execute better!" Better execution was seen as being essential to increased productivity. Many organizations need to increase productivity NOW, gaining a competitive edge from being able to get things done faster and better.

The second issue was " We need to think and act more strategically." Strategic thinking and acting was seen as critical to becoming better goal-setters. Without well thought-out goals, using insights gained from real world thinking coming from solid strategy, many organizations drift, not only losing momentum but also wasting scarce resources.

The third issue was "We need to invest more effort in leading our people." The broad consensus was that executives and managers need to be BETTER LEADERS in order to gain better results. Organizations do NOT just succeed, they must be well led in order to produce superior results. Abdicating responsibility for achieving success to others produces few good results. Organizations need to take the responsibility to train leaders and support their efforts.

The final issue was "We need to get some balance in our lives." Survey respondents voiced the need to be a "total person" with balance in all areas of their lives. The old saying that all work and no play makes Jack (or Jill) a dull person has never been truer. And, survey results make that point clearly.

Take the Leadership Challenge!

2011-01-21T06:57:00.004-05:00

Does your organization have a leadership problem?

The best way to answer this question is to take The Leadership Challenge.
At my organization do I hear ...

"Who dropped the ball?" when mistakes are made
"When is management gonna tell us what's going on?" when uncertainty reigns
"Why do we have to go through all this change?" when change happens
"Why don't they walk their talk?" when leadership disseminate values for all
"When will that department do its job right?" when others don't follow through
"Why don't others pull their own weight?" when there is much to do
"I wish my people were motivated!" when the team is struggling
"When will we get more tools?" when resources are tight
"Who's going to train me?" when the job is difficult
"Why don't we have better systems?" when competitors surpass you in technology
"Why don't they communicate better?" when communication suffers
"When are we going to find better people?" when recruiting

If you even heard just a few of these questions there is a most likely a leadership crisis in your organization. So what?

Every organization is a direct reflection of it's leadership, for better or worse - and leadership is a direct reflection of the CEO / Business Owner. The "So What" is your leadership is in crisis!

What are you reflecting?

The Cry for Change

2010-10-28T17:22:00.005-04:00

What are you doing to change?

“The irony of entrepreneurial leadership is that the very behaviors and habit patterns that lead to success at one stage of growth can contribute to failure in the next stage.”

- Katherine Catlin & Jana Mathews “Leading At The Speed of Growth”

“To go from good to great requires a deep understanding of three intersecting circles translated into a simple ‘Hedgehog Concept.’ Foxes pursue many ends at the same time. Hedgehogs, on the other hand, simplify a complex world into a single organizing idea, a basic concept that unifies and guides everything. Good-to-great companies were all hedgehogs, focusing on one big thing.”

- Jim Collins, Good to Great

The Top 3 Concerns in Today’s Economy

1. Low employee engagement and low productivity 34%
2. Losing top performers 26%
3. Leadership gaps 18%

- Taleo Research

“On average, employees waste 1.44 hours each day on nonproductive activities.”

- Joseph Carroll, Gallup News Service

A study of 3200 companies found a 10% increase in capital expenditures led to only a 3.8% increase in productivity. However, a 10% increase in training and development spending led to an 8.5% increase in productivity.

- Robert Zemsky & Susan Shaman University of Pennsylvania

“A survey of 3000 leaders found that only 4% believed they possessed the necessary mindset or skills to lead the virtual corporations of the 21st century.”

- Economist

“In 5 years, 50% of all executives will retire. The need has never been more urgent to develop key talent and to recognize leadership potential at every level of the organization.”

- Korn Ferry International

"Four out of five companies do not have enough talented leaders to pursue their current or future business opportunities."

- McKinsey

Now if businesses only had a place to turn for help... :)

2010-08-04T15:46:00.001-04:00

Question of the month - what would you do with an extra 30 minutes in your day? Leave early? Get more done at the office? Enjoy a longer lunch?

Life Lessons

2010-06-30T11:53:00.000-04:00

An old Cherokee tale tells of a grandfather teaching a life principle to his grandson. The old Cherokee told his grandson that inside every person is a battle raging between two wolves. One wolf is evil. It's angry, jealous, lazy, unforgiving, unhappy and unhealthy. The other wolf is good. He is filled with love, kindness, self-control, respect, happiness and health.

The little grandson asked "which wolf usually wins?" the grandfather said, "whichever one you feed."

Make sure starting today you feed the right wolf inside of you!

Studies show that 90% of our everyday behavior is based on our habits.
CHANGE YOUR HABITS AND YOU CHANGE YOUR LIFE!

Three Keys to Leadership + Courageous Leadership

2010-04-13T07:43:00.002-04:00

Three Keys to Leadership
by Michael Diercks

Managing Partner, LMI

Leadership is often described as "the ability to influence others." I believe a leader, in order to influence others, needs to demonstrate three key beliefs to be effective in leading their organization, department, team, or even, their family.

The first key to leadership success is your belief in your team. People want someone to believe in them, give them chances to succeed, responsibilities to demonstrate their value and many more things - all seeking to answer this key question - "Do you believe in me?" As a leader, if you demonstrate this through your actions and words, you are on your way to being a great leader with influence.

The second key to leadership success is demonstrating that you can be believed! Not only do people want someone to believe in them, they want someone to believe in. Are you showing yourself to be trustworthy and reliable? Do you have a set of standards that you can be counted on to uphold? Do you

Continue your leadership journey by joining an upcoming LMI Executive Showcase!

demonstrate integrity (do your words and actions integrate)? Are you a person of your word? Essentially, your team wants to know - "Can we trust you?"

Finally, the third key to leadership success is your vision. Do you have a vision that everyone can "see?" Is your vision for your organization, department or team greater than the daily grind? People want to follow leaders who are going someplace. Do you realize you are communicating your vision every time you speak and act? You are either pointing to a clear, bright future where everyone shares in the success or you are presenting a vision that has little or no future - or worse - one without them in it! Fundamentally, your team wants to know the answer to these two questions - "Where are we going?" and "Do I want to go there?"

Whether you are a CEO, department manager, team leader, parent or T-ball coach, your success as a leader and your ability to influence others depend on these three foundational beliefs - belief in your team, their belief in you and your unified belief in the vision.

Ask yourself - Does my team believe?

Courageous Leadership

One of the most neglected and overlooked, but important, qualities of great leaders is being willing to do what is unpopular - courage.

One of the great civil leaders in US history suffered intense and, unfortunately, violent opposition. While he was alive, he may have been considered one of the most unpopular people ever to serve.

Who was this despised and now revered man? Abraham Lincoln - almost unanimously considered one of the top 5 U.S. presidents by scholars.

Lincoln’s viewpoints were radically different from most officials. He, therefore, faced constant opposition. When serving in congress, he stood up against President James K. Polk regarding the Mexican War, saying the war was unjust. This was very poorly received and almost went against the entire congress!

As you recall from your history lessons, Abe lost many elections for political offices before finally being elected president. His presidential election was by one of the lowest popular margins in history. He was regularly mocked and continually attacked by the press. Just before the 1864 election, a newspaper editor in La Crosse, Wis., suggested someone be Brutus and stab Lincoln! Lincoln was, naturally, unpopular with his opposition, the Democrats, but much of his time as president, he was unpopular with members of his own party. Even his cabinet often confronted him.

Yet, because he was willing to do what was unpopular, taking deliberate stands of conscience, enduring public abuse, scorn from friends, even loss of power and prestige, he became the man who "saved the Union" and freed the slaves.

Enhance your leadership "courage" by joining an LMI Executive Showcase!

Consider where our nation (and you!) might be if he had only done what was popular?

This willingness to go against the tide, to do what’s right and make tough calls is not only an important leadership trait for a president, but also for a CEO, entrepreneur, team leader, community or neighborhood leader, or the leader of a family.

We call someone a leader when he or she is willing to do what others are not, even when—and maybe most especially when—the right thing to do might not be what’s popular to do!

Ask yourself - Am I a courageous leader?

Helping Your Employees Change + The Winter Olympics and You!

