Nine critical factors for success:
1. Goal clarity; How do you rate your ability to be clear on goals? How well have you done in your business; is it growing? Why is clarity a key success factor? It is key because it guides decision making, aligns priorities, defines purpose, motives to act, and gives us somewhere to go. If goals are not clear your thinking gets diluted and your people go off on any direction.
2. Leadership; Why is it a factor? Someone has to keep focus on leadership. The law of entropy says, if left to itself, you and the team will slow down. The leader must take a stand against average! It is simply a decision to accept and execute leadership. Every group has to have a leader. Leadership harnesses the talents of the players. If not, and youcomes self-directed, you will have to spend a lot of time teaching how to share the leadership role. In any group of people 90% are going to need and expect guidance and procedures. If that doesn’t come from the leader, where does it come from? If you are a sole proprietor or leading a team, you need direction. They need direction, strong guidelines, and accountability. Your team needs to know that you care.
3. Customer focus: Why is this is important? There are only two reasons for the existence of a business: 1. Create & retain customers 2. Earn money; that requires customers!
You cannot leave the customer out of your decision making and operational focus. Ask your self this, let’s say you went on a trip and left someone else in charge. How would you know that your group is very well focused on the customer?
4. Performance management: Why is that important? What gets rewarded gets repeated. Think of growth and expanding capabilities. Ask your people “In the next 6 months would you be able to identify 2 or 3 new skills that you would like to build into your own growth in this position? What would you like to learn most for your own growth, performance or gratification within the context of this job? That is what performance management is about. It is about quality, if you are not managing performance and you loose quality, and it is expensive. Excellence does not happen automatically. Your people will not change themselves. Most struggles and problems are driven by emotions, they are not predictable.
5. Team work: Why is it a critically important? Two heads are better than one. Succession planning! Employees are looking to belong to a community that they are working with. They thrive when the feel like they belong, they feel good. It is the human element. One of the top reasons people perform very well, it is a true sense of belonging, being part of something bigger than them as individuals. You teach teamwork so the business will grow, that is what the client wants.
6. Process management: Success is always in the process not in the people! Analogy, think of flying across the country, what processes are in play. You may have good process, but you need to have control systems to measure results!
7. Positive Control systems: Indicates progress, identify inconsistent performance, and institute change. Every business needs feedback and control to operate successfully. Management needs to say “Did we get what we wanted or expected to get?” great tip for meetings. Check in at 60% of the meeting and ask if we are getting what you want, what you expected from the meeting.
8. Learning: Why is it so important? The kiss of death for a leader is when they are not learning. They have to be someone who can act, get feedback and change. We are in a world that changes so quickly, if you are not constantly learning you will not be able to adapt to the changes. There is a human need to know, grow and evolve; how to figure things out! Not the heavy handed Harvard type learning, but being a better observer of what is happening around us.
9. Rewards and recognition: Why? People have got to be acknowledged as individuals and teams. What gets rewarded gets done…it is as simple as that!