The assumption is that your communication of strategy, tactics, goals, and behaviors through the organization actually works the way you intend.  Yes, you’re the CEO.  Yes, you do communicate with your team – perhaps even very often.  But note well that there is a difference between “telling” and “effectively communicating,” in a manner designed to create and reinforce desired behaviors and results.

During a recent coaching session with the CEO and General Manager of a successful office furniture distributor, both of them were shocked to learn that they were out of alignment on the most fundamental goal for the business.  The CEO’s top priority for the GM: create profitable growth.   The GM, however, believed that her top priority was to protect the CEO’s investment.  More background: The CEO and GM have worked together for years and are also friends away from the office.

Neither could fathom how it was possible – after all they worked together for years and were also friends – to be out of alignment in such a fundamental way.  Yet they were.

Now think about your leadership team and front-line staff, and consider the probability that you’re just not all as in synch as you should be.  My own experience with numerous clients and plenty of independent, credible research suggests that it’s not just highly likely – it’s predictable.

Lack of alignment is predictable when 1 or more of the following 3 conditions – invisible obstacles to profitable growth – exist in your business:

Unclear Vision, Strategy, and Metrics to Measure Progress

The Problem:
If you haven’t clarified your vision (“where” the business is headed) and your strategy (“how” you are going to approach your chosen markets to make the vision a reality), you can’t communicate a sense of direction and guidelines to help your people make decisions in their day-to-day work.  What’s more, the absence of simple, clear metrics to indicate progress reduces accountability and further increases confusion regarding what’s most important.  The acid test: pick 4 people at random in your company and ask them to tell you your vision, your strategy, and the KPIs that are most critical to the business achieving its objectives this year.  At least 3 of them should answer all three elements accurately.

How it Feels:
Like the business is adrift and that you’re constantly reacting to external events.

The Fix:
Gather your senior team and invest the time and energy to create a clear vision and strategy for your business.  A qualified coach or external facilitator with a proven process for this will dramatically improve the quality of your dialogue and the outcome, which must be actionable for it to have value.  Once the strategy is clear, create Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure critical numbers for both people and process, which must always remain in balance.

Ineffective Communication

The Problem:
In their book “Made to Stick,” Chip and Dan Heath highlight The Curse of Knowledge as a key contributor to ineffective communication.  The research behind this demonstrates that you routinely communicate from your own frame of reference (i.e. CEO or Business Owner with complete access to all results and records of the business plus your own thoughts about the future).  The Curse of Knowledge causes you to communicate in ways that make it difficult for your team to understand and internalize.  It’s like the Gary Larson cartoon with a man talking to his dog and all the dog hears is “Blah, blah, blah, Fido.  Blah, blah, blah Fido.”  The details are lost in translation!

How it Feels:
You wonder why your front line staff don’t say and do the things that you would say and do if you were in their jobs yourself and why they don’t “get it.”

The Fix:
Be sure that your communications are translated in a way that everyone in the organization – from top to bottom – can clearly understand and act upon them.  Humans are fantastic at pattern recognition – so think about explaining strategies and plans in familiar terms; for example “your tic-tac-toe” strategy” or “this quarter’s Jeopardy theme to ensure that we ask our customers 3 questions on every call.”  You should spend at least as much time figuring out how to translate your strategies and initiatives as you do creating them to ensure understanding and to permanently overcome the Curse of Knowledge.

Lack of Regular Communication Rhythms

The Problem:
Repetition is the mother of all learning.  It’s how you learned your multiplication tables, how to ride a bike, how to eat, and virtually every other behavior and piece of knowledge you’ve mastered.  Unless you have regular communication rhythms – daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual – established as habitual practices, you are limiting repetition learning, information flow, and “think” time for your senior team.  In full swing, for example, a daily huddle discipline can completely align an organization with hundreds of staff in the span of 30 minutes – with most of the staff attending a single 6-7 minute meeting.

How it Feels:
Like you are disconnected from your front line staff and customer touch points or like the organization isn’t as “tight” as it used to be when it was smaller.

