Leadership & Goal Setting in 2010

Accountability – From Resolution to Reality – How Will You “Get It Done” This Year?

Now that we are 1/2 way through the year, how much have you gotten done? Are you on track to complete all of your company’s goals this year?

I can safely say that Carceron is not? Why not?

We moved offices in Q2, which is still in progress with various capital improvements like a new air conditioner for the server room, conference room furniture and other amenities, etc. Somehow, something as big as an office move never made it onto our original list of goals when we planned everything last year. Needless to say, moving into a new office is something of a time sucker. Consequently, this, along with a wave new business opportunities (certainly no complaints about that), has delayed some of our other goals that we had set to complete – especially the ones due for completion at the end of Q2.

So what happens now? Do we pout about that fact that we are behind schedule? Of course not! Things happen! Life happens! You simply adapt. If a few things get pushed into Q1 of next year…  so be it.

What I would recommend doing is going over all of your goals with your staff or at least your management team. You may find that some goals are no longer relevant and can be removed. Other goals may need to have their completion dates changed because of the unexpected life events or just because you realize that goal A is really dependent on goal B and you only just now found that out.

Don’t give up. Reassess, adapt and execute. Get everyone back in alignment and march forward!

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The concept of Time Compression was recently introduced to me by a client at the conclusion of a recent meeting. I was so enthralled by what he taught me that I did some more research that night and found several articles that further elaborated on the concept and what it means for business.

The first article I found, Technology’s Time Compression, is an excellent primer. At the bottom of that article are links to several other articles, all worth reading, but the two that were most interesting to me were It’s Time for Zero Time and We are Literally Trying to Stop Time.

What I got out of the latter two articles is that, at a minimum, we are trying to reach zero time, preferably negative time. The analogy of a track runner is quite appropriate. Track runners are constantly trying to reduce their times, with the ideal time being zero seconds. But can we achieve negative time? I don’t think a runner could, but we might able to as business owners. This is why business intelligence (BI) and dashboards are so hot right now. Dashboards are more than being able to see real time performance – they are about predicting the future and being ready to adapt to it instantly. You might argue that adapting instantly would be a definition of zero time. However, without proper business intelligence, you won’t be able to make the necessary predictions and subsequent preparations for that instantaneous switch. Negative Time is about being able predict when the change will come and changing at that precise moment (because you’re ready for it), versus reacting to the change once it has come to pass – where the first phase of the reaction is planning (what are we going to do?) and execution (doing it) both of which take time and make you late to the race.

Think about how this translates to business in terms of things like response time, resolution time, order time, processing time, or any other operational task where time is “consumed”.

In my business, Carceron, we monitor servers, networks and desktops in attempt to predict failure. These articles tell me that we can probably be doing a lot more with our monitoring and other business processes.

How can you achieve Negative Time in some of your business processes?

While these tips and tricks can be used by anyone, for almost any reason. I am going to explain how I use them from the perspective of a business owner. Why the distinction? Because business owners are generally juggling many responsibilities at the same time: business development, operations, administration, short and long term projects, serving on non-profit and association boards, etc.

In the digital age, a lot of management is done from the inbox. For many business owners, the inbox serves as both a communication repository as well as a t0-do / follow up list. The problem with this approach is, that given how many things the business owner is involved in, the inbox can fill up pretty fast – to-dos get mixed in with communication follow ups, etc. Here’s what I handle it: (all of these tips are based on Outlook 2007)

Organize Using Subfolders & Categories

The most commonly used method of organizing email is to use subfolders. I have several just under my inbox. I have one subfolder that acts as my GMail inbox, so those emails stay separate from my Carceron email (I use my GMail account strictly for personal stuff). Another way that I use subfolders is to store important emails relating to any association management that I am involved in. For example, I might have one subfolder called “Corporate Connections”, one called “Kiwanis”, etc.  – anything where I am on a board of directors or serve in a management capacity outside of my company, Carceron. It is important to note that I do not archive all of my business emails in my personal subfolders, but in Public Folders in Exchange – this way everyone in my company has access to them. To create a subfolder in Outlook, simply right click on the Inbox (or whatever folder you want to create the subfolder under) and select New Folder. Name the folder and you’re ready to go.

