Dave Oetken, Managing Director of Business Advising for GLI’s ENTERPRISECORP, offers the following advice on making your business’s New Year’s resolutions stick:
How are your New Year’s resolutions working out?
Now that we’re halfway through January, are you on track with your New Year’s business resolutions? Most Decembers, business leaders reflect on the prior year’s performance and vow to improve: to do things differently, or never do that again.
And then what happens?
Fifty-three percent do not maintain their New Year’s resolutions because their planned changes are either too expensive or take up too many resources (Health & Safety Executive – HSE – 2006).
75 percent of change initiatives fail because the organization is unsuccessful in managing the human reaction to change. (John P. Kotter, Leading Change, 1996)
Obviously, the odds are not always in our favor. We lose focus, priorities change, and the incessant “stuff” of day-to-day business weakens our resolve.
Faced with challenges from every corner, what can business leaders do differently this year in order to make their New Year’s resolutions stick? Gary Harpst, CEO and founder of Six Disciplines and author of the top-rated book Six Disciplines for Excellence offers the following tips to ensure your business resolutions endure:
Beware - the answer is not the best-seller. Most business leaders hunger for the most effective insights, yet many end up falling for the latest management fad,a symptom that has become known as MBBS – “Management By Best Seller.” Best-selling business books, by themselves, are not silver bullets. To turn the odds in your favor, you’ll need to adopt a repeatable approach, establish a system for keeping you on track, and obtain outside help (a business coach) to keep you accountable.
Use a repeatable method. Only a repeatable method, applied consistently, enables change to stick. For example, start by stepping back and assessing your organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Then, renew your organization’s mission, vision, values and strategic position, and create a list of the things you will stop doing. Next, set goals that are specific, measurable aimed at leading your organization. Then, align all the systems within your company to ensure the resources are stacked to meet your goals. Next, create individual plans for everyone in the organization on a quarterly basis, so each person understands and aligns his or her daily activities with the goals of the organization. Have each person meet with a manager weekly, to keep on track and learn to become accountable for executing the strategy.
Don’t look at it as “just a New Year’s resolution.”Look at your resolutions as a continual pursuit – not a short-term fix to an immediate problem. It takes an enduring approach, one that must be embraced and practiced every day, quarter after quarter, even year over year. To turn the odds in your favor, you’ll need to come to grips with the realization that short-term fixes are not the answer. Only a commitment to continual improvement will enable the changes you want.
Advantages of an external accountability coach. Having access to a business coach who can hold you accountable for the changes you want in your business immediately improves the odds in your favor. Just like personal challenges of fitness, diet or weight loss, a business coach can help keep you on track toward your goal. Having an accountability coach provides that additional level of motivation to do the things you know need to be done, but in the past never got around to doing.
Execution software – to keep you engaged. What keeps most business leaders up at night is the greatest challenge of all: execution. Meeting the plan.Delivering the goods.In business as in our personal lives, we generally know what to do (strategy), and the hard part is just doing it (execution). Doing the things we say we’re going to do sounds easy, yet each of us struggles with it every single day. To stay on track, you need software that enables you to track how you spend your time, helps you communicate progress effectively, and continuously aligns your daily activities with the goals of the organization.
Change what? Look beyond the obvious! So, your “biggest” problem seems to be getting sales leads, or maybe it’s your customer follow-up procedures. First, face the facts: whatever you think is your biggest problem is not really your biggest problem. These problems, while looming large today, can be fixed, one at a time - until the next big problem pops up. The greatest problem business leaders face is building an organization that learns how to increase its capabilities to meet the next set of challenges.
If you want to transform your business in the coming year, simply making New Year’s resolutions isn’t goingto deliver the results you want. A repeatable process to constantly and consistently improve your business over time is the only way to transform your company. If you don’t know where to start, the EnterpriseCorp can help. Visit www.GreaterLouisville.com/enterprisecorp to learn about the services and expertise we can provide your company.
Here’s to a successful 2011 for us all!