Four Capacities Every Great Leader Needs

The following is a great article on leadership that was sent my way. It is written by Tony Schwartz.

Develop a work environment that compels employees to give the highest value to your company. by Tony Schwartz


WHEN I WAS a very young journalist, full of bravado and barely concealed insecurity, Ed Kosner, editor of Newsweek, hired me to do a job I wasn't sure I was capable of doing. Thrown into deep water, I had no choice but to swim. But I also knew he wouldn't let me drown. His confidence buoyed me.

Some years later, I was hired away by Arthur Gelb, the managing editor of The New York Times. This time, I was seduced by Gelb's contagious exuberance about being part of a noble fraternity committed to putting out the world's greatest newspaper.

Over the last dozen years, I've worked with scores of CEOs and senior executives to help them build more engaged, high-performance cultures by energizing their employees. Along the way, I've landed on four key capacities that show up, to one degree or another, in the most inspiring leaders I've met.

1. Great leaders recognize strengths in us that we don't always yet fully see in ourselves.

This is precisely what Kosner did with me. He provided belief where I didn't yet have it, and I trusted his judgment more than my own. It's the Pygmalion effect: expectations become self-fulfilling.

Both positive and negative emotions feed on themselves. In the absence of Kosner's confidence, I simply wouldn't have assumed I was ready to write at that level.

Because he seemed so sure I could - he saw better than I did how my ambition and relentlessness would eventually help me prevail - I wasted little energy in corrosive worry and doubt.

Instead, I simply invested myself in getting better, day by day, step by step. Because we can achieve excellence in almost anything we practice with sufficient focus and intention, I did get better, which fed my own confidence and satisfaction, and my willingness to keep pushing myself.

2. Rather than simply trying to get more out of us, great leaders seek to understand and meet our needs, above all a compelling mission beyond our immediate self-interest, or theirs.

Great leaders understand that how they make people feel, day in and day out, has a profound influence on how they perform.

We each have a range of core needs - physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. Great leaders focus on helping their employees meet each of these needs, recognizing that it helps them to perform better and more sustainably.

Arthur Gelb helped me meet not just my emotional need to be valued, but also my spiritual need to be engaged in a mission bigger than my own success. Far too few leaders take the time to figure out what they truly stand for, beyond the bottom line, and why we should feel excited to work for them.

3. Great leaders take the time to clearly define what success looks like, and then empower and trust us to figure out the best way to achieve it.

One of our core needs is for self-expression. One of the most demoralizing and infantilizing experiences at work is to feel micromanaged. The job of leaders is not to do the work of those they lead, but to serve as Chief Energy Officer - to free and fuel us to bring the best of ourselves to work everyday.

Part of that responsibility is defining, in the clearest possible way, what's expected of us - our concrete deliverables. This is a time-consuming and challenging process, and most leaders I've met do very little of it. When they do it effectively, the next step for leaders is to get out of the way.

That requires trusting that employees will figure out for themselves the best way to get their work done, and that even though they'll take wrong turns and make mistakes, they learn and grow stronger along the way.

4. The best of all leaders have the capacity to embrace their own opposites, most notably vulnerability alongside strength, and confidence balanced by humility.

This capacity is so powerful because all of us struggle, whether we're aware of it or not, with our self-worth. We're each vulnerable to believing, at any given moment, that we're not good enough.

Great leaders don't feel the need to be right, or to be perfect, because they've learned to value themselves in spite of shortcomings they freely acknowledge. In turn, they bring this generous spirit to those they lead.

The more leaders make us feel valued, in spite of our imperfections, the less energy we will spend asserting, defending and restoring our value, and the more energy we have available to create value.

All four capacities are grounded in one overarching insight. Great leaders recognize that the best way to get the highest value is to give the highest value.

Tony Schwartz is the president and CEO of The Energy Project and the author of The Way We're Working Isn't Working.

Let us know your thoughts on this article!

It Does Not Have to be Lonely at the Top (in fact it shouldn't be!)

Today's post is written by Bob Dodge, Sr. Partner at The Alternative Board - Denver West.

As a business owner, you have no doubt experienced how lonely it can be at the Top. It doesn’t have to be lonely, though. Even the Lone Ranger had Tonto to talk with. You don’t have to go it alone; in fact, there are several reasons you should involve (listen to) others.

Talk with your employees to find out:

1. if they understand why you expect them to complete critical tasks. If they are not motivated, no amount of training will help! The must have the desire to do so.
   
