6 Leadership Styles, And When You Should Use Them

6 Leadership Styles, And When You Should Use Them

By Robyn Benincasa

(Reposted from Fast Company - http://www.fastcompany.com/1838481/6-leadership-styles-and-when-you-should-use-them)

Taking a team from ordinary to extraordinary means understanding and embracing the difference between management and leadership. According to writer and consultant Peter Drucker, "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."
Manager and leader are two completely different roles, although we often use the terms interchangeably. Managers are facilitators of their team members’ success. They ensure that their people have everything they need to be productive and successful; that they’re well trained, happy and have minimal roadblocks in their path; that they’re being groomed for the next level; that they are recognized for great performance and coached through their challenges.
Conversely, a leader can be anyone on the team who has a particular talent, who is creatively thinking out of the box and has a great idea, who has experience in a certain aspect of the business or project that can prove useful to the manager and the team. A leader leads based on strengths, not titles.
The best managers consistently allow different leaders to emerge and inspire their teammates (and themselves!) to the next level.
When you’re dealing with ongoing challenges and changes, and you’re in uncharted territory with no means of knowing what comes next, no one can be expected to have all the answers or rule the team with an iron fist based solely on the title on their business card. It just doesn’t work for day-to-day operations. Sometimes a project is a long series of obstacles and opportunities coming at you at high speed, and you need every ounce of your collective hearts and minds and skill sets to get through it.
This is why the military style of top-down leadership is never effective in the fast-paced world of adventure racing or, for that matter, our daily lives (which is really one big, long adventure, hopefully!). I truly believe in Tom Peters’s observation that the best leaders don’t create followers; they create more leaders. When we share leadership, we’re all a heck of a lot smarter, more nimble and more capable in the long run, especially when that long run is fraught with unknown and unforeseen challenges.
Change leadership styles
Not only do the greatest teammates allow different leaders to consistently emerge based on their strengths, but also they realize that leadership can and should be situational, depending on the needs of the team. Sometimes a teammate needs a warm hug. Sometimes the team needs a visionary, a new style of coaching, someone to lead the way or even, on occasion, a kick in the bike shorts. For that reason, great leaders choose their leadership style like a golfer chooses his or her club, with a calculated analysis of the matter at hand, the end goal and the best tool for the job.
My favorite study on the subject of kinetic leadership is Daniel Goleman’s Leadership That Gets Results, a landmark 2000 Harvard Business Review study. Goleman and his team completed a three-year study with over 3,000 middle-level managers. Their goal was to uncover specific leadership behaviors and determine their effect on the corporate climate and each leadership style’s effect on bottom-line profitability.
The research discovered that a manager’s leadership style was responsible for 30% of the company’s bottom-line profitability! That’s far too much to ignore. Imagine how much money and effort a company spends on new processes, efficiencies, and cost-cutting methods in an effort to add even one percent to bottom-line profitability, and compare that to simply inspiring managers to be more kinetic with their leadership styles. It’s a no-brainer.
Here are the six leadership styles Goleman uncovered among the managers he studied, as well as a brief analysis of the effects of each style on the corporate climate:

1. The pacesetting leader expects and models excellence and self-direction. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “Do as I do, now.” The pacesetting style works best when the team is already motivated and skilled, and the leader needs quick results. Used extensively, however, this style can overwhelm team members and squelch innovation.
   
2. The authoritative leader mobilizes the team toward a common vision and focuses on end goals, leaving the means up to each individual. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “Come with me.” The authoritative style works best when the team needs a new vision because circumstances have changed, or when explicit guidance is not required. Authoritative leaders inspire an entrepreneurial spirit and vibrant enthusiasm for the mission. It is not the best fit when the leader is working with a team of experts who know more than him or her.
   
3. The affiliative leader works to create emotional bonds that bring a feeling of bonding and belonging to the organization. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “People come first.” The affiliative style works best in times of stress, when teammates need to heal from a trauma, or when the team needs to rebuild trust. This style should not be used exclusively, because a sole reliance on praise and nurturing can foster mediocre performance and a lack of direction.
   
4. The coaching leader develops people for the future. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “Try this.” The coaching style works best when the leader wants to help teammates build lasting personal strengths that make them more successful overall. It is least effective when teammates are defiant and unwilling to change or learn, or if the leader lacks proficiency.
   
