By Michael Kline

Frustrated employers frequently ask themselves
and each other about what employees want. 
If you are a fellow employer, having to deal with the day to day
challenges of employee requests, suggestions, complaints or drama, you know what
I mean and you know it is not as simple as asking the employee. 
I’ve been making it my business to ask employees. I try learning from my
own, but because of the complex relationship employers have with employees, and
because I want larger numbers of employees to study, I find it easier to learn
from the employees of other companies. 
If someone else controls your ability to have the hours you want, the
schedule you want, the promotion you want and entirely, the income you make, you
might feel less than excited about being totally honest in discussing what it is
you want. Such honesty would require a great deal of trust, self-confidence and
a positive attitude that may have already been beaten out of you over the
years.  I have the pleasure of
working with relatively large numbers of employees of my client organizations.
The anecdotal evidence I see, is interesting enough, but when I can start to see
commonalities across the spectrum, I find it downright fascinating. 
 
When asked outright, most employees do not know
what they want, or do not know how to answer the question. I think they know it
when they see it or feel it, but it’s very difficult to describe, and the
question is even difficult to comprehend, since in real life, their wants have
little to do with their job anyway.  A little cynical, right? To be fair,
when asked, most employers don’t really know what they want either. Based on
what I’ve learned over the years, influenced more heavily by local research
through this year, I see two aspects of this as a challenge we can overcome and
I see great opportunity for improved productivity, financial success and
personal happiness. First, organizations don’t know what they want. Second,
individuals don’t know what’s really important to them personally, so even if
they knew what their employer’s goals were, they wouldn’t see how it relates to
fulfilling anything for them personally. 
Finally, the opportunity for greatness is right in front of us when these
two problems are resolved. Nearly 100% of employees agree that there is more
talent, creativity and passion available among them, that is underutilized, or
even undesired by their employer, who is at the same time, asking for more
productivity, creativity and passion. It seems so obvious and simple, doesn’t
it? Simple things are not always easy to execute, so let’s start at the
beginning. 

First, most individuals and organizations lack
specific goals they can clearly state. This is true of most businesses, most
not-for-profits, most business owners and most managers. 
It seems pretty obvious that every organization needs to have a clearly
stated mission if it expects to achieve anything close to greatness. Forget
greatness. Let’s just have a fighting chance at developing a strategy or simply
to communicate with staff, financial backers and clients.  If
this is so obvious, and it’s not hard to do, why do I keep finding so many
lacking? Do it already! What’s more, is if it is so obvious that organizations
need to have a mission, some goals, and a strategy, why is it not obvious that
individuals need the same things?

I find too many people live their life reacting to situations
over which they think they have no control. Most students leaving high school
think about what they want to do with their lives. That is often the last time
many people think about what they want. Somewhere along the way, they compromise
and take jobs they don’t want and life marches on. Add to the unwanted job, the
rent or the mortgage being due, or children take over any last glimmer of
financial or personal freedom, and they submit to simply reacting to whatever
life throws at them next. They get up every day to see what fresh new hell
awaits them, until they count down the days to retirement. Have I gotten you
sufficiently depressed yet? Now imagine asking this per person, who has every
reason to feel cynical, what it is they want from their boss! That is almost
laughable, isn’t it?! Yet, we
aren’t going to get anywhere unless we know what we want. 
Let’s start with that. One of the tools I give my seminar students is a
personal mission statement builder website.  Anyone with Internet access can do this
by themselves, for free. Go to www.franklincovey.com/msbsign in with your email
address, study the inspirational mission statements of others if you like, and
then complete the form. When you’re
done, you will have the option of printing out a suggested personal mission
statement, based on your input. Is it perfect? I think it’s pretty close, and at
it’s very worst, it’s a great place to start figuring out what it is you want in
your life and to begin bringing it to reality. You will have a much clearer
sense of what you value and don’t value about your relationships, your home,
your career path, your attitude, your behaviors –it’s an amazing new insight. 
 
Michael Kline is a local retailer, success coach and trainer. He
may be reached through his website, www.klineseminars.com, or e-mail,
mike@klineseminars.com.

The Entreprenologist
Conway Daily Sun
By Michael Kline

One of the more popular seminars I’ve been teaching lately is Time Management. The title alone begs some argument as to whether there is any such thing as time management. Lest we get lost in semantics, let’s agree what
we really mean is self-management in reference to how we use our time. It is a pretty level playing field, since we all get the same amount of time each day.
All the money in the world can’t buy you an extra hour in the day. The smartest scientist cannot find extra minutes in their day. Yet, we still put things off until we “find the time”, and we still try to “make time” for new projects. 

