Small business leaders have a lot on their plate. It’s normal to be juggling at least 136 issues at any given moment. Time is a scarce resource. Unfortunately, most small business leaders have their time taken up by reacting in firefighting mode to the latest need or crisis of the day. These items always seem urgent, but usually not enough time is spent to consider their importance. And this pattern happens over and over again. Without clear decision making tools, small business leaders are unknowingly causing inefficiencies and slowing their company’s pace of growth. 7 Signs Your Leading Lacks Decision-making Skills How do your decision-making skills measure up? How many of these pitfalls do you fall into? Relying on consensus decision-making. You’re trying to come up with a decision that makes everyone happy – and unfortunately when this happens, the resulting decision isn’t always in the best interest for your company.

Freedom. Control of our own destiny. Making your mark on this planet. Financial wealth. Growth. More fun. These are a few of the many reasons why entrepreneurs and key leaders desire the positions that they’re in. Unfortunately for most small business leaders, they don’t experience the very things that attracted them to the position in the first place. In fact, they are continually frustrated! 5 Most Common Frustrations of Business Leaders There are five big frustrations that keep most business leaders up at night. Do any of these sound familiar to you? Control – you don’t have flexibility over your own schedule. You’re working harder and longer hours that you’d like. Profit – you aren’t making enough money to invest in the people, training, technology, and equipment – and your own compensation – that you want. People – no one is really on the same page! Employees, vendors, customers, even owners and partners. It

A client of mine in the manufacturing industry recently experienced an a-ha moment about how often their team should meet. They had tried everything under the sun to find the right meeting cadence—daily meetings, weekly one-on-ones, weekly meetings, bi-weekly meetings, monthly meetings, cross functional meetings…you name it. nothing seemed to be working effectively, and they were getting frustrated. And no matter what they did, they were wasting too much time in meetings, and not getting stuff done. The a-ha wasn’t just how often their meetings occurred—it was what they were doing (and not doing) in the meetings that was amiss. How Often Should Your Team Meet? The team narrowed their debate as to whether a weekly or bi-weekly meeting frequency would be best. The Operations department leader said that he had tried both with his department and shared his realization of two points: Bi-weekly meetings = waste of time Weekly

Every company has internal meetings. Very few organizations have good company meetings. When I first meet with the leadership team of a client, one of the first questions I ask them to do is rate the effectiveness of their meetings on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is the best. On average they rate them at a 4. Why is that? There are several reasons, actually. Here are 15 all-too-common ways to ensure your meetings continue to be the worst part of everyone’s work week. 15 Tricks to Mastering the Art of Bad Meetings 1) Use cell phones Keep your cell phone ringer on (at full volume) and answer your phone during the meeting. 2) Spend time texting Text the person sitting across the table from you to complain about the person running the meeting. 3) Make assumptions Everyone knows the purpose of the meeting, don’t ever tell them—keep ‘em

Recently a client who has been in the service industry for over 69 years reported that they’re having a record year in both revenue and profit. It wasn’t always this good. Just a short time ago, their team was frustrated with too many clients who didn’t pay their bills on time, always seemed to be looking for discounts, and never seemed to be fully happy with the service. As a result, my client wasn’t making very much profit on these engagements. Frustrated? You bet! So how did they make the breakthrough to get where they are today? All we did was get the leadership team fully on the same page with four vital components of their marketing strategy. This was the foundation for them to make all of their prospect- and client-related decisions going forward. Your Vital Marketing Components Want to boost your profit and revenue? Implement these components to

A few weeks ago we co-hosted an event with Gino Wickman called the Integrator Mastery Forum. It’s a full-day interactive workshop for entrepreneurial business leaders of 50 Michigan companies. A common thread throughout the room was that nearly every Integrator has challenges making their relationship more effective with their Visionary. If you’re feeling this way too, you’re not alone! In fact, this is normal. Here are five rules and five tools for working with your Visionary. These 10 vital guidelines are rocket fuel for your company. 5 Rules for Integrators and Visionaries Stay on the same page. Schedule monthly same-page meetings (2-4 hours) for the Visionary and Integrator to check in and IDS issues, so that you’re operating as a united front. No end runs. When the Visionary goes around the Integrator to give someone direction, or when someone from the team bypasses the Integrator to go to the Visionary, this is called an end run. Hearing people out