5. The coercive leader demands immediate compliance. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “Do what I tell you.” The coercive style is most effective in times of crisis, such as in a company turnaround or a takeover attempt, or during an actual emergency like a tornado or a fire. This style can also help control a problem teammate when everything else has failed. However, it should be avoided in almost every other case because it can alienate people and stifle flexibility and inventiveness.
   
6. The democratic leader builds consensus through participation. If this style were summed up in one phrase, it would be “What do you think?” The democratic style is most effective when the leader needs the team to buy into or have ownership of a decision, plan, or goal, or if he or she is uncertain and needs fresh ideas from qualified teammates. It is not the best choice in an emergency situation, when time is of the essence for another reason or when teammates are not informed enough to offer sufficient guidance to the leader.

Bottom line? If you take two cups of authoritative leadership, one cup of democratic, coaching, and affiliative leadership, and a dash of pacesetting and coercive leadership “to taste,” and you lead based on need in a way that elevates and inspires your team, you’ve got an excellent recipe for long-term leadership success with every team in your life.
Robyn Benincasa is a two-time Adventure Racing World Champion, two-time Guinness World Record distance kayaker, a full-time firefighter, and author of the new book, HOW WINNING WORKS: 8 Essential Leadership Lessons from the Toughest Teams on Earth, from which this article is excerpted. (Harlequin Nonfiction, June 2012)
[Image: Flickr user Bas Kers]

Understanding Fear of Process Improvement

by Brad Power  (Published on 09/27/13 on HBR Blog)

A culture of continuous improvement is crucial to organizational performance and survival. Just ask Richard Aubut, CEO of South Shore Hospital, the leading regional provider of healthcare in southeastern Massachusetts. “We don’t know what changes will be coming with healthcare reform and other changes in our industry,” he told me recently. “But we do know we need to build the capability to deal with whatever does. That’s why we’ve added continuous improvement to our cultural pillars.” Yet most reports, such as John Kotter’s classic Harvard Business Review article “Leading Change: Why Transformation Effort Fail,” show that few attempts at fundamental change are very successful, a few are utter failures, and most fall somewhere in between, with a distinct tilt to failure. Discussions about process improvement failures sprang up recently on two different LinkedIn groups I participate in, and most members cited a lack of leadership from the top as the primary reason. A few said it was because people didn’t follow the methodology (e.g., Six Sigma or Lean) the right way.
Ironically, few of these discussions pursued this issue much further to get at the root cause. Why aren’t leaders on board? Why doesn’t culture change? How do you change culture?
But one of the people in the conversation stood out to me, with a more thoughtful approach: John Ryan, a continuous improvement coordinator at Zeus, Inc., a South Carolina-based manufacturer of polymer tubing. When I contacted him directly, he told me there is a simple yet highly effective tool for getting at the root cause of process performance problems: asking the question “Why.”

Why do cultures resist change?

Because they are successful.

Why are they successful?

Because we hold onto practices that make us successful until they become habitual.

Why don’t we try new practices?

Because it takes energy to learn a new habit.

Why do we need habits?

Because to compete successfully, we must able to instantly respond to the environment; we cannot take the time to think every time before acting. The faster we can react, the more likely we are to survive when confronted with danger.

When do we create new habits?

When we confront a situation where existing habits don’t work, we conclude a new habit is needed, and we have enough time to create one.

Why does it take a long time to change habits?

Because if we change immediately every time we encounter a new environment, we will constantly spend energy on changing — energy that we need to survive. And whenever we encounter a new environment, our first reaction is fear. It has to be fear because before we take any action, we must ensure that we can survive. We use this fear to keep us safe.

If fear of change is the root cause of failures to create a culture of continuous improvement, as W. Edwards Deming (the father of the quality movement) famously said, “Drive out fear. No one can put in his best performance unless he feels secure” — what are the counter-measures? What are the most effective ways to embrace fear of change? I see three:
1. Show respect to the people whose work will change by getting them involved in defining the improvements.
People resist change that is imposed on them. But if they help define the changes, they will own them. As Peter Hunter, a former naval officer and management consultant, has said, “People hate being told what to do. It is human nature to avoid doing what we have been told. … Instead find out what people want and give it to them, or give them the reason why they can’t have it. Both answers are equally valuable because they both let the individuals know that their opinion has been listened to and is valued.”
2. Welcome failure in experiments of new ways of working as a way to learn; remove the downside risks and provide upside.
Experiments allow us to learn and improve. As described in my previous post, “Get Your Worker to Disrupt Their Jobs,” you should commit to your employees that they will stay employed if they suggest process change. You should also give them some of the upside from making those changes — profit sharing and promotions. And by training them, you can demonstrate your commitment to their development.
3. Hire self-starters who are committed to your mission.
Your employees will embrace change that furthers the mission of the organization if they view the value of that change to the customer as greater than the pain of change. For example, the 58,000 employees of the Mayo Clinic, a worldwide leader in medical services, are more likely to embrace changes to their work if it’s clear that it makes the patient’s experience better. It starts with recruitment. On the jobs section of the Mayo Clinic website, the first thing you see is “Working at Mayo Clinic is making a difference. It’s providing the highest quality patient care by placing the needs of patients first.”
Organizations with cultures that value continuous improvement are far better at changing their processes and staying competitive. Yet most organizations that make a run at continuous improvement fail to make it stick because of fear. As Zeus Inc.’s John Ryan points out, “You should embrace fear for the tremendous benefit it provides.”
Questions: What do you see as the root cause of failures to institute continuous improvement? How have you seen workers overcome their fear of work changes?

