Solid strategic plans, strong work relationships, high morale and improved performance are all by-products of good questions. Particularly good questions asked in your 1 on 1 meetings with your direct reports.

Remember these meetings are where you as a manager get to help your staff member ‘be the best they can be.’ This is not a forum for you to talk and tell. It is for you to lead and listen.

This potent communication tool can help you discover important information about your business, your staff, yourself, your customers—and create insights that otherwise might have remained hidden. Continue reading

Finding the disadvantage dollar in your business.

Continuing on from last week discussing your disadvantage dollar. A refresher on what that is… It’s the money your business is missing out on through all sorts of channels and avenues. Sometimes it’s things that are costing your business money.

Last week, I shared an example of a business that was having problems with staff time and approach to work. This week, I’ll talk about a business that was missing quotes (resulting in missed business), and one which had mistakes made too often that were causing stress or overtime on the part of the owner and causing him/her to miss out on things like valuable family time. Continue reading

Do you need to uncover the disadvantage dollar in your business?

Most business owners are not aware of the places their businesses are ‘leaking’ money. Sometimes real, sometimes in other forms such as lost or missed opportunities, inefficient use of time and other resources and ongoing frustrations that seem constant.

More often than not, these frustrations are dismissed with a shrug as ‘just a part of running a business’. Until the day you decide to measure what it is actually costing you.  Better sooner rather than later.

The good news is that once you look into these you can generally uncover the cause, and the higher the cost to you or the business, the sooner you want to address it.

In almost every case of when a business is leaking money, it will be because of a missing system. Continue reading

In the last two blogs, I’ve been discussing the in and outs of the Personal Progress Meeting (PPM). This week, I’m going to share with you a little bit about a PPM system and some final notes on the PPM in general.  Continue reading

Today I’m going to talk more about the Personal Progress Meeting (PPM). You may be wondering what the PPM covers. What do you talk about if you’re not talking specifically about their works items, or work in progress?

Here are some of the topics you can cover:

Current work issues – what’s working, what’s not working in their job and the jobs of others. What are their ideas for improvement and cost savings. What are your ideas and what does the direct report think of them. Continue reading