Posts in Business Consulting

Being the Leader

Business Coaching Business Consulting Leadership Meandering Genius Stuff Thoughtful Thursday

Pre-COVID Boss to Employee: I’m in charge. I have all the answers. I don’t need to discuss the situation with you.

Post-COVID Boss to Employee: I’m in charge. I don’t have all the answers. I need to discuss the situation with you.

What are the top leadership lessons that we’ve learned in this crisis?

Is it best to be open, up front, honest, and vulnerable with your employees?

Do you tell them that cash flow is struggling, sales have dropped, and no one is buying?

Do you let them know you don’t know what to do and that you’re concerned about layoffs or going out of business?

Do you protect your employees and don’t tell them any of your concerns — it’s better this way?

These are thoughts every leader faces at some point. But how do they respond and what’s the pros and cons of each?

It’s easy to tell someone how they should act, but it’s a totally different thing when you have to do the acting.

What are your thoughts?

#success #incubator #business #coaching #consultants
#leadership

Did you plan for COVID?

Business Coaching Business Consulting Change Management Leadership Meandering Genius Promotion Tuesday Strategic Planning Stuff Tips

Pre-COVID. Boss to Employee: “We don’t have time to plan right now — we need to get work done.

Post-COVID. Boss to employee: “We need to plan right now, or we won’t have any work to get done.

Planning…

That must be one of the scariest words in the Business Dictionary.

Why?

Because, so many shy away from it.

By this Friday, we are expecting it to start raining here in San Antonio TX. It’s forecasted to rain for the next seven days.

That means flooding.

I turned to my wife last night, after looking that the weather report, and said, “We’ll need to get the Flooding Checklist out.”

Is just one of our ‘plans’ that makes sure we are as prepared for the worst as possible.

You do that when you run a business. Ours is a 100-acre horse farm with 40 horses on property.

We didn’t have a “Pandemic Checklist.”

But, almost three months ago, we did pull out our Disaster Preparedness Plan and developed a list of actions.

These actions kept our business moving forward and helped since I was laid off on April 20th.

Did you plan for COVID?

Were you ready for COVID?

What are you doing Right Now about planning for the next crisis.

#success #incubator #business #coaching #consultants
#planning

Working from Home

Business Coaching Business Consulting Change Management Leadership Meandering Genius Motivational Monday Process Improvement Stuff

Pre-COVID…Boss to Employee: “Our company cannot survive with anyone working from home.”

Post-COVID…Boss to Employee: “Our company cannot survive without everyone working from home.”

Was your boss one of the many that didn’t allow remote work?

How’s that working out for them now?

#success #incubator #business #coaching #consultants

Does Your Internet Suck?

Business Coaching Business Consulting Innovation Life Meandering Genius Performance Measurement Process Improvement Stuff Take A Leap Wednesday

How’s your internet service holding up during these times?

We live out on our horse ranch, north of San Antonio TX. I wouldn’t say that we live in the country, but we’re certainly not in any city limits.

Right now, internet service is massively important.

And honestly, our service could be a lot better.

Last night, we were doing a group mentoring session over Zoom and my connection was horribly unstable and kept dropping.

How many other people are finding their internet service has become their Achilles Heal during these trying times?

#success #incubator #business #coaching #consultants #internet #wireless

Connections on LinkedIn

Blogging Business Coaching Business Consulting Meandering Genius Strategic Communication Stuff Thoughtful Thursday Tips

Do you have a lot of connections , but not a lot of interaction? 

Not all connections are created equal.

What type of person are you on LinkedIn?

隸‍♂️ Super User. You are online all the time. Posting at least daily; like, comment, and share all kinds of stuff; and you respond to messages and comments.

履‍♀️ Lurker. You read other people’s posts, but hardly ever post or respond. You’d rather be a silent participant on LinkedIn than active.

 Absent. You have a profile, but you never use it. Occasionally, you might update it, but you don’t look at your messages or your notifications and you have no pulse online.

Ways to identify what type of connections you have.

1. Send them a birthday greeting or congrats on job changes and promotions. See if they ever respond.

2. Look at their Activity on their profile. If the section is blank, you can see this person doesn’t participate much.

3. Check the recency and completeness of their profile. No picture, limited details, etc. Probably not active.

4. Number of connections. Less than 500? Obviously not using LinkedIn to connect with the world.

Who cares?

Are you using LinkedIn to connect with people on a deeper professional level or just to build a connection count.

#success #incubator #business #coaching #consultants

Positive or Negative?

Business Coaching Business Consulting Change Management Leadership Meandering Genius Organizational Commitment Strategic Planning Stuff Take A Leap Wednesday Tips

So, are you being positive  through this or are you being negative ?