The Fix:
Implement daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual meeting rhythms in your business.  Daily huddles are to synch work units and to create daily top-to-bottom alignment and information flow.  Weekly meetings are for your extended management team to focus on monthly objectives, obstacles, and problem solving.  Monthly meetings are for senior management to focus on quarterly objectives, obstacles, problem solving, team development / learning, and the evolution of your plan.  Quarterly meetings are for executive management to focus on strategy, annual objectives, longer-term goals, team development / learning, and the evolution of your plan.

If any one of these three conditions exist in your business, it is predictable that you have a lack of alignment – which means that your organization is falling victim to an invisible drag on performance and growth.

Clint Eastwood as Cool Hand Luke said “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”  Overcoming your assumptions and naming the right problem is always about 50% of any solution.  The other 50% lies in your ability to implement The Fix – processes and disciplines – required to create a permanent remedy.

Mark Green is a business growth expert who works with companies to help them implement a proven, easy-to-use framework to run and grow the business faster and more profitably, while expending less effort and less time. To learn more about Mark or his firm, visit his website or contact him directly at (888) 720-7337 or Mark.Green@Performance-Dynamics.net.

If you’re the smartest person in the room you’re a genius.  If you surround yourself with the smartest people in the room and continually strive to help them get even smarter, you’re a genius maker.

According to Liz Wiseman, author of “Multipliers – How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter,” Multipliers are genius makers who bring out intelligence in others and build collective, viral intelligence in organizations. Diminishers, on the other hand, are geniuses.  Absorbed in their own intelligence, they stifle others and deplete the organization of crucial intelligence and capability. 

Diminishers are usually unaware of their behavior and its consequences.  According to Wiseman’s research, Multipliers get TWICE the capability from their people as Diminishers.  That’s like doubling your staff without increasing overhead!  So there is a massive drag on productivity and engagement that Diminishers pay for their actions.

Unfortunately, statistically speaking, most of us are unintentional Diminishers.  This means that you and your management team likely exhibit diminishing behaviors, whether you realize it or not.  This is the first reason that your business is going to underperform in 2011:

1. You and Your Management Team Exhibit Diminishing Behaviors

To overcome this massive drag on productivity, first make sure that your management team is aware of Wiseman’s research and of the consequences of diminishing behavior.  Read the book and discuss it as a team, take the author’s Accidental Diminisher Quiz to better understand your own diminishing tendencies, and begin to call out Genius (diminishing) behaviors you observe in one another.

Here are the other reasons why I believe that your business will underperform next year:

2. You Believe What You Hear

What you believe impacts the results you achieve.  If you pay too much attention to “conventional wisdom,” including media coverage of the economy, your beliefs and expectations from your business will diminish which, in turn, yields underperformance.  I’d be a crazy wealthy man if I had a dime for every time I hear “the economy” excuse from CEOs and Managing Partners to justify their lackluster results.

You, in turn, hear and accept excuses from your team that help them justify your own and their own failures and shortcomings.  “We couldn’t have won this deal anyway based on the competition’s price” – EXCUSE.  “It’s impossible to get the bank to extend our line of credit – nobody’s lending” – EXCUSE.  “We’re glad we stayed flat this year given the economic conditions” – EXCUSE.  Sound familiar?

To overcome beliefs in conventional wisdom and institutional excuse making, first change your surroundings. Because you are a product of those around you and of what you are repetitively exposed to, it might be time to find friends and colleagues who share a more positive “can do” outlook.  A little distance from negative people and excuse makers will go a long way to inoculate you from picking up the bug.  You might also consider doing something I did several years ago – stop consuming general media, which is predominantly negative (good news, after all, doesn’t sell!) and of little practical use to any of us.  Finally, begin to recognize excuse making in yourself and in others – and call it out.

3. You Are Not Actively Combating Commoditization

I heard author and consultant Bob Bloom speak this week at the Gazelles Fortune Growth Summit.  He mentioned that Procter & Gamble is going to begin selling their products – like Tide, Charmin and Head & Shoulders – directly to consumers via the internet.  Memo to grocery distributors and stores: UH OH!

