Being aware of what gets in your way is the most effective way to deal with the speed bumps you encounter on the way to building a successful business.

There are many ways that people diminish their effectiveness, or allow it to be diminished by others. The cure all for each of them is simply awareness – being aware of what gets in your way and having the presence of mind to see when it’s happening, or better yet, before it happens. Then it’s simple to make a different and more productive choice. That’s really all there is to it. To be aware and to choose to do it differently.

Here’s a list of the common speed bumps:

Interruptions This is probably the biggest and what I’m really talking about are unnecessary interruptions. If there are emergencies which are extremely important, time critical decisions and there are a few key people that should be allowed to interrupt you, make sure that the emergency is real, not imagined, that the decision is critical and that the key people that you allow to interrupt really justify that diversion of your attention. Continue reading

A productive mindset is essential to having a successful business.

A mindset is a set of attitudes, beliefs and expectations that you have about any given situation. I describe mindset as equaling results plus systems plus delegation. The key is to focus on results, systemize everything you can and delegate everything you absolutely don’t have to do yourself.

Focus on results first. This is a simple change in your state of mind that can make you more productive and happier at work. It’s a shift of your mindset from the work to getting the result. Instead of it feeling like drudgery (if you see it as onerous and overwhelming, it will be if you just focus on the work), it won’t if you take your focus off the work and place it on the result. That is, keeping the result in mind, not the work, it shifts from a mental place of working to a mental place of accomplishment and fulfillment and satisfaction of a job well done. Continue reading

Get twice as much done in half the time and take an extra day off a week with effective time management.

Time is your biggest issue – there’s never enough of it. Why? Well, usually it’s not that you’re doing too much work. You’re doing too much of the wrong kind of work and because of that, right now it’s difficult for you to see how to do more of the right kind of work and even know what the right kind of work is.

We’re going to examine how you use your time each day and what you can do to maximize your productivity.

First of all, there really is no such thing as time management. Time is not your problem. Attention is your problem. Achievement follows attention. Managing your attention will make the best use of your time and, in turn, the best use of you. Continue reading

What you need to achieve strategic intent – read on to learn the elements of strategic intent.

There are five key steps to strategic intent. Strategic positioning is about what kind of business you want it to be. Strategic differentiation asks the question of how it will stand out as better than its competition. The business model answers the question about how it’s going to do what it has to do and make a profit. The personality is about what kind of team we need to do this with. What are your values? What are the values you want in your team? What’s important? What’s right? What’s wrong? And then, of course, goals because when you’ve succeeded, you have to be able to measure it.

Let’s take a look first at Strategic Positioning which answers the question, what kind of business do you want it to be? Continue reading

You need a clear picture of what you want your business to become. We call this Strategic Intent.

Did you know that 80% of new businesses fail in the first five years and that 80% of the remainder don’t make it to ten years? The outcome of these statistics? A 96% failure rate or a 4% success rate. Scary, right? But it’s a sad truth that most new businesses fail.

Given that all of those businesses were working in the same economic conditions and climate, what was it that the 4% had that the 96% didn’t? The 4% succeeded because of their mindset. They had a mindset about knowing where they’re going and then working out how to get there. That involves having a very clear strategic intent. Continue reading