Making Successful Changes – Part 1

I’m sure you’ve had times in your life when making a change becomes a big challenge. Perhaps you want to change how you deal with certain situations or a part of your lifestyle like your diet or exercise. Change is very difficult no matter what we want to change. We start out with good intentions then for one reason or another; we go back to the way we’ve always done something. So, how do we make changes that stick?

What is blocking change?

Well, the first piece of the puzzle is looking at what is blocking the change. Sometimes, we just want a problem to disappear, so we make changes as a “fix-it” solution. Fix-its are rarely good changes as they are usually based on unrealistic or unreasonable expectations of a situation or ourselves. Like those times, when we may have stopped eating altogether to lose some weight or took a vacation to fix a troubled relationship. First, it helps to take a realistic view of the situation to be changed and have an understanding of the limitations and strengths involved.

Understanding our limitations

For example, if you want to change a troubled relationship, whether family or work, one should have realistic expectations of both one’s self and those involved. It would be frustrating and unhealthy to expect to be able to change another person or control the relationship to make everyone happy. We can only change our own behavior and ourselves. It’s important to have a balanced perspective of the situation. We can’t expect to make magical changes or to ‘save’ those around us. At the same time, we should not try to underestimate our strengths and abilities. If you have trouble evaluating the situation, then be sure to get feedback from unbiased and supportive friends, counselors or clergy.

Finding our focus

Sometimes, we want to change something that is so big that we feel overwhelmed. So, we end up either trying to put band-aids on this big problem or give up altogether. It’s helpful to focus only on parts of the problem and take one piece at a time. For example, let’s say an individual doesn’t feel good about him or her self. If that person would try to change everything at once, he or she would probably give up. An alternative would be to pick one thing to change, like shyness, and focus on that first. However, whenever making changes in one’s self, please get a realistic viewpoint from others. We are often very demanding of ourselves and may try to change what doesn’t need changing at all. This violates our true self – our style and sense of being, because we deny who we are. Sometimes, the change we have to make is appreciating who we are and that is a big change!

What are my motives for change?

Once you have focused on to a specific and manageable problem, ask yourself some questions about it. Why do you want to change it? What about the situation do you want changed and why? What are you expecting to get out of this change? At this point, motives for the change need to be examined in depth to see if they are healthy reasons. For example, if you want to lose weight to please others or because you don’t like yourself, then there may be bigger issues at stake. Look at what is underneath the problem and ask yourself, “What is really bothering me about this situation?” These issues need to be looked at. Otherwise, the change would only be at the surface, and surface changes do not last very long nor solve the real problem.

Next week we will look at ways to make those changes we desire in our lives.

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Permission is needed from Lighthouse Consulting Services to reproduce any portion provided in this article. © 2010  This information contained in this article is not meant to be a substitute for professional counseling.

Author’s Bio:

Dana Borowka, MA, CEO and Ellen Borowka, MA, COO of Lighthouse Consulting Services, LLC have over 25 years experience in the area of business and human behavioral consulting. They have been helping organizations both nationally and internationally in raising the hiring bar through using in-depth work style assessments.  They are nationally renowned speakers and radio personalities on this topic. They have built a well recognized organization that provides expert interpretation of in-depth work style assessments during the hiring process, providing a variety of workshops and assisting those with communication challenges. They are authors of the book, “Cracking the Personality Code”. To order the book, please go to www.crackingthepersonalitycode.com.

If you would like additional information on this topic or others, please contact your Human Resources department or Lighthouse Consulting Services LLC, 3130 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 550, Santa Monica, CA  90403, (310) 453-6556, dana@lighthouseconsulting.com & our website: www.lighthouseconsulting.com

Lighthouse Consulting Services, LLC provides a variety of services, including in-depth work style assessments for new hires & staff development, team building, interpersonal & communication training, career guidance & transition, conflict management, workshops, and executive & employee coaching.

