Tag Archives: vision

Why People Leave a Business

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This is from a LinkedIn discussion group. The question being discussed was” Do people leave a business because of its managers?” The following was my response.

“I believe the character, soul and values of a business are manifested by its leadership. This applies even if the stated mission, vision and values of a business say something different. It is a “you are what you do” sort of thing. If I am right, then people leave a business because of its leadership when there is no alignment in these areas.”

Voice of the Business

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Some of the first questions that a business must answer are:

• Why do we exist?
• Who are our customers?
• What is our mission or purpose?
• What is our vision?

To understand the importance of the answers to these questions, we must first understand that different stakeholders in a business have different perspectives. The stockholders wish to get a return on their investment. Workers wish to get a good wage for their work. Managers and officers wish to meet the business performance metrics set forth by the owners (stockholders, etc). The community wishes to have a neighbor that provides jobs, pays taxes, supports the community, and has no negative environmental impact. These are just a few.

Understanding the answers to these questions from the stakeholders’ perspective helps to define problem areas within the business and its ambient environment. It allows the business to have clearer vision. In the final analysis though, there are two high level purposes of a business. In a capitalistic society, businesses exist to make money, to make a profit. Without this, the business would not exist. Secondly, when the business is profitable, it ideally gives back stability to the community in which it exists.

When a business correctly defines its problem areas, from the customer and business points of view, it is ready to take the next step to improve processes connected to the problem areas.

So what does process improvement mean to the business? It means lower cost, higher efficiency, and higher profits. These manifest themselves in higher customer satisfaction, improved market share, and larger margins. The tie between customer satisfaction and profitability is evident.

Similar metrics apply to organizations like non-profits. For them the metrics may be lower cost and higher efficiency. These may manifest themselves as lower dependence on outside funding and improved margins. The commonality between businesses and non-profits is that the focus is upon doing more with less, thus returning more margin to the stakeholders and more value to the customers.

These bottom-line metrics in a healthy business are in alignment with their strategic planning. Furthermore, when strategic planning is in alignment with customer expectations, improvement projects will improve customer satisfaction and profitability.

Personal Motivation

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Personal motivation has 4 components:

  • Belief in purpose
  • Belief in process
  • Belief in self
  • Definition of success

Belief in purpose is about having a reason to want to achieve a goal or objective. What is the burning “Yes” in your life that makes you want to be successful?  For some it is our families, for others it may be a desired life style or a cause we are passionate about. In any case, you have to know what it is.  I am not talking about head knowledge in this case.  It is heart knowledge you need.

Belief in process moves you from the purpose of your efforts to an understanding, and adherence to, a methodology for achieving your goals. This means knowing what sacrifices it will take to achieve your goals and what map you will follow.

A good friend of mine gave me this advice a long time age. He said “find the person who is the most successful at doing the things you want to do and learn from them”. Let go of your preconceived notions, open your mind and learn.  At the same time don’t lose sight of what you value. In other words, don’t use a map to success that compromises your values. For example, you can get rich taking advantage of others, but you will lose the richness of self.

Belief in self is about seeing yourself being successful. Visualization is a key ingredient. Successful people see themselves in a positive light and visualize what success looks like. A successful hitter in baseball goes to the plate expecting to get a hit and seeing the event in their mind’s eye. Visualizing failure is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

People who do not believe that they deserve to be successful, or doubt their abilities, are doomed to a lower level of success. “I can’t do it, so why try.” The first person to convince is you. If you don’t believe, neither will anyone else. Conversely, if you do believe, others will follow.

A definition of success allows you to measure your performance. It involves answering two questions.

  • What does success for me look like?
  • How do I measure my performance?

This success component is important because we sometimes set our definition of success too high or too low. It is best to set up a series of smaller step goals that take you toward a larger goal. This way you can celebrate your success along the way.  It is the difference between running 5 miles every day for a week or just showing up on Saturday and trying to run 35 miles all at one time.

Your definition of success will tie directly into your belief in purpose. If not, you will be lost in the jungle of life, making the wrong choices and expending precious time and energy being successful at things that do not take you where you want to go. For example, if your 5 year plan is to become financial independent, going into debt for the “status” car may not be your best decision.

This is a personal journey.  You must make your own choices as you move through life. Getting your life into focus using the ideas above will allow you to move with purpose. Not getting things into focus will cause you to be like drift wood, tossed about by the forces of life, going nowhere on purpose and everywhere by accident.

How is Your Vision?

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How detailed is your vision? I’m not talking about whether or not you need glasses, but whether or not you have enough detailed information to make good decisions.

This is an issue with both business and personal decisions.  It is, in fact, why so many business process improvement initiatives fail. Six Sigma process improvement projects are meant to address this issue for businesses, but you also need a personal strategy to avoid falling prey to poor resolution (lack of detail) How many times have you decided on an action only to find that a critical, missing, detail undermined your success?  .

The problem is our reliance on two dimensional, discrete, thinking. Pass/Fail, Yes/No, Democrat/Republican, etc. Two dimensional thinking allows you to be 100% right or 100% wrong, but never partially right

A more continuous way of thinking will lead to better detail and better decisions. As detail increases, so does our ability to see problems in their true colors (resolution). What you will find is that you will move from the “what”(pass/fail), to the “why” (causal relationships).

Consider this analogy of moving from low resolution to high resolution.

At 50 miles of altitude, if you fired at a target on the ground and missed by one degree, you would miss the target by 38 miles.

At 10 miles of altitude, if you fired at a target on the ground and missed by one degree, you would miss the target by 1.74 miles.

At 5 miles of altitude, if you fired at a target on the ground and missed by one degree, you would miss the target by 2300 feet (a little less than ½ mile).

At 1000 feet of altitude, if you fired at a target and missed by one degree, you would miss the target by 3 feet.

More Detail = More Resolution = Higher Accuracy = Improved Performance