2010-02-26T12:56:00.001-05:00

Helping Your Employees Change

by Randy Slechta
CEO of Leadership Management International

In today’s dynamic world of constant change, it’s imperative as a manager and a leader that you have the tools and skills necessary to help your employees change behavior as needed. In fact, change management is a critical skill for all managers and leaders in the 21st Century. The question then becomes, “How does a manager/leader change or influence an employee’s behavior?”

The best tool for accomplishing this is feedback. It has been said that feedback is the “breakfast of champions.” This is absolutely true. With feedback, you can have a significant impact on your employee’s behavior and results.

Feedback is an act of recognition of a person, an event, a result, etc. There are two main sources of feedback: a person can provide feedback to themselves, or they can receive it from others. There are three very different feedback scenarios:

1. Positive Feedback – Positive feedback reinforces positive behavior.

2. Negative Feedback – Negative feedback stops negative behavior.

3. No Feedback – People who are unsuccessful in getting any feedback through normal behavior will resort to making mistakes and/or causing trouble to get negative feedback. This is because getting negative feedback is better than having no feedback at all.

Nature abhors a vacuum. The absence of feedback creates a psychological vacuum in a person’s mind. Under this condition, people will act in any way they can to gain feedback, either negative or positive.

Since it is often easier to get attention by doing something bad than it is by doing something good, in the absence of feedback, people will move from doing what they are doing now to doing something differently where feedback is achieved. We can easily see this in children. They will do whatever they need to do to get the attention of a parent, sibling, etc.

Download the rest of the article - Feedback

The Winter Olympics and You!

by Michael Diercks

Leadership Management Institute, Columbus Office

The Winter Olympics are giving us quite a show this year. The thrills, the chills, the agony of defeat, the celebration of victory.

For the next couple of weeks we will be glued to the TV watching skating, bob sledding, skiing and curling -- the pinnacle of winter sports!

As you watch these athletes and teams compete, watch for all the "Slight Edge" performances. What is a "Slight Edge" performance? It is where an athlete finds that one little thing that makes the difference.

Each athlete is looking for that "Slight Edge" in their performance. Speed skaters seek just the right time to pass, bob sledders are trying to navigate the corners to get optimal speed, skiers are riding the edges of their skis to cut their turns just right.

The "Slight Edge" moves them from contender to the podium and from the podium to the gold.

So... what does the Olympics and the "Slight Edge" have to do with business performance? Simple -- learning to apply the "Slight Edge" in your performance can move you into the winner's circle – from very good to outstanding.

What is the "Slight Edge" in performance? It is simple but not easy. Simple in that you need to identify the one or two actions that, when implemented, over time will elevate your performance by a step. That step is one thing that will move you closer to the victor's circle. It doesn't need to be a huge, monumental leap, just a one simple activity.

Let me suggest one thing you can do today to enhance your performance. Write down one thing that prevents you from finishing your to-do list. Here are ones that I hear frequently.

Unproductive meetings
Constant interruptions
Giving directions to someone over and over again
Allowing commitments to slip
Taking on too many assignments
Fighting "fires"

Once written down, make a decision not to allow these performance inhibitors to happen. (This is where the simple isn't easy!) Create a daily habit of replacing these inhibitors with performance enhancers (legal ones) that will move you to the next level. Decide to...

Improve meetings
Manage interruptions
Ensure others understand
Keep commitments
Learn to say "no"
Find the causes of fires and prevent them

Remember performance improvement only happens when personal improvement happens!

If you would like to explore how these performance inhibitors are really impacting your results, please contact us. The LMI transforming process delivers "Slight Edge" advantages to you by creating the personal habits that improve productivity and enhancing performance!

Paul J. Meyer dies at 81 years old

2009-10-27T18:10:00.000-04:00

An excellent article on the founder of LMI, SMI and many other businesses.

Waco entrepreneur, philanthropist Paul J. Meyer dies at 81 years old

Enjoy!

Lessons in Mentoring - PJM

2009-09-03T16:28:00.000-04:00

Tell Me, Show Me, Let Me, Correct Me - Lessons in Mentoring by Paul J. Meyer

My father told me again and again to never take a job unless I was willing to be mentored. He knew that knowledge was not enough. He knew the value of repetition and mentoring in the learning process, and he modeled that for me from my earliest years. His learning system was simple. He would:
·tell me
·show me
·let me
·correct me
My first bike, for instance, was a junkyard rescue. My dad and I picked it up, brought it home, and took it apart. He patiently showed me how to put it back together - how to fix the brakes, build a gear, and put new spokes on the wheel. That hands-on learning taught me a great deal, but just when I felt I had conquered the bike, he made me take it all apart again. My dad understood that repetition was a powerful ingredient in the learning process. I took that bike apart and put it together so many times that I could have done it with my eyes closed! Sure, I was sometimes frustrated, but I learned.
My dad did the right thing: he provided structure and follow-up, making sure I understood the correct way of doing it from the very start, and then allowed me to repeat the process with his "mentoring." He supervised my practicing until he felt I could do it on my own.
Dad did this with everything in life. I remember when I got my first car - I had to have it towed home! I knew nothing about cars, but dad taught me everything. He taught me the difference between the transmission and the master cylinder, the headers and the exhaust pipes. He taught me what made the car work and how it all fit together. Together we took each piece apart and he'd tell me what it was, show me how it worked and was put together, let me try to do it on my own, and then correct me so that we could begin the process again. Finally, when we had finished and I knew how to put every piece back together, he took it completely apart again, smiled, and said, "Put it together, and it's yours!"
It was a challenge, but I did it and learned a lifelong lesson about learning, "Successful people yearn to learn and have a plan for learning." Unless people have a plan for learning and are motivated to do it right, it isn't very likely that they'll hang in there and do it. My dad created a need and a plan for me with that car, and to this day, one of my saddest memories is the day I joined the military and had to sell that car.
In my own companies, I maintain my dad's learning system with one small change. As I got older, I realized the power of positive reinforcement and praise in the coaching/mentor relationship. My dad was a great teacher, but his correction didn't always involve encouragement. So we've modified it a bit:
·tell me
·show me
·let me
·observe me
·praise my progress and/or redirect me
Having a coach or mentor accentuate the positive as you journey through the learning process is vital to success!
I am who I am today largely because of the lessons I learned from my own father. I understand how to learn and activate that knowledge because my dad modeled that for me. As you seek to grow and learn, remember the power of repetition, the importance of follow-up, and the value of coaching and mentoring.
_________________________________________________

About Paul J. Meyer

Paul J. Meyer is a New York Times best-selling author and founder of Leadership Management Institute, Inc. and Success Motivation Institute, Inc. He has mastered the power of spaced repetition, using it to grow his businesses and change the lives of countless people. For more resources, and to order Know Can Do, visit the LMI bookstore.

Keys to personal leadership success

2009-08-21T10:32:00.000-04:00

Personal Leadership is needed - and demanded - now more than ever.

These are random thoughts on the keys to personal leadership success.

1) Recognize EVERYONE is a leader. Whether you wear the title of CEO or bottle washer, you are a leader.
2) True personal leadership has nothing to do with managing others. It has everything to do with influencing others.
3) True personal leadership starts with self and works outward.
4) True personal leadership has a vision for themselves and encourages, supports and engages the vision of everyone else.
5) True personal leadership doesn't wait to be managed.
6) True personal leadership has a humble sense of being. They are comfortable in their own skin and don't depend on others for their identify.
7) True personal leadership is self-accountable. Their standard is beyond doing 'enough', meeting the 'base' requirements or satisfying the 'expected' results. They continually raise the bar of performance on themselves and, by influnce, those around them.

You become a true personal leader by your behaviors and not by your titles.

So - let's all take a little more ownership and become the leader you want to follow!

I need your help - those are my random thoughts on the subject - what can you add to the list? This isn't the complete list.

5 Pillars of High Performance

2009-07-17T10:35:00.000-04:00

1) Crystallized thinking - You must have clarity of direction and goals in business and life to perform at your peak.