Leadership: How one good apple can save the whole barrel

The private equity firm was in a world of hurt. They paid over $100 million dollars for this fast food restaurant chain and it was now losing over $40 million a year. Their investment was now effectively worth zero. They called me in to find a new CEO for the company. We interviewed many candidates, but one stood out above the rest. Why? Our questions about leadership brought out his greatest strength. You could tell from his answers he was more than a manager, he was a leader. He came from a very large fast food chain where, frankly, he wasn’t all that well liked by senior management. They were uncomfortable with his “style”. But, his “style” created a team where every person who worked for him loved him and would work their fingers to the bone for him. Not surprisingly, he took the worst region in the company and made it into the most profitable region in the company. This guy worked harder than anyone. Despite being an EVP, he wouldn’t hesitate to grab a rag and wipe down a table when he visited a restaurant. He had example after example on how he turned around his region through hard work and leadership.

When he met with our client, in 15 minutes they knew they had found their new CEO. He took the job and within two years had the company back in the black. How? Was he a management genius? No. He was successful because he was a leader, not just a manager. His team believed in him, his banks believed in him, and his private equity investors believed in him. He was able to get the performance he needed from his employees and the financial backing he needed from the financial community. Good leaders hire good leaders and he was no exception. He hired a good team and the rest is history. He was with the company for over a decade and sold it to a financial buyer for over $600 million. (Needless to say, he’s now “on the beach”.)

Lesson: Don’t confuse management with leadership. Ask candidates for examples of where they’ve demonstrated leadership. Would their subordinates say they were a strong leader? Why? Have a hiring process designed to attract and retain top quartile talent throughout your organization and your opportunities will become endless.

Is your hiring methodology designed to attract top talent? If you want to assess the quality of your hiring process, download a free copy of our 8-Point Hiring Methodology Assessment Scorecard. CLICK HERE to download.

You should also join our Hiring and Retaining Top Talent group on LinkedIn. There are many great articles and discussions on  hiring. CLICK HERE to join.

Author’s Bio

Mike is the founder of Hagerthy & Co, an executive search, training and consulting firm. For information on how to arrange for their complimentary Hiring Process Assessment go to www.hagnco.com/page13.html#HiringProcess

The roast beef story . . .

A newly married couple was beginning their first Sunday meal preparation. The young woman began preparing a wonderful roast of beef while the man was preparing the vegetables. As they worked, the man noticed that the wife sliced off both ends of the roast and then rolled it in spiced flour. Curious, he asked, “Why did you do that?” “Do what?” “Slice the ends off the roast,” he responded, “Does that make it juicier or something?”

“Well, I don’t really know. Mom always does that when she cooks a roast.” So they called her mother and were amused to hear that she also didn’t know why the ends should be cut off the roast. It turns out it was because “your Grandmother always did that and so I do too.” Of course they called Grandmother and heard a hearty laugh when they asked her “why do we always cut the ends off the roast of beef before cooking it?” After Grandmother got control of her laughter, she exclaimed, “I can’t believe you guys are doing that! The only reason I did that in the early years is because your Grandfather and I had only one roasting pan and it was too small for a roast big enough to feed us all.”

How many things are we doing in our businesses that are no longer necessary, no longer efficiently done or are downright damaging to our processes because “that’s the way we’ve always done it?” Do you have a practice of reviewing all of your processes from time-to-time to make sure that they are needed, effective and efficient?

Here’s something to consider in both your personal and business life. Implement a practice of annually or twice a year sitting down and thinking about what you will “Stop,” “Start,” and “Continue” doing from that point forward. Pay special attention to what you will stop doing. As employees, we often will fight this practice since we worry that if we don’t have to do something, then our employers won’t need us. Especially now, with the reduction in force that most companies have experienced, it is critical that we unburden the remaining employees by making it mandatory that they find tasks they can stop doing without jeopardizing customer service. As employees, we need to embrace the concept that we can add value by eliminating unnecessary or less than critical work.

