Yuk! It’s meeting time.

 Don’t worry you’re not alone. A recent survey by the Harvard Business Review revealed that 92% of meeting participants in corporate America view meetings as a supreme waste of time! Frank Robinson, CEO of Robison Helicopter says, “I’ve always felt that meetings are one of the most wasteful things in industry. We avoid having meetings as much as possible. Most decisions don’t have to have a meeting.” I’m not sure I would agree with this but I certainly understand WHY many take this position when asked about meetings. A meeting should be used to carry out communications, planning, setting policy, making decisions, or motivating a team. The most effective meetings are well planned and executed.   They should serve to bring forth the best in all team members – the best ideas, the best decisions, and the best follow-up. Here’s some tips on how to make your meetings more valuable, effective and hopefully a pleasure for all that attend: 1. Always send an agenda to all the participants in advance. The agenda presented at the start of a meeting just doesn’t cut it. Attendees can not prepare for a meeting if they don’t know the content and purpose of a meeting ahead of time. If no agenda exists ahead of time it is highly possible that there is no plan for the meeting. 2. Always begin the meeting with a statement of the goal and get everyone’s agreement. End the meeting with a quick review of the action items that have been established and who will do what and when it will be accomplished. 3. Never hold a meeting to learn the “status” of various initiatives. This is accomplished far more effectively by reports from team members. This can be done via email, written memos or even by using voice mail. When 5, 10 or 20 people are gathered together at a meeting to hear the reports of others, very little is being accomplished. 4. Brainstorming ideas is a good use of a meeting as long as there is a plan so that attendees can prepare their ideas in advance. Those ideas can then be collected quickly and efficiently at the meeting. However, attempting to brainstorm the content of a document at a meeting is a terrible waste of time. If a group must all agree on the contents of a document I recommend providing a draft to participants several days in advance, collecting feedback and doing a summary presentation of the collaborated draft to the group. 5. Create a system so that all the participants can contribute. There’s nothing worse than having just one or two members dominate the meeting while others passively stand by just listening. Often times those who speak the least have the best ideas or are fearful of disagreeing with the most vocal participants. Many times I have found that it is these very participants who will raise the most critical issues that need to be resolved. 6. If you are a facilitator of a meeting – BE PREPARED or cancel the meeting, know the goals for the meeting in advance, have a start and a stop time and stick to it and be prepared to facilitate any conflict which, by-the-way is a good thing. Having constructive conflict within a meeting is moth healthy and necessary to creating the most valuable and cost effective solutions. I hope this helps at your next meeting. Also I’d love to hear some meeting success or horror stories. Send them to: mark@markdeo.com. 

Over the last few weeks I’ve been talking about some of the intangible traits that define “who we are” or “who our company is.” We’ve been looking at Rule #11 from my Rules of Attraction: Who we are is more important that what we do.

In my last few Business Updates I wrote about Integrity, Vision and Enthusiasm. Today I’d like to look at another trait that makes up “who” we are – selflessness.

Henry Stimson, Secretary of War during World War II once said, “no one who is thinking of himself can rise to great heights.” It sounds nice. It looks good in quotes. But the reality is that this statement runs counter to what most people truly believe and how we live our lives. In fact it is the opposite of what most of us are taught as children. That is, we must FIGHT for what is ours. Even in school we teach our children evolution. We beat into their little heads – the survival of the fittest. Only the very best make it to the top. We make no bones about the fact that we live in a dog-eat-dog world. Where is selflessness in all of this? Don’t get me wrong I am in no way saying that I live up to this trait. I am ashamed to say that I often fail miserably at being selfless. I do think it is necessary that we illuminate the fact that those who have molded their character to a selfless mindset ultimately create attraction and bring about change.

There has already been much written on the lives of those famous selfless individuals who have changed the world. People like Gandhi, Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela. I will not dedicate extensive discussion to their accomplishments in this book but as point of illustration allow me to touch on them briefly. I think you will see that their selfless actions did in fact create massive attraction. I will attempt to demonstrate that this type of character-based attraction, like integrity, vision and enthusiasm can be implemented in a powerful and genuine way by regular folks like you and I.

In his youth Gandhi was a regular guy. In fact the name Gandhi means “grocer.” Educated as a lawyer in England he ultimately managed to lead his people to freedom from British rule by practicing nothing BUT selflessness. He never wavered in his unshakable belief in nonviolent protest and religious tolerance. When Muslim and Hindu compatriots committed acts of violence, whether against the British, or against each other, he fasted until the fighting ceased. Independence, when it came in 1947, was not a military victory, but a triumph of human will. 

Mother Teresa taught at St. Mary’s High School in Calcutta from 1931 to 1948. However the suffering and poverty she saw outside the convent made a profound impression on her. She asked for permission from her superiors to leave the school and devote herself to working with the destitute and dying in the slums of Calcutta. Although she did not have a single penny, she relied on Divine Providence, and began the first school for slum children without even a building. Her selflessness attracted volunteers and eventually financial support. By the 1990s there were over one million Co-Workers in more than 40 countries.