This case of disintermediation is a symptom that illustrates how technology and the increased amount of information available to buyers is speeding commoditization in virtually every industry and profession.  For example, if I need to hire an attorney to review a contract, I believe that there are probably 100 within a 10 mile radius of my office who have the capability to do a good job for me.  Since they all seem the same, all I’m left with is price to determine who I will hire.  This pattern is happening in your industry right now, whether you realize it or not and it is already impacting your ability to generate the results you want.

It is imperative that you actively and doggedly combat commoditization – unless, of course, selling a commodity is part of your business strategy.  Start by defining your ideal and minimally acceptable clients to find a niche where you can provide uncommon amounts of value.  The days of trying to be “all things to all people” – a path littered with razor thin margins and shuttered businesses – are long gone.  Once you have clarity on your niche, stop talking about value added and start finding ways to beat your clients and prospects over the head with a value club – they have to see it clearly and it has to be relevant to them (not to you!).

4. You Lack Discipline and a Plan of Action

As your organization grows more complex, it becomes increasingly difficult to put knowledge and understanding into practice.  It’s not about “what” to do (in most cases you and your senior team know this) – it’s about “how” to get it done through the work of others. Many talk about this; few actually pull it off – because they don’t know how to neutralize the complexity that inevitably creeps into a growing business. An inability to create and stick to a plan of action and instill discipline, habits, and alignment that are conducive to producing predictable results condemns many organizations to mediocrity.

There are four critical decisions that must be evaluated and monitored in every business. They are:

Strategy – How are we going to generate revenue, for what, from whom?

Cash – How are we going to accelerate cash flow in the business?

People – How are we going to attract, develop, and retain “A” players?

Execution – How will we align the organization, create accountability, and manage the flow of information to ensure we stay on track?

Make time to plan for your business and implement a process to continually evaluate these four critical decisions.

5. You Are Underinvesting in Your Leadership Development and Growth

I have yet to encounter an organization where the growth rate of the business exceeds the personal growth rate of the senior team. You and your senior team must grow for your business to grow.  Failing to acknowledge and act on this leads to insular thinking, less innovation, an inability to react to competitive and environmental threats, and an organization that spends most of its time living in the past at the expense of the future. All strengths and weaknesses in your organization can be traced directly back to the leadership team and your levels of trust, competence, discipline, alignment, and respect – each of which requires continual care, planning, and development.

Consider:

What are you reading?  What industry and general business conferences do you attend?  Name 3 business growth / leadership speakers you’ve heard in the last 12 months. When was the last time you paid someone for business advice?

Set goals, a budget, and time for this! Most high performing growth firms work with a coach who serves as a catalyst to generate leadership growth. You must grow for your business to grow.

Choose Your Next Step

As you begin to contemplate making 2011 the year you want it to be, pick 1 of these 5 reasons for underperformance. Focus on it for the next 90 days with your team – make time, make changes, and implement.  Even with a modest start, you’ll be on your way to a more predictable and sustainable growth trajectory for your business.

Mark Green is a business growth expert who works with companies to help them implement a proven, easy-to-use framework to run and grow the business faster and more profitably, while expending less effort and less time. To learn more about Mark or his firm, visit his website or contact him directly at (888) 720-7337 or Mark.Green@Performance-Dynamics.net.

If you’re the smartest person in the room you’re a Genius. If you surround yourself with the smartest people in the room, you’re a Genius Maker.

These terms and concepts come from the book ”Multipliers – How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter” by Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeown, published earlier this year.

Based upon their own research the authors define Multipliers as “Genius Makers” who bring out intelligence in others and build collective, viral intelligence in organizations. Diminishers, on the other hand, are the “Geniuses.” Absorbed in their own intelligence, they stifle others and deplete the organization of crucial intelligence and capability.

The bottom line of their study: By extracting people’s full capability, Multipliers get TWICE the capability from people as do Diminishers. That’s a hugely significant finding in robust economic times, but even more so as businesses continually strive to do more with less. Can you imagine what it would be like if you could get TWICE the capability from your employees?

The bad news is that, statistically speaking, you and your management team are most likely Diminishers, whether you realize it or not. You’re not tyrants, you’re not bad managers, and you’re not hated by those on your team — you’re Accidental Diminishers. You try your best every day to do the right things, but inadvertently create a diminishing environment for your people.