   
2. if they have the capabilities (time, tools, skills and resources) to accomplish what is needed for the organization. Telling your team to “just do it” if they lack these capabilities will only frustrate them, and eventually you. You and your entire team will benefit from discussing your vision and priorities; providing opportunities for employees to learn. Demonstrate to your employees through your actions that you are committed to these critical success factors.
   
   
3. if they know the consequences of their actions or lack thereof. If employees don’t understand what is in it “for them”, they’ll never perform. Be prepared to provide those (positive as well as negative) consequences to avoid problems down the road. In short, walk the talk.
   
   As a result, you might hear some great ideas to improve the business! After all, they are the ones actually doing the work!
   
   

Talk with your customer to jointly consider how they experience your product or service:

1. Maybe there are additional services you might provide that customers would value (and pay for). These are opportunities to capture additional revenue.
   
   
2. You might discover that your company is currently spending time, money or other resources on activities and features that your customers don’t value.
   
   At least they’ll appreciate the gesture to at least look at the business relationship from their perspective.
   

Talk with your peers:

You might be surprised that other leaders face similar challenges as you. Regular conversations with these executives provide a safe way to explore ideas and learn from one another.


Talk with your coach:

Consider getting a coach to help you explore and accomplish taking your business to a new level. A good coach will help you listen to yourself!

These examples of communicating are all actually acts of listening. Most business leaders can and do inform, motivate, sell, and convince. Effective leaders have also mastered listening! How could listening to your employees, customers, peers or coach affect your business? Would you feel like less of a Lone Ranger?

If Your are a Victim; You are Guilty

This was written by my good friend and colleague John Dini, in San Antonio.

Let's say you own a small Italian Restaurant. Fifteen tables. Pasta, Pizza, beer and wine. Not really a white tablecloth place. More like plastic red and white check tablecloths with Chianti bottles and drippy candles. On a good Saturday night you might take in $2,500. You average about $400,000 a year in sales. You are closed Mondays, because everyone in the family needs a day off.

One Tuesday morning you come in early to start food prep for the week. The mail is piled on the floor where the mailman pushed it through the slot yesterday. You sit at one of the tables drinking a cup of coffee as you open the mail. Routine stuff. There is the produce vendor's statement.A postcard from a regular customer on vacation. An offer or two for new credit cards. There is a letter from a credit card processor; Visa or MasterCard. It informs you that a number of customer cards have been used fraudulently. They have traced the origin of the security breach to your restaurant, and you owe them $170,000 under your merchant agreement, plus penalties. Your issuing bank will be contacting you regarding the collection terms, and to inform you of the additional costs.

You are out of business.

This isn't a joke. It's not an Urban Legend. It is happening every day to scores of small businesses nationally, and the number is increasing rapidly. PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance is a term that should strike terror into the heart of every small business person who accepts credit cards. If you've been ignoring the warning information from your bank or merchant processor, or if you think you have it taken care of, think again.

A restaurant here in San Antonio recently went to the newspaper to ask for a story warning every customer of theirs to get new credit cards. This restaurant was hit for over $500,000 in charges, plus penalties (more on those later.) The most bitter pill to swallow is that this restaurant did it right. They have the latest version of a POS (Point of Sale) register system. Their network was behind an up-to-date firewall. Their credit card data was encrypted. Nothing saved them from a sophisticated international fraud industry that remains one step ahead of security techniques.

Some fraud is low-tech. A waiter takes cell-phone photos of cards as he runs them, and mails them to an online fence who pays him a couple of dollars per number. A hotel is missing boxes of old credit card slips. (That happened last week in San Antonio- 17,000 customers affected.) The most pernicious, however, is the Internet hack. The threat encompasses every business; retail, service or B2B that accepts credit cards.
Organized thieves, many of them in Eastern Europe, spend all day "pinging" IP addresses in the US. When one hits a firewall, or more commonly, hits an electronic cash register, processing terminal, PC or a server that isn't behind a firewall, they blast a dictionary of keywords at it to identify whether there is any credit card information on the other end. If one of these words gets a hit, they begin the hack, inserting a program that duplicates any card number run through the system and transmitting it to their servers. It takes seconds for the whole process.

Typically they will collect for some time, months or in some cases years, before they put the cards into use. It gives them economies of scale. With faster fraud identification systems, many have started "real time" usage, duplicating cards in Europe or Asia and selling them the same day.

Illegal web sites post buyer requirements; how many cards, issuer type, credit limits sought and prices to be paid. ("Need 200 AMEX Gold or Platinum- pay $50 each") Other sites will tell you the current available limit on any card number. Still other sites sell stolen numbers in a daily auction, batched by type and credit limit availability.