While selflessness is indeed a rare commodity today, I think we can all give a bit of ourselves for someone else. We don’t have to be Gandhi or Mother Teresa to help another person. I think this is as relevant in business as it is in our personal lives. How often do we place our own interests before the clients? How often do we let our egos get in the way just because we can? If I had to answer that I’d have to say, TOO OFTEN!

What would happen if we took the long view, overlooking a confrontation in favor of a selfless approach? Do you think it would create attraction? I’d be willing to bet my bottom dollar on that. In a society that focuses on gratifying ourselves, imagine the impact we can create with our clients, shareholders and team members when we take our eyes off ourselves and look to a brighter future.

In 1961 John F. Kennedy put forth the idea of sending a man to the moon and bringing him back safely before the end of the decade. The American people were no doubt moved by this vision. But frankly he received much opposition from Congress due to the Cold War and the fear of technological failure.

A team of legislators were sent to Cape Canaveral to determine whether the funding should be allocated for the project. One day Florida Senator George Smathers, a member of this team, was touring the facility. He slipped away from the group of dignitaries for a moment to get a drink of water. Attempting to rejoin his group he became lost and found himself wandering the halls. The place was immaculate. It looked to be sanitized. Suddenly he came upon a woman sweeping-up and he explained his situation to her. She seemed to know her way around the complex and quickly told him how to rejoin his party. Smathers, impressed with the woman’s knowledge asked her, “What is it that you do here?” He was astounded by what she told him: “Why sir, I am part of a team helping to put a man on the moon and bring him back safely.”Smathers went back to Washington with a renewed fervor in his heart for the lunar project. He told his colleagues, “If the janitor at Cape Canaveral has this kind of sense of mission, what might the scientists and astronauts be like?”This simple cleaning women understood her humble job of sweeping-up to be far more than it appeared to an outsider. She was an important part of the Apollo project. Do you think that, as a result she was far more committed to her job? Do you think she went out of her way to do an extra great job of cleaning up? You bet she did. Her answer showed her deep understanding of her “personal internal vision.”Please understand I am not talking about a corporate vision or mission. Not that a corporate vision/mission is not necessary. On the contrary it is the first step in organizations developing their personal internal visions. But today many corporate visions or missions have become more like slogans than anything else. A PIV, or “Personal Internal Vision”, is a one-on-one relationship between you and your job. For that cleaning women that might have meant having the floors shine, the porcelain gleam and the corridors sparkle. What is it for you? Or if you’re a business owner or manager what does it mean for each one of your people?The purpose of a PIV is to give people the freedom they need to succeed. It allows them to take full responsibility for their choices. This is really the only way to create an environment of accountability. When a company asks their people to develop their own personal internal visions, they also give them the freedom to break the bonds of authority and excel beyond what might be expected from management.The fact is that accountability and responsibility lies with those closest to the task. Owning their job and future allows someone to let go of the idea that they need someone to look to for direction or control. It allows people to be responsible to the entire organization and the customers rather than their manager or supervisor. It takes the focus off of doing things right or by the book. It puts the focus on doing the RIGHT things. This improves decision making, performance and productivity.Improved performance and increased productivity aren’t the only benefits of a PIV program. Implementing PIV allows people to improve their skills by taking personal risks that will benefit the organization. They become more trustworthy and more trusting of others. They tend to hold themselves to higher standards and operate with greater integrity. They are often willing to put the interests of others above their own. This makes sense if you think about it. When their OWN success is at stake rather than some stranger’s company, do you think they will make better decisions and operate with greater commitment? Of course.In fact, in the coming economy, the only alternative to implementing a PIV program will be increased employee turnover, continuing resentment and ultimate stagnation. Don’t take my word for it. Ask the folks at Southwest Airlines, Harley Davidson, Nordstrom, Dell Computers and the list goes on. The bottom-line is that having a PIV program can be the difference between achieving your company’s goals in terms of financial growth, manpower development and customer satisfaction.If not for that cleaning women’s PIV, might there be a Russian flag on the moon today?I hope that this “Business Update” has been helpful in assisting you to improve the performance of your organization. For more information on how the Small Business Advisory Network assists companies in improving their performance, please feel free to contact us at 310-320-8190 or email mark@markdeo.comMark Deo

The biggest disease this day and age is that of people feeling unloved.–Author Unknown

