Maybe there is something that we are endowed with by the Creator that gives us an opportunity to naturally figure out how to make this a better place. ~ Bob Weir (Grateful Dead)

As a business owner or leader, you know firsthand the pressures of making critical decisions that impact your enterprise and the lives of your employees and customers.  And in some cases, even the lives of members of your community.   Who of us hasn’t, at one time or another, been  so distracted by moving fast or grabbing market share that we took our eye off the ball of the fundamentals and like a pedestrian looking the wrong way, got hit by a bus we didn’t even see coming?

The ball, of course, represents the fundamentals of your business.  For most of us, customer focus, quality and cost fall into our list of fundamentals.  In the building industry safety is key, both for the welfare of our employees and for the bottom line of our business.  What are the top five fundamentals of your business?  Do you have a way to monitor those fundamentals?

Some of you may be thinking, Sharon, I’m a one person show. Do I really need to be identifying and following the fundamentals of my business.  And my answer to all of my solo entrepreneurs out there is absolutely YES!  As a solo enterprise, your business is even more sensitive to any change in the dynamics.  When an employee of McDonalds  has a break down in customer focus by giving a customer a McChicken when they ordered a Big Mac and then fails to correct the situation, McDonalds has one unhappy customer who may McSplit and never return or more likely tells family and friends about their poor experience.   When you are a solo entrepreneur, in a moment of thoughtlessness, you fail to deliver to your customer, you could be losing someone who generates 25-50% of your revenue.

So we all have a ball called the fundamentals of our business.  How do we keep an eye on that ball?  I like to have some key metrics that tell me how my business is performing.  And then when one or more of those metrics begins to trend negatively, I focus my energies on determining the root cause and taking any necessary corrective actions.  Safety is a good example of the benefits of monitoring metrics and taking appropriate, timely action.  Most accidents are not single events, but the culmination of a series of small events and poor decision making.  For example, a crew gets to a work site late.  They feel rushed and know they need to get this job done quickly to stay on schedule for the day.  In the rush of the moment, one of the crew members fails to put on safety glasses, figuring it’s a small job that will only take a few minutes and going back to the truck for the glasses will just eat up more time.  Then the drill bit kicks up a metal shaving injuring the crew member.  Now we have an injured employee, insurance issues, lost time for the employee and the crew, delays with other projects, etc.   All of those consequences came out of the crew feeling rushed.  And so in this instance, I’d want to know what about our project planning or scheduling process is leading crews to feel rushed for time so significantly that they have started to compromise their own safety.

My challenge for all of us in August is to step back for a moment, clarify the key fundamentals of our unique businesses, determine what metrics will give us the best indication of the status of those fundamentals and then make the monitoring of those metrics part of our daily activity as business leaders and owners.  Please don’t compromise safety or procrastinate in doing what needs to be done.

Go out and make it a great day!

Sharon McGee

As we move into June, I’m thinking about Fathers and all the great gifts Dads bring to the feast called Family:

Creator

Two of the most powerful attributes of fatherhood are those of creation and protection.  When we speak of “fathering” something or someone, we’re talking about creating.  Of course a baby seems to be the obvious creation of a parent.  However, as has been said before, its easier to make a baby that raise a baby.  The creator role for a father begins at conception, but great Dads continue the creation process as long as father and child live.

Protector

Ask any Dad and he’ll tell you one of his main jobs, whether he likes it or not, is that of protector.  The role has almost primal roots as fathers feel the need to keep the family safe from all threats.  Dad’s not only pick us up when we fall down, they often teach us how to stand up on our own two feet and if we do fall, how to do so with style and grace.

Explorer

I can’t say that I have a scientific basis for this, but next time you’re out, look to see what position mothers and fathers hold their babies in those front baby carriers.  My informal survey has Moms holding the child facing toward her in a nurturing position, the baby often snuggled in and sleeping peacefully.  The majority of Dads have junior facing out into the world, eyes wide open, just taking it all in.  One of the great gifts Dads give us is permission to get out into the world, take some risks and explore.

Teacher

Dads teach in many ways and most of us begin our lives knowing our Dad is probably the smartest guy on the planet.  Of course, as we reach adolescence we realize that we actually have the knowledge and Dad is a bit of a lump.  However, our Dads endure that time, holding on for the day when ten or twenty or thirty years later, we begin to see the wisdom in his words.

Nurturer

More and more, I see fathers embracing the role of nurturer.  They are taking leaves of absence when their children are born and making time to be with their children as they grow.  When we speak of “mothering,” we’re talking about nurturing.   However, as every father and mother knows, “it takes two to tango.”  The creation and nurturing of our children is not confined to one parent or the other.  And besides, Dads give fantastic hugs!

Let me leave you with a few quotes to ponder as you consider your father and/or your own fatherhood.

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.

~ Mark Twain, Old Times on the Mississippi

One night a father overheard his son pray: Dear God, Make me the kind of man my Daddy is. Later that night, the Father prayed, Dear God, Make me the kind of man my son wants me to be.

