How much time and effort is it taking to run your business? Six months ago, I posed this question to one of my client leadership teams. They were getting good results—after all, they had been profitable and were achieving double-digit growth. But it felt like the team was expending an extraordinary about of energy, time, and effort to do so. I asked, why? This company is in the service and distribution business with around 100 employees and multiple locations. They’ve been in business for decades. But their largest location consistently had a high turnover of employees, and just seemed to always be limping along. It was a drag on the bottom line, and was consistently a source of frustration because of the number of issues that seemed to be never ending. It felt like Groundhog Day as the same issues kept resurfacing. After seeing this situation unfold with other teams,

This post was originally authored by Ken DeWitt and appeared on the Dewitt LLC blog. I have a wonderful client who says, “Thank you! You’ve given me my life back!” practically every time I see him. He’s so happy, he referred one of his friends to me. That friend recently sent me this email: So, I wanted to share the joke around the house… Dad is now semi-retired.   I’m not only home 2-3 hours earlier than normal, but my mind is free to focus on the family. Yesterday, I was home at 5:30 and used the extra time to play Monopoly with my 9 year old.   I know we have a very long way to go, but I cannot describe how it already feels. Our personnel problems are resolved! Our salesman loves his new position and the revenue reflects it! Employees have the accountability charts on their walls and

While working with leadership teams of entrepreneurial companies, a vital step is getting the team to agree upon the company’s sweet spot—the Core Focus. The Core Focus answers two questions: Why does the company exist? What is the company’s niche? When a team can identify and agree upon the answers to these two questions, decision making becomes much simpler and faster. 3 Criteria for Finding Your Core Focus Many organizations struggle with crystallizing their sweet spot and getting agreement among all the leadership team members. You know your company’s sweet spot is clear when all three of these criteria are met. It’s where: The company makes the most money The team has the most fun Your clients are happiest It’s not at a place that you hope to be in one day—it’s where this exists in your company today. Not everything your company does today will fit these criteria. Identify where this takes place

Do you have enough time? Most business owners and leadership team members answer “no” to this question. Their response is typically something like, “There’s never enough time in the day to do everything that I want to do.” If you’ve ever felt like you don’t have enough time in the day, it means you’re normal. In a recent client EOS session, I asked the question, “Who here doesn’t have enough time?” This question lit the fuse. The team unraveled quickly. It was clear that they’d been giving every ounce of their time to the business and felt like they were getting farther and farther behind. Catching up even seems to be a stretch at best, getting ahead seems impossible. They were exhausted, worn out and at their breaking points.   They were overwhelmed because they were trying to do everything themselves. They had a habit of delegating very little to

The Elephant in the Room. The Sacred Cow. The skeleton in the closet. Every company has certain issues that they avoid bringing up at all costs. Sometimes the issues are too uncomfortable to confront. Or the same issue has been discussed many times in the past and still nothing is being done about it. Sometimes it’s because we’re afraid that someone will get personally offended just because we brought it up. The issues that are most often avoided are people-related issues. Someone is underperforming, but because they’ve been with the company forever, their lack of performance becomes the norm or status quo.   During client meetings I place some fun stress toys on the table to help release tension when it rises. Two toys that I use most commonly are an elephant (it’s the elephant in the room) and a cow (the sacred cow). When it becomes clear that someone