Your data is encrypted? Law enforcement sources tell me that decryption programs to defeat the current levels of credit card security can be bought for $125 on the web and installed in 15 minutes.

When I tell small business owners this story, they usually say "But my credit card company says I'm not liable for fraudulent charges." That is true if you are a consumer. If you are a merchant, you have already accepted the liability. You agreed to comply with all PCI security protocols. Those protocols, however, are so loosely defined, and so complex, that if you are defrauded it essentially means you weren't in compliance. In other words, if you are a victim; you are guilty.

When cards are used fraudulently, here is what happens. The card processor begins an algorithm to cross reference the fraudulent cards with the places they were used. In minutes, twenty cards cross at one point- Anthony's Italian Trattoria in Peoria Illinois. (If there is really an Anthony's in Peoria, I apologize. I checked to see that there wasn't. It's supposed to be fictional.) You are proven guilty.

What happens next is a nightmare. First, every customer who charged something at your business (in a time frame of potential risk determined by the processor) must be notified that their card may have been compromised, and they should get a new one. The charge for that is $30 per customer. It is billed to your bank issuer, who can either pass it on to you or eat it. Guess which one they will choose?

(A quick aside here. If you are like almost all small business people, your accounts are concentrated at one bank. Your loan agreements usually allow the bank to deduct amounts owed them from ANY account you have there, business or personal.)

Then they have to do the forensic investigation, to determine how the cards were stolen and the potential losses. The cost of a forensic examination is currently set by PCI at $10,000 minimum. All this is in addition to any fraudulent usage, which is directly billed to you. The bank may choose to let you continue operating, if you can afford to let them withhold everything charged to credit cards in your business until repayment is made.

If you think I am being alarmist, check out the PCI video at TAB member Don Douglas' Comply Guard Networks website. (This isn't a plug. Few small business owners could afford Don's services, which are geared to corporate and institutional customers.) The other examples I cite here are from my own experience locally in the last month, and they are not the only ones I know.

What can you do? Checking a driver's license, which many people consider security, doesn't help with this problem. That only protects you from being back charged for a fraudulent usage. That is one transaction, not hundreds or thousands.

You could stop accepting credit card, but for many of us that isn't feasible.

Here is what you CAN do, in simple terms:

First- Spend the money to upgrade your system. I've talked to POS vendors at length about this. They tell me that the usual openings, lack of a firewall, shared hubs with wireless hot spots, and out of date software, cost between $1,000 and $3,000 to change. It still isn't fool proof, but it is like the burglar who was asked why he didn't hit houses when he knew there were only timers on the lights. "Because the house next door doesn't even have timers." The cost is minimal in comparison to the deterrent factor.

Second- DO NOT STORE CREDIT CARD NUMBERS ON TRANSACTIONS ANYWHERE, EVER! Many businesses don't even know that their systems are keeping numbers. With cheap data storage, some have no erasure process at all. One restaurant locally, with hundreds of seats and a booming business, recently found out that they had every credit card number for every transaction in the last ten years residing in their hard drive. One hack, and they could have been hit for millions in notification fees alone.

If you have a customer dispute or question, you can get the information from the credit card company. Yes, it may take forever on the phone to wade through the process, but how bad is that compared to losing your business?

There are some major things that the industry could do, but for now they've chosen to just shift the liability to small business owners who are generally unaware of what has been done to them. In this case, such ignorance can ruin you.

If this is news to you, it is probably news to your business owner friends. I have been passing this information on to every business owner I know. Most have been surprised by it. Do a friend a favor, and give them a heads up. Ask them "Are your computers PCI complaint?" If they look at you blankly, send them here.

Ready...Set...Wait? Leading Indicators and Small Business

The following was written by my good friend John Dini in San Antonio. I couldn't resist re-posting.

In the last few weeks I've talked to a score of small business owners who say that things are improving for their companies. Several have been involved in trade shows that had record attendance. A few manufacturers are seeing a strong uptick in orders. Retailers are experiencing increased traffic.

We all know that the businesses who are positioned to move early in a growing market get the jump on those who aren't, but how do you know whether this is the time to move? Most entrepreneurs behave like "retail" or individual investors in the stock market. They are too late into a bull market to capture most of the profitability, and too slow to get out in a down slide to avoid most of the losses.