You Are Not the Best Judge of You

You Are Not the Best Judge of You
by Scott Edinger (Published on 11/15/11 on HBR Blog)   

“To create a reliable 360 survey,” Marcus Buckingham concludes in his recent blog on this site, “The Fatal Flaws With 360 Surveys,” all you need do is…ask the rater to evaluate himself on his own feelings.” Since you are an expert on your own feelings, your responses have to be solid.

That seems logical, and yet I could not disagree more with this conclusion. In an effort to give equal time to the other side of the story, and to clarify some misconceptions, let me share with you the reasons why not getting 360-degree feedback may actually be fatal. (But here’s hoping that in the course of this debate there are no fatalities.)

Leadership effectiveness is in the eye of those who are led. “Rate me on ‘Marcus is a good listener’ and we learn whether I am a better listener than you,” Buckingham writes. But in my work with Jack Zenger and Joe Folkman analyzing the 360-degree feedback from tens of thousands of leaders, that’s not been our experience. What we find is: ask me to rate “Marcus is a good listener,” and we discover whether I think Marcus is listening to me. That’s certainly not objective data. But it doesn’t have to be. If Marcus is my boss and I think he’s not listening to me, that certainly plays into how effective he is as a leader, no matter how subjective my judgment is.

Subjective 360 data can correlate to objective business results. What I think about my boss wouldn’t matter if it had no relation to business success. But our analysis of the data from those thousands of 360s shows that it does, empirically. We have correlated the leadership-effectiveness scores we’ve collected with a variety of business outcomes — profitability, turnover, employee engagement, customer satisfaction — you name it, we probably studied it. What we’ve seen is that 360 data are an incredibly reliable measure of business success, frequently showing a lock-step correlation between the effectiveness of a company’s leaders, as measured by those subjective 360s, and the company’s objective business results.

You don’t have to be great at everything. “Most 360s are built on a logical non-sequitur,” Buckingham suggests, “namely that since a particular group of exemplary leaders possesses all the competencies measured by the 360, therefore the best individual leader is she who possesses all of them.” I agree that’s a non-sequitur, and that would be a problem if you used the full range of leadership skills on the assessment as a one-size-fits-all definition of the perfect leader. But our research suggests that’s not necessary at all, even if it were possible. When we analyze the most effective leaders in the world, we find that the truly extraordinary ones need only excel at a relatively small number of competencies — three to five. For us, the purpose of taking the 360 is not to see which leadership skills you lack so you can complete the set. Rather, it’s to find your best self — that is, the particular leadership skills you should focus on to become uniquely extraordinary.

You are not the best judge of you. Several years ago, while working on my first project with Joe Folkman, I asked him what was the most interesting finding he’d seen in his years of studying 360s. He responded, with a wry smile, “The average leaders don’t think they are.” Thus we, too, find leaders subject to “benevolent distortion.” But we don’t find it that benevolent. Our data show not just a gap — but something closer to a canyon — between people’s perceptions of themselves and how other people see them. “How could that be?” you might ask: After all, you are the only one there for everything! No doubt. And yet, our data tell us that you are a notoriously bad predictor of your own leadership abilities because it is so difficult to consistently know what impact you are having on others. In that regard, other people are experts at knowing how they feel about your effect on them. Ironically, we find, the best leaders in our database frequently rate their performance lower than their peers, bosses, and direct reports. From the perspective of inner strength and psychological health, it’s terrific to have confidence in your own views and convictions. But when considering your strength as a leader, doing so in isolation is, from where we sit, downright, fatal.

