Start with the recognition that your business culture is what shapes everyone’s behavior. And everyone’s habits and behaviors are what produce the results. So, if you’re not getting the results you need, you need to tune up the culture of your business.

Either you manage your culture, or it manages you!

Working to produce success in a business where the culture is working against you, is very hard work, stressful, and frustrating. There is one thing that you need to transfer to your key staff and managers. It’s the one thing that will give them the training and experiences they need to think and act like an owner. It’s the one thing that gives most employees a great deal of satisfaction and reward, and it’s the one thing that most owners and managers withhold.

It’s the opportunity to solve problems and breakdowns–if the opportunity is offered in the right context.

Counter Intuitive Management: The Fastest Way to A Successful Business is a post from: Gregory Neil Associates

It starts with a Culture of Accountability, Accountability at every level of the business. The real power in Accountability is what each person speaks for, what they give voice to.

Many people confuse this with a less powerful form of management where the speaking is done for someone, or work is assigned without the opportunity to choose, nor to speak up and report on results. When you take away someone’s voice, you cripple their productivity, which also impacts their personal job satisfaction. Bringing key employees and managers together to report on results is the most powerful management tool you can employ.

The Right Context for Business Success is a post from: Gregory Neil Associates

Because if your daily problems and challenges are offered in the right context, they become the best tool you have to building leadership under you. Becoming masterful at anything requires practice.

The practice of solving problems in a team environment builds leadership skills. Key employees and senior managers need the practice of shouldering the weight of these challenges until they have the competence and confidence to handle anything that comes at them.

Why Daily Problems and Challenges Are NOT a Bad Thing is a post from: Gregory Neil Associates

With even just a little Acknowledgment, you can accomplish so much like:
Praise – as in bringing attention to a job well done.
Educate – using a job well done to set a standard for everyone.
Empower – putting attention on someone for something specifically well done.

And the best thing is, if makes you feel good, it makes others feel great,
it makes productivity go up, and…it costs you nothing.

So come on, don’t be a k’vetch. Go find someone to acknowledge right now.

The 2nd Most Powerful Management Tool You Have is a post from: Gregory Neil Associates

Building leadership under you…
Are you effectively leveraging this for the highest productivity in your business?

• It gives your employees what they want most — the ability to solve problems for you, the doing of which on a daily weekly basis accomplishes several things.
• It gives them the experience needed to think like an owner, (this is critically important).
• It gives them the challenges they seek for personal job satisfaction.
• And it takes things off your plate, making your day-to-day less busy and stressful.

Many owners feel they don’t have time to invest in this, but the truth is, you really can’t afford not to.

The Most Powerful Management Tool You Have is a post from: Gregory Neil Associates

No business owner would plan to sabotage business by inspiring fear with employees. Not intentionally, at least. But often, due to the financial stress of months where business is slow, owners and managers pass on information that de-motivates employees at a time when you most need their best effort. Although it may seem normal to complain about typical business problems, it can have an adverse effect on employees who may take it personally.

Fear is not a good motivator. Scared employees work less effectively. Fear has a very short shelf life, and can lead to resentment and resistance. Fear impedes real thinking, innovation, challenge, and risk taking. Replaced with avoiding responsibility, CYA, and doing the minimal amount.

Instead, talk about what’s working and what you would like to see more of. Acknowledge each person for their best efforts and you will get more of that.

Fear Based Management is a post from: Gregory Neil Associates

Most people are probably thinking about the landmark achievements they will accomplish this year, and while that’s a good and necessary thing, it’s not what I see making the biggest difference in successful companies.

It’s all the little things. How the owners and senior managers relate and interact with other employees a hundred times a day, and how those employees in turn interact with customers.

Small acts of kindness demonstrating respect, acknowledgement, appreciation, and a genuine concern only happen consistently when its backed up by owners and senior managers who walk their talk. Only then do more functional behaviors become embedded in the culture.

While the landmark goals and achievements are important, remember it’s the attitudes and behaviors of whatever is there in your business culture that’s driving execution.

While You’re Planning Your Year… is a post from: Gregory Neil Associates

All day long, your business and your employees are managing work getting done. The more efficiently your organization executes commitments, the more money you make.
Powerful and effective execution starts with powerful management. Powerfully effective management starts with powerful speaking and listening. You will not have powerful actions without powerful speaking and management.

Speaking without power is a management style that is relying on the hope of circumstances to turn out and deliver the results, very likely accompanied by worry, fear, stress, and frustrations.

Powerful speaking as a management style wields requests for commitments in time, challenging the best execution possible. In short, more attention to work on the front end, pays big back end dividends.

Powerful Speaking and Profitable Business is a post from: Gregory Neil Associates

Part 2 – Commitment Management – Out of “the Box” and into “the Gap”

In the same way that Accountability brings focus to your business, Commitment Management brings speed of execution to your day-to-day operations. This is a tool you really want to sharpen and master, because if you do, the payoff is huge. Everyone wants work to move forward powerfully, but you can’t have powerful actions without powerful speaking. First, let’s define “the box” and “the gap.”

The Box: That place of emotional safety where you are very comfortable making commitments towards what you know you can accomplish with no risk at all. That’s “the box.”

The Gap: When you commit to actions that take you just beyond your comfort zone, (the box), into that area where most of us would rather not visit unless we have to. That’s putting yourself into the gap. Those are the promises you want to listen for, those are the promises that move action forward powerfully.

“Necessity is the Mother of Invention” can mean we won’t go there unless we have to…and when we do, we discover new skills and abilities to perform work that weren’t there before. We get more work done in less time.

Commitment management is best used to help people make promises to execute the more important day-to-day actions. The act of Committing can be described as the backbone, strength, and driving force of achievement. Think of some accomplishment that is so bold it inspires you, and you will find one or more individuals fiercely committed to that work.

Leadership Power Tools and Business Accelerators 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