If you’d like to know for sure, and also get a more specific idea about which of your leadership assumptions and behaviors have a diminishing impact, you can take the Accidental Diminisher Quiz created by the authors.

What can you do about it if you’re an Accidental Diminisher? 

First, read the book.  Next find ways to make it ok for you and your leadership team to begin calling out “genius” behaviors.  Finally, consider hiring a qualified coach to help you implement management and leadership practices that will generate consistent, profitable growth.

The first is FEAR. Fear is internal; it’s in our head, however it is the great crippler of human potential. Fear can be divided into three basic categories:

• Fear of Failure – Not trying ensures failure.  A better perspective on failure is to equate it with learning.  When we stop failing, we stop learning.  No mistakes = no action.
• Fear of Criticism or Rejection – When you don’t get the sales order, it means you didn’t get the order, not that you or your product was rejected.  This can lead to feelings of “I’m not worthy.”  Your worth as an individual isn’t on the line – a business transaction is.
• Fear of Non-Conformity – This can rob you of your uniqueness.

Ask yourself: What are my fears and how might they be holding me back?

The second reason people resist change is because of EGO. The need to be right is a powerful human need. It’s a common problem with leaders, managers, and business owners who have had a taste of success.

Ask yourself: Is it possible that my need to be right is an obstacle?

The third reason why people resist change is to avoid CONFLICT. Because when you try to do something different and create change, you’ll create and get some conflict. And conflict isn’t fun, so many people just avoid it all together.

Ask yourself: How comfortable am I with conflict?

The fourth reason that people resist change is LACK OF PURPOSE. Without a sense of purpose, people become stagnant and complacent. They also tend to get burnt out.

Ask yourself: Have I created a compelling vision for my business?

The fifth reason people resist change is LACK OF INFORMATION or poor communication.  People deal better with change equipped with information, even if the information is negative.  You cannot lead unless you have a sense of purpose – for yourself and for your team. What’s your vision? Is it something that everyone understands and has a stake in?  How do you continually communicate and reinforce your vision?

Ask yourself: How would my team rate me as a communicator of my vision?

In today’s world, we face more change in a year then our grandparents may have faced in their lifetime.  It can be overwhelming; it can be scary; it can be frustrating, or it can be exhilarating. Regardless of how you view change, the fact remains that it is very real, it won’t go away, and your business’ growth depends on it.  In his book, The Renewal Factor, Robert Waterman says, our “willingness to understand and exploit change is a powerful competitive weapon.”

Ask yourself: How well do I actively seek and exploit change?

The first step is always the most painful. To get your employees to accept and embrace change, you must first lead by example. That means that you must demonstrate your willingness and ability to change before you can expect them to change!

A simple, yet powerful way to accomplish this is to do the following:

1. Ask your direct reports (and, if applicable, your boss) to list the top three things that you could change to make you a more effective leader. Don’t accept any fewer than three answers, because the third is usually the most important one.
2. Compile the list of suggestions and share it with your team, then pick 2 or 3 items from the list and make a commitment to change.
3. Share your progress with your team and ask them to help you hold yourself accountable.
4. As you progress, it’s time to ask your team to follow in your path and complete the same exercise for themselves.

The fundamental truth is this: As goes the leadership team goes the rest of the firm.  Whatever strengths or weaknesses exist within the organization can be traced right back to the executive team and their levels of cohesion, trust, competence, discipline, and willingness to change and adapt.

Ask yourself:  Am I modeling the thoughts and behaviors I expect from my team?

Your answer to that question might not be comfortable, but it will explain precisely why your organization either is or isn’t performing the way you want.

This question is painfully simple, yet it plays a major role in the execution of your firm’s vision and priorities. Sadly, many leaders cannot accurately answer it. You may be surprised to find a sizable disconnect between your top priorities and how you actually spend your time.

People take their cues from the leader when it comes to time management. How time is allocated must match both your business priorities and your team’s actual day-to-day activities.  If they don’t match, have a look at your goals and priorities (you DO have goals and priorities, right?).  I’ve found that in most cases, time management issues are merely symptoms of underlying goal and priority issues.

