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How Many Chips?
by Mike Wagner & Steve Vaught
 The new CEO was seated at his desk; fully concen-trating on the task at hand. Working on the computer with his back to the office door, he thought he felt a presence behind him.
Slowly turning to confirm, or assuage, that "being watched" feeling, he was startled to see his executive assistant staring at him from the chair in front of this desk.
With his heart pounding and just a bit of an edge to his voice he asked, "How long have you been sitting there?"...Read complete article >
Leadership Challenge:
How are decisions made in your organization?
As a leader, you are constantly asked to make decisions that impact the future of your business - and so are your employees. The decisions they make effect how customers experience your organization, whether they'll buy from you again, and what they tell others what it's like to work with you.
Therefore, it is imperative you are teaching your organization to make better decisions - decisions that are in alignment with the company vision. But first you must understand your decision-making process:
- Recall a major decision you made for your organization in the last week/month.
- In making that decision, what type of customer were you serving? Use as many descriptive words as possible to profile that customer.
- In making that decision, what type of customer experience were you promising to deliver? Boil that promise down to its essence - 3 to 5 words only.
Understanding the type of customer you serve and the experience you promise them enables you to better explain to everyone in your organization how to make decisions. Developing decision-making guidelines will propel your organization to achieving its vision.
Ask the Rabbit
Q: Why do others need to make decisions? I'm the owner of the company, shouldn't I be making all the decisions?
A: Yes, by all means. Keep making all the decisions for your company if...
- You never want your company to grow past its current size.
- You want "zombies" working for you that need to be told what to do.
- You never want to leave town, or even the office, for fear of nothing getting done if you're not there.
- You want to work 70+ hours per week making decisions for everyone else in addition to your own work.
- You want to discover your company is only worth a fraction of what you thought it was if you're not there to make all the decisions.
You get the picture. Creating a decision-making framework based on your Sweet-Spot Customer and the promises to that customer allows everyone to make good business decisions.
Stop being the bottleneck that is restricting your company's growth. Enable your employees to make decisions even when you're not there. |
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Join us online for the next installment in our series of no-cost seminars on February 11.
This month's topic, "Decision Making", discusses how all your leaders can make good decisions when focused on the same organizational vision.
Details & Registration >
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2/3: MetaBank
2/4: Keystone Labs
2/11: White Rabbit Live
"Decision Making"
2/12: Saxton, Inc.
2/15: Latham Hi-Tech Seeds
2/16: Co-Line Manufacturing
2/17 & 18: Woodward Communications (Galena, IL)
2/19: Saxton, Inc.
2/23: Latham Hi-Tech Seeds
2/26: EntreFest!
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What's a Zombie Cost These Days?
by Mike Wagner
 In this blog post from 2006, Mike recounts an example of an employee "going zombie" at their job.
Without the communicated vision of the organization to guide her decision making, she did was was best/easiest for her.
Read how the lack of a decisioning framework can result in no decisions, or worse yet, poor decisions that will cost you business.
Find out more >
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