2) A dynamic plan of action - getting to your desired future faster requires focused action around defined plans and an accountability system to support it.

3) Possibility attitude - You must always find ways to make it work. Everything is good that happens.

4) Personal, internal motivation - You must become self-driven not reward driven or externally motivated.

5) Dogged determination - Passion and power to overcome any obstacle, barrier or road block, even yourself.

Less than 3% of the population really have built these pillars. They don't happen overnight. You must develop them and constantly improving them or they crumble and fall.

Give me a call and we can discuss how these can become part of your personal leadership fabric.

614.823.8150

Managing Your Time Well

2009-06-24T16:56:00.000-04:00

By Paul J. Meyer
Your success as an effective team leader or team member requires a wide range of skills, but one of the most important is how you manage your time. Knowledge of the work itself, skills in interpersonal relationships, and the development of creative and useful ideas are essential to your success.
It is time management that determines the efficiency and the effectiveness you achieve in each of these important areas. The effectiveness of the activities in each hour of the day - not the number of hours you work - determines the results you and your organization accomplish.
Effective time management can give structure to your day. Several time-management methods have proven effective in all types of organizations and at every level. Use these three important methods to manage your time:
Set priorities based on high-payoff activities. The most successful people are those who carefully identify their priorities and use them as a basis for making decisions, preventing problems, facing and resolving challenges, and planning the day's activities.
Work every day from a written plan based on your priorities and goals. Use a calendar system that works best for you. Make a list of all items of work you must complete during the day to meet a deadline or to prevent some serious consequence. These are your "Imperative" items. Next, write down all of the work you could do today, but could finish any time in the next two or three days without causing serious problems.
These are your "Important" items. Then, within both categories, assign each item a priority. Tackle your high-priority items on your "Imperative" list first. As each item is completed, go to the next. When all "Imperative" items are completed, move to the "Important" items.
Set challenging, but reasonable target dates for every project. Recognize and respect the value of deadlines and target dates. There is a saying that work expands to fill the time available. Without deadlines and target dates, your work may be stretched out over too much time. Deadlines push you to move forward.
Improved time management offers one of the quickest, easiest, and most effective strategies for improving productivity and increasing results.

To learn more about LMI's Proven Personal Management process, check out our Time and Results Workshop.

Delivering Tough Messages in Tough Times

2009-06-17T07:31:00.000-04:00

By Dr. L. Todd Thomas

Communicating change during tough times can be one of the greatest challenges facing leaders today. Change is always uncomfortable—even when it is for the better. But in the current environment, economic uncertainty and the far-reaching implications of the recession give a greater sense of general stress to the organization. Leaders are faced with the need not only to communicate change but to somehow engage their followers at a time when there are few things that can be stated for certain. This is not a feel-good exercise—it is a time to focus on the future.

Communicating change in times like these may be difficult but that doesn’t mean it is impossible. It means that change communication has to become part of a strategic plan. It requires forethought and a commitment on the part of the leader to openly and honestly address concerns and set direction. The following four principles can help leaders navigate the challenges of not only sharing information but engaging employees in the direction of the future.

1. Define the changed condition. Too many times, leaders jump into a “reporting” mode and share a lot of data and information with employees without providing the necessary interpretation. Your employees have access to the same public information you do: they read the same blogs, watch the same television and read the same magazines and newspapers that you do. Simply reporting information only highlights uncertainty. Take the time to consider what the impact of the situation is going to be and provide employees with a way to understand the impact.

2. Know what you are after. It is also important to determine the purpose of your communication. What is it you would like to accomplish with this communication? If you need to address rumors that are circulating in the organization, prepare to do so with some level of proof and understanding as to how those rumors might exist. If you want feedback from employees, consider what the key issues for feedback might be and how the input is going to be used. There is no right or wrong answer here, but it is crucial that you decide on your purpose before you start your communication.

3. Give employees multiple channels for feedback and dialogue. By the nature of being a leader, you have more information and you have it sooner than those who follow you. Some may be comfortable speaking up in a town hall meeting while others need the opportunity for one-on-one discussion. Small group discussions where employees meet together and identify their top two or three concerns can also be an effective feedback mechanism. Again, there is no perfect answer. Providing multiple avenues respects the needs of employees and allows them to choose the channel with which they have the greatest comfort.

4. Establish actions your employees can take. One of the greatest challenges for employees is in knowing what to do as a result of the information they are receiving. Your followers are looking to you for direction. Telling them to “Keep doing what you’re doing” creates a conflicted message because on the one hand you are talking about change and on the other you are saying stay the same. Don’t create busy work but use the unique talents and strengths of your followers to create a change environment. Perhaps you need employees to listen more closely to customer comments, or you want them to form some focus groups to identify the challenges for the future. Employees can only be engaged in moving the organization forward if they are actively invited to do so.

About the Author:

President of IMPACT consulting and Development, LLC (www.ImpactSuccess.com) Dr. L. Todd Thomas is a speaker and coach and author of several books, including The Leadership Integrity Quotient (TM): Establishing Trust as Your Trademark Strength and Stop Wasting Your Time: A System for Creating High-Impact Meetings. Contact: todd@Impactsuccess.com.

Why seminars, training and workshops fail!

2009-05-21T13:10:00.000-04:00

Closing the "Knowing - Doing Gap"

Have you ever tried to learn something new and it just doesn't stick? You send lots of energy on learning new skills and better habits, but you keep falling back into your old way of doing things. Most of us lack effective strategies for retaining and applying all the helpful information we take in (like this blog!).

In his book Know Can Do!, bestselling author Ken Blanchard and Paul J. Meyer, founder of Leadership Management Institute, use the storytelling method to explain why this occurs and how to be a more effective learner.

Know Can Do! chronicles a motivational/leadership author who is frustrated by the "knowing-doing gap" - The chasm between all the great ideas and advice digested from books, seminars and workshops and the actual actions and behaviors we do. All too often, in spite of their most sincere efforts, what people learn just doesn't stick. It's an endless source of frustration for individuals and for organizations as well.

This gap is one of the key reasons the "training budget" gets cut when a business looks to trim expenses.

Seeking a way to close this gap, the author sets out on a journey to find a solution. He soon meets a legendary businessman who teaches him the three reasons people don’t make the leap from knowing to doing:

Too much knowledge—information overload
Too much negativity—an inadequate filtering system
Bad habits—an inadequate learning system

The key to overcoming these roadblocks, the author learns, is spaced repetition. Important information must be repeated over time if it’s going to impact behavior.

People who have mastered learning are free to be creative and make big things happen. In fact, John F. Kennedy once remarked that "leadership and learning are indispensable to each other." This book helps people at all levels develop the mind-set and the skill set to achieve extraordinary results.

Know Can Do will show you how to avoid information overload by learning "less more, not more less." You'll find out how to adjust your brain's filtering system to learn many, many times more than ever before, ignite your creativity and resourcefulness with Green Light Thinking and master what you've learned using spaced repetition.

At last, an answer to the question, "Why don't I do what I know I should do?" Read this book and you will!

PS - Sales pitch - this is what LMI has been doing for 43 years. So you can either try and do it yourself or you can partner with someone who has perfected the process!

Is Your Sales Force Wasting Valuable Time and Effort?

2009-05-15T15:54:00.000-04:00

This is a great article on how to increase sales by increasing productive behaviors.

Is Your Sales Force Wasting Valuable Time and Effort?

By Andris Zoltners , Prabhakant Sinha, and Sally Lorimer

If you want a winning sales force, here are answers to some questions, courtesy of the book Building a Winning Sales Force. Written by Andris A. Zoltners, Prabhakant Sinha, and Sally E. Lorimer, the book offers powerful strategies for driving high sales performance to maximize results.

As the authors observe:

Are important customers getting enough attention? Many salespeople spend too much time with comfortable and secure accounts, while others spend too much time catering to small but demanding client segments. Yet, a company’s most important customers aren’t always its most loyal or most difficult ones. Make sure your sales force is devoting ample, proactive attention to high-potential and high-profit customers.

