Ask any plumber and they'll tell you: leaky pipes are bad news. They lead to decreased intensity, wasted resources, and slower delivery. And there's a good chance that if you are leading a team, there are a lot of leaks in your delegation "pipes". In my work with small business owners and entrepreneurs, I've found that one of their biggest hurdles comes when they have to start delegating tasks to their team. They've moved past the point where they can do all of the work themselves, and they need to spread activities around. Leaky Delegation Creates More Work But often, instead of taking responsibilities off of the leader's shoulders, … [Read more...]
Manage by Numbers, Lead with Stories
When you are in charge, you have two critical tasks to accomplish. It doesn't matter if you are a CEO, an entrepreneur, or a pee-wee soccer coach; there are two jobs that you need to excel at to succeed. First, you have to make decisions. Then, you have to get people to execute on those decisions. How Do Leaders Move People? That's it. That's leadership in a nutshell. It sounds simple because it is. When you get to the heart of all the strategy sessions and brainstorming and committee meetings, that's what a leader does: decides what to do and gets the members of the organization to do it. The art and science of doing these two … [Read more...]
Create a 19,900% Advertising Bump in 67 Seconds
A few months ago, I went to a birthday dinner for a friend at an Italian restaurant in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood. It was a fun night - great conversation, delicious food, and pretty tasty wine. I'd never been to Saporia Trattoria before, but I had a good experience and I said to my girlfriend as we were leaving, "Hey, we should come back here sometime." Now, Chicago has a lot of great restaurants. So even though we enjoyed ourselves, it wasn't necessarily on the top of our list to get back. But I had signed up for their mailing list when we were paying the bill (I get excited when small businesses do marketing right so it's … [Read more...]
3 Questions to Ask Before Solving ANY Problem
A while back, I heard a stand-up comedian talk about the 3 questions you should always ask before you tell your significant other anything: Does this need to be said? Does this need to be said right now? Does this need to be said right now by me? The joke works because many of us don't think before we speak and act. (These questions are also great to ask in professional relationships, but that's for another article.) Solve Business Problems Intentionally A place you can see this lack of forethought in the business world is the rapid-fire manner in which entrepreneurs and business owners solve problems. For those … [Read more...]
The Magic Closet for Entrepreneurs … That Unfortunately Doesn’t Exist
If you grew up watching Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, you'll remember his daily ritual at the beginning of each show. He'd walk into his house, sing a song, go into his closest, change his sweater and shoes, and then go about his day. Of course, at the end of the day he'd go back to that closest to change back into his street shoes and sweater. And then off he went. (Though, come to think of it, no one really knows where he went...or why he had a second home that he stayed at during the day...) That outfit change while he was singing held a lot of significance. It's like he was changing into his work uniform. He went to his closest and … [Read more...]
The Confidence that Will Make You Comfortable on Zoom, on Stage, and in Zumba
Updated March, 2021 Years ago I read through Scott Berkun's Confessions of a Public Speaker and I came across the line: Know that your response to a mistake defines the audience's response. And I thought to myself, "Dude, you couldn't be more right." It's continued to stay relevant to me as I've moved beyond my normal public speaking and into the digital realm. Because now I can often see the mistakes I make in real-time! When you have a camera on you, and a little window of yourself in the corner of the screen, it can be a little intimidating. The Audience Only Cares if You Do And now everyone is a public speaker because of video … [Read more...]
Leadership Lessons from The Commitments
When people ask me about my favorite movies, they're usually unprepared for one of my top choices, The Commitments, the tale of a scrappy Dublin soul band struggling to break away from the travails of working class life. Even though many people haven't seen (or have even heard) of it, the exploits of Jimmy Rabbitte and his band have deeply influenced my approaches to music, business, and life. The fact that it's also full of witty Irish repartee and has a solid soul soundtrack helps a little bit. There are some powerful lessons on leadership that can be pulled from the story. Are you putting together a soul band or a new … [Read more...]