Many business owners and managers use their inbox as their follow up repository. An easy way to organize your inbox is by Categorizing email. To Categorize email, simply right click a message and click Categorize. You can create your own custom categories and colors by selecting “All Categories” at the bottom of the Category menu. Once you start categorizing, then you’ll want to sort your Inbox first by Categories and and then by date. This way, newer and un-Categorized emails is always at the top and  email is always together bundled below. The end result should come out something like you see below. Note that the “Categories: (none) (1839 item, 2 unread)” is my unread and or unprocessed email.  The email in the Category containers below are for follow up (e.g. CARCERON Accounting – which I will open when meeting with my book keeper or CPA)

Prioritizing & Email That Needs Your Attention

I get a ton of email from a variety of sources: my staff, clients, the associations I belong to, social media, vendors, etc. Obviously I want to prioritize my staff and clients. To do this, I “re-color” their message in my inbox so that I can quickly identify them amongst the hundreds of other messages in my inbox. To do this, simply click on any message from a person that you want color coded in the future, then, from the top menu bar, click Tools –> Organize; select the “Using Colors” options and then simple select your color. Here’s an example:

If you have a very full inbox, a more effective way to get to the emails you need to respond to faster is to use Search Folders. If you look just below your Tasks folder, you will see the Search Folders section. To create a new Search Folder, simply right click “Search Folders” and select “New Search Folder”. A window will pop-up that will allow you to configure the your new Search Folder (which is really more of an inbox filter). There are many ways to configure your Search Folders. The primary way that I use them is to filter by people. For example, I have one folder for my company, Carceron. When I click this folder, it will display all emails currently in my inbox from everyone on my company (assuming that I have specified them in the search folder criteria). I have similar folders setup for various Corporate Connections chapters, clients, VIPs, etc. It also comes in very handy for voice mail. I use YouMail for my mobile phone’s voice mail. This service emails me a transcriptions and MP3 file of all voice mails that I get. Using a Search Folder customized to view only emails from YouMail is a very fast and effective way of processing voice mails because I can just “read” the voice mail as an email message and respond to it or delete it without having to listen to every single voice mail.

Automate Email Sorting

Using the Rules, you can automatically sort emails a variety of ways. I use Rules to route all of my GMail correspondence to a separate subfolder, to route all e-newsletters to a separate folder (I can get to those later when I have time), routing electronic faxes to other folders, Google Alerts, etc. To setup custom Rules, click on Tools –> Rules and Alerts. You can do a great many other things with Rules, like create different sound notifications based on the sender, or automatically flag messages for followup base on sender. Have fun with it.

Some Other Strategies

Do It, Delegate It or Delete It

If you want to really take your mastery of Outlook to the next level, purchase the book, Take Back Your Life with Outlook which is chock full of tips and tricks to make Outlook really work for you as well as how to better manage your time. One of the core teachings of the book, as it relates to inbox management, is “Do it, Delegate it, or Delete it”. Basically this means means do whatever needs to be done at the time you are reading the message, or, delegate it (forward it to a staff member, convert it to a Task and assign, etc.), or, delete it (junk mail, unimportant FYIs, etc.). If you follow this to the letter, than you should have a very small inbox. This philosophy does not work for me as well it could, because I keep so many categorized follow up emails – but it is essential to keeping my Inbox much slimmer than it could be. Delete is especially useful when your checking messages via a mobile device like a Blackberry – as long as you remember to do it. I get tons of FYIs and CCs  (e.g. FaceBook notifications, etc.) that I have no need to keep that clutter up the inbox. If I remember to delete these messages that become useless once read, then they will not be waiting on me when I open Outlook later on for some real email processing.

