Unless your business is perfectly run with no mistakes, there is some human error. Are you fully capitalizing on those mistakes? Are they new mistakes – or the same ones over and over again?

Unless you set up daily and weekly learning opportunities, your business will race along with a focus on getting the next job done, and become static. To remain aggressively profitable, you must use every opportunity for training and development.

Learning needs to be institutionalized into your daily and weekly meetings. Mistakes shift from a negative to a positive as they become viewed as an opportunity to become stronger faster.

Learning vs. Static Organizations is a post from: Gregory Neil Associates

Part 1 – Accountability

Think of these next 3 posts as business power tools, or even better, business accelerators. They combat against the drift of entropy towards business as usual and mediocrity that is common to every business.

1. Accountability – Brings focus to your operations, meaning, clarifying exactly what each person is accountable for, having every task in the business held within someone’s accountabilities. Assigning metrics for each accountability to drive and challenge production, and instituting a reporting structure that allows transparency of the work being done.

A very powerful tool if used well in a reporting structure. Empowers each individual with a sharp focus on the needed outcomes rather than the process, and lays a firm foundation for team support. Essential for a healthy functional business culture. The only other option is one of command and control – which at its best is nowhere near close in inspiring productivity and effectiveness, and at its worst, frustrating and exhausting.

Leadership Power Tools and Business Accelerators is a post from: Gregory Neil Associates

Over 15 years ago, Southwest recognized just over 2,000 point of contact opportunities customers have, from the first call to arrival at their destination, and went to work to make each of those as positive an experience as possible. The results are in: Southwest is the most successful airline in the USA.

Former Southwest CEO James Parker attributes success to their business culture, “The business culture drives success by creating great leaders at every level. In a study in 2001, the productivity of Southwest employees was 45% higher than American and United.” And in a 2011 survey of all the major airlines, Southwest was rated #1 in customer service. Intelligent and well-regarded CEO Ken Chenault says, “Great service starts with the people who deliver it.”

American Express, when recently desiring to improve customer service globally, decided to focus on making life better for its 26,000 call center employees. The theory: Happier employees means happier customers. So what did they do? American Express asked their employees for suggestions on improvements. The program was very successful in setting new standards, considerably higher than even senior managers thought possible – ask the adults who work for you how to improve their work environment! Great idea? This concept is so new and revolutionary that FORTUNE magazine devoted a full page to spread the news!

Customer Service and the Business Culture is a post from: Gregory Neil Associates

Here’s a risky, progressive idea: Take the money you would spend on marketing, and spend it on extraordinary customer service. Works for Lawrence Construction, a Bay Area remodeler, and Zappos, a leading online retailer.

It’s true that very few companies are willing to risk letting go of traditional models, no matter how badly they’re performing, but I think the only reason is the lack of information regarding any other viable option. There are always options.

(Next post: Southwest lean engineered their customer service and look what happened.)

Marketing or Customer Service: Where’s the Best Place to Put your Dollars? is a post from: Gregory Neil Associates

(In case you don’t know, Zappos is an extremely successful online retailer that recently merged with Amazon)

1. Deliver WOW Through Service
2. Embrace and Drive Change
3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
5. Pursue Growth and Learning
6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
8. Do More With Less
9. Be Passionate and Determined
10. Be Humble

You’re probably wondering – can you actually make money with values like that? How could you have a serious, productive, and profitable work environment when you’re focused on being weird and having fun?

To hear what Zappos CTO, Arun Rajan has to say about this, click here.

Today’s Study: Zappos Core Values is a post from: Gregory Neil Associates

Stage 1: It really is all about you at this stage.
You do everything, wear all the hats, cover all the bases, and if you have the strength to, you move on.

Stage 2: The beginning of Control or Freedom Based Management.
You learn how to create success, hire employees, and begin to delegate. How you delegate either sets you up for even bigger problems later, or considerably easier success.

Stage 3: The beginning of where the paths can diverge dramatically.
You start to have employees who excel when they are coached and experience being held to account as empowerment; who love to play the game of business, becoming self managing and self generating; or you don’t, and you are working extra hard and long hours to compensate.

Stage 4: Raising the bar up to Team Performance – From “Me” to “We”.
You train, coach, and mentor Team Performance to be the driving force of the business. Mutual Accountability shows up – your job becomes much easier. Or, if you took a different path at Stage 2, it’s likely that real teammanship is not a possibility and therefore, getting to Stage 5 is almost impossible.

Stage 5: You set up performance challenges, continue coaching and mentoring for best performance, and plan your succession or exit strategy.

5 Stages of Success or Control – Your Choice is a post from: Gregory Neil Associates

If you’re one of those people in a senior position in your company, you made it to that senior position for a reason. And it’s likely that from time to time, you may wonder why you bother to work so hard. Here are some things people in your position have shared with me:

It doesn’t work to do it for the benefits, nor for power or position over others. The best way to play it is full out, nothing held back — it’s actually more fun that way.

It requires you to be bigger than anything that shows up; bigger than any circumstances; bigger than any of your own personal issues or someone else’s; bigger than any power struggles and ego trips.

It takes a great deal of courage and faith to consistently generate an attitude of “can do” in the face of “no you can’t circumstances.”

And it takes something spectacular to be able to do all this on a daily basis.

Two choices, to be bigger, or not – the choice is yours to make every day.
Why should I you ask? For the very reason that you do have this choice, and you know the choices you make define who you are, and you are willing to wrestle with this every single day.

Leadership and the “What About Me” (WAM) Syndrome is a post from: Gregory Neil Associates

We gave a talk at Crawford and it was very well received, so here are some thoughts from our presentation in brief.

Over Promise and Over Deliver
If you have your teams focusing on making commitments and keeping them, you’re way ahead of the pack.

Accountability
It’s a personal choice, you can’t make someone accountable. It’s not about control, it’s about freedom. Freedom Based Management is way less effort on your part, and far more profitable. Benefits to you are:

Clarity of direction – working smart.

Transparency of information – ability to see what’s happening right now.

Restores power to the person who needs it to get their work done.

Coaching
Combining unreasonable requests and performance challenges, with an attitude of “whatever it takes to get the job done” support leads to the highest productivity, and a very successful business.

The real power is when you put all three tools together. Enjoy!

3 Simple Tools – Simple, but not so easy. is a post from: Gregory Neil Associates

Here is some evidence:
There is a great deal of trust between your staff and your customers.
Trust shows up when people working together keep their word with each other.
Another indicator is when called, your people rise up to meet the difficult challenges.
They are not afraid of hard work and making the extra effort to get the job done.
They see risk, challenge, and difficult circumstances as a welcome opportunity.

How do you know if your Leadership is working…really working? is a post from: Gregory Neil Associates

If you’re feeling stuck with certain employee’s behaviors, it’s probably because you don’t see that you have any other options. There are always options…always.

The hardest part of leadership is being responsible for the impact of your own behaviors. It’s tough for the following reasons:

• Most employees are afraid to “confront” an owner with their true thoughts, so you don’t get the feedback.
• Without that feedback, it’s tough to see your own blind spots and bad habits.
• Even if you could see them, exchanging them takes a concerted, supported effort.

To be the kind of leader that people look up to takes a big person, courage, and heart.

Your Leadership is Always Inspiring Something is a post from: Gregory Neil Associates