Are important products getting enough sales effort? When given an option, most salespeople will focus on products they find easy or fun to sell. They’re also influenced by contests or incentives aimed at boosting short-term sales of specific products. As a result, products with strategic importance sometimes get overlooked. Strive to balance your sales force’s time and efforts between established core products and exciting new ones.

Is the sales force engaged in the highest-impact sales activities? Time spent on planning, training, travel, and other activities besides selling should help make salespeople’s time with customers more valuable. When salespeople waste hours sitting in sales meetings, answering internal e-mails, feeding data into awkward CRM systems, checking their sales numbers against incentive payouts, chasing invoices, and crafting sales proposals that could have been adapted from company boilerplate, the company loses money.

Do salespeople have appropriate expectations? Even the best salespeople are likely to misallocate their time if they are unclear about what the company wants them to do and expects them to achieve for each customer, market segment, or product. Clearly communicate priorities and objectives to your sales force and provide salespeople with goals that encourage desired behaviors. Also, measure how salespeople are spending their time and tracking their sales and provide them with ongoing feedback on these metrics.

Do salespeople have the information they need to do their jobs? Sometimes salespeople know what the company wants them to do, but lack the information they need to do it. If salespeople are not sure how to go about identifying good prospects, for example, a mandate like “develop business with new customers” offers no guidance. To keep salespeople informed, invest in developing and maintaining up-to-date customer databases. Provide quick and easy access to detailed product information and arm salespeople with the high-tech tools and the bandwidth to leverage the information they need to do their jobs better.

Do salespeople have the skills and knowledge they need to be successful? When salespeople know what the company wants them to do and have the information they need to do it but continue to avoid important customers or products, they likely lack confidence and specific sales skills—such as how to negotiate effectively or how to close a sale. The remedy for both is targeted sales force training and coaching.

Are salespeople motivated to do what the company wants? Lack of sales force motivation is one of the most notorious wasters of time, sales talent, and potential profits. To get salespeople motivated, tie incentive plan rewards and align the criteria for nonmonetary recognition, like membership in the President’s Club, to the desired sales activities. Another effective motivational strategy is demonstrating to the sales force how a failure to grow business leads to lost market share, insufficient word of mouth among customers, and a decrease in long-term income for salespeople.

Do you have the right salespeople in the job? In some companies, sales resource misallocation is a matter of having people with the wrong capabilities or characteristics in the job. The solution is improving recruitment and retention of top performers. Start by changing your hiring profit to reflect the capabilities and characteristics of your best reps. Evaluate current salespeople and encourage those who lack what it takes to succeed in your sales organization to seek other jobs. Finally, work on changing your sales culture so that salespeople with the right capabilities and characteristics will want to join and stay with your company.

(From Building a Winning Sales Force: Powerful Strategies for Driving High Performance by Andris A. Zoltners, Prabhakant Sinha, and Sally E. Lorimer. Copyright 2009, Andris A. Zoltners, Prabhakant Sinha, and Sally E. lorimer. Published by AMACOM. is published by AMACOM, a division of American Management Association. For more information: www.amanet.org/books)

About the Author:

Andris A. Zoltners is a professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a founder and co-chairman of ZS Associates.

Prabhakant sinha is a founder and co-chairman of ZS Associates where he has consulted on sales effectiveness for more than 200 firms in North America, Europe, and Asia.

And the beat goes (Speeding) on!

2009-05-05T15:09:00.000-04:00

And the beat goes (Speeding) on!

Every single day we get bombarded with messages about how "business has to change!"

There are a TON of "You have to's" like...

You have to do more with less
You have to think outside the box
You have to increase your activity level
You have to outperform the competition

The buzzwords go on and on (and on.) BUT, how do you tap into your resources so you can achieve all the "have to's"?

LMI has the answer!

Three Very Simple Keys to Success

Become Goal-Directed

Goal-driven people focus on the critical few instead of the important many.

The economy can be robust or slow, on fire or dried up, it makes NO DIFFERENCE. Take the "noise" out of the system and be free to say "no" to good intentions and "yes" to great actions.

Goals produce focus.
Focus produces drive.
Drive produces results!

It’s that simple.

Implement an Accountability System

We have to accept the fact that we are responsible for our own economy.

Yeah, yeah – nobody wants to be held accountable - whether it is in business or life. Our natural tendency is to look to the government, our "boss", the consumer, our spouse or even "the devil" for someone to be responsible.

We can't control the market, the government, the consumers or even the "devil". We can, however, control our action, behavior and attitude.

Accountability is the road to higher achievement.
Higher achievement produces higher results.
Higher results give you greater success!

It’s that simple.

Instill a Positive Expectancy

A "can do" committed to success NOW attitude is the motivation to make goals and accountability work.

You get what you expect. Positive expectancy is the spark that ignites the passion and builds commitment.

Positive expectancy creates resolve.
Resolve overcomes daily obstacles and roadblocks.
Overcoming “noise” delivers results.

It’s that simple.

Yep, these three keys ARE simple, but it’s extremely hard to put them into practice. Studies show that only 3% of the population uses these keys all the time.

You probably recognize these individuals. They’re the "lucky" folks. Things go right for them. They don't join "the sky is falling" bandwagon. They have a clear head in the midst of negative messages. They face reality with clarity and purpose.

How do you become part of the 3%?

NOW WE CAN TALK ABOUT THE SIMPLE ANSWER -- combine LMI’s unique process (implemented by 100,000’s of individuals across the world) with your desire to improve. You will develop the three keys to success that will last you a lifetime.

Are you a "3%"?

Join the next LMI Catalyst Club to move your performance to the next level or would you like to become one of the elite! Join the LMI Catalyst Club to begin the journey.

Michael D. Diercks, Regional President, LMI - Serving Columbus for 40 years!
(614)823-8150 - www.lmi-columbus.com - mdiercks@lmi-columbus.com - http://lmi-columbus.blogspot.com

How to Market in a Recession

2009-04-21T10:57:00.000-04:00

By John A. Quelch and Katherine E. Jocz

Recessions change consumer attitudes and consumer behaviors. Sometimes these changes are just transient coping mechanisms that will disappear once the recovery returns. But the current recession may be so long and so deep that the attitudes and behaviors of a large percentage of consumers will change permanently, and in ways that will challenge marketers.

Understand Consumer Behavior
The starting point for any recession-based marketing plan is the consumer. As consumer confidence evaporates, their price sensitivity increases. Even those who can still afford to spend become bolder in asking for deals, empowered by the expectations of lower prices that accompany any economic slowdown. Higher price sensitivity leads consumers to spend more time searching for the best deal and evaluating the price/performance trade-offs among alternative brands. Consumers typically make fewer purchases on impulse and spend more time planning ahead. Those who still have cash on hand may stock up when promotion offers are especially attractive.

Different products and services are more or less vulnerable to changes in consumer behavior. People will still buy essentials such as toothpaste and basic food products, but even here, consumer behaviors may change. The purchaser of organic produce may trade down to nonorganic; the purchaser of frozen vegetables may trade down to canned; the purchaser of a brand like Green Giant may switch to a store brand instead.

Perhaps the most vulnerable categories of consumer goods are durables. Their purchase can be postponed and, in some cases, may have to be postponed if consumer credit is not available. The precipitous decline in auto sales is mirrored in corresponding declines in sales of new kitchen appliances, aggravated by the fall in new home construction. In normal times, many durable goods sales depend on new products with new features accelerating the purchase cycle ahead of consumers’ existing equipment breaking down. In a recession, consumers will hold on to their existing equipment longer. That’s good for repair services, but not for new product sales.

Services can also fall into the categories of essentials and postponables. Instead of that dream Mediterranean cruise, a consumer may have to settle for a seaside rental closer to home. On the other hand, disconnecting your cell phone service is unlikely. Though certain add-on, discretionary features might be cancellable, many consumers have monthly bank or credit card autopayment of their telephone charges, so the effort involved in switching or changing service becomes a barrier to behavior change. Nevertheless, NetZero has recently run an effective campaign advertising the lower cost of dial-up internet versus broadband.

