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We’ve all been through our resolutions. Some of us have decided not to have any. But we all want 2008 to be better than 2007. Even if 2007 was pretty good.I’ve discovered it’s always the small things that make the difference. Rarely is it a monumental change. Even changing jobs can be a simple decision. An effective strategy is to look at 3 things:

1. What do you want to stop doing?
2. What do you want to start doing?
3. What do you want to keep doing?

If you can define these things your 2008 will more than likely be better than 2007.So, what are they? What will you stop, what will you start and what will you keep? Here are mine. I’d love to hear of yours.  3 things I want to stop doing 

1. Stop drinking any alcohol during the week.
2. Stop eating junk food any time I feel like it.
3. Stop treating work like a To Do list - project manage my role.

3 things I want to start doing

1. Exercising 5 days out of seven
2. Being interested in others more - without the need for reward or recognition
3. Paying off my short term debt before any more purchases (though I really do want that new Honda VFR 800!!  )

3 things I want to continue

1. Being a good husband - I have a great marriage, need to hold on to that
2. Learning - the older I get the less I understand
3. Being a role model at work

As easy as they may all sound it is not alway easy to accomplish. To some these may not seem that deep but it is often the “little foxes that spoil the vine” so if I can get these things on track I think I can tackle some bigger things later on.  I want my 2008 to be different and better than 2007.  I hope yours is too. 

A big issue here in Australia is the lack of skilled staff. Both Western Australia and Queensland have been in the middle of a resources boom for the past 3 or so years and it doesn’t look like ending soon. A recent report also suggested that in the next 10 - 15 years Europe is going to be needing 20 million skilled workers for various opportunities.

All of a sudden, our employment competition is on the other side of the world!

This affects everyone. Every IT company, every blogger, every web focused individual. People’s skills are in demand and there are plenty of people with the resources to steal your better staff.

So in a recent HR Forum a few colleagues and I discussed options for attracting and keeping people within your business. It seems that the best way to keep people is to address the basics of human requirements. Maslow was right all along - as was Herzberg!

I learnt in grade 3 that people were social beings. That we needed each other and there was a need to interact. But the type of interaction is also important. It’s no longer Command and Control, “Do as I say” or “you’re lucky to be here.”

People today are realising more and more that they have options. And options provide us with choice and lifestyle. If I don’t like working for you I’ll go and work for someone else. And you can’t stop them.

So, what do you do?

firstly, it really does come back to basics. People want to be recognized for their part in the business, they want to know that what they do makes a real difference and they want to be heard. The Internet opens up so many options today that there are probably more ideas floating around that there was in the whole of last century.

So ask questions. Find out what your staff are thinking and what they are thinking about their jobs. Ask them how you can help them make their job better. Better still, give them the challenge of making their own job better. They’ll have plenty of ideas and they probably won’t cost you anything.

“Back in my day.” Mentally count the times you say or think this. Now pay yourself $10 for evry time you say it and see how it mounts up. That’s how much you’re probably annoying your team. Now ask them what they need to do today. Ask yourself as well but if you’re in a leadership role remember who’s actually going to be doing the work.

Create small project teams. Ask these teams 3 questions:

1. what are we doing that we could improve upon?
2. what are we doing that we should stop right away? (and I mean today!)
3. what are we doing that is good and we should continue to do?

If you ask these 3 questions and nothing else, you will get a huge amount of feedback that will enliven the team, produce results and build a sense of ownership within the group. And once you have ownership with value, they aren’t going to be going anywhere soon.

Oh, one last thing: don’t start these things and not see them through. If you do, your turnover will go through the roof and your profits will go through the floor.

Bill

The last couple of months have been pretty huge in our household. I don’t think we’ve ever experienced the changes we have recently. And many of them are right up there on the Holmes-Rahe Scale - a tool to identify stressors in your life. Go there and have a look.

Here is a short list:

• Changed job
• Father passed away
• Christmas (yes that is a stressor!!)
• Wife started full time work
• Son got driver’s licence
• and the are a few more

The problem for many of us these days is the white noise that comes in as a distraction or underlying intereference with what we are trying to achieve in life. When you take a step back and have a look at what is going on in our lives it is pretty insidious. White noise is all that extraneous stuff that goes on, demanding our attention but taking our focus off what we are trying to achieve.