~ Anonymous

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;

For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

~ Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Sharon McGee

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

Annie Dillard, author

Do you love life?  Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.

Benjamin Franklin

There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important thing.

Brian Tracy, author and speaker

In The First 90 Days, a book for new managers, Michael Watkins points to research that suggests there are several common traps managers fall prey to that undermine their success.  Two of those traps, taking on too much and misalignment, also happen to be two of the key impediments to effective time management.  Let’s look at these a little more closely.

Taking on too much

Being the effective time manager you are, you probably have a to do list capturing all of the actions you want to take, from completing that morning workout to cleaning the kitchen to dropping the kids off at school to preparing for that client meeting to interviewing a potential employee to meeting with your team to scheduling that out of town trip to checking in on the status of a number of projects to having dinner with the family, making time for the kids, spending some protected time with your spouse to reading email, listening to voicemails and reviewing reports….  Sound familiar?  If you’re like most of us, the list above doesn’t begin to cover all of the many tasks, actions, projects, meetings and relationships that you must navigate every single day.  How many of us look at our schedules and lives and wonder, “How am I possibly going to get everything done?” (more…)

For many of us the New Year marks a time to pause and reflect on what we have achieved in the prior year and to set goals for what we want to achieve in the coming year.  Of course all of us are familiar with those New Years resolutions and most of us have the experience of having good intentions, but finding many of those goals slipping off the radar in the face of other life issues.  This month I want to focus on how we can set meaningful, achievable goals for 2010.

A formula that I have found very helpful when thinking about goal setting is

Excellence + Consistency

______________________                      =   Success

Time

Let’s break this formula down and see if we can come up with a strategy for effective goal setting.

The point of the formula is Success.  Knowing what we want to achieve, having a clear picture of the outcome we desire, is critical to the process.  As you’ve probably heard said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably get there!”  As you begin your goal setting process, follow Stephen Covey’s advice — “Begin with the end in mind.”  What do you want to achieve?  Maybe you want to start a new business, run a marathon, spend more time with your family, write a novel, learn a new skill, lower your golf score, increase your revenue.  Whatever the outcome, take time to imagine not only the quantitative aspect of your goal, but also what your achievement looks like and how it feels.  Write out a list, tell a story, draw a picture — whatever helps you flesh out this future achievement. (more…)

What I spent I lost; what I possessed is left to others; what I gave away remains with me.

Joseph Addison (d 1719)

November is upon us and as you read this blog I will be running, once again, in the New York Marathon.  Running a marathon has become more than a personal achievement, although, those first marathons definitely focused on personal achievement!  I return to New York not just to run a race, but to gather with friends, celebrate life and join together to raise money for one of my favorite causes, Team for Kids.  A program of the New York Road Runners, Team for Kids fosters healthy, fit and motivated kids by bringing free and low-cost running programs to schools and community centers.  When I cross the finish line this year, I won’t be a lone marathoner, but I will cross with the hundreds of thousands of kids who will benefit from the Team for Kids programs.  Believe me.  After over 26 miles, there’s nothing like imagining all of those healthy, smiling faces!

Almost all of us have been impacted by the financial downturn in one way or another, struggling with our financial commitments, experiencing a slow down in work, having less or no income, and in some cases, the loss of a job.  So what I am about to say will sound counter intuitive, maybe a little crazy.  However, I have found in my life, when the path becomes difficult, when failure looms and I can’t seem to catch a break, if I shift my focus away from myself and out to others, I find ways to shake things up!

Ralph Waldo Emerson said service “is one of the most beautiful compensations in life, that no man can ever help another without helping himself.”  How true that is!  I want to challenge all of us this November, to turn our focus outward with a giving heart.  And in the act of giving, I know all of us will find that we receive more than we give.

Let me give you an example.  Another of my favorite charities is Food for the Poor.  This  international relief organization feeds 2 million poor every day. Their various relief programs and projects reach out to children and the poorest of the poor by providing food, housing, health care, education, water projects, emergency relief and micro-enterprise assistance in the Caribbean and Latin America.  If you go to their website you will see the Forty Days of Thanks project.  By setting aside fifty cents every day for forty days you change the lives of the starving poor.  Imagine that!  You may carry a burden about how to make the next car payment or house payment or may be seeing lower profits in your business, but for the cost of six lattes over a period of forty days you can keep a child from starving. 

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

Winston Churchill

I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.

Maya Angelou

Please join me this November in a spirit of giving.  Check out the “Giving Back to the Community” page of my website to see links to charities I actively support (and don’t miss the pictures from this year’s Run for the Wall) or give of your time, talents or resources to a charity dear to your heart.  And let me hear from you.  I’d love to post your story and photos of your giving in November to inspire us all.

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain.
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

Emily Dickinson

Wishing you a great day,

 Sharon McGee