The stock market professionals say that when huge volumes of retail money (from IRAs, 401Ks and other self-directed sources) begin pouring in, the rally is probably over. What worries me is that in the last 60 days I've met 5 people who told me they "didn't need the income" from their job or business, because trading their personal portfolio was making them enough money to live on. They have apparently forgotten 2000. I know several successful individuals who would have retired years ago if they hadn't been suckered into the tech bubble right at the end.

So do you start looking at expansion of your small business now, or wait until you are completely certain, and probably miss the bulk of the opportunity? How do you know when it is the right time to bet on the economy?

The first rule is to stop reading the newspaper, and turn off the financial news stations. For the vast majority of small business owners, what happens in "the economy" means nothing compared to what happens in your local market.

I have a client who owns a machine shop. Nationwide there is clearly a surplus of manufacturing employees. In our local market, a new plant by a big publicly traded corporation has begun recruiting. It doesn't matter to my client whether manufacturing unemployment nationally is 10% or 13% or 20%. Locally, there aren't any skilled employees available. Would this be a smart time for him to cut wages or benefits? Of course not. Regardless of the national situation, he is in a dog fight for good workers.

Business owners need local measurements of what is happening in their industry. These are typically not published anywhere. You need to develop and track your own. Establish relationships with other business owners who are "upstream" of you in the food chain. They may not be a precise predictor, but they can give you a better idea of whether an uptick in business is an anomaly or a trend.

For example, a subcontractor to residential subdivision builders maintains a relationship with a civil engineering firm that serves the same market. While his contracts for home construction vary according to monthly sales, when the civil engineer starts platting whole new subdivisions the trend is longer term. The civil engineer talks to the real estate agents who represent large parcels. He wants to know when the residential developers are negotiating for new tracts of land. It doesn't matter much to either of them what the national numbers are. They don't do business nationally.

A fast-service restaurateur of light (frankly- hip) food follows approval of financing for new apartment complexes. An office furniture dealer tracks leasing rates. A pest control company tracks the backlog in residential sales. A cash register dealer tracks announcements of new retail centers.

Most small businesses thrive according to the skills of the owner. If you have 1% market share, you can grow to 2% market share and do well even in a shrinking market. Leading indicators can tell you when it is time to focus on taking existing business from competitors, and when it is time to put your efforts towards chasing new business.

Managing Your Way to More Effective Meetings

Meetings are integral to business. Whether you are running a meeting or participating in a meeting, there are things that all of us can do to improve the overall success of every meeting. So, today’s post is some simple tips and tricks to make your meetings more effective.

First and foremost, do you need to hold a meeting? Meetings cost time and money, both of which are valuable. Hold meetings only when necessary, and ensure that they are concise and constructive. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• Is the purpose of the meeting clear to everyone?
• Does everyone need to attend the entire meeting?
• Is there a better way of addressing the issues than having a meeting?
• Are there other people who do not usually attend your meetings who might make a useful contribution this time?
• Will the meeting benefit from the use of any visual aids?

Once you’ve answered the above questions then you can decide what kind of meeting you need. Is it an informal meeting, more formal, a 1-1 meeting, etc.? And of course, don’t forget the logistics. In this day and age it is not uncommon to have people conference in or even have a video link of some form. Don’t forget to make sure you remote attendees feel like they are part of the meeting.

The next two tips are near and dear to my heart. Have an agenda and set the time and stick to it. There is nothing worse than having meeting times not honored. Here is a format you might want to use for setting your meeting agenda‘s –

Purpose: describe the purpose of the meeting. Be as specific as you can.

Agenda: describe the agenda. Again, be specific. Sometimes it makes sense to put time blocks by each agenda item, as well as the presenter, if appropriate.

Logistics: this defines where the meeting will be held, what time, conference call-in and video link information as well as reminders to turn off cell phones, etc.

Outcome: this describes what you want to have occur by the end of the meeting. It might be a decision, a set of steps to move something forward, etc. Again, you want people to leave the meeting with a sense of accomplishment. This will also keep people focused on the agenda at hand as it should be all about obtaining the outcome.

As for meeting times, well, set them and honor them. If you have an hour meeting then your agenda needs to be realistic as to what you can cover in an hour.

And last but not least, here are two other quick tips if you are running the meeting.

• If you are running the meeting, then you need to actively listen to others, facilitate the meeting and not talk throughout the entire meeting. You should be taking notes during the meeting which can be disseminated, if appropriate, after the meeting. Most people don’t enjoy meetings where the organizer dominates the conversation.
• When action items are assigned, they need to be S.M.A.R.T –
  
  

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Resourced
Time-bound

For every action/activity that the meeting attendees feel need to happen, you need to make sure that there the action is clearly defined and measurable, has an owner responsible for it and has a due date. If your actions aren’t S.M.A.R.T they likely won’t get done on time.