This morning, I woke up to a really negative post on LinkedIn about people being positive in this crisis.

He was complaining about people “predicting” what business will look like after this is over and how things will change.

His mantra was that this will last a long time and the world will be in ruins, so everyone should stop being positive and predicting the future.

Funny, but isn’t that what he’s doing … predicting the future?

However, his prediction was one of doom and gloom over positivity.

How about you right now? 

16 days ago, we had our first day of over 1K of confirmed cases.

Everyone pretty much started working from home about that same time.

Yesterday, we had our largest number of confirmed cases, but the incubation period is 14 days. So, that’s not a huge surprise.

Look at China. On their worst day, their confirmed cases spiked to over 15K and then significantly dropped off.

Since then they’ve practically eliminated confirmed cases.

I’m going to continue to look to a positive future.

How about you?

#success #incubator #business #coaching #consultants

Knowledge Management During Crisis

Business Coaching Business Consulting Change Management Leadership Meandering Genius Promotion Tuesday

Have you discovered the importance of strong knowledge management as companies laid off employees and the remaining employees all started working from home?

You might be thinking, what the heck is knowledge management?

Knowledge management is a process of defining, structuring, retaining, and sharing the information, knowledge, and experience of employees within your organization.

Normally, it’s important because it boosts efficiency, effectiveness, and decision-making ability in a company.

Now, more so than ever, companies are finding that knowledge management has become almost paramount.

Why?

Mainly because of two things:

1.  Employees have, for the most part, been forced to work remotely — working at home.

2.  Several companies have been forced to layoff employees fairly quickly to protect their cash flow.

But really why?

Mainly because most company file systems are completely disorganized, employees have files saved haphazardly in systems as well as their own personal locations, some still have paper files and paper-based processes today.

Thus, it’s extremely hard right now to find information that you are looking for.

How is your knowledge management?  Has it become a major issue in your company?

#success #incubator #business #coaching #consultants

Next Ripple for Coronavirus

Business Coaching Business Consulting Change Management Leadership Meandering Genius Motivational Monday Performance Measurement Strategic Planning

For many people, monthly bills are due soon: rent, car, accounts, etc.
Why is this important?

Ripples in the pond.

This is when the economy is going to start feeling the crunch.

With so many people out of work and so much turmoil in business, everyone will start making some financial decisions.

To pay or not to pay.

It’s now that the true economic impact of coronavirus is going to start showing up.

Consider this, 3.3M — record numbers — on unemployment. They’re going to make every dollar they have go as long as they can, right?

Businesses have a lot of monthly bills, but the future for their company isn’t clear and cash is king. They’ll probably hold off paying any bills right now — holding on to their money.

Also, people are going to start tightening their belts because of the lack of money coming in. So, significantly reduced spending will start occuring this coming month.

This coupled with people staying at home, so no gas being bought, no travel, and no entertainment.

Result: considerable less cash flow in businesses and more lay offs.

Vicious Circle.

#success #incubator #business #coaching #consultants

Change Readiness

Business Coaching Business Consulting Change Management Leadership Life Process Improvement Strategic Planning Success Sunday

Was your company ready for this current change or is it reacting and thus managing the change?

Cigar Talk with Crosscutter Enterprises is back.

If you are managing #change in today’s business world, you are probably behind the times and late to the party.

In today’s business world, changes are hitting companies in such a way that they simply can’t keep up.

The old world of managing change is long gone.

But being ready for change is a lot more of up front work — much like planning — and many companies don’t take that time to make it happen.

Change readiness is like growing grass. If you have a plot of weed-filled dirt, simply throwing grass seed on the ground and watering it probably won’t be too successful.

You need to remove the weeds, till the dirt, fertilize the ground, and then spread your seeds for best results.

What are you doing now to ensure you business is ready for the changes after the coronavirus crisis is over?

Change Readiness starts with building awareness, desire, knowledge, and ability early.

#success #incubator #business #coaching #consultants

Innovation in Crisis

Business Coaching Business Consulting Change Management Innovation Leadership Meandering Genius Process Improvement Strategic Planning Success Sunday

Has your company come up with an innovative value or completely changed what they do in this crisis?

We have seen some very quick changes in business because of COVID-19.

Manufacturing plans moving quickly to producing masks and ventilators.

Distilleries producing hand sanitizer.

Restaurants switching to a dine out operating model.

Many businesses moving to online interaction. We even are seeing online happy hours and networking events.

Is your business one of the ones stuck in the old way of doing business? Or, were you able to make a quick shift to something profitable?

So many businesses are stuck in their old way of doing business.

Which are you?

If you’ve changed, hiws that working out for you?

#success #incubator #business #coaching #consultants