How Do Your People Feel About Their Work?

I have a personal theory about people and their interest level in talking about their work outside the office. (I'm referring to what they do and the culture, not gossip.)

I think that people who are stressed out, frustrated or just don't care about their jobs want to avoid talking about work outside the office.

People who love what they do, are engaged in it, or who are just plain interested in their work love to talk about it outside the office.

Which side of the fence do most of your people fall?

The Danger Of Success

How a company handles success can determine if success breeds more success...or if it breeds failure. Does it generate arrogance in the company, or can the company stay hungry and humble?
Depending on the tone the CEO and leadership team sets, success that generates arrogance and a sense of infallibility is a path to failure. When you begin taking customers and employees for granted is when you're at the highest risk of losing them to other opportunities or competitors.

Moving The Ball Every Day: '3 Goals'

It's very easy, both as an individual and a team, to spend time doing to-dos and activities rather than making definable progress towards a goal.

I'm a big fan of taking some time in the morning or night before to write down three goals for the day - "If I can only do three things today and nothing else, what would they be?" It's surprising how hard it can be to even get three important goals (not activities) done!

A subtle, but key difference is a focus on bite-sized results not, activity. For example, instead of "call five partners to schedule meetings", the goal should be to "schedule five meetings with partners".

For projects that span weeks and months, break it into day-sized chunks. When raising capital, one of your goals today could be to "find three referrals into targeted VC firms", or "send completed due diligence materials to firm x."

What can you accomplish today to move the ball forward?

Executive examples:
- Get management team agreement on our top three metrics to track this quarter
- Engage a recruiting firm for an open position
- Return detailed product feedback to the VP Engineering
- Finish incorporating management team feedback into the fundraising pitch
- Finish press release draft and send to the team for feedback
- Interview 3 VP Marketing candidates today

Sales examples:
- Schedule 5 phone qualification calls with prospects
- Get executive approval on pricing for a final customer quote
- Use a demonstration to either disqualify or move a prospect to the next sales cycle stage
- Add 20 new target executive contacts to a CRM system
- Get final sign-off on a territory definition
- Build a personal CRM dashboard
- Watch a CRM training video or read a chapter in a sales book

The Magic Quadrant of Time Management

Take this test:
http://www.fcprofiles.com/focusflash.html

My post around "Aligned Execution", and one I'll do shortly - "3 Goals per Day", will move you and your team into the upper-right magic quadrant of time management.

My Two Favorite Sales Diagnosis Questions

When I initially dig into understanding a company's customer / sales model and according bottlenecks, I have two favorite questions of employees working directly with customers:

1) To understand how things work:
"What's a day in your life look like?"

2) To get a sense of what doesn't work:
"What's the biggest waste of your time and energy during your day?"

However you phrase it, the second question ALWAYS elicits useful insight into what's not working smoothly in a company or process. Ask it of a cross-section of people and teams and I guarantee you'll find some common root issues that are causing problems. And, as often as not, the issues aren't hard-to-fix ones such as pricing or product strategy...but simple-to-fix issues around poor processes (especially between teams), incomplete communication, technical issues with a system, or a lack of management attention in an area.

Try it out with some of your own people and let me know how it works for you!