Gordon Tredgold is our guest blogger this week. He is a Global Gurus Top 10 Leadership Expert and Speaker. To learn more about Gordon, click this link to visit his website.

There is no such thing as failure, only feedback, and it's what we do with  that feedback that determines how successful we will ultimately be.
 
When we fail, we have three options:

• We can choose to quit, which is the only true failure
• We can choose to ignore it, but when we do that, we are flirting with madness because, according to Einstein, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results, or
• We can look at the feedback from our failures, adapt our approach, and try again.

 
Early in my career, I had many failures, the worst being a $50k project I was involved in that we delivered for just over $5m.
 
To say that the customer was unhappy would be an understatement.
 
I was mortified, and I became very passionate about avoiding failures. I start looking at them more closely to see if there were any patterns as to what was causing us to fail, which we could then look to mitigate and hopefully use to prevent future failure.
 
The more I investigated, the more obvious it became that all of our failures occurred for the same four reasons.  
 
These were: we had the wrong focus, a lack of accountability, we'd made things overly complex, or we lacked transparency into what was needed and into our actual performance. 
 
Interestingly as I started to study other failures, I found that these same root causes were also present. Using this feedback, I began to work on improving performance in all four of these areas.
 
Sharpening the Focus: to make sure we had clarity over our goals and what success looked like. When we have the wrong focus, it doesn't matter how hard or how long we will work; we will become frustrated and demotivated by our lack of progress.
 
Boosting Accountability: by clarifying roles, responsibilities, and expectations of that role. This helped to get people to take ownership and better understand what was needed from them.
 
Promoting Simplicity: looking to ensure we didn't follow our natural tendency to over-complicate things, keeping communication clear and straightforward to improve understanding. Without understanding, it leads to confusion and misunderstanding, which will then cause us to fail.
 
Lastly, increasing Transparency: making sure that by doing enough due diligence to ensure we knew what was fully involved in being successful, and having the proper tracking in place to monitor progress.  
 
Projects are like icebergs; it's easy to see the third about the water, but the thirds below sink the ship. And suppose we lack transparency in our performance. In that case, we can fall into the happy under-achiever trap, where we think we are doing well and but in reality, we are falling short. By the time we realize this, it's too late; we become destined to be unhappy underachievers.
 
By taking this approach of improving Focus, Accountability, Simplicity, and Transparency, we have not only helped avoid failures; we have helped achieve significantly better results.
 
Focus and Accountability help improve effectiveness by ensuring we have the right people doing the right job, and Simplicity and Transparency help increase efficiency by making things easier and providing feedback on performance so we can see the impact of any changes we make. If you can improve both effectiveness and efficiency, you put yourself well and truly on the path to success.
 
Using this approach has helped me turn around failing projects, underperforming departments and deliver significant business benefits, such as $50m per annum in cost savings and operational performance improvements, increasing on-time delivery from 35 percent to 95 percent.
 
But none of this would have been possible if I hadn't had that big multi-million dollar failure that fired up my passion not to fail again.
 
There is no such thing as failure, only feedback, so how will you use this feedback to benefit you and your company?

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Business leaders often encounter the daunting task of improving their organization’s profitability. Many may not know where to start.  

If that's you, check out the following five steps an organization can focus on to improve its bottom line:

1. Establish a Culture Employees Love

According to McKinsey, companies with cultures ranking in the top quartile of the Organizational Health Index post a 60% higher return to shareholders and 200% higher than those in the bottom quartile.

There’s no easy formula for creating a great culture, and I certainly can’t do this subject justice in a 500-word blog. The foundation starts with valuing each individual, giving them a voice in everyday matters, and creating an environment where employees love to come to work. Then, build from there.

2. Establish Goals Everyone Can Buy Into

When business leaders establish top-level goals and all levels of the organization establish their goals in support of them, that's an excellent place to start. However, the employees have to buy into their plans. Executives must cast a vision of where the organization is heading and the employee’s role in getting there. If employees don’t connect to the big picture, productivity can suffer, and the organization’s profitability could follow suit.

3. Emphasize the Use of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Successful organizations use KPIs to measure progress towards their goals, Even if you're currently using KPIs, you want them to tie directly to your most critical operations so you can stay on top of the progress towards your goals. By monitoring your KPIs, you’ll be alerted when measures are trending downward, so you can intervene more quickly with solutions.

4. Streamline Your Processes

Organizations with streamlined business processes experience a reduction in costs, increased revenue, and improved profitability. Take Merchants InsuranceGroup. After streamlining their Portfolio Management area operations, they improved on-time project delivery to 80% and achieved a 758% revenue growth in the first two months.