Schedule Email Checking

If you are trying to focus on a particular task, like writing a proposal or SOP, it can be very distracting to have emails continually flow into your inbox, making noise and popping up notifications in the lower right corner of your screen. The solution is very simple, yet surprisingly hard for so many people who have the need to always feel connected: Set Outlook to Work Offline or close Outlook down while you’re working. When I have an admin day where I need to get a lot done, I check Outlook 2-3 times a day: 1st thing in the morning, after lunch and, perhaps, late afternoon. In between those times it is set to Work Offline. Incidentally, this is also a great way to catch up on email without being interrupted. How many times have you been working on trimming down your inbox only to be stalled by new incoming emails as well as ongoing email back and forth from what you are working on in your inbox? When I process my inbox, I have a goal, usually in days, of email that I want to process using Do It, Delegate It or Delete It. So I set Outlook to Work Offline and I process, for example, all email from the previous 3 days. Anything that I send, will hang in the Outbox until I set Outlook back to online.  To set Outlook to Work Offline, simply click the the area in the lower right corner of Outlook that says “Connected to Microsoft Exchange” and then select Work Offline.

I hope that this returns a little sanity to your life.

First and foremost, you will need to get your communications up and running. This means moving the telephone and computer systems and having them hooked backed up by professionals. In the Atlanta market, for telephone systems, I recommend Robert Brock’s company, Square 1 Technology. For computers and the network, I obviously recommend my company, Carceron.

As far as moving your office is concerned, you can do it yourself of course (that’s what we did, along with an army of youth volunteers). But you may want to outsource that part, especially if you’re a bit bigger (2000 sq ft. or more). In that case, Debbie Ponder from Suddath Relocation Systems is who I would use in the Atlanta market. Regardless of who you use to move or how, you should have a space plan for the new office. A space plan is a layout map of the office that shows where every piece of furniture is going to go and how it will be positioned. It’s especially helpful to have measurements of your furniture relative to each room’s dimensions. also be mindful of the position of the door into the office relative to your desk. “L” shaped desks may not be able to go into the office just how you want it based on the position of the door into the office. If you’re getting any additional new furniture for the office, make sure to coordinate with your furniture rep on the move in as well.

You also might have a lot of loose ends to tie up here. Such as:

• Getting office and server room locks re-keyed and disseminating those keys to relevant employees
• Signage (reception area, parking, etc.)
• Touch painting after move in (hopefully not)
• Security system operational
• Interior Decoration (hanging plaques, awards, etc. – adding some plant life to soften the place up a little)
• Stocking the kitchen / break room
• Commercial Insurance is updated for the new property and you have a certificate of insurance into the landlord / lender

If you brain storm with your staff over everything that needs to get done from the very beginning, then put that list where everyone can see it (in LifeTick or SharePoint for example), you should have a very successful and relatively pain-free move.

Moving an office is a process accompanied by so many possible emotions: joy, dread, relief, stress, and more – that it can seem like you need a therapist just to deal with the move… for everyone in your company. After all, you still have a business to run, and if you’re reading this, you’re most likely not a Fortune 500 company that can outsource all of the planing and execution that goes into it; you’re most likely doing it all yourself. So how do you run a business while moving somewhat painlessly -  change the oil while driving car, per se? I am about to tell you.

Timing and the Tenant Rep

You need to give yourself as much time as possible, 6-12 months ideally. The less time you have the more likely you’ll be forced into something you don’t want due to less time to search for vacant properties and less time to negotiate the deal. And let’s talk about negotiating that deal. Two Words: Tenant Representative. You’ve most likely used a residential real estate agent to purchase and home, it is doubly or more important to secure a tenant rep for your commercial space. Here’s how a tenant rep benefits you directly:

• They are free (they are paid a commission by the landlord)
• They have access to commercial MLS (multiple listing) systems that provide real time information on vacant properties which helps you narrow your search based on pre-defined criteria like:
  • Access to interstate(s)
  • Power & Data Cabling
  • Office Layout
  • Class A vs B vs C (think quality)
  • 1st Floor vs any floor
• They are master negotiators (or should be), protecting your interests from the landlord and negotiating the lease for and with you.

