The Cost of Using the Wrong Tool

As I mentioned before, painting the picture of the tools you can provide a potential team member to grow within the organization once they come onboard can play a significant role in the recruiting process. Failing to make good on those promises though, sooner than later, will be a direct...

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But I Thought We Were Friends?

While Joe was outstanding at pretty much every technical aspect in the department, there was one thing he didn’t have to worry about when he accepted the lead role; he never seemed all that bothered about alienating long term friendships. I think that was largely a result of him being able...

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The Costs of Unaccountability - How Much and Where?

Let’s consider what Shannon Howard shared right off the bat in Holding People Accountable: Where Most Leaders Fail once more:

When accountability is lacking, performance, company culture, and morale suffer. When employees are not held accountable for missed deadlines, bad behavior, or poor...

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Early, Often, and Everywhere In Between!

Here’s what I can promise you; we can indeed eliminate the cost of confusion and avoid leaving a ton of profit on the table if we’re willing to provide the kind of clear expectations that produce results! I’m certainly not suggesting that this is easy but by following a few...

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Clear Expectations Remove Excuses & Increase Profit

If we wanna stop leaving all that profit on the table, we’ve got to take action. The hard part though, as I just shared, often boils down to what we can or cannot dedicate our resources to - or at least that’s what I hear from folks in leadership roles quite frequently. If we only had...

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What Leaders Can Do To EARN Engagement

I wrapped up last time by mentioning that we’d soon work through some “simple things” that we can each do to EARN engagement from the teams we’re leading, and more specifically, some actual steps we can take to put those things into practice. Here’s the thing: just...

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Not Just Some Fuzzy Initiative…

Based on the stats we just looked at showing that an overwhelming majority of the workplace at-large isn’t actively engaged in “powerfully rowing toward their company goals,” the cost of disengaged employees should be fairly evident… Truth be told, I struggle to...

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A Reason to Stay

Now that we’ve identified some of the causes of turnover, specifically the reasons great team members leave an organization voluntarily and the high costs associated with that voluntary turnover, and we’ve looked at the extended reach of those costs, let’s get to work at...

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Following a Simple Pattern

With just a basic understanding of why people do what they do, Matt was about to intentionally break the golden rule with his team and avoid so many of the costs of poor communication! By following a simple pattern, he was able to begin adding fuel to a different fire… Instead of the fire...

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Fuel to the Fire

It seems that the cost of poor communication is impacting enough organizations that it’s become quite a hot topic… I found a separate article on Inc.com called Costs of Poor Communication Reach $37 Billion. Avoid Disconnects By Implementing These Two Things at referenced the same...

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Can You See the Big Picture?

Even when we begin to recognize what’s killing our profitability, start to dial in on the right prescription for addressing it, and come up with some simple solutions that can have a strong impact, we’ll miss capturing a significant amount of our best potential results if we allow our...

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A Leader’s First Customer

I believe making responsiveness a priority is considerably easier when we understand just how much impact it has. Think about it, would you even consider not responding to a customer or client who represents tens of thousands in profit for your company? I’d guess most of us would put our...

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