For your operations, focus first on improving your processes that are the most significant cost drivers and have the most time-consuming tasks. By doing so, you're likely to experience more significant gains on a shorter timetable.

5. Automate Your Processes

When organizations automate their business processes, it’s a powerful tool for reducing costs, improving productivity, and increasing profitability. It's not uncommon for productivity to increase by over 300% with workflow automation over previous processes.

A great plan is to automate recently improved processes. By doing so, you can achieve even more significant cost reductions and productivity increases than through process improvement alone.

 
Speaking of streamlining operations, my strategic partner, Michael Cantu’, and I have over 50 years of combined experience in process improvement and automation. If you're interested in learning more, we'd love to have a conversation with you!

If that sounds good, click the button below to schedule a chat.

If you’re new to the leadership game, or even if you’re not, there’s much to learn about becoming a more influential leader.

If you’re in this boat, here are six things you can do to increase your leadership influence:

1. Expand Your Knowledge Base

It’s easy to get lackadaisical when it comes to learning. Some leaders may feel complacent and don't feel the need to grow anymore. This scenario can be the case if leaders have been in their roles for a long time. If this is the case, the best thing to do is decide to keep learning, push through the resistance, and get growing!

2. Take a Genuine Interest in Others

Great leaders show care for others and their needs, which builds emotional equity amongst their peers and those they lead.  Who doesn’t love to follow leaders who genuinely care about them?

3. Be Generous

People remember leaders for their generosity, especially when their giving isn't required. And it doesn't even have to be money--gifts of time are invaluable as well.

4. Be Authentic

People can spot a fake a mile away, yet so many are afraid to be themselves, thinking people won’t accept them if they show their true selves. They’d rather put on a mask instead. The best thing we can do is be ourselves, and if the true-you has rough edges, that’s okay. We all have them. To be imperfect is perfectly human.

5. Thrive During Tough Times

We do have a choice on how we deal with hardship. It comes down to two things: either we choose to face challenges head-on, or by default, we allow adversity to eat away at our resilience and our ability to overcome. My advice? Choose wisely!

6. Embrace Servant Leadership

Have the mindset that life isn't about us. It's about serving others, bringing value to everyone we meet, and leaving a legacy.
 
In the end, if we can embrace these six qualities such that they become a part of who we are, our influence as a leader will grow, and who doesn’t want that?

 
Speaking of influence, does your organization have the resources to grow your impact in the market, but you're not sure where to start? Often, the best way to do that is through improving the way your business runs.

A great way to do that is through the FIRM Fitness Assessment, a 100% virtual tool that gauges your organization's fitness and then pinpoints precisely where to start to make improvements.

Interested? Then take my FREE business assessment! It will give you a high-level feel for what the assessment covers, yet it can give you actionable intelligence to get started on making your business better.

Click the button below to get started!

By: Kathy Kent Toney, President of Kent Business Solutions

I was talking with a friend the other day, and she told me in one sentence what my passion is all about, and I'd love to share it with you!

Kathy, you’re all about helping people become the best that they can be.

Wow, she hit the nail on the head!

So, why am I sharing this with you? Well, it translates well into my passion for work. I’m all about helping businesses become the best that they can be!

The primary way I do that is through process improvement. By streamlining operations, it creates efficiencies, which reduces costs, which then increases the bottom line. And that leads into my tagline:

I help organizations become profitable beyond their imagination!

I do this through the following approaches:

• Process Automation
• Sigma/Lean
• Scrum
• Voice of the Customer

The one I’m most excited about is process automation. The software platform I sell, Accelerate, has helped my strategic partner, Michael Cantu’, consistently achieve a 300% increase in productivity with his clients. This tool fits nicely in my toolkit—I streamline the processes, and Michael automates them. It's a win-win scenario!

As for me, I’ve experienced some great results as well:

Scrum Project:

• Increased speed-to-market by +100%

Voice of the Customer:

• Increased revenue by +40% in just two months
• Opened up a new market worth millions of dollars

Sales Process:

• The process used over nine years facilitated an increase in sales from $85M - +$300M.

For all these reasons listed above, that’s why I’m passionate about what I do. I love to help companies become the best that they can be!

So, that's enough about me. I'd love to find out more about what you do!

Are you facing any challenges in your business? I’d love to hop on a Zoom or phone call to brainstorm some solutions with you—for free!

If that sounds good, click the button below to schedule a time for us to talk.

Are you facing (or have faced) less-than-ideal circumstances, and you still have a positive attitude like the dog in this video? His cone of shame didn't stop him from having a good time!

I’m pretty sure that is not the case for most of us!