We used Bob & Rob Hill of Hill Corporate Partners. They walked us through our 56 page lease in painstaking detail and knew things that needed to be changed right away that I would have never know to ask for. That is the biggest reason you need to use a tenant rep.

Some other notes when considering properties:

• When you walk through your final choice of office to develop the “buildout and refresh” scope of work for the landlord, make sure to so in full lighting. When we did ours, the power to our unit was turned off due to small flood in the adjacent office suite. So we viewed the space with our BlackBerry video lights. While this did not really affect the buildout that we needed done, it did significantly impact what we asked for in terms of bringing the unit back to an acceptable move in condition (refresh). In our case it was painting walls, peeling wallpaper in the bathroom, carpet stains, and other cosmetic blemishes. No worries. We handled it ourselves. It was just a pain that could have been avoided.
• If you need any buildout work done, make sure that you have you, your tenant rep, the landlord and the architect (usually hired by the landlord) in the room and go over precisely what your recommendations are and arrive at a consensus on the final total square footage. In most offices this might be pretty straight forward, but because our new office has a curved front, many of the of the interior walls are at weird angles which made calculating square footage accurately a challenge.
• Be extremely detailed in your scope of work for both the buildout and refresh. Insist on meeting with the property or construction manager personally to go through each item so that there is no confusion.
• Check the functionality of everything mechanical, like:
  • Doors fully closing and latching
  • Sinks work correctly and don’t leak
  • Toilet Flushes
  • Light Fixtures all work
  • Ceiling tiles are all intact and not cracked

My business partner (Jeffrey) and I got into a disagreement regarding this the other day and I thought “Let’s see what the rest of our small world of FaceBook friends and blog readers think”.

Jeffrey, had found a forum post on a product review board on the Dell web site which slammed some new tiny computer that they had recently put out. He emailed me the link saying that transparency was not good in this case. Having read about Dell Hell in Jeff Jarvis’ What Would Google Do?, I was inclined to immediately disagree because Mr. Jarvis made a very good argument to the contrary – that publicly calling Dell out had resulted in him getting what he wanted and that his small set of the articles spread very quickly over the web, becoming a PR nightmare for Dell. Dell finally reacted and learned their lesson and made many other customer service related corrections as a result of this.

However, I have given it some more thought and I have to say I’m not totally convinced that 100% transparency (much less 75% or even 50%) is good for every business, especially small business. Dell is a very large company, many people had never even heard of the Dell Hell incident – I had not until reading his book. Despite the bad PR, Dell remained relatively unblemished. I’m not sure that I could say the same if it were to happen to my small business. They could lose 10s of millions of dollars, perhaps 100s of millions, and remain relatively unscathed. For small businesses that operate in a smaller market those results might be catastrophic.

So ponder on this:

• Would you publish a publicly viewable forum where anyone could write what they wanted about your company and anyone could read what had been written?
  • How would you handle negative commentary?
• How would you react to web site that are erected for the sole purpose of discrediting your company by having users share their negative experiences (e.g. www.dellhell.net)
• Is the concept of transparency more relevant/practical/necessary for big businesses and government than small businesses?
• Does this even matter for service-based businesses?

By the way, what do you think about the transparent canoe? Cool huh?

Step 1: Outsource Personal Weakness

I learned early on in business that I did not need to handle book keeping, and, a littler later on, tactical marketing (web sites, direct mail, etc.).  Reconciling bank statements, taxes, etc. are best handled by someone else, I quickly deduced. My undergrad training was in Psychology. I never took a single business class, so this was a no brainer. What’s been harder to let go of is marketing. My background in psychology has served me in understanding the clent and how to market to them in terms of messaging, but other tactical elements such as graphic and web design, collateral design, are all done better by the artsy types who can give your business a more polished look.