It is essential that companies understand how its core consumers are thinking about the recession. This requires investing in new market research studies, understanding the evolving price elasticity of demand for your brand and your product category, and perhaps even developing a new consumer segmentation typology based on price sensitivity, value orientation and buyer confidence.

B2B marketers need to apply the same discipline to their customers. Some customers will be cash poor and looking for supplier credit and extended terms. Other distributors will be cash rich but will still cry poverty to extract better terms from their suppliers. B2B marketers must appraise the financial viability of their customers and align themselves with those that will survive and, indeed, gain market share during the downturn. Particularly during a long, hard recession, it is inevitable that some customers and distributors will fail. While the good marketer—whether B2C or B2B—should try to hold the customer’s hand to get through the tough times together, he or she must be careful not to ship product and extend terms to customers that are poor risks.

Deliver Value
During a recession, marketers—even those selling luxury merchandise—should emphasize value more than ever:

The typical appliance product line will emphasize stripped-down models with fewer bells and whistles and built-in options.
Products and services will be unbundled to permit cash-strapped customers to pick what they truly need.
Multiple purpose products such as Vaseline Intensive Care or Nivea become more attractive compared to special purpose creams.
Individual package sizes of candy bars or the number of cans in a Pepsi multipack may be downsized to enable the manufacturer (and retailer) to continue to hit attractive retail price points.
Liquor marketers may launch a fighting brand to provide the price sensitive consumer with an attractively priced alternative so the premium brand’s price (and profit margin) does not have to be slashed to maintain category share.

But whatever adjustments companies make to their product portfolios, quality must high. To do otherwise will be to risk eroding brand equity and shareholder value for the long term.

Marketers must also reassess the allocation of their marketing expenditures. In some cases, it will be necessary to shift some portion of the budget from franchise-building brand advertising to short term promotion activity that will move product, on a pay-as-you-go basis, next Monday morning. Consumers clip more coupons, fill out more sweepstakes entries, and go after more deals in a downturn. They are most interested in immediate cash savings at the point-of-sale that require minimal effort to obtain but many are also more willing than ever to fill out the forms to qualify for mail-in rebates.

The traditional media advertising budget is always under pressure in a recession. Like new product research and management training, advertising is vulnerable because expenditures cannot be linked clearly to sales. What companies need to know is that a sustained (rather than stop-go) investment in advertising builds brand equity and shareholder value; that when competitors are cutting back, just maintaining your ad spend will increase your share of voice and therefore your opportunity to capture more market share; and that the cost of capturing an additional share point in a recession is invariably lower than when times are good.

Typically, a recession is unlikely to induce experimentation and adoption of innovation. However, for several reasons, we expect this recession to accelerate the growth of digital marketing. Consumers will be spending more time at home in front of their computers rather than going out on the town. They will be researching best value products using Internet price search engines. Worried about their job security in the face of economic gloom, they will be staying close to friends and building their virtual networks through Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networking sites. The average American spends around 25% of his or her media interaction time on the Internet, yet only 7% of U.S. media advertising is assigned to the Internet. It’s time to close that gap. Those marketers bold enough to build their digital brand presence, encourage user-generated content, and create powerful brand communities during this recession will emerge stronger on the other side.

The messages that marketers send to their consumers may also need a rethink. When times are tough, never use fear appeals and zany humor. Ads that emphasize value combined with the reassurance that comes from using a reliable, trusted brand are more appropriate. Procter & Gamble’s Ivory dishwashing liquid currently allocates a third of its media advertising messages to ads that show how many more dishes it can clean compared to cheaper, lower quality private label look-alikes. A similar side-by-side comparison ad demonstrates Bounty’s superior absorbency compared to private label paper towels. In another category, the “That’s Value. That’s Aleve” campaign stresses that the consumer need take only one pill every twelve hours versus one every two to four hours for Tylenol and Advil.

Consumers may become more hard-nosed about functional benefits and price-performance trade-offs during a recession, but they still need emotional support. Ads that show how using the brand can promote family relationships and friendships are especially appealing. Just as Pepsi built its “new optimism” project around President Obama’s inauguration, Coca-Cola’s new “open happiness” campaign targets consumers longing for comfort and emotional support. And there is always room for a creative and emotionally uplifting ad such as British Airways’ depiction of its new Terminal 5 at Heathrow as a wondrous aquarium.

Control Costs, Seize Opportunities
Tough times call for tough actions. The drive for value delivery provides the perfect excuse for tightening cost controls. Cash is king and marketers must work closely with the finance department to lower their cost structures and to understand the balance sheet as well as the income statement implications of their marketing initiatives. Marginal or unprofitable products in the portfolio should be weeded out to reduce complexity costs. Tough conversations should be initiated with unprofitable customers to see how to reduce the cost to serve them. Marginal distributors should also be cut, along with underperforming suppliers and underperforming staff. New sales promotions should be simply designed so as not to reduce manufacturing efficiency.

Companies should aim to reduce fixed costs through disposing of noncore assets, closing excess capacity, consolidating suppliers and outsourcing so long as quality control is not jeopardized. Some ways to shift fixed costs to variable including transitioning salesperson compensation from salary to commission and shifting media spend from advertising to direct marketing and promotional offers tied to individual products. Companies with the leanest cost structures in their industry can be transparent in their pricing and will stand to gain share over those with frills. For example, Wal-Mart can be expected to outperform Target in a recession, but vice versa when the economy is doing well.

Companies should be wary of overshooting in their cost-cutting. They should take a scalpel to their budgets, not a sledgehammer, cutting the fat but not the muscle. No one knows quite when the economic recovery will begin. When it occurs, the speed of recovery may be dramatic. To the extent that competitive conditions permit, marketers need to retain some slack in their planning process so that they can respond promptly to the uptick in demand when it occurs.

Concluding Thoughts
There are opportunities in a recession:

It provides any company with the opportunity to rebase its cost structure.
It may provide an opportunity to pick up market share at low cost.
It may motivate a useful reassessment of the organization’s business model.

It’s worth remembering that many brilliant commercial ideas have been inspired by the need to find better ways of delivering value to customers during economic downturns. Jack Bogle formed the Vanguard mutual fund group and Charles Schwab set up Schwab & Co. in the face of the recession of the early 1970s. Bill Gates launched Microsoft during the recession of the early 1980s. That’s why the Chinese characters for “crisis” also translate as “opportunity.”

About the Authors:

John A. Quelch is the Lincoln Filene Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is coauthor, with Katherine E. Jocz, of Greater Good: How Good Marketing Makes for Better Democracy, published by Harvard Business Press.

Katherine E. Jocz is a research associate at Harvard Business School. She is coauthor, with John A. Quelch, of Greater Good: How Good Marketing Makes for Better Democracy, published by Harvard Business Press.

Are you ready to exit?

2009-04-08T17:47:00.000-04:00

From our Kent Frese, LMI partner in PA, who specializes in Exit Planning.

http://www.teamlmi.com/Latest/are-you-prepared-to-exit-your-business.html

Do you have a plan to exit your business on your terms? There are three key areas that need to be examined and strengthened: financial, management and legal.

You may want to consider the following from a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers Family Business Survey for 2007/08:

"..While many entrepreneurs happily devote their time and energies to building a business, they pay less attention to what will happen when they are no longer running the show. They find it difficult to address issues like illness, incapacity, retirement and death, and therefore postpone dealing with such problems..."

One-quarter of the family firms in the survey are due to change hands within the next five years.
Half of those companies are expected to remain in the family. Yet almost half of all responding companies have no succession plan, and the percentage is even higher in small firms or those that have been in business for fewer than twenty years.
A surprisingly high percentage of family business owners have also failed to gauge their potential tax exposure, and are unaware of the domestic capital gains tax or inheritance tax liabilities they may have accrued.
Eighty-four percent of the respondents aim to pass their companies on to their descendants.
Two-thirds of family businesses have no defined criteria for choosing which family members who want to take an active role in the company should be allowed to do.
More than half also employ relatives without requiring them to compete for their jobs on the open market.
More than two-thirds of companies in the survey had no procedures in place for dealing with disputes between family members.