But there are things you can do to overcome what appear to be insurmountable challenges. Here are three tips to get you headed in the right direction:

1. Accept Your Current Situation

I like to call this “relinquishing your right to a different current state.” This idea may sound strange, but it's an effective way to approach difficult situations creatively. We often waste precious brain capacity on wishing for a different result. Whenever we can clear out the mental clutter, this frees up our mind to see the challenge for what it is, not for what we want it to be.

Here’s a little exercise I’d like to you try:

• Think back to a time you faced a challenging situation in your work. What were your reactions in the beginning? Did you worry too much about it? Did you place blame on yourself or others for any outcomes? Did you waste too much mental energy and perhaps time wishing for a different present tense? In short, review your mental process and actions early on in the process.

 

• Next, think through what it would have looked like if you relinquished your right to a different current state, accepted the current situation, and then started on finding a solution. Would your timeline have been shorter? Would your amount of wasted mental energy be reduced?

Once you’ve tried this, you’re ready for the next step.

2. Brainstorm Solutions

Get your team involved with this. You can even do a reverse brainstorming exercise. This approach is where you work backward from the end state that you DON’T want to happen.

3. Pick Your Best Solution and Put it into Play

Again, include your team to help choose the best one that will solve the problem. If you’re having a challenging time picking the best approach, I’ve included a free Prioritization Tool below.

Once you have selected your best option, implement your new game plan.
 
I hope these tips helped you! In the meantime, if you have any questions about the best ways to optimize your organization, I'd love to hear from you! I'm all about helping organizations become profitable beyond their imagination.

P.S. Don’t forget to download your FREE Prioritization Tool by clicking the button below.

Customers can be so fickle these days. It’s hard to know sometimes exactly what they want.

Well, there’s no need to guess! Gathering feedback from your customers isn’t as difficult as you think it is.
Intrigued? Then keep reading!

There are many ways to do this: listen to customer complaints, interview/survey them, or run a contest for new product ideas. Next, consolidate feedback as a basis for your innovation efforts. Most importantly, act on what you discover!
Here are some other things you can do:

Use Social Media

Use social media to your advantage by following trends and asking questions on Twitter and Facebook groups. You can also ask people what they want to see in future products. Many early adopters are active on social network groups and will happily respond with suggestions.

 Frito Lay is an excellent example of a company that has done this effectively in an entertaining way. I'm sure many of you have seen the Do Yourself a Flavor campaign on social media a while back, and it was very successful. By inviting customers to choose new flavors of Lay's Potato Chips, they brought a fresh appeal to a very mature product offering, and at the same time, increased brand loyalty.

Observe Customers Interacting with Your Products

There is a whole field of study dedicated to observing customers interacting with products. Ethnographic Market Research uses insights gained through observation to develop products that customers will love. It's a great way to inspire the development of innovative products and/or services.

Here's a great example: Levi Strauss began to market a new line of jeans based on what they saw customers doing with brand new Levi jeans. They were ripping them! So they started selling pre-ripped jeans with excellent results.

One of my clients did this with a prototype for a new product they had developed. They were all excited to show a contractor a prototype of a new product they had created. They asked the contractor to install the product on a building, and it's a good thing they did! My client discovered they had made a grave mistake in the design that made it non-functional. If they called in the contractor, my client would have put the product into production, and it would have been a very costly mistake.

 
These are just two specific things you can do to improve your customer feedback process, and there are many more things you can do.

If you're interested in learning more about improving your products, I'd love to have a conversation with you to hear about your challenges and brainstorm some possible solutions. I have over ten years of Voice of the Customer experience, I've got the creds under my belt!

If that sounds good, click the link below to get a time on our calendars!

Have your product innovation efforts gone the way of the blower dryer pictured above? For those of you who've experienced this, here are five tips you can use to get back on track, all centered around the idea of thinking outside the box:

1. Examine Patents for Inspiration

Search patents in your field. What ideas can you put into practice from active patents that could achieve the same end goal? Are any expiring that you could use that method? Are there some that you could license? 

2. Transform Products through Add-ons

Try combining your product with something different to make something new, e.g., a cell phone with a flashlight, a watch with linked cell phone technology, to name a few.

3. Eliminate to Innovate

Is there a way to remove something that can make your product better? Amazon displaced the need to visit a bookstore, Dell eliminated the computer store, and the Sony Walkman eliminated speakers and record functions.

4. Find a New Use for Your Product

Think of different applications for an existing product. An excellent example of this is De Beers—they decided to focus on engagement rings when they had only produced industrial diamonds. Doing so was a game-changer for them.

5. Borrow Ideas from the Past

Are there any methods, products, or services that were in use years ago in your market space that could inspire developing something new? For instance, speed dating is a relaunch of a Victorian dance format where ladies had cards marked with appointments.