As Carceron grew, I began to realize that I wasn’t even the best computer technician and worked quickly to divest myself from that role to allow other, more capable, people run the day to day support operations of the business.

My next area to personally outsource? …Sales.

As I have grown the business, it was hard to see how tactical of a role sales really was until I had done it for a while. Now I realize that it is simply a numbers game. It’s about generating more leads (marketing and prospecting) and attaining better conversion rates (sales and sales training). I firmly believe that I could teach just about any good sales person how to sell what we do because the principals of selling are the pretty the same in any business. My training would give him the information needed to apply those principals..

In summary, you can outsource some of your personal responsibilities to outside vendors or employees. Evolving business owners and overwhelmed management alike must outsource their personal weakness in this way to get precious time back and/or to increase the quality of the area to be outsourced. This was the case of Jay, an operations manager for one of our clients. Jay ran the day to day operations of his company’s 16+ locations in addition to supporting its near 100 end users, while Carceron simply supported his server farm. Eventually he “cried uncle” and let Carceron take over all of their IT operations which gave him back 15-20 hours per week that he was spending on just supporting end users.

Step 2: Outsource Business Processes & Functions

As your business grows, you eventually see other areas to outsource to save money and/or improve quality. Some things make more sense than others. As a rule of thumb, don’t outsource anything that interferes directly with your client relationships… hold that sacred.

Here are some common areas of the business to outsource and why you should:

• Book Keeping: Save time, Accuracy, Cheaper than a full time employee (depends on the size of business and transaction volume)
• Payroll: Accuracy, IRS Compliance
• Human Resources: Compliance, Compliance, Compliance
• Marketing & PR: Social Media needs daily attention, a firm can do it cheaper than a full time employee
• Shipping / Delivery: What would it cost you to maintain a fleet of vehicle and drivers vs the cost of using a local courier or FedEx?
• Managed Services Provider (MSP): MSPs don’t get sick or take vacations, MSPs don’t need to be equiped or need benefits, MSPs cost about 1/2 the salary of a full time IT employee, click here to see a lot more reasons

Much of outsourcing is accomplished through the use of information technology which is an enabler towards issues like compliance, business process etc. Make sure that you understand the impacts on your IT infrastructure of anything that you plan to outsource before doing so.

You’ll also want to make sure that you have a good working relationship with all of your outsource vendors, constantly communicating your expectations.

Here are some other resources on outsourcing, well worth the read:

• 8 Reason Why Outsourcing Fails
• What causes outsourcing failures?

Off-shoring

When many people hear the word outsourcing, visions of call centers in a far away country pop up. Bare in mind that you can outsource without off-shoring. Put differently, off-shoring is 1 technique of outsourcing. When and why should you use this technique? In many cases it almost always comes back to saving money. Labor pools in other countries are generally cheaper and vast. It can also come about due to of lack people in country that have the necessary skills to carry out specialized kinds of work. This has been Microsoft’s argument for years – that University’s simply aren’t spitting out enough application developers (Watch the Bill Gates Testimonial to the Senate regarding this).  However, there are some trade offs:

• Language barrier: Many people get frustrated with call center operators where English is a second language. Also things can get lost in translation – this happens often for company’s that outsource software development abroad where misunderstandings about the scope of work often arise.
• External Politics: In the current state of this economy, where unemployment is so high, you risk a PR backlash by sending work overseas
• Internal Politics: Offshoring can have a direct impact on moral due to an “am I next?” mindset

Personally, I have not seen the need to offshore, however, I think it may become inevitable in order to compete unless legislation is passed to limit it somehow. As I am not an economist, I can’t say either way if that would be a bad thing or not. If we are of the mindset that we are now a global market place, would increased (presumably more restrictive) legislation help or hinder us? I simply don’t know…

• Why Offshore Outsourcing Projects Fail

• The ability to compete against stronger competitors through the creation of synergistic partnerships
• Development and exploitation niche markets faster
• Increased activity throughout the entire sales pipeline – all the way from lead generation to closed business.