To learn more about Exit Planning, contact me or Kent to discover how you can control the process!

HELP - We need leaders!

2009-03-31T17:27:00.000-04:00

Interesting read. They say that Lee Iacocca paid back every bit of the money he borrowed from the government to save Chrysler. Now he's written this book and it looks like a good one.

Remember Lee Iacocca, the man who rescued Chrysler Corporation from its death throes? He's now 82 years old and has a new book, 'Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

Lee Iacocca Says:
'Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder! We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, 'Stay the course.'

Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned, 'Titanic'. I'll give you a sound bite: 'Throw all the bums out!'

You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore.

The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving 'pom-poms' instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of the 'America' my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?

I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have. The Biggest 'C' is Crisis! (Iacocca elaborates on nine C's of leadership, with crisis being the first.) Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged in times of crisis. It's easy to sit there with your feet up on the desk and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids off to war when you've never seen a battlefield yourself. It's another thing to lead when your world comes tumbling down.

On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide us out of the ashes. A hell of a mess, so here's where we stand.

We're immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving.

We're running the biggest deficit in the history of the country. We're losing the manufacturing edge to Asia, while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs.

Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble.

Our borders are like sieves.

The middle class is being squeezed every which way.

These are times that cry out for leadership.

But when you look around, you've got to ask: 'Where have all the leaders gone?' Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, omnipotence, and common sense? I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.

Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo? We've spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.

Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina.

Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm. Everyone's hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn't happen again. Now, that's just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what you're going to do the next time.

Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. Who would have believed that there could ever be a time when 'The Big Three' referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen, and more important, what are we going to do about it? Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debit, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry.

I have news for the gang in Congress. We didn't elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity.

What is everybody so afraid of, that some bonehead on Fox News will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don't you guys show some spine for a change?

Had Enough? Hey, I'm not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I'm trying to light a fire. I'm speaking out because I have hope - I believe in America. In my lifetime, I've had the privilege of living through some of America's greatest moments. I've also experienced some of our worst crises: The 'Great Depression,' 'World War II,' the 'Korean War,' the 'Kennedy Assassination,' the 'Vietnam War,' the 1970's oil crisis, and the struggles of recent years culminating with 9/11.

If I've learned one thing, it's this: 'you don't get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action. Whether it's building a better car or building a better future for our children, we all have a role to play. That's the challenge I'm raising in this book. It's a "Call to Action" for people who, like me, believe in America'. It's not too late, but it's getting pretty close. So let's shake off the crap and go to work. Let's tell 'em all we've had 'enough.'

Make your own contribution by sending this to everyone you know and care about. It's our country, folks, and it's our future. Our future is at stake!!

The Best Investment During a Recession!

2009-03-27T17:52:00.000-04:00

The Top Five Reasons NOT to let the “R” word stand in the way of investing in your organization's development in 2009...

· Reason #5: Since you don’t dare invest money anywhere else right now, you might as well invest it in yourself, your know-how, your self-improvement, and your business.

· Reason #4: You aren’t going to get a “bail-out” from anybody but yourself!

· Reason #3: “All weather is local.” What happens in YOUR business, YOUR finances, and YOUR life has much more to do with how YOU think, what information YOU acquire, who YOU connect with, and what YOU do, than with the goings on in Washington or on Wall St.

· Reason #2: You can’t just ‘wait this out’ and hope everything will soon return to ‘normal.’ An entire New Economy is developing, presenting new challenges and new opportunities, requiring new strategies, which is why we feel it is critical that you start now with a serious analysis and optimization of your ‘process’ so that you can create the future you dream of.

· Reason #1: Only the Best and the Brightest invest in their own development, it’s how they create that ‘slight edge’ difference between them and the next person which when compounded hour by hour and day by day and week by week allows the few to blow the doors off the many. Learn more about the slight edge at http://www.212movie.com/

A miss is as good –or bad -- as a mile!

2009-03-26T13:48:00.001-04:00

A miss is as good –or bad -- as a mile!

In 2004, Smarty Jones was America ’s favorite racehorse. He nearly won horse racing’s Triple Crown, losing by only a length in the third race of the series, the Belmont Stakes.

Consider the facts:

This horse went undefeated in 6 previous major competitions
Combining all three legs of America’s premier horse racing title, he was leading all the way for over 514,800 inches of track
He missed winning the Triple Crown by about 96 inches, or about 2/100ths of one percent of the total.

That tiny percentage of failing to lead, according to some sources, may cost the horse’s owners as much as $100 million in lifetime breeding fees!

It’s the same in business!

Studies show to beat your competition, you don’t have to be twice as good as they are—you just need to be 3% better!

Usually, the measure of whether we are that critical 3% better depends not on your product or service but on how your prospect views your team.

Business Excellence is a direct result of Leadership Excellence. Leadership Excellence is what gives you and your team the "3% edge" in business. The "3% edge" performer knows how to win by not letting the distractions and noise of daily life interfere with reaching their goal.

What’s the Magic 3% answer?

It’s simple -- combine LMI’s unique performance improvement process (implemented by 100,000’s of individuals across the world) with your business expertise. That will give you the magic "3% edge" formula for success.

You might even OVER-achieve! The performance gains of LMI clients are often far greater than that magic 3%, and grow consistently with continued over time. Most other businesses will NOT be gaining – and will lose the race.

As the cartoon to the far left makes clear: A little bit of difference can mean a lot of money, in horse racing or in the real world of your competitive business!

Discover your "Magic3% edge" with LMI!

2009-03-23T07:24:00.001-04:00

Power breakfast with business masterMind group
Sent from my BlackBerry smartphone with SprintSpeed

2009-03-19T08:05:00.001-04:00

Hanging out at the new Dublin Entrepreneurial Center
Sent from my BlackBerry smartphone with SprintSpeed

2009-03-16T11:30:00.001-04:00

Serving those who suffer with arthritis by helping to organize the annual
Classic Auto Show - http://ping.fm/sALms

Michael D. Diercks, Regional President, Leadership Management Institute -
40 years of
leadership in Columbus!

Partnering with Leaders to Increase Results and Enhance Value!

(614)823-8150 - www.lmi-columbus.com -
mdiercks@lmi-columbus.com -
http://ping.fm/21aKy

This information and any attachments may be confidential and/or privileged.
If you are not the intended recipient you may not read, copy, distribute or
use. If you received this in error, please notify the sender email and
delete all copies.

2009-03-16T09:49:00.001-04:00

"Many people are anxious to improve their results, but they're unwilling to improve themselves. They therefore remain bound." - James Allen

Forty Year of Leadership in Columbus

2009-02-27T15:04:00.001-05:00

Columbus, OH, February 27, 2009 -- Leadership Management Institute (LMI) celebrates 40 years of service in Columbus.

LMI is based in Waco, TX and offers leadership development across the world helping leaders and organizations improve performance results.

The LMI Columbus region was established in 1969 by Lou Cummins, who led the organization until 2003 when Michael Diercks become the Managing Partner and Regional President. In addition to Lou and Michael, there have been many key contributors who have made LMI a major player in the Columbus business community over the year.

During those 40 years, LMI has provided leadership training and support to a host of public and private organizations throughout the Central Ohio area, including Attorney General of Ohio, State of Ohio - State Highway Patrol, Children's Hospital, Ernst & Young, Ohio Education Association, Ohio School Board, Commerce National Bank, Hopewell Federal Credit Union, Ohio Savings Bank, Winfree, Ruff & Associates, Ltd., Abbot Labs / Ross Products Division, Best Lighting Products, Inc., Equity Real Estate, T&R Properties, Aetna Building Maintenance, Rescue Rooter, Time Warner Cable, AEP, White Castle, Worthington Industries, Key Blue Prints, Liqui-Box Corp., Stouffer Hotels, Kokosing Construction Co., Highlights for Children, Chesrown Oldsmobile, Speer Industries, Midwest Acoust-a-Fiber, Sharper Impressions Painting, US Tank Alliance, Cartridge World, Midwest Electric, PuroClean, Swan Cleaners, Superior Die Tool & Machine, Sterling Process Engineering, Caspan Software, Columbus Port Authority, Safelite Auto Glass, Daniel Logistics, and Rosati Windows.