Although time allocations may vary depending on time of year, staffing changes and external factors, time management must become a conscious decision that fits your vision and priorities. In fact, a periodic review of how you invest your time is a vital business habit.

Give yourself the gift of time for the new decade: track your time for 3-5 days.  Have your management team do it too, then review the results together.  Once you see the reality of how your spend your day, you can more realistically and honestly evaluate what needs to change to bring your time allocations back into alignment with your goals and priorities.  Like a fleet small boats bobbing in the ocean – they are bound to drift over time.

Back in the 1920’s, a PR man named Ivy Lee was hired by Charles Schwab – the President of Bethlehem Steel.  Lee gave him an offer he couldn’t refuse. He told Schwab “I can increase your efficiency. Pay me in 3 months whatever you think it’s worth.”

Lee met with Schwab and with each member of the executive team individually for exactly 10 minutes.  In the meeting he told them “Promise me that for the next 90 days, at the end of each day you’ll list the 6 most important priorities you need to accomplish the next day, and number them according to importance.  Then when you come to work the next day, work on them sequentially until they are all completed. Any leftover items get transferred to the next day’s list.”

They all said: “That’s it?”  And then they all agreed to Lee’s rules.

Schwab wrote Ivy Lee a $25,000 check 90 days later and said “This is the best investment I’ve ever made.”  Remember that this was in the 1920’s!

Whether you realize it or not, all your staff’s eyes are trained on you – looking for cues and norms to help them define how they should behave.  If you need THEM to make better choices around how they spend THEIR time, start by setting an example for them to model and follow.

Track your time, analyze the results, and make changes to your allocations. You might also consider taking Ivy Lee’s $25,000 advice to Charles Schwab – often it’s the simplest things that can make the biggest differences.

In other words, he’s worth your time!  Take just over 2 minutes (2:04) and get a dose of Tom Peters to spark your thinking.

I recently heard from my colleague Vern Harnish – author of “Mastering the Rockefeller Habits” – that in his 27+ years of educating executives of growth firms the best predictors of success are a voracious thirst for learning and a bias for action – that is, “learn fast, act fast.” It’s why Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, has created a habit of shutting off his Blackberry over the weekend and reading a book or two.

Happy reading!

Choose the best answer from the options to discover your Influence Quotient. Dr Robert Cialdini, the leading expert on Influence and Persuasion presents a simple quiz that can help you (and your team) understand your ability to recognize influence and persuasion techniques.

If you don’t have time to take the quiz, but want to learn about the answers, click here.

1. Upon first entering the office of the purchasing manager of a company with whom you would like to do business, you notice a picture of the team mascot of your alma mater on the wall. You should:

1. Mention that you went to the same university prior to discussing business.
2. Mention that you went to the same university after discussing business.
3. Not mention this personal similarity in a business meeting.
4. Discuss that you went to the same university only if the client brings up the topic.

2. You are attempting to persuade the Board of Directors of your company that it is in your company’s best interest to implement a costly revision to your back-office functions. You know that the Board is very concerned about costs, so you have also formulated two alternate plans that are less costly and less comprehensive. When it comes time for your presentation, which of the following strategies should you use to obtain the optimal results (the greatest degree of change the Board will support)?

1. Describe the least expensive revision first.
2. Describe the mid-range revision first, and then ask the Chair if s/he would like to hear the alternate plans.
3. Describe the most expensive revision first, then the mid-range, and then the least costly plan.
4. Ask the Chair which plan s/he is most interested in and then describe that plan only.

3. Your company is launching a new product and your boss asks you to make a marketing decision. Your boss is considering two options to generate initial interest from the public: offering a price reduction on the product for a “limited-time” or offering a price reduction for a “limited number” of the product. Which approach should you recommend to get the greatest interest from the public?

1. “limited-time”
2. “limited-number”
3. Either option will produce the same positive results.
4. Neither option will produce positive results.

4. You have an important meeting with a prospective client later today. You know from your previous discussions that the prospect is impressed with your proposal, but does not believe that implementing your ideas at this particular time is a top priority. Which of the following approaches to the meeting would provide you with the greatest chance of persuading the prospect to approve your proposal in the shortest period of time?

