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CHARITIES shouldn’t work.
Think about it: We’re all quite busy, and we value our time too much to throw it away.
Yet, here we have it: A charity asks for your time AND money, and we give it. Not to every charity, of course, but to some.
Are we insane? How could that possibly work?
INHISNAMEHR.COM had a great article today, titled Most Employees Are Not Lazy, Just Not Led. It’s a great read, and captures a thought that I’ve had kicking around for some time.
Managers can make lots of judgments about employees: they’re stupid, they’re lazy, they’re just not worth it.
But if you’re building a business that needs people, you have to get beyond this way of thinking. Because if this is the lens you’re using, then NOBODY is ever going to live up to your expectations. Your life will be miserable, and your business will fail.
JONATHAN RAYMOND wrote a powerful article recently called The Power of Caring over at the E-Myth Blog. They do great work over there.
His observation is that customers make most of their decisions based on emotions rather than logic. I find this to be absolutely true – even in surprising cases.
My background is in engineering, so I’m a pretty hardcore analytic. Read the rest of this entry »
LAST WEEK I gave some perspectives on branding your values-based business. My good buddy Hugh offered up a challenging question that I think is worthy of more exploration.
His question is around the values of your company versus the values employees hold as an individuals.
When you started out as a one-person company, it probably wasn’t too hard. Read the rest of this entry »
THERE was a wonderful discussion this week when I put an announcement of this blog in one of the Facebook groups. I have to say that I’m very pleased with the support I’ve been receiving.
Someone made a great point about how they’ve strongly branded their coaching business with a Christian theme, and how well that’s worked. For myself, I’ve chosen to emphasize two points:
GALLUP Business Journal recently published an article entitled Making Hope a Business Strategy. I have to confess that I was a little disappointed, though, because the bottom line seemed mostly, “if you support your people, they’ll have hope in a better future and they’ll be 14% more productive.”
Sure, but that’s only scratching the surface.
ODAY marks the beginning of Lent, a Christian period of reflection and renewal leading up to Easter.
If your business is based on Christian principles – either implicitly or explicitly – perhaps this would be a great time to reflect on how well it’s living up to those ideals.
FOR my professional and spiritual development, I listen to a number of podcasts. One of those is Get-It-Done Guy, presented by Stever Robbins. A recent episode entitled How to set unplannable goals addressed situations where the normal goal-setting doesn’t work.
This idea strikes me as similar to what we’re talking about with creating a business which is values-oriented.
Normally, setting goals wouldn’t be terribly hard to do. Read the rest of this entry »
IAM a member of a local group called Bridge Networking. I enjoy this as an asset for growing my business, but more important, doing good in the community.
It’s a values-based organization, which is a primary reason why I stay engaged and contribute.
It was a lot of fun to have a great discussion with the group this morning around what values really look like. Here’s the structure I introduced:
A DEAR friend died on Friday. He was a great, generous, caring man, and he improved many lives.
This got me thinking about the role that funeral leave plays in the business world. Yes, I know that’s a leap, but stay with me here.
The Values-Based Business 