And just because you’ve read through all five, here’s a bonus tip:

6. Bring in Outside Help

If your company lacks bandwidth, contract with someone for identified projects, or if you’re not sure where to start, think about bringing someone in who’s skilled in innovation consulting.
 
Speaking of outside help, if you're feeling stuck and could use some assistance, my strategic partner, Michael Cantu', and I would love to brainstorm some ideas with you!  We can help point out some areas where you could improve your profitability and increase innovation.

Interested? If so, click the button below to schedule a time, and we'll get something on the calendar! 

Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán from Pexels

We can learn a treasure trove of wisdom from famous leaders, and a quick way to go about that is from a wealth of quotes you can find on the Internet. Here are just a few of my favorites:

1. A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd. – Max Lucado

How many of us cave into the negative criticism of others when we know the path we want to take? Turning our backside to the naysayers, when you know the right direction to take, is often the best thing to do.

2. Become the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily, even if you had no title or position. – Brian Tracy

I'm sure many of you have worked with exceptional leaders that you were eager to follow for many reasons. Perhaps they were fun to work with, or they brought out the best in you, and therefore you were willing to give your best to them. A great exercise is to keep that person in mind as you go about being a leader. Then exemplify those traits you admire in them as your lead others.

3. Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them become what they are capable of being. – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

One of the best managers I ever worked for called out leadership abilities that I didn't know existed. He then put me in positions where I had the chance to practice those abilities. What he did helped me to grow by leaps and bounds!

4. The leader's task is to get their people from where they are to where they have not been. – Henry Kissinger

This idea is closely related to #3. If it hadn't been for this one manager who had not invested in me, I would not be the leader I am today, for which I'm so grateful!

With that in mind, here's a tip you can try: think about each of your team members, the hidden abilities that they have. Then do what my boss did with me for some or each of them. It works; I'm living proof!

5. The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one who gets the people to do the greatest things. – Ronald Reagan

Great leaders do an excellent job of empowering team members to be the best they can be through modeling many of these characteristics outlined above. They also create an environment where employees become enthusiastic about their work, collaborate well, and in the end, accomplish exceptional results.
 
Speaking of leading well, how would you like to guide your organization into a place of profitability beyond your imagination? I'm all about helping organizations reach that goal.

Interested in learning more? Then click on the link below to schedule a chat. I'd love to learn about your challenges and brainstorm with you some potential solutions, to help you lead well!

The road to digital transformation is littered with many disastrous results. Countless companies begin their transformation journeys with high hopes and grand plans yet often don't achieve their goals. But then, there's another end of the spectrum where companies know projects will fail from the very beginning!

Check this out: a series of studies conducted by several heavy hitters (the likes of McKinsey, Oxford University, and KPMG) revealed that 70% of all respondents said they knew an IT project they were about to start would fail from the onset.

With all these grim realities, how does a business leader ensure success from the onset? One way to go about it is preventing those things that could go wrong.

Along those lines, here are the three top reasons why digital transformation initiatives fail, all from a people perspective:

1. Wrong Mindsets

Good mojo flows down from the top of an organization, and if the CEO isn't supportive of transformative IT initiatives, success will be hard to achieve. So it's essential to have support from the top.

Also, when companies continue to keep employees on board who are resistant to change and can sabotage change efforts, this can cause problems. 

2. Wrong Culture

If an organization has too many siloed departments and collaboration is minimal, IT projects are destined to fail. It's essential to establish an atmosphere of cooperation. When an organization can foster an attitude that everyone can win with the proposed new technology, that's a game-changer. If there aren't effective change management systems in place along those lines, end-user acceptance will suffer.

Finally, if management does a poor job of encouraging an environment where team members are free to be themselves and can voice feedback without repercussions, chances for success are minimized.

3. Wrong Talent

Not having the right talent mix for your team can impede your efforts. For instance, a team leader who doesn’t do a good job assessing their internal human capital and filling skill gaps will suffer in the end. Also, when team leaders don't include team members during the interview process with prospective hires, the potential for friction in the team increases. You want to ensure new members can easily integrate into the team.

One undervalued idea is having highly skilled people on your team who have experienced firsthand failed initiatives. That way, they can bring their expertise and prior knowledge of what doesn't work on projects.

 
I've only scratched the surface of three possible reasons digital transformation efforts can fail, all from the people side of things. So, there's so much more to learn! In our upcoming digital transformation e-book, Michael Cantu' and I detail what it takes to ensure project success.

Speaking of that, Michael and I hope to publish our e-book soon! In the meantime, if you have any questions about digital transformation, we'd love to hop on a Zoom or phone call. Click the button below to get that scheduled.