That’s why I like what Leo writes about at Zen Habits when he talks about 27 Great Tips to Keep Your Life Organized. There’s some really good and practical stuff there. Leo is also great at communicating the essential elements of his point so the time spent reading isn’t wasted. For example, Point 5: Do One Thing At A Time. Not all that scientific but if you review your day (and you’re anything like me) you’ll find there are a zillion things racing through your mind while you’re trying to do something else. Thus you lose your effectiveness.

Steve Pavlina also has a great technique (I haven’t implemented yet) around not listening to news. Here is Australia I listen to the ABC and every half hour we get 5 minutes of news - and it’s all bad. Steve’s solution is to NOT listen to the news (radio, newspaper etc). And if you think about it it’s not a bad idea. Imagine, first thing each morning you wake up to news - and it’s all bad. That is not a great start to the day. Killings, tragedies, inflation, interest rate rises and the pathetic list goes on. Pathetic in the sense that there is not much we can do about any of the issues we hear and yet, without knowing, they can deflate the energy of our day before we start.

Now we come back to the Holmes-Rahe Scale and how our lives are affected by stressful situations. Too much stress and we become prone to illness, fatigue and burn out. If we inadvertently add to this through negative influences on our lives we are, potentially, shortening our lives and, more than likely, shortening our daily effectiveness.

Both Leo’s and Steve’s ideas on managing information and workload will go a long way to managing the operational stress levels we wortk within.

Life events, as depicted by the Holmes-Rahe Scale can be a little harder to prevent. So, do what you can and reduce your stress in areas that are easier to manage.

By the way, my score on the Holmes-Rahe Scale ewas 455!! Beat that (lower) … Please!

Death usually causes us to reflect if the death is of someone close.

As many may already know my Father in Law passed away last week and we held his funeral on Tuesday. Hence no posts for a couple of days. I did try but there were so many things to do and people to look after, I started about 4 or 5 posts but just couldn’t finish them. Apologies.

But Dad’s passing has caused me to reflect on his life and what I am doing with mine. He was 84. I am 44. I have 40 years to go.

Forty years is, in fact, a lifetime to achieve some considerable things. Even if I am staring from zero (which I’m not). My business life only started effectively at 18, so based on that I have only lived (business-wise) 26 years. Miles away from the 40 that are left.

Dad was born in Pianella, Italy in 1923.

• He wasn’t educated the way we know education.
• He didn’t blog
• He didn’t surf the web
• He didn’t drive a car in his latter years and;
• He didn’t own a mobile phone.

Yet, in all of that, he was a very wise man. He knew how to pay off his house, live debt free, develop very close friends who always dropped by and had good conversations. He was a man who knew how to have fun without spending thousands or having new toys. He grew his own vegetables, made his own sausages, drank home made wine and kept his family close.

Somehow, the broader world wasn’t as important as those close to him. He lived a very simple but very full life. He visited Italy 9 times since he arrived here (Australia) in 1956 and always brought home Italian goods, while he left Australian goods with his family back in Italy. He was very generous for someone who, from appearances, didn’t have much. He was actually very rich in a currency that, perhaps, isn’t as common anymore.

So I’m reflecting on my last 26 years and my next 40. Brian Tracy has a great quote that goes something like: "Those who do not think about the future , cannot have one!" and that is the essence of our future. Every action begins with a thought. So, if we don’t have thoughts about our future - crystal clear thoughts - the future may turn out as what everyone else wants for us.

And I’m begiining to really understand that I create my future and, from this moment I am responsible for my very next experience. I control that and I control my response to the experience itself. It means that I can choose to experience something and then evaluate it. Did I like it and did I like it enough to experience it again? If so, good. If not, what am I going to do to change it, improve it? I have 40 years to create the life I want.

Now, to many reading this, what I’m saying isn’t a "light-bulb" moment, it’s more a "duh!" moment. But knowing and doing really are two different things.