Real productivity increases do not come from managing our time better.  Sure, most of us can find some value in the tips and tricks to making better use of our time. In fact, our seminar is full of useful ways to be more productive.
Based on feedback from my students, most everyone finds a trick or two in a seminar that makes it worthwhile. They are ready to start a new habit or two that could free up maybe an hour a day. I would argue that a shift in philosophy
could more than double productivity.
1. What to do. Busy people focus on doing more. Effective people focus on doing the right things. You need to know the goals, the real goals – what really matters at a deep and meaningful level. For the entrepreneur, if you don’t have a plan for your business, I guarantee you are not making the best use of your time doing the right things at  work. If you don’t have a personal mission statement for your life, chances are you’re waiting to find time to do what is most important to you personally. Starter versions of these planning tools for business and life are easily available for free online or you can ask for help. Until you do these things, everything else is just filler.
2. How to Prioritize. I’m a big fan of Stephen Covey’s Time Management Matrix. Everything we do can be  rated as either important or not important, and as either urgent or not urgent. With only four possible combinations, this tool is simple to use and helpful at identifying tasks that can be eliminated altogether and tasks that deserve more attention. The difficulty most people have is they put unimportant things in the important box. This is why step one above is so critical. If you would like a free chart that might help you prioritize tasks for yourself and your staff,
just send me an email and I’ll make it so.

3. When to Delegate. The most common answer to why we don’t delegate is “it’s easier to do it yourself”.  Think of delegating as an investment. If you spend two hours teaching a task that only takes an hour, most people do it themselves. If the task is to be repeated every week, then a two hour investment is paid back in two weeks, leaving you another fifty hours of free time added to your year!  That’s more than a week off! Another aspect of the delegating investment is money. If you can train a less expensive person to do the work, then delegate and spend your time bringing in the big fish. This is an investment in making other people more valuable while doing the same for yourself. You’ve heard me bang this drum before - most entrepreneurs would benefit from working in  their business less and on their business more.

 Time is the most precious commodity on earth, and no one has any more of it than you do. Invest it wisely.

Conway Daily Sun
The Entreprenologist
By Michael Kline


To do just about anything, there is always a better way. Just ask your staff, customers, suppliers or you’re your spouse; everyone has a better way for you to do just about anything. If you are the decision maker in your business, it’s probably for a reason. 
Chances are you actually do know better than most people what to do and how to do it. Chances are also pretty good that you employ people who are at least as smart as you and you collect input from those people on a regular basis… uhoh.


Surely, no one is as smart as you, certainly not those who work for you, or those pesky suppliers who don’t understand your problems, or those fickle customers who just like to complain and aren’t really trying to help you.
Now let me put aside my sarcasm and talk about a real opportunity here. These helpful people like to say things like “why don’t you just______”or “you know what you should do, you should_______”. We tend to shut down when we here these statements – no matter what they fill in the blank with, it is almost never a good idea. Most people are not consultants, and certainly not coaches. They like to make suggestions based on their perceptions of what you need to make your business better, and because they are not professional advisors, they do so without first understanding your goals or challenges. However, we do like free resources if we can make them work.

We have employees who know a lot about what’s going on at your front line.  We have suppliers who know a lot about what’s happening in your industry and at your competitors.  We have customers who know something about what they would like to get from you. Why do they all seem so stupid and keep wasting your time with their lousy ideas?!  I suggest we need a system for taking advantage of these free resources. We’ve identified the first problem is the free advisors don’t know what your goals or problems are before they start  giving advice. For that matter, even you may not know exactly what your goals or problems are. If you have a communication system that allows for input from people in-the-know, you can benefit from their wisdom and make better decisions. 

First, everyone needs to know your top priority. It needs to be crystal clear to everyone in the company exactly what you are most focused on this year and this quarter. Goals should be set with your team annually, modified quarterly, monitored weekly and pulsed daily. At each of these steps, the team is invited to have input. At weekly staff meetings you are open to input and better ideas. These are not sessions for the manager to yell at employees about things they didn’t do correctly or for employees to complain. These are sessions in which you and your staff identify challenges and opportunities to establish better practices that will become the new documented standard in your procedures manual. The more frequently you have these sessions, the closer you will come to having constant improvement. Customers and suppliers can be invited to special events where they are given some background information and asked for feedback and creative input.

In summary, identify your top three priorities. Communicate those priorities in words, actions and policies that are congruent with your values and goals. Involve everyone you can in creating a strategy to meet the priorities. Keep score and measure progress on your goals. Follow up on everything. Most people will expect you to abandon your ideas in a month, week or day because that is how it has always been. You have good ideas but nothing ever really changes. They never change because the idea didn’t get shared, strategy didn’t get developed, measured or followed up on. Without all five steps, you will continue to be perceived as someone who needs free advice from uninformed
people that make you crazy with their silly opinions. There is a better way.

Michael Kline is a local retailer, success coach and trainer. He may be reached through
his website, www.klineseminars.com, or e-mail, mike@klineseminars.com. 

The Entreprenologist
Conway Daily Sun

By Michael Kline

Sometimes. We live in a world of alternatives. The ugly truth is you do not need to be the best in the world, or make the best product in the world. You only need to be better than the alternatives available to your
customer.
First, if you are not very good at something, success may require you to be even better than your current best. “How can I make myself/my business better?” is the big question you need to ask yourself. Next, you need to know three things really well. You need to know your competition, know yourself and  know your target customer. By the way, if you are an employee, then consider your competition to be others who could do your job, while your boss and
co-workers are your customers.
Research your competitors –they may have gotten better or worse in recent years. To know yourself may be hardest of all. Hire a secret shopper, or better yet, really listen to customer and employee feedback. Some of us need to be way easier on ourselves, and some much harder on ourselves and face some facts. To know your target customer, understand you can’t be everything to everyone. Be sure you can explain who wants your product, why they want it, and why they want it from you.