 The software engineer put on Nirvana’s “In Utero” as he did every evening when he got home from work, took his gun out, loaded it, and tried to garner enough courage to put it in his mouth and squeeze the trigger.  This was a ritual he had played out every night or the past year.  While successful at work, he was miserable.  He felt no one cared about him as a person- he was just another programmer, doing what programmers did, living a solitary life with no friends.  Then one day, out of the blue, his boss sent him a personal e-mail- not related to code revisions, interface changes, or other work related items.  But one that expressed his thanks and sincere appreciation for the work he had accomplished in the time he had worked there, and how he was valuable to the team not as just a programmer, but as a person.  He told this employee that he was glad he knew him as a human being, not just as someone who typed away at his computer all day.  That night the software engineer went through his daily ritual of putting on Nirvana, loading his gun, and for the first time- he was scared that he might actually go through with it.  He sold the gun, and with the proceeds bought his boss a gift- and told him the story of how that simple gesture had saved his life. This story was related to Mark Deo and I on the small business hour this week by Tim Sanders, author of Love is the Killer App.  He is at the forefront of a new wave of business thinking- not one focused on numbers, but one focused on people.  His philosophy is that one must share three things in order to have a successful business relationship: knowledge, networks and compassion.   By doing so you can not only help your business, but you can help others as human beings, much as in the story above. How does one share their knowledge?  By staying informed reading about the latest trends in business reading about things that interest other people and then sharing that knowledge with people who are interested in it.  How do you know what you should be reading?  A great place to start is the list of books on our website www.smallbusinesshour.com.  Tim Sanders also maintains a reading list on his web site at www.timsanders.com.  Some publications that are excellent are business magazines such as Fast Company, Entrepreneur, Business Week, and Business 2.0.  By reading these books and publications you’re making yourself valuable as a walking library to people that you speak with.  This allows you to become a personal resource to others- someone who they can trust and count on for information.  This in turn makes you as a person more valuable. What do we mean by sharing your networks?  This is not some reference to computers and internet access- To share your networks you must take your personal contacts and instead of protecting them and hiding them in secrecy open them up to the world.  Share your contacts with others who might find them to be of use.  This can be a simple matter such as simply passing a phone number on to someone, or giving a referral.  Better still is personally introducing two people who can both gain some value from establishing a new relationship.  By doing so you become a business “matchmaker” of sorts- someone who helps others to achieve their goals through communication with people to which you introduce them.  How does someone show compassion in business?  It comes back to one of Dale Carnegie’s principles, “Become genuinely interested in other people.” Only by being interested in someone and showing that interest can you demonstrate that you care about them as people and not just as tangible resources.  People respond to being cared for- you never know how making a small gesture can profoundly impact someone’s life.  I encourage you to think of someone in your business life who you can show your love to this week.  Become genuinely interested in them as a person- not to try and gain something from them, but to find common ground you share.  Then discover what it is that interests them, and find some information about that topic that you can share with them.  Find someone in your network of contacts who also has interest in the same topics, and introduce the two.  You will be amazed at how that will endear you to both contacts, turning them from business relationships into personal friends.  I’d love to hear your success stories at mwalker@sbanetwork.org.  Have a great week! This Business Update was written by SBA Network Business Advisor Matthew Walker- for more information, please contact him at 310-320-8190 or mwalker@sbanetwork.org.

Small business represents more than 99 percent of all American employers, employs more than half of the American workforce, provides just a little less than half of this country’s sales, and represents 96 percent of all U.S. exporters. Yet fewer than 5% of all small businesses survive to see their fifth birthday.

Why?

Some say its due to a lack of knowledge, a missing skill-set or hyper-specialization. I agree that skills and knowledge are critical but sometimes I think this huge failure rate has a bit to do with overconfidence.

Let’s face it, making the transition from “employee” to “employer” is not as easy as it looks. As an employee we had it pretty good. The owners took all the risk. True, when business was good they bought themselves a new Mercedes but if business was bad, they took the hit and I still got my salary. I didn”t have to worry about workers comp, insurance, OSHA, labor laws, lawsuits, competition, soft-sales, rising expenses and a plethora of other issues.

As employees we were “dependent” on the owner to absorb the risk and compensate for any losses or downside. Some owners may feel this “dependence” translates to a form of employee entitlement. Yet the owner takes the risk and the owner enjoys the reward.

Many employees on the other hand have come to believe that they are owed more money, more health care, more retirement benefits-more of everything that is costly to the owner of a business. Business owners often feel as though they deserve to take as much out of their companies as they wish sometimes not fully funding initiatives which can create a difficult working environment for employees. How can this dichotomy be reconciled?

I think it is deeper than simply saying we all need to take responsibility. I think we need to change our mindset about independence and entitlement. And I think we need to teach our employees to think like owners. Some have gone so far as to actually make their employees owners.ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plans)

In 1994 United Airlines became the largest employee majority-owned enterprise in the United States, with various groups of employees mostly represented by unions – having purchased 55% of its stock in exchange for various concessions. The employees accepted pay cuts and made other concessions, but were also granted representation on the company’s board of directors. The case represents the potential of an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), but not the full realization of that potential. It shows that an ESOP may be a necessary condition but certainly is not a sufficient condition for substantial changes in labor-management relations leading to improvements in company performance.