There are many books written on effective meetings but these few simple tips will go a long way to improving the overall effectiveness of meetings within you r organization. In short, prepare for the meeting, hold the meeting, and then follow-up by sending out the minutes and making sure people are clear on their actions. If another meeting is required, you may want to think about scheduling it while everyone is there in the room with their calendars in front of them!

Let me know how this helps you save meeting time and money.

Taking Care of the Customer During Business Growth

I just had a great customer service experience. A company that I have been doing business with for a few years made a mistake in an order they sent me. What they sent and what I ordered were not only different but I ended up on the short end of the stick from a dollar perspective. So I called the company to find out what could be done.

What did the company do? Well, here is what they did:

• They apologized for the error.

• They acknowledged that I was on the short end financially and that I didn’t receive what I ordered.

• They credited my account for the different in price AND they sent out what I actually ordered at no charge.

• Then they apologized again and confessed to having some problems in the packing area due to having added an additional employee.

Now, do I care why they are having the problem? Not really but ... On one hand, I just want my order shipped properly and on time. I really don’t care much about the internal workings of the company. With that said, I can also tell you that having the company tell me that they have been experiencing growing pains and that they were committed to maintaining quality and keeping their customers happy as they grow was good to hear.

Often as companies grow they lose many of the qualities and traits that make them special in the first place. Should the company have taken all of the steps they did to make me “whole”? Yes, of course! Actually, I would have been happy with having them make up the financial difference. So, I was even more satisfied and committed to the company when they said to keep what was sent and that they would ship out what I actually ordered.

What do you do to maintain customer satisfaction and loyalty, particularly when there is an issue? Sometimes all it takes is one mistake and you have lost a customer for life. The cost to make them “happy” is typically much less then the lifelong income generated from that customer, plus the referrals. Sometimes saying “I’m sorry” isn’t enough. Whatever you do, make it easy for the customer and make sure that at the end of the conversation the customer feels good about what you have done to take care of them.

So what are you going to do to improve your customer service, particularly as you grow your business?

Small Business Leadership and the Olympic Athlete

I confess – I am a big fan of the Winter Olympics. This must be due to my background as a competitive figure skater. My dream was to go to the Olympics (I didn’t even come close to this but I tried …). I spent my summers training in locations where the Olympic rings hung everywhere and they inspired me. They motivated me. They challenged me. And to this day, there is something very special about those rings for me.

So what does this have to do with small business? Everything. To successfully run a small business, you need leadership and courage. Olympic athletes display tremendous amounts of leadership and courage. Leadership is much more than being at the top of the organization chart and making big money (okay, not all of us are making the big bucks yet).

The athletes who compete at the Olympics are there because they love their sport. They choose to train 6-8 hours a day, six days a week in pursuit of their dream, an Olympic medal. The injuries, pain and successes that an elite athlete goes through, well, let’s just say there is a reason why most of us aren’t Olympic athletes.

As leaders, we encounter disappointments, challenges, personnel issues, issues out of our control and of course, our share of victories. In this respect, we are not that different from the Olympic athletes. Yet, the best of the athletes have a joy, a passion, a drive for what they do - even when they don’t perform as well as they could or should.

It is not uncommon to get frustrated and burned out when it comes to running our small business. This is when courage and leadership is needed most. Our employees look up to us, as do our customers, partners and suppliers. Yes, there will be hard days but great leaders find a way to step up.

What does it take – well, find your passion. Remember why you started your business in the first place! Your business should not be a job but rather a calling. Leading your business needs to be something that you look forward to doing every day, even if you know it is going to be a tough day. Parallel this to the athlete lifting weights, racing down mountains, falling, running, making their legs and lungs burn – you get the idea – to be the best they make their bodies (and sometimes minds) hurt! It is the challenge for excellence. It is looking for new outside of the box thinking; creativity, innovation.

When you talk to your team – inspire them, show them your passion for what you are doing and where you are trying to take the company. To put yourself out there - your commitment, your joy and love for what you are doing and want to do – takes courage because it most likely isn’t an easy road to get there but then again most athletes don’t win Olympic medals either.

To this day the Olympic rings are a form of motivation, passion and inspiration for me. What are your "Olympic Rings"?