1. Emphasize what the prospect will lose if he does not implement your ideas at the present time.
2. Emphasize the positive features and benefits of your proposal.
3. Ask the prospect to outline his objections to your proposal.
4. Begin with a request for a commitment and then try to close the sale.

5. Imagine you are the (unlucky) campaign manager of a political candidate who has recently lost the public’s trust. Now imagine that the candidate wants to rebuild his reputation through profiling himself as a touch crime fighter. Even though his opponent has a credible track record in his regard. Of the following choices, which represents the best way for your candidate to start his next ad?

1. “My opponent has not gone far enough in fighting crime…”
2. “Many have supported my ability and willingness to fight crime…”
3. “Although my opponent has a good record of fighting crime…”
4. “Fighting crime is a critical issue…”

6. Imagine you are a financial advisor, and you believe that a young client of yours is invested too conservatively. In order to persuade her to invest in riskier, high-return investments, you should concentrate on describing:

1. How others like her have made similar mistakes. (appeal to consensus)
2. What she stands to gain if she invests in riskier options. (appeal to greed)
3. What she stands to lose if she does not invest in riskier options. (appeal to loss)
4. The importance of the two of you working as a team on this issue.

7. You are attempting to sell your professional services to a medium-sized software company. They have never done business with you before and are uncertain as to whether they should select your company. You will increase your persuasiveness the most by:

1. Providing them with a testimonial from Microsoft, who utilizes your services currently
2. Providing them with a master list of all your clients
3. Talking about other clients’ experiences with your company in general ways, without providing any specific testimonials.
4. Providing them with several testimonials from other medium-sized software companies who are your current clients.

8. If you have a new piece of information, when should you mention that it is new?

1. Before you present the information.
2. In the middle of the presentation of the information.
3. After the presentation of the information.
4. You should not mention that it is new information.

9. You have responsibility for motivating your company’s sales force to increase its annual performance. You were told by your supervisor to set goals for the sales people and hold them accountable. Which of the following strategies would be the most effective?

1. Set a goal for each employee based on his or her prior year’s performance and inform each of the goal.
2. Have each employee set a reasonable private goal for themselves.
3. Have each employee publicly state a reasonable goal for the year.
4. Have each employee set an unrealistically high personal goal, and keep it private.

10. You are having difficulty with employee attrition, so you organize a retreat for your office to energize your employees. You want to give each a gift for attending that will enhance the employee’s commitment to give back to the organization. Which one of the following strategies is likely to produce the best results?

1. Give them all the same, expensive gift with your company’s name engraved on it.
2. Give them no gifts, but thank them for attending.
3. Give each employee a personalized gift that is meaningful, even if it is not expensive
4. Give gifts only to those employees who complete the evaluation forms for the retreat.

Click here for the answers!

Want to learn more?  Dr. Robert Cialdini will be leading his first ever 90 minute LIVE video webcast November 17th from 12:00 — 1:30 pm ET.  As author of one of the Top 100 business books of all time — considered by most critics in the Top 10 — his principles are timeless and continue to drive important decisions around the globe. The webcast is just $199/individual; $495/company license (unlimited computers) — and includes access to the archived program for three months after the live event. Register here.

Stony was working in the New York area for 9 days replacing all of the hydraulic lines on the largest dredge on the planet, which was temporarily dry-docked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  Its next assignment: hitch a tow to Central America and then deepen and widen the Panama Canal.

His employer is the largest hydraulic maintenance contractor in the US.  As we conversed during our flight, it became clear to me that Stony was highly experienced, well trained, motivated, and clearly proud of and very good at what he does.  For his organization, Stony represents the “tip of the spear,” or the front line – where the heavy lifting, blocking and tackling, and money of the business is made.

I asked if he had time during his stay to visit Manhattan.  He answered, “No – and it’s too bad, because I’ve never been in the city and I’d really like to see it.  We worked 12-15 hour days, so there wasn’t any time.”

When I followed up and inquired where he stayed while working in Brooklyn, he told me that his team stayed in a hotel in New Jersey approximately 50-60 minutes from the work site.