I’ll be the first to agree that a 360 assessment is no panacea and that the tool can be over-, miss-, and incorrectly used. But in my experience, there’s simply no substitute for getting feedback from the people who are the most influenced and affected by your actions, talents, and skills. Applied creatively, a 360-degree feedback process can be an incredibly powerful tool to help you identify your strengths, grant you insight into how you can make them even more effective, and alert you to any behavior that might be severely detracting from your effectiveness. Are the 360 data objective? No. But even so they can help leaders create an objective, personal plan of development. And they’re certainly more effective than just asking yourself.

9 Best Practices for Creating Powerful Mentoring Programs

9 Best Practices for Creating Powerful Mentoring Programs  
by Ann Tardy, President
The LifeMoxie Consulting Group

Implementing a corporate mentoring program can be your wildly successful legacy or your administrative nightmare. The difference lies in creating a powerful, employee driven, effective program.

As an employee benefit, a powerful mentoring program can serve to develop your current team and attract new talent. A mentoring program is the perfect opportunity to leverage the skills and strengths of your employees in order to train and develop each other. And when designed properly, a mentoring program can enhance leadership skills, soften departmental barriers, increase employee effectiveness, and boost morale.
Alternatively, a poorly planned mentoring program can become an administrative nightmare. The burden of designing, implementing and maintaining a mentoring program often falls on the already-full plate of an HR director or diversity manager. And an ineffective mentoring program runs the risk of frustrating the employees (and you!) and negatively impacting morale.

The following are nine best practices for creating a powerful, employee-driven, effective mentoring program:

1)      Define Your Success - As early as possible define your program’s success factors in measurable ways and then design your program to achieve that success. For example, one of LifeMoxie’s clients created a mentoring program to increase membership in its company-sponsored affinity groups. Another LifeMoxie client is using the program to augment its succession planning initiative and develop its mid-tier managers.  

2)      Give them a Reason to Participate - time is precious, especially on the job. If you want your employees to participate in your mentoring program, give them an incentive to participate or obligate them to identify their own reasons for participating. For example, encourage participation in the program by making it a factor in annual performance reviews.

3)      Blow up Mentoring Myths - Mentoring often connotes “a guide for your whole life,” similar to the character Obi-Wan Kenobi from the movie Star Wars. As a result, employees often expect to find that one special lifetime mentor in someone of the highest ranks of the company. In reality, everyone on your team can be a Mentor and everyone, regardless of level, can benefit from a mentoring program. Encourage employees to participate as both a Mentor and a Mentee in your program so they learn from as well as develop each other.

4)      Think like a Dating Service - As the catalyst of your mentoring program, consider yourself a dating service for the professional development of your employees. As such you need to provide a way for people to find each other (think Match.com) while providing them the structure in which to make good matches (think matchmaker). Teaching people how to participate in their own matching will create more effective mentoring relationships while giving them lifetime mentoring skills, but will also require your employees to be proactive in the finding and creating of their mentoring relationships. Your challenge is to implement a program that acts like a dating service and not like an arranged marriage.

5)      Teach them How to Mentor - To create an effective mentoring program, you must teach the participants how to be effective Mentors and Mentees. Incorporate ongoing Mentor/Mentee training and educational opportunities, and provide your participants with tools for creating structure in their relationships. Your goal is to teach them how to create their own mentoring relationships so that your mentoring program becomes an employee-inspired, employee generated, employee-driven program year after year.

6)      Make them Commit - Make it a requirement that everyone who enters into a mentoring relationship must sign a mentoring agreement or complete an application (either on-line or on paper). In addition, require your participants to commit to the relationship for a certain period of time, preferably three to six months, while providing each party the opportunity to obtain a no fault split should the relationship not be working.

7)      Mentor around Specific Goals - As your participants start creating mentoring relationships, encourage them to work on specific goals that the Mentor and Mentee generate together. Having goals will create focus and contribute to the effectiveness of their relationship.

8)      Make it Easy to Play - There is nothing worse than an interested, inspired employee that becomes frustrated with the process. Make it easy to participate in your mentoring program, easy to access the mentoring tools and information, and easy for you to administer.

9)      Track Everyone’s Progress - Encourage your participants to track their progress in the program and their progress on their goals. Incorporate a mechanism for participants to provide their feedback on their relationship and on the mentoring program.