So what is a Strategic Alliance and how do you form one that works and lasts? I’m about to tell you:

First, let’s look at some definitions for “strategic”:

• Pertaining to, characterized by, or of the nature of strategy
• Important in or essential to strategy
• Of an action, as a military operation or move in a game, forming an integral part of the stratagem

Next, let’s look at some definitions for “alliance”:

• the state of being allied or confederated
• a connection based on kinship or marriage or common interest; “the shifting alliances within a large family”; “their friendship constitutes a powerful bond between them”
• an organization of people (or countries) involved in a pact or treaty
• a formal agreement establishing an association or alliance between nations or other groups to achieve a particular aim
• confederation: the act of forming an alliance or confederation

Finally, the definition for a Strategic Alliances, (as defined by Wikipedia)

A Strategic Alliance is a formal relationship between two or more parties to pursue a set of agreed upon goals or to meet a critical business need.

I like this definition due to its emphasis on formality and “agreed upon goals”. One thing that I think is missing from this definition is that the relationship should also be mutually beneficial – as this is key to making the Strategic Alliance last.

Some Strategic Alliances Basics

The are many kinds of strategic alliances. Most center on revenue creation. Examples include:

• Reseller / Affiliate Model: You become a reseller of a certain product or service in exchange for sales and marketing support of said product or service.
• Outsource Relationship: Over time you come to realize that certain parts of your business are better handled by another entity outside your business because it is more profitable, efficient, etc.
• Business Development: Referral Partnership, Co-Marketing, etc.

It is the last type of Strategic Alliance, business development,  that I would like to spend some time on. This can be one of the easiest to form and at the same time the most powerful. Who should you strategicly partner with? The obvious answer is professions that you naturally get referrals from already. For example, I own an IT company, so I receive a great deal of referrals from an ISP broker and telecom hardware vendor that I have allied with. Another great example of a good strategic alliance would be composed of a CPA, financial planner & estate planning attorney.

It is important to formalize this relationship as much as possible to get the maximum results. Formalization should create a culture of accountability in the alliance which is critical to the success of it. Here are some ideas.

• Meet at least once a month and share sales pipe line reports
  • What deals are you working on now?
  • What deals have you recently closed?
  • Discuss referrals that have been passed around the alliance. (status, quality, etc.)
  • Create a list of specific prospects that you would like to get into and go over the list with your alliance. Use Linkedin and other business social media sites to make connections.
  • Are you have trouble closing any deals? If so, how can the alliance help?
    • Powerful Example: If the prospect does not have the budget for your project or service, is their anyone in the alliance that can create the savings through their product or services that essentially creates the funds for your project? I use my telecom broker in this regard. He can come in and save them hundreds to thousands a month, the savings from which cover most or all of the cost of my proposal.
  • Side Note: If, when I say “sales pipe line report”, your eyes glaze over, then you probably need a customer relationship management (CRM) system, such as ACT!, or Microsoft CRM. I recommend Alanna Galiano or Emerging Technologies to get your up to speed.A good CRM is essential to making this strategy work.
    
• Develop a joint Needs Assessment
  • If you already have a Needs Assessment, this is easy, just ask each member of your alliance for the top 3 questions that you should ask when conducting a Needs Assessment on your prospect that might generate a referral for them. For example: I always ask a few questions about their phone system to see if there is a possible referral opportunity to the telecom hardware company in my alliance.
• Joint Marketing
  
  • Create a “Partners” page on your web site and add logos with link backs to each of your partner’s web sites. Make sure they do the same.
  • Co-sponsor an event together, such as a conference or tradeshow. Obviously the event should contain target prospects that you are all are going after.
  • Find other ways to cross market:
    • Drop a brochure or coupon from an alliance member into your invoice mailings.

More Advanced Strategic Alliances

Want to take this concept to the next level?