“Wow,” I said. “You were working 12-15 hour days and had to commute an hour each way? I’m sure there are plenty of reasonable accommodations much closer to the Brooklyn Navy Yard.”

Upon hearing this, Stony paused, thought for a moment, and then through a frustrated smile said: “Well, you know how Corporate works.”

The truth of Stony’s situation is his belief that “Corporate” doesn’t care.  Unfortunately, there is ample evidence to support him.  After all, who in their right mind would put a work crew in a hotel an hour away from a 12-15 hour per day job when there are plenty of closer (and affordable) alternatives?  To his credit, he never complained to me about it; he just shrugged it off as if resigned to his fate.

As our flight touched down smoothly in Houston, I knew that there had to be much more to the story.  I wondered what else Stony knew that none of the people at “Corporate” cared to ask him about – and I wondered what that lack of open communication was costing all of them.

Who are the “Stonys” – the most experienced, most valuable, most dedicated front line employees – in your organization or department?  What can you learn from them?  Do you have mechanisms in place to regularly solicit their input and feedback or does communication in your organization tend to flow only 1-way – from top to bottom?

High performing organizations have deliberate 2-way communication and feedback mechanisms in place to tap the collective wisdom of their front line staff.  Find the Stonys!  Then start asking the right questions to further engage them and learn from them.

How much profit and productivity do you leave on the table in your organization due to misalignment and hazy focus? By implementing these 3 tools, you’ll be well on your way to more productivity and profit from your existing investments and resources.

3 Tools to Create Focus & Improve Performance

For instance, while driving (even if you’re doing the speed limit), it’s quite common to pull your foot off the gas pedal when you see a police car ahead on the side of the road. In that instant, it seems like your foot has a mind of its own! What really happened is that you incorporated an assumption – that getting a ticket is a bad thing — to replace the thinking component of the “stimulus-thought-response” chain of events. In this example, no doubt, the assumption — or habit of thought — serves you well (this is the good news).

Unfortunately, however, that’s often not the case (this is the bad news). In a business, assumptions might include any of the following statements or beliefs:

• “That won’t work here.”

• “Change is risky.”

• “I’ve seen this situation before.”

• “We’re better than the competition.”

While some of our assumptions are useful in preventing us from having to consciously figure out the mechanics each time we confront a familiar situation, many habits of thought keep us from stretching our capabilities and trying new, and inventive, and possibly better ideas or techniques. Just like when you see a police car, these assumptions work silently, but powerfully to impact your behaviors and the behaviors of those around you.

Welcome to the “black box” of business and the enemy of business growth. Most business leaders don’t even know that it exists; yet it contains the keys to our own potential, our organizations’ potential, and our ability to get more of what we really want.  Assumptions drive thinking, thinking drives behavior, and behavior drives results.

In late 2005 FORTUNE Magazine published a cover story about Andy Grove, one of Intel’s founders and most accomplished leaders. In describing one of the key characteristics that made Grove so successful, author Richard S. Tedlow wrote “Forcibly adapting himself to a succession of new realities, [Grove] has left a trail of discarded assumptions in his wake.” Grove’s ability to challenge “conventional wisdom” (just a euphemism for assumptions) paved the way for a number of seminal decisions at Intel including their move in the mid 1980′s to exit the memory business and focus on processors, and their decision to spend millions on a ground-breaking branding campaign called “Intel Inside” to brand an internal component of a computer.

What made Grove different (and so successful at Intel) is that he actively sought ways to force himself to challenge his assumptions and beliefs – in effect continually pushing and expanding his comfort zone. It was the modus operandi of his personal growth and his ability to lead Intel so successfully for so long.

Can you identify the modus operandi for strategic growth in your organization? When is the last time you consciously pushed to expand your comfort zone – by definition making yourself and those surrounding you uncomfortable in the process? Can you find a way to regularly challenge your own assumptions and beliefs? If not, might it make sense to find someone who will?

For sure, assumptions make our lives easier and more comfortable. It’s up to you however, to decide what you’d like to do with them to drive growth, to make your organization more competitive, and to improve yourself personally.