Keys for a successful coaching relationship

Keys for a successful coaching relationship

Is the executive highly motivated to change?
Yes : Executives who get the most out of coaching have a fierce desire to learn and grow.
No: Do not engage a coach to fix behavioral problems. Blamers, victims, and individuals with iron-clad belief systems don’t change.

Does the executive have good chemistry with the coach?
Yes: The right match is absolutely key to the success of a coaching experience. Without it, the trust required for optimal executive performance will not develop.
No: Do not engage a coach on the basis of reputation or experience without making sure that the fit is right.

Is there a strong commitment from top management to developing the executive?
Yes: The firm must have a true desire to retain and develop the coached executive.
No: Do not engage a coach if the real agenda is to push the executive out or to fix a systemic issue beyond the control of the coached individual.

Does the focus of coaching engagements shift?
All but eight of the 140 respondents said that over time their focus shifts from what they were originally hired to do.
“Absolutely! It starts out with a business bias and inevitably migrates to ‘bigger issues’ such as life purpose, work/life balance, and becoming a better leader.”
“Generally no. If the assignment is set up properly, the issues are usually very clear before the assignment gets started.”

What should you look for when hiring a coach. Here's how various qualifications stacked up. 

 

 

Coaching borrows from both consulting and therapy

 

Tips on Managing Difficult People (Harvard Business Review)

This article is worth sharing since the topic of my last newsletter was "Know Your Players and INVEST in Them". It is from Harvard Business Review - http://hbr.org/web/management-tip/tips-on-managing-difficult-people

Tips on Managing Difficult People

Three Ways to Deal with a Passive-Aggressive Colleague

It can be incredibly frustrating when a co-worker agrees with a plan of action, only to go off and do his own thing. This type of sabotage is all too common and can make it difficult to achieve your goals. When you have a co-worker who says one thing and does another, try this:

• Give feedback. Explain to your co-worker what you're seeing and experiencing. Describe the impact of his behavior on you and provide suggestions for how he might change.
• Focus on work, not the person. You need to get the work done despite your peer's style, so don't waste time wishing he would change. Concentrate on completing the work instead.
• Ask for commitment. At the end of a meeting ask everyone (not just the troublemaker) to reiterate what they are going to do and by when. Sometimes peer pressure can keep even the most passive-aggressive person on task.

Adapted from "How to Deal With a Passive-Aggressive Peer" by Amy Jen Su and Muriel Maignan Wilkins.

Keep Your Composure, or Walk Away

With offices becoming more physically and metaphorically open, the privacy of a room with a closed door can be difficult to find. More often, everyone from the CEO to the receptionist is visible to everyone else. This level of exposure can encourage transparency but can also put you on display in fragile moments when you are stressed or upset. Next time you feel like you might lose your cool (and who hasn't had these moments?), take note of where you are. If you might be observed by others, take a deep breath or a drink of water. If that doesn't do the trick, get outside. In these new open work spaces, it's critical to maintain professionalism by being calm and supportive of others, and by doing your venting somewhere private.

Adapted from "The No-Drama Rule of Management" by Peter Bregman.

Three Tips for Resolving a Conflict with Your Coworker

Differences of opinion between coworkers can be useful and even productive. But when clashes turn ugly, conflict can be harmful to working relationships. Here are three tips for handling the next disagreement you have with a colleague:

• Identify common ground. Point out what you both agree on at the beginning of the conversation. This may be a shared goal or a set of operating rules.
• Hear your coworker out. Allow your colleague to share his opinion and explain his point of view. Don't disagree with individual points he makes; listen to the whole story.
• Propose a solution. Use the information you gathered in the conversation to offer a resolution. This should incorporate his perspective and be different from what you originally thought.

Adapted from "The Right Way to Fight" by Amy Gallo.

Turn Your Competitors into Allies

When a colleague's agenda is seemingly opposed to your own, it can be tempting to demonize him. Distorting other people is a common response to conflict, but not a particularly productive one. In fact, doing so undermines your ability to exert influence. Instead of deciding that everything about a colleague you don't get along with is hateful, get to know him better. Sit down and talk about what he cares and is concerned about. You may find that the source of your conflict is actually an area of mutual interest and rather than being enemies, you are natural allies.

Adapted from "Managing Yourself: Stop Holding Yourself Back" by Anne Morriss, Robin J. Ely, and Frances X. Frei.