Form an alliance around a business process or event. One idea that came from my friend, Bob Hill of Hill Corporate Partners, centers around office moves. Think about it. When someone want’s to move their office, they need the following:

• A commercial tenant rep, like Bob Hill, to find the new space
• An office furniture company to furnish the new office
• A moving company to move the stuff in the old office to the new one
• An IT company, like Carceron, to restore the computer network
• A telecom broker, like Elite Telecom Services, to get the telephone lines and Internet service going
• A telecom hardware company to setup the phone system for the new location
• A printer to handle change out of all collateral such as business, cards, brochures, letterhead, etc.
• And probably a CPA

You could market the alliance with an informational web site that is search engine optimized (maybe everyone chips in for some pay per click advertisement as well). Make sure that there is good quality content on the site. In the case of the office move, perhaps some check lists, Dos & Don’ts, etc.

Getting Started

If you don’t know all of the people that you need to form your alliances, I suggest joining a BNI or Corporate Connections referral marketing program. Corporate Connections chapters, like Synergy, are developing a strong, structured program for strategic alliance creation and development. Another venue might be Vistage. I am a director for Corporate Connections in the Atlanta market, so please feel free to contact me directly with any questions about that program.

What are some other ideas for an Advanced Strategic Alliance?

1. Don’t hand me your business card unless I ask you for it. I promise to do the same. I meet a lot of people and if you’re someone that I don’t think I can help, or you can’t help me, or you can’t help someone I know, then what’s the point? We should be honest with one another. If you do force me to take a card, you’re getting added to my email marketing list and getting spammed – fair warning.
2. Don’t issue cheesy status updates to any of the various social media outlets (FaceBook, Linkedin, etc.). Make sure what you post is interesting enough to read. A good rule of thumb is the “So what” contest – if another person posted what you were going to post, would you say “So What?”. If so, it’s probably not a good post. I know the idea behind status updates and micro-blogging is to talk about what you’re doing right now – what they forget to add was “What are you doing right now, that is interesting to the people you are connected to?” Otherwise, I’m clicking the “hide” button. If my posts bore you, feel free to “Hide” me by all means. Here are some examples:
   • Good
     • I am at the Networking in ATL event at Sutra Lounge with Brandon Miltsch, owner of FireWolf (tells you where I am and who I am with, both of which might be of interest)
   • Bad
     • I’m going to ________   [mom's, bed, the toilet]
3. Don’t call me and try to sell me something the day after we have met. If I took the time to get to know you, I will have told you on the spot that we need to set a follow up appt to discuss your services or product. If I didn’t, and you want my business, then help me pay for what you want to sell me via a referral. This goes a long way. I promise to do the same (and already do).
4. Don’t send me invitations to cheesy FaceBook applications like “Snowball Fight” or Kidnap. These are annoying time wasters. ’nuff said.
5. Don’t hand me a brochure or any other kind of sales collateral at a networking function. Your business card will suffice. I assume that you have a web site if I need more information. If you don’t, I have a referral for you.
6. Don’t ask me to become a fan of or join a group related to something that is obviously not interesting or of benefit to me (e.g. cosmetics)
7. Don’t assume that I remember you if we’ve only met one time. Reintroduce yourself to me every time until we have had a 1:1 meeting, beers together or whatever. I promise to do the same. Again, I meet a lot of people (as you should be) and it is impossible to remember everyone after just one meeting in passing. (Exception: if you are someone important to the networking function I am at, i.e. chapter or associations president, etc.  – leadership has its perks)
8. Don’t connect to me on Linkedin with a free-mail email address as your primary contact email address. Freemail accounts are, for example: @yahoo.com, @gmail.com, @bellsouth.net, etc. (Exception: this only applies if you are a business owner. I understand the case for sales people to maintain control of their profiles with their personal email address? Also, this it is ok if you’re between jobs or retired)

1. A year is a significant amount of time for to allow for the completion of many long term goals.
2. The holidays allow us to renew ourselves with some relaxation and time with family & friends.
3. The holidays are a slow down period for many businesses which allows many of us to “catch our breathe” and re-group.