If you offer no point of differentiation, why do you exist? Maybe just being there is good enough. Convenience, location, price, quality all figure into the mix. If you have a gas station or a restaurant on the turnpike for instance, perhaps your location is what makes your business good enough. You can offer generic products and poor service at high prices; it is almost expected. If you’re making your numbers and that is your only goal, then it appears you are good enough. The problems appear when the economy slows and people get more demanding with their dollars. Do you have any loyalty?  Have you built relationships with people or just cash flow? Or if you make your living from tourist dollars, will locals support you in the off-season? 

You will have to consider your goals. Is your goal to pay the bills through the next quarter or to build repeat business for a lifetime? Is personal pride a factor? Is setting an example for your employees, neighbors and children important? When you know what you really want, why you do what you do in the first place, only then can you define what is good enough. Once you’ve set the bar at the height you want, then that is your new definition of good enough – good enough to meet your goals, is all you need. There is no need to make your service or product of such high quality that no one in your marketplace could afford to buy it. You only need to know your goals, and offer your service or product to be good enough to achieve your goals. Considering  the trade-offs for customer taste and demand, price, convenience, quality, relationships, guarantees, etc., you need to be competitive with the alternatives in your marketplace.

Remember though, you need to really be honest and know what you are delivering. If you think you have it exactly right, then your host/receptionist/desk clerk/server/technician/etc. turns people off at the front door, your business is no longer good enough. If you have everything perfect, but the consumer no longer wants what you offer, your business is no longer good enough. And of course if your competitor is faster, cheaper, smarter, cleaner or friendlier, your business is not good enough. Given the continued existence of mediocrity in the world, it appears that good enough is in fact, good enough at least some of the time. Given the high failure rate of business, it appears a lot of businesses were in fact, not good enough. Given the rate of change happening in the world, the definition of good enough will change tomorrow anyway. Given the amazing rewards of a job well-done, it would appear that there is always a better way to do what is already good enough. Be the first to take what is good enough and make it a little better. Let’s all commit to setting our bars a little higher on what we call good enough, and make everything in our lives at least that good.
 Michael Kline is a local retailer, success coach and trainer. He may be reached through his website, www.klineseminars.com, or e-mail, mike@klineseminars.com.

The Entreprenologist
Conway Daily Sun
August 8, 2012
By Michael Kline

As promised in my last column, I want to share lessons learned and/or relearned in this spring of change we’ve experienced in our businesses. In case you missed it, we moved one retail store, opened another new retail concept, and dramatically increased our seminar activity. This brought about three lease negotiations, hiring 6 new people, establishing about a dozen new supplier relationships and rethinking what really matters to us personally and professionally. All this made for fertile ground for lesson-learning and character building, I assure you. The last column shared four lessons in commercial leases. Today we’re talking about integrity and personal missions.

I am blessed to be able to deliver a series of workshops to employees of Memorial Hospital as part of their Culture of
Excellence movement.  A recent workshop involved writing personal mission statements, which of course necessitated making a connection between work and personal missions. If our work is incongruent with what matters most to us in life, we will never be as effective as we would, if there was integrity.

Teaching this seminar also inspired me to update my own personal mission statement.This caused me to realize that business owners have the same problem as employees in this area. We went down a work path because of a passion, or maybe because of a need for income. We got embroiled in the thick of it, to a point where it now defines who we are; it is what we do. We need to know what is most  important to us, what makes us our highest and best versions of ourselves, what we admire in others that we wish we could emulate, what we want our lives to
have been about when it’s all over. These answers help us define our life’s personal journey while we can
still direct it. I asked a young friend recently what she wanted to be when she  grew up and she said“happy and interesting”.  I was convinced that she is officially grown up!  If you want to be more effective at work, decide what values, experiences and relationships are most important to you and your family. Find a way to draw a connection between your work and your personal mission. This may require a career change, or maybe just a shift in the way you look at your work. Perhaps the solution is to use your personal ability to work on things that are within your area of influence to make small changes in your work place or home.

When the work we do contributes to something greater, we are more effective. When the work we hire others to do matters to them, they will be more effective.  Is it even possible to  create meaningful work out of mundane everyday work-related chores? 
I certainly hope so. As for my friends that work at the hospital, they have the blessing of important work either directly helping people in the most serious and literal sense of the word, or supporting the work of people who do. In retail, we have the blessing of helping someone acquire something they worked to be able to acquire – something fun or useful, something inspiring or uplifting, or maybe a gift to express their affection or appreciation for someone else. I dare say that is important work, even if it isn’t everyone’s highest calling or biggest challenge. I hope you will join me on this journey of figuring out what really matters to us as individuals and how to help others figure it out for themselves. Dr. Stephen Covey calls this the 8thHabit – Find your voice and help others find theirs.

Michael Kline is a local retailer, success coach and trainer. He may be reached through his website, www.klineseminars.com, or e-mail, mike@klineseminars.com.