Stop Being So Nice

Conflict avoidance is a common trait of most corporate workplaces. But, steering clear of disagreements and leaving things unsaid creates unnecessary complexity and needless anxiety. To get better at confronting conflict constructively, follow these three steps:

• Reflect. Ask yourself whether there are times you should've spoken up but held your tongue. Do you avoid certain types of conflicts?
• Get feedback. Ask trusted friends and colleagues how they perceive your readiness to engage in constructive conflict. They might see patterns that are less obvious to you.
• Experiment. You don't have to change overnight. Try pushing back on a request or speaking up in a meeting and see how it goes. Preface your comment with an admission that you are working on getting better at conflict. This will help demonstrate your sincerity.  

Adapted from "Is Your Culture Too Nice?" by Ron Ashkenas.

Is Your Business Ready For 2013?

Preparing Your Business for 2013

Change is happening.  The stress we felt in recent recession will hit our businesses again soon.  

Whether this predicted fiscal cliff is a 10,000 foot drop, a bump in the road or someplace in between, business leaders need to be prepared. 

Taxes will increase, legislation will be greater, health care costs will continue to go up, government will get bigger and BUSINESS WILL STILL HAPPEN.

Based on the lessons learned from past economically challenging times, as well as good business practices, let me share with you 5 areas that you can manage in your business to survive and possible thrive.

• Financial Management. Going beyond fundamental management of your business (income statements, balance sheets, and sales forecasts), I recommend 2 specific things to improve your financial stability: 

1. Have a strong banking relationship. This goes two ways.  Know the bank you are with is a solid bank. Think about the fallout a few years ago.  Partner with a bank that will be there for you.  Secondly, meet quarterly with your banker to review your business. Share what you have done and what you will do.  This relationship will be invaluable if you need financial assistance from your bank. 
2. Get your Accounts Receivable balance to zero OR EVEN negative!  How can you get paid before you deliver the service?  Think about magazines. They collect their money and then, over 12 months, deliver your service.  How can your business do this? 

•  Operational Management. This is where you can make the biggest impact to your survival. Again, I recommend 2 specific actions:

1. Know what you do and do what you know.  Identify your core services / products and be the best at it.  Don't get distracted by the "shiny new idea".  Focus on your core strengths and commit to being the best at it. Too many times I see businesses who lose sight of their core capabilities and wonder into unchartered waters. More often than not, they sink.  Now is not the time to stray. 
2. Simplify, simplify, simplify.  Continually ask what you can do to streamline your operations.  What steps don't add value to your service or product? There is a process called "Activity Based Costing".  Ever activity has a cost to it. Find your cost and ask if there is an offsetting value. If not, eliminate it or simplify it.

• Customer Management. Your customer relationship is the third area of focus. You must create "raving fans" to survive and thrive.  Here are two recommendations:

1. Sell solutions not products or services. As simple as this sounds, too many businesses sell products and services that they think their customers need. Ask your customers what problems you solve. Ask them why they buy from you?  Know their problems and be their solution. 
2.  Don’t depend upon a few good customers. Diversify your customer base. If you have more than 70% of your revenue coming from less than 30% of your clients, you are at risk. Find new customers who have the same problem. Can you expand geographically, demographically, gender, ethnicity, age, etc.? How does your solution solve another potential customer's problem? Profile your customers and find a new customer. 

• Utilization of Resources. Most companies are only using 20-30% of their resources true potential. Consider how much technology is at your fingertips. Besides using it for e-mail, documents and a few basic spreadsheets, most of the potential lies dormant. This is true for most of the other resources in our business - including your people.  What can you do? Here is one simple recommendation.

1. Invest in resources. Consider where the biggest opportunities are in your business and invest now - BUT measure the results.  Don't assume if someone is trained or equipment is upgraded, that you have solved the problem. Measure the expected performance improvement. What gets measured gets accomplished. This is the only true way to do more with less.

• Stakeholder Management. This is one of the most neglected asset a company has and yet the one that can make or break a business.  The stakeholders of your business includes the community you live in and the market you serve. Frank Agin, founder of AmSpirit Business Connections and author, once said "All things being equal, and even when they aren’t, people do business with people they know, like and trust." In today's business world, no reputation is a bad reputation. You must pay attention to your reputation and build your reputation. Here is a simple action you can take.

1. Invite comments. Ask your customers to give you feedback. Online, in writing, through survey cards but you must ask.  If you get something unfavorable, respond immediately. Study after study shows that a quick, positive resolution brings stronger loyalty than all the 'good' service in the world.

FOCUS on these core concepts and you have a better chance of surviving and even thriving during this next challenging time.

Remember this business truth – if someone is buying the products or services you offer, you have a marketplace to compete. Your job is to compete!