Be ruthless in stopping less than critical work. Be stingy about what you decide to start doing. Make sure the new tasks are goal achieving, effective and integrated efficiently with the rest of the system. And celebrate what you decide to continue doing – that means (hopefully) that those tasks are critical to success, effective and efficient.

Is your culture one of team work and does everyone in your company agree? Have them take our Company Cultural Assessment. CLICK HERE to download your assessment.

Is  your hiring methodology designed to attract top talent and weed out those candidates that embellish? You can download our 8 Point Hiring Methodology Assessment Scorecard and find out. CLICK HERE to download.

About the author

Dave Kinnear is a sought after Business Advisor and Mentor. He works with highly successful executives through one-to-one mentoring and coaching meetings. Individuals who are presently running successful businesses and executives in transition work with Dave to ensure meeting corporate and/or career goals. Through his affiliation with Vistage International, Dave convenes and facilitates Advisory Boards comprising Business Owners, Company Presidents and Chief Executives dedicated to becoming better leaders who make better decisions and achieve better results.

Loyalty . . . to what?

I’m reminded, from time-to-time, of the inequality of expectations between employees and employers with respect to employment. Especially in the small to mid-sized businesses, the owners are often frustrated with employees who do not seem to put effort into the business. They don’t have a sense of “ownership.” Well, that’s because they aren’t owners, and usually aren’t treated as owners.

On the employee side, they feel that it’s quite alright for them to give two weeks notice if they get a better offer elsewhere, but at the same time seem to think that as long as they want to stay, they should be able to do so. If the employer lets them go (for whatever reason), they feel that somehow it is unfair. Of course, this is not true of all employees nor do all business owners despair over employees not acting as if the company is their own. However, there does seem to be anecdotal data to back up my perceptions.

This situation first came to my attention many years ago as I worked in the semiconductor industry. We had facilities in Silicon Valley (Sunnyvale and San Jose). I often heard managers complaining that employees were more than willing to leave for a slight raise and join another company. It seemed to be easy to do in the valley and it seemed to be true; and it made me wonder. So I started asking some questions of the engineers, marketers and sales people who left our company and those still with us. The picture became a bit clearer. It seems that there was a lot of loyalty – but the loyalty was to a particular product line or architecture rather than a company. So if I considered myself a Complex Instruction Set Computer (CISC) kind of guy, I would go where all the exciting things were happening in that field. Likewise if I considered myself a Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) person. If I was skilled and excited about one architecture and the company began to emphasize the other, I eventually left to find another employer in line with my talents and passions. This kind of “loyalty to a concept” was even more prevalent in the software and Internet companies.

So managers needed to change the context in which they interpreted the content of their experience with respect to “loyal employees.” If an engineer or sales person believed in a certain product or architecture and we began to de-emphasize that particular product, then we could expect to see folks leave for greener pastures. On the other hand, if we kept pushing the envelope and introduced new products and improvements to existing products, then our employees were “loyal” and mostly content.

Discovering this different view of loyalty led to some insights that served some divisions very well. As long as they were able to stay at the leading edge of product development, they kept the best employees. They found that salary and other monetary rewards were not the biggest motivators. They had to be competitive, but by and large, it was an exciting environment in product development that the employees appreciated and which kept them happy and inspired.

So as we work our way out of this recession and employees begin feeling as though employment changes are possible, how will you hold on to your key players? Do you know what your employees are loyal to? Since they don’t own the company, it likely isn’t the company itself that inspires them. They may be grateful for the company and the employment it provides, but what are they really passionate about?

Is your culture one of team work and does everyone in your company agree? Have them take our Company Cultural Assessment. CLICK HERE to download your assessment.

Is  your hiring methodology designed to attract top talent and weed out those candidates that embellish? You can download our 8 Point Hiring Methodology Assessment Scorecard and find out. CLICK HERE to download.