It’s this slowing down that is of greatest interest to me. What this tells me is that if we are given enough time to slow down and think in a relaxed state we’re pretty good at knowing where we need to go. So why do so many (including me) that set goals and create resolutions fail to reach them? It most cases it simply comes down to execution – doing what needs to be done. But human beings are complex animals, and while we are very good at giving advice and holding others accountable, it is much harder to hold ourselves accountable for the necessary execution required to complete our goals. This is why people hire personal trainers and business coaches -  not to help them with execution, but to hold them accountable for the execution. After all, your personal trainer won’t do the lifting or heavy breathing for you (wouldn’t that be nice?).

So how will you hold yourself accountable this year? I can tell what I have done and what I am going to try.

First, set your personal goals and business goals, making sure that they are very clear to you and to anyone else that they affect (employees, family, etc.). One of the biggest tips on increasing accountability is to set yourself a deadline. When you have a deadline, you should feel some kind of pressure to complete the goal. See my article “Leadership & Goal Setting for 2010″ for more on this.

Business Goals:

Be as transparent to your staff as possible and hold monthly meetings that focus only on the goals that you have set. I believe strongly in leadership by example, so I can’t very well show up to a meeting where I have not made any progress on my goals and they have. That is my accountability system for my business. Another excellent way to add accountability in business is to have a client advisory council. Then you are getting accountability from 2 different directions.

That being said, it is a goal of mine to hire or engage a mentor/coach as there are certain things that I like to bounce of other experienced business owners that may not always be appropriate to share with employees or a client advisory council. It’s taken me a while to come around to the concept of purchasing “accountability” through coaching – but I am getting there. That being said, I currently have several friends that are also business owners that serve this purpose.

Personal Goals:

This one is tougher. It’s been my experience that friends and family do not always make good accountability partners unless you’re both working on the same goal – and even then, one may have stronger discipline than the other making it a bit one-sided. Why do I emphasize the importance of the same goal? Because many friends may not care that much about your personal goal, are poor role models relative to the goal, and/or they “love you just the way you are”.

What’s the answer?

The easy way out is to hire a life coach, but who has the budget for that?

My answer…

Using friends with the same goal is a good start and better than nothing I guess. However, for me, if I can get a group going or join a group related to the goal that I want to accomplish, it makes it a lot easier. The same principles that motivate me to meet the goals of my business (fear of disappointing my employees) drive me to not disappoint the group and my new friends. Obviously this works best if you immediately get to work befriending people in the group which creates the necessary ties to make them care about you. It may sound a bit shallow – but if you think about, many of your friendships had to start on a common bond of “something”.

Review Your Goals Regularly:

Whether you have personal or business goals, review your goals regularly. Monthly is probably a good frequency. If you’re behind on your achieving your goals, devise a game plan to catch up. Deliberately set aside time to catch up – a day on the weekend or a couple of nights – whatever it takes. Also, make sure that your goals are in some kind of digital, easy to access format. I recommend using one of the tools below.

Tools:

There are some great tools that can provide varying levels of accountability depending on how much you are willing to share with your friends, coach etc.

LifeTick: This is a simple to use goal tracking web site. Pay $20 for the 1 year subscription and start tracking all of your personal goals. The site enfores SMART goal format and will email you impending and past due goal deadlines. It also has some mild reporting capabilities and a journal entry feature.

Screenshot of the LifeTick.com Interface

NSight EPS: This is like LifeTick on steroids. Still in beta, NSight runs about $300 per year but has a very cool interface and much more depth of content than LifeTick. It has locations for personal SWOT analysis, personal and company vision and mission statements, and a slew of other features. This service also has a coaching module and is great for group coaching (think Vistage).

Screenshot of NSight

How do you plan to hold yourself accountable?