LMI stands ready to provide benefits to the leaders of any organization. For further information and to discover how your organization could benefit from Leadership Management Institute, please contact the local LMI office at 614-823-8150 or visit us on the web at www.lmi-columbus.com and discover how the forty years – and continuing – of LMI service can help you and your company improve performance.

2009-02-05T10:08:00.000-05:00

STOP SPENDING MONEY!

Yes, the economy in the tank!

Yes, the banks are holding on to “their” money!

Yes, businesses are going belly up!

Yes, stocks are plunging into the tank!

So – it’s time to stop spending money!

or is it?

Does the copier jam every once in a while?

Are your computers still running old software that should be updated? Does your equipment need some adjustments? How about your fleet of trucks, do they need an oil change?

It would be shortsighted not to fix these problems.

Continually unjamming the copier - time waster and frustration.

Computer software that isn't up to date - invalid data or erroneous reports sent to the IRS!

Not fixing your equipment - major customer problems and financial disaster.

Not servicing your trucks - breakdowns and delays.

Maintenance is simply the cost of doing business following the idea of "you can pay me now or you can pay me later". It is inconceivable that you would run a business without maintaining the assets that make the operation run efficiently.

Yet, when it comes to our people – “our greatest asset” – we treat them like liabilities.

On the one hand, we stop “maintaining” our employees, let alone try to “enhance” our employees. On the other hand, we expect them to …

"Do more with less!" "Be a team player!"

"Adapt to change!" “Just work harder!”

"Get out there and sell more!"

Instinctively, we know that our employees have potential that isn’t being utilized. Somehow, we believe if we say the right words, create enough motivation (“you still have a job, don’t you?”) and assume that everyone will step it up, our problem is solved.

This thinking is kind of like expecting the copy machine to fix itself by run more copies or software to correct the data on its own by blindly using the system. I call this the “hope-a, hope-a, hope-a” leadership style.

Sorry but lectures, motivational speeches, and platitudes are not enough. People need to hone their current skills and develop new skills.

The good news is, some organizations are on top of this incredible need. We've already seen a change in 2009. The right type of training builds trust, loyalty, and confidence—not to mention competence. It assuages fear and worry.

The right training will do two things for a company.

1) Help facilitate change so they can survive and grow in this economy.

2) Position the organization to explode when the economy turns.

Make no mistake; all recessions go away. All sour economies rebound. So the only question is, will you be prepared? You will if you believe …

It's Time To Train!

Michael D. Diercks, Regional President, LMI - Serving Columbus for 40 years!

Partnering with Leaders to Increase Results and Enhance Value!

(614)823-8150 - www.lmi-columbus.com - mdiercks@lmi-columbus.com - http://lmi-columbus.blogspot.com

Succeeding in a Changing World!

2009-01-26T17:05:00.000-05:00

If you are finding the current times challenging and unnerving, this LMI Journal was written for you!

Seven Great Ideas that Will Change Your Life

Each of these articles has specific actionable information that you can use to gain better results in your business. Please take the time to read at least one – and consider reading more than that!

1. The ability to develop and sustain self-motivated people is a critical determining factor of your organization’s success or failure.

· Become Self-Motivated in a Changing World,by Paul J. Meyer, founder of LMI (Click to read)

2. Six “New Year” questions that should be answered by every effective leader at the beginning of each year.

· New Beginnings, by David Byrd, President of LMI (Click to read)

3. Increase your productivity by understanding your communication needs and leveraging equipment to meet those needs.

· Managing Communication in the Office (Click to read)

4. Steps to facilitate good communication and maximize your success as a team.

· Communicating for Results (Click to read)

5. Three key areas to increase team members’ productivity and use more of their potential

· Focusing on How to Grow and Develop (Click to read)

6. The Four P’s: The wants and needs of people can be classified into four types.

· Understanding Human Behavior (Click to read)

7. Unlocking Your Potential and Achieve Greater Results

· Discover the unique LMI process (Click to read)

Now is the time to act – don’t allow the forces of change to swallow you up – you have the ability to make change and lead from the “front.”

The LMI process is truly a Catalyst of Change and Growth.

Discover how!

Michael D. Diercks, Regional President, LMI - Serving Columbus for 40 years!

Partnering with Leaders to Increase Results and Enhance Value!

(614)823-8150 - www.lmi-columbus.com - mdiercks@lmi-columbus.com - http://lmi-columbus.blogspot.com

Top Ten Things for Thriving During and After The Recession

2009-01-13T10:21:00.000-05:00

TOP TEN THINGS FOR THRIVING DURING AND AFTER THE RECESSION

(Based on an article from www.forum.com)

I believe reading this will help you gain focus and make 2009 more than “just another recession year."

The Key to Success –
Doing More than “Just Surviving”
a Recession

The economy is in trouble and senior leaders face difficult choices in controlling expenses and working through the global downturn:

What to do? What to avoid? WHAT???

Should we cut prices to maintain market share?
How deeply can we cut costs?
What about layoffs?
How can I discourage defensive internal politics that protect others’ narrow interests?
How can I lead my company to emerge from the end of the downturn on an upturn?

The Forum Corp. has done research which shows that business leaders who take the following 10 steps in three areas—financials, people, and organizational climate—are better positioned to emerge from the recession with their organizations poised for success.

FINANCIALS

1. Move quickly to reduce costs and control spending by narrowing focus. Winners in a downturn focus on a few critical priorities where they can develop a clear lead, and they walk away from bad business. Losers chase unprofitable sales in an attempt to hold their top line.

2. Refrain from across-the-board cutbacks. Preserve areas that customers value most. Businesses that uniformly cut costs often find that they end up damaging their ability to sell and deliver their products and services. How do you find out what customers value most? Ask them.

3. Consider alternatives to layoffs. Downsizing tends to bolster the bottom line and stock price in the short term but often creates long-term negative repercussions. Alternative strategies include cutting management bonuses, freezing salaries, and reducing compensation options. It’s critical to clearly communicate the rationale and impact to employees.

4. Invest in opportunity. A bad economy can present bargains, both in new assets and in new talent. Good areas to invest in are R&D, marketing, and customer-perceived quality. By contrast, investing in working capital, manufacturing and administration doesn’t pay off as well.

PEOPLE

5. Retain and develop top talent. High-impact workers are often more susceptible to being poached by a competitor in a downturn. Organizations that provide development experiences and rotational assignments have better employee retention rates.

6. Make sure everyone’s on the same page. When alignment on key goals is absent, performance suffers, according to studies on strategy execution. Top leaders frame an agenda and meet with key stakeholders to gain support and build commitment to overarching goals and values. Ineffective leaders let interoffice politics fester and hidden agendas dominate.

7. Encourage questions and new ideas by making it safe for employees to raise them. Leaders who admit they don’t have all the answers and ask for input empower their people to contribute their best ideas.

CLIMATE

8. Manage the heat. Leaders are often tempted in difficult times to relieve the organization’s stress by making unilateral, tough decisions. That’s often a mistake. Leadership by dictate often doesn’t take because it lacks a broad base of support, and it often eliminates constructive conflicts that challenge the status quo and fuel good decision making.

9. Communicate authentically. Strong leaders acknowledge the challenges they struggle with and, by doing so, build trust among followers. Rather than being a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength.

10. Create a positive vision and attitude that acknowledges reality. Businesses at the top of their markets often fall while “sleeper” companies sometimes jump to the top in a tough economy. When leaders exercise discipline and focus by mobilizing employees to respond to customers’ interests and values, they increase the chance that, when the downturn ends, they’ll come out on top.

Applying these lessons promises a tremendous upside: new competitive opportunities that result in a stronger business uncovering when the economy improves.