I have 40 years left to develop the life I want very much on purpose. And, if I don’t, I’ll be doing that on purpose too. Quite empowering if you let it get inside you.

Reflect on the life of someone you admire, living or dead. Allow time for their skills, knowledge and attributes to get inside you. What do you admire about them? What would you like to copy, assimilate into your life?

Your chosen person may be a father, a business leader or colleague, someone who has overcome great obstacles.

But don’t just reflect on the outcomes of their life. Reflect on what what might have had to bear to get there. What pains, disciplines, setbacks they had to go through. No one is an overnight success - unless you count 20 years as "overnight".

And, sometimes we all need to remember that it’s not the new things that always help us progress, sometimes it’s the small, little, time forgotten things that cause us to stop, re-think and then re-invent.

Feedback is important in every sphere of life but more so in business simply because it tells how we’re going and how we can improve.

If we continue to improve, we’ll continue to grow.

The benefits of feedback are obvious:

1. Consolidates the relationship
2. Lets you know where you’re falling down
3. Opens up communication
4. Can be the catalyst to valuable testimonials

But Many Businesses Still Don’t Do It ( and Many Don’t Do It Well)

So, why do so many businesses fail to implement a proper customer feedback process?

Every business will have their unique reasons and on the face of it, most will be very rational. Here are three:

1. Time - it’s hard, in the traditional format, to arrange constant customer feedback nevermind tracking it and taking action.

2. What to Ask - some questions may seem personal, while others may seem to say “tell me how good I am”. Where’s the balance? What do you want to know?

3. Customer Response - not just to the survey questions but to the survey itself. Just not knowing people’s reactions might hinder the implementation process.

But what if you could get the feedback when you wanted it, automatically and have it collated so you can get an overall feel for how you’re doing?

How priceless would that be?

To know:

• what your customers think about you
• what your customers and prospects think about your product and your service

would be so powerful your business would be at the edge of its performance very quickly.You see, you don’t want “nice & fluffy” feedback.

You need feedback much like the Grand Slalom skiers are getting at the Winter Olympics in Turin at the moment.

If they miss by 2/100ths of a second, they get told. There’s no apology or softening the blow.

That’s what great business is about.

But How do You do This Quickly & Easily?

For those with assistants it may be easier but with any business there are simple and effective ways to get customer feedback. Some use checklists, others have it pre-prepared in the client file and hand it over or post it out at the same time every time.

One way I’m going to suggest is with an online survey.

Why Online?

To my way of thinking this is the best way to get client feedback today.

1. The population is increasingly “web aware” and are exploring the Web more and more.
2. An online survey (example below) is generally quick saving both you and your customer time.
3. Completing the survey privately will allow better responses. You can even have the responses go to a third party like a coach or a manager.
4. Inexpensive: this is a big one. Mail out surveys cost both time and money. Online surveys, once they are set up are done. All it needs is for clients to complete them.

Nothing Happens in a Vacuum

I can hear some people question the use of technology and how it might appear to be impersonal. I actually believe the opposite.

If any service provider has made enough of a connection then almost any tool used to promote the relationship (like a survey) will be beneficial. The means to that survey can be immaterial.

I will agree though that online surveys, just shot out of a cannon because it’s the latest fad can do more harm than good. You need a well thought out strategy to go with the surveys.

Overcoming Resistance

If a client refuses an online survey, that in itself is feedback - not to change tools, but to develop a closer relationship, find out their objction to it and help them overcome whatever is getting in the way.

It is a signal to add value.

So How Hard Is It?

I’m not sure who said it but someone wiser than me stated: “The questions you ask are defined by the answers you need.” (not want)

That is how you form your questions. And if you follow the advice the content becomes easier.

Now What To Do

The next thing to do is to work out 3 - 5 questions you’d like to know from your clients and write them out how you’d like to ask them.

If you’d like feedback on your questions you can fire them off to me and I’ll oblige - f.r.e.e. of charge for the next two weeks.

I’ll look forward to your responses.

p.s. if you know someone who is looking into this already, feel free to pass this article on to them.

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