About the author

Dave Kinnear is a sought after Business Advisor and Mentor. He works with highly successful executives through one-to-one mentoring and coaching meetings. Individuals who are presently running successful businesses and executives in transition work with Dave to ensure meeting corporate and/or career goals. Through his affiliation with Vistage International, Dave convenes and facilitates Advisory Boards comprising Business Owners, Company Presidents and Chief Executives dedicated to becoming better leaders who make better decisions and achieve better results.

In search of benefits . . .

You have to wonder what the insurance companies were thinking. Many, maybe most, small businesses are struggling with cash flow issues; and we all know that. One might expect the insurance executives to be sending out the word to agents and brokers that in light of the “predatory government regulatory atmosphere,” there shall be no premium increases for small business clients. Apparently that hasn’t happened. Instead, monumental premium increases are hitting small businesses.

One small business owner I know, a staunch conservative and very pro business, was adamantly against ANY government intervention in health care. The only thing she felt was useful was to have government remove the interstate barriers to competition among insurance companies. Then the bill came to renew the insurance benefits for her employees. The increase was 32%. She is now all for some kind of intervention, not just more competition; maybe not too much public option, but something to help drive down costs. Many small businesses are finding that they cannot afford to be in the insurance benefit program.

On the other hand, you might think that in light of the administration’s goals of putting in place more regulations and also initiating a “public option” for insurance, that they would try and keep any perceptions about government interference with health care out of the headlines. Again, the word hasn’t gotten to the committees making recommendations on women’s health. And so we get the news that one of the more effective programs for breast cancer screening is to be deemphasized. The public, helped by the media, interprets this new recommendation as proving that indeed big government wants to get between you and your doctor.

In similar fashion to the business woman above, another woman with whom I have had conversations around the health care issues was pretty much convinced that a public option was the only sensible way to contain health care costs. Otherwise, the insurance companies will continue to reap huge profits at the expense of policy holders. And, she claimed, the government isn’t really who we need to worry about. It’s the insurance companies who hang us out to dry with fine print and denial of coverage due to trumped up pre-existing condition claims. Needless to say, she’s having second thoughts now based on the mammogram flap.

So neither side on this argument seems to be paying attention to the public sentiment or the “customer’s issues.” Arrogance is a word that comes to mind.

The major reason that companies are in the benefit business is to have something other than salary on which to compete for good employees. With the increasing cost of drugs, medical insurance and other mandated insurance such as worker’s compensation now going through the ceiling, it may be time to look for some other kind of benefits with which to attract employees. I know this is heresy, and I’m sure I’ll get a bunch of “hate mail,” but I’m thinking it’s time to hope that the government does take the health insurance monkey off the backs of our businesses and we can go find other benefits to supply our employees. It’s a chance to maybe level the field again – if costs are really reduced for employees.

The “big boys” will be able to afford the usual benefits for employees. If small businesses can’t, then they won’t be able to attract top notch employees; unless they can offer something else. One idea has surfaced in a new book called the Dream Manager. I’m sure we could come up with other ideas, including paying higher salaries so our employees can take care of their own insurance (if effective, low cost insurance becomes available). Wellness programs are much needed. The trick will be to greatly reduce the amounts spent on employee health insurance by business and use the savings to fund other innovative benefits.

How about you? What will you do about employee benefits? Are your health insurance premiums sky-rocketing? Will you have to cut back on benefits this year? Do you have other benefits, or plans for new benefits?

Download a Cost Of Hire Calculator to help you know the true cost. CLICK HERE to get it.

About the author

Dave Kinnear is a sought after Business Advisor and Mentor. He works with highly successful executives through one-to-one mentoring and coaching meetings. Individuals who are presently running successful businesses and executives in transition work with Dave to ensure meeting corporate and/or career goals. Through his affiliation with Vistage International, Dave convenes and facilitates Advisory Boards comprising of Business Owners, Company Presidents and Chief Executives dedicated to becoming better leaders who make better decisions and achieve better results.