If you would like to discover how the unique LMI process can help you apply these key points so you are position to grow and thrive in today's market, call us today for a complimentary consultation.

Partnering with Leaders to Increase Results and Enhance Value!

Michael D. Diercks, Regional President, Leadership Management Institute

Serving Columbus for 40 years!

(614)823-8150 - www.lmi-columbus.com - mdiercks@lmi-columbus.com

2008-12-03T08:32:00.000-05:00

As a business leader you have probably responded to the current economic climate by making serious "cuts" within your organization. Maybe you have...

Cut back on the year end party
Trimmed the budget
Tightened controls on spending
Negotiated new terms with vendors
Redoubled your efforts in sales
Shored up client relationships
Reduced staff

Is it enough? Are you running at optimal effectiveness? Is there any more "juice" that can be squeezed?

Even in the trying economic times, most businesses only make superficial changes. What are superficial changes? See the list above. Though these need to be done, all they do is reduce the way we do things, they don’t really change the way we do things!

Every organization and individual is perfectly designed to get the results they are getting. The results you are getting are exactly what you are designed to get. This makes sense if we apply it to equipment. A copy machine will only make copies. You don’t expect it to make bread - it isn’t designed for that. A computer isn’t expected to make coffee. You get the picture.

The good news is we are not machines!! Both business and people are very adaptable and changeable. People can learn new skills and change their behavior, attitude and results! A business can do the same - moving from one business model to the next.

Yet, as capable of change as we are, the axiom – “Every organization and individual is perfectly designed to get the results they are getting” - still rings true. Why? Why do we resist change? Simple put - we are creatures of habit. Or, as David Byrd would say, we get stuck in our comfort zone where nothing ever changes.

How do we drive new results? How do we change our design? How can we break out of our comfort zone? Let me suggest a few of questions that may help you.

Why are you in business? Fundamentally, why does your business exist? This question will help you identify your true meaning for being in business. From this answer you can create vision and focus.
Are the daily activities of your business in line with why you are in business? Your answer will help you become more effective in your work.
Do you have a process to tap into your team’s true potential? Most companies are underutilizing (not necessarily under working) their existing team. Your team has the answers needed to change your design. Do you have a process to draw it out of them?

These answers will lay the foundation for creating the change needed to give you new results, especially in today’s economic climate.

If you would like to enhance your focus, align your daily activities with your business and tap into your hidden potential so you can THRIVE in today's market, give me a call – 614-823-8150 or register for an LMI WEBinar and discover how we can help you thrive in business today -- guaranteed!

Michael D. Diercks, Regional President, Leadership Management Institute
614)823-8150 - www.lmi-columbus.com - mdiercks@lmi-columbus.com

Change is in the air!

2008-11-05T12:43:00.000-05:00

David Byrd, in his book The Tripping Point in Leadership, defines apathy as “A natural, human instinct, common to us all, that consistently encourages us to seek a comfort zone in which nothing ever changes.”

The current economic climate requires us to address this problem every day.

This crisis is causing businesses to make significant changes and we must all go through the various stages of change. Right now you might be experiencing the Panic/Anger stage. This is where everyone thinks the world is coming to an end and all businesses will go bankrupt. When we go through this stage, we become paralyzed, not knowing what to do or how to respond to the change. This stage is very intense and can be very frightening. The good news is that it is usually over relatively quickly. I believe we are only a few short days away from moving on to the next stage.

The next stage is Acceptance/Understanding. This is where we accept the change and begin to understand the implications. We become more comfortable with the change and everything it means. Fear and panic subsides. Things are certainly not a bed of roses, but neither is the world coming to an end. We get back to work and stop focusing on the problem and start looking for solutions.

This stage (according to the book Strategic Selling) creates 4 different responses – Overconfidence, Even Keel, Growth, and Trouble – in the marketplace.

The current economic crisis moves us from Overconfidence and Even Keel responses to the Growth and Trouble responses quickly. Now is the time to start focusing on the Growth response. In the past, you might have been too busy or not ready or, possibly, not seen a need to do things differently. Now, more than ever, you need to find some answers to help you improve the performance of your people, change effectively and improve the results of your organization.

You have a choice to make -

Do you believe you have all the answers (Overconfident)?
Do you think things will return "back to the way they used to be" (Even Keel)?
Do you recognize the need to change because change is happening in the market (Growth)?
Do you feel like you are serious trouble because you don't see a way to recover (Trouble)?

If you have selected the first two options, best of success to you. If you are feeling more like the third or fourth option, I would love to hear from you.

The difference between good and great organizations is their willingness to face the brutal facts and make the necessary changes to succeed. Are you a good or great organization?

“The greatest enemy to ‘excellence’ and ‘greatness’ is ‘fine’ and ‘good’!”

2008-11-03T10:40:00.001-05:00

It's an Ideal Market!

Everyone is talking about the downturn in the economy, the impact of the new president, various bailout programs, the loss of jobs, etc.

I would ask that you just simply reconsider the times we live in. This is a great time to step up and move forward in the market place. If we take a moment to learn from our history, we can quickly learn that the US market is very resilient and robust.

During downturns, many businesses not only survived but thrived.They capitalized on the situation rather than ran from it. They looked forward instead of putting their head in the sand and said "I wish, I wish, I wish this would all go away".

How did they do it? There were common traits they all displayed:

They acted out of courage instead of fear. They took positive steps instead of waiting to see.
They had vision. They saw beyond the crevice and up the rising mountain. They didn't allow their judgment to be clouded with all the naysayers and doomsayers.
They had focus. Their mission was clear and they didn't deviate from the mission. Their actions were laser focused. Instead of getting pulled off course, they reaffirmed their path and leaned into it with more determination.
They had a plan and stuck to it. Instead of getting pulled off course, they doubled their efforts and stayed the course.

So now we must answer these questions.

Do others see me acting out of fear or courage?
Have I embraced a crystal clear vision of the future and is my team rallying around it?
What is the focus of my organization and have we reaffirmed it today?
Do we have a plan and have we doubled our efforts?

The choice is ours - grow or decline! If we refuse to choose, the market will! It's up to you.

2008-09-05T15:59:00.000-04:00

The Total Leader™

"Building Leaders for the 21st Century!"

Have you ever tried to play golf with a putter, badminton racquet and a basketball? Or maybe tried to build something with just a hammer, wheel and string? You might have fun and even create something unique, yet the probability of winning the game or building something that will last is slim to none.

Yet today too many leaders attempt to develop themselves and their team with a fragmented, piecemeal, hit and miss approach to development.

They attend a leadership conference, a workshop and maybe read the latest business leadership book. Maybe they send their team to hear a motivational speaker or take an online class on delegation. They focus on one area, or one attribute, or one facet of leadership believing that is all they need. Leadership is much more complex than that.

The Total Leader™ Concept is based on two vital principles:

The first principle is that for organizations to succeed in the 21st century, they must develop leaders throughout the total organization
The second principle is that for leadership development to be effective, it must utilize a complete, integrated, total leadership development process

The Total Leader™ Concept creates a framework for someone to develop into a total leader in their business and life.

There are four pieces to the puzzle of the Total Leader™. Half the pieces develops the organizational leader and the other half develops the personal leader. Each half develops both the head and heart.

The head of leadership requires the continual development of Performance, Productivity and Priorities of the individual and the organization.

The heart of leadership focuses on the development of Purpose, Passion and Power.

When combined together, this puzzle of the Total Leader™ becomes a powerful, thorough, comprehensive leadership development model. It literally transforms you into Total Leader™!

It is time to stop stepping up to the first tee of an important golf tournament and trying to win with a putter, badminton racquet and basketball. The time has come for a new paradigm. A new process for developing the Total Leader.

The upcoming LMI Catalyst Club (September 24) begins your journey to developing into the Total Leader™. Contact us today to start your journey!

To learn more about the Total Leader™ Concept, visit our website – Total Leader™.

Michael D. Diercks
Regional President, Leadership Management Institute
Building Total Leaders for the 21^stCentury
(614)823-8150 - www.lmi-columbus.com - mdiercks@lmi-columbus.com