Social Media: Finding the Right Person

With social media absolutely booming, many business owners are trying to keep up with the times and get their company name out in the cyber world. For most small business owners, however, finding the time to keep up with their social media efforts can be very challenging. Finding the right person who understands your industry and can portray your business well over the web may not be the easiest task. The right person needs to be able to position your company in a way that will help you meet your company goals and help make your business a success.

David Armano with Harvard Business Review gives six ways to help business owners find the right person for their social media efforts.

“As organizations move their social media strategies from theory to practice, they discover a difficult truth they must confront: Finding the "perfect" social media talent is practically impossible.

To start, the field is flooded with thousands of self proclaimed "experts" who have reinvented themselves to take advantage what looks like a growing business opportunity. Maybe they do know social media, but many don't. They need to be vetted.”

Read more…

Technology Isn't Everything

We all love our technology – email, social media, our websites and our PDAs. Technology is a great productivity tool and most of us have a hard time imaging life without electronic communications. However, there was a time, not too long ago, when we didn’t have email, laptops, smart phones, etc. As business leaders, we need to be able to leverage technology but maintain relationships.

Business owners will often say that people are their greatest assets. But in fact, their people are PEOPLE. And no amount of technology can replace human interaction. I am seeing too many business leaders using electronic communications as their primary way of communicating, in some cases it is their only form of communication. When is the last time that you dealt with an employee or vendor issue by issuing a tense email rather than having a meeting or picking up the phone and have a conversation?

Yes, it is easy to hit the send key at any hour of any day from anywhere. But there are times when in-person human interaction where you can see body language or at least hear voice tones. All too often, the tone we mean to send in an electronic communication is interpreted very differently by the receiving party.

I know of a business owner’s employee who received a very terse email from the owner. The employee was upset; the owner wasn’t clear in their communication and didn’t bother to talk to the employee before sending the email. The employee, who previously had been a high producing employee, suddenly went to “average” according to the owner. After having conversations with them, the employee felt that it wasn’t worth the extra effort to go above and beyond if the owner was just going to hide behind email and send messages without getting all of the facts because they wanted to deal with an issue quickly and easily.

We are a social species and thrive on interaction with others. The work environment is no different, our employees, vendors/suppliers, partners, etc. are great assets but more importantly they are human. To be a great leader you need to develop relationships, not just electronic communications. Technology should be used to enhance and improve the relationship, not take the place of 1-1 communications. I love my Blackberry and other forms of electronic media but email, tweets, Facebook messages and the like are not a replacement for in-person meetings or an old fashioned phone call!

Egyptian Pyramids and Small Business

I was having dinner with friends over the weekend and were started talking about upcoming travel or tripe we wanted to take. One friend had just returned from India, another couple was just in Thailand and I had been in Mexico. Africa came up and while I have already been to Africa twice, I was sharing that I had to go to Africa at least twice more – once to see the mountain gorillas and the other to see the great pyramids in Egypt. The more we got into the conversation, the more I started mapping the pyramids to small businesses.

How could I make a leap like this? Well, in order to construct the pyramids, the teamwork required b y the labor force (which was anywhere from 20,000-30,000 people at a time) was, well nothing short of amazing. The architecture is extremely sophisticated. In this case, the architecture is equivalent to the business plan. The Egyptians knew their strengths and weaknesses – no doubt about that.

When it came to the actual construction, well the Egyptians were specific in what they had to do, when and how. Think about it – they figured out how to move very large, heavy blocks of stone, and not just move them but move them to the required height. While there is dispute as to how they did it, they figured out how to build ramps on an incline so they could move the blocks of stone. I always admire innovation.

If you understand your strengths and weaknesses (not to mention opportunities and threats – SWOT) then you can create your architecture or plan. Many business owners let the challenges of achieving their plan get in the way of planning so they either don’t plan at all or the plan isn’t as aggressive as it should be. Just think – if the Egyptians had let the challenges of building pyramids get in the way of their elaborate design, then we wouldn’t have them to appreciate and wonder in amazement. Once you know what you want the final outcome to be (your company vision), you don’t have to figure out how to get there right away. In fact, you won’t! But you can start by breaking down the first steps into bite size baby pieces and then build from there. The Egyptians figured out how to build their pyramids so you can build your company. You just need to update your SWOT, create your company vision and then focus on breaking things down into bite size baby steps that most likely will take you years to achieve. Just think – you are building your own pyramid/monument.

I haven’t schedule my trip to Egypt for anytime soon but I do have the architecture or business plan in place that lets me know when I will be able to go!