The year 2020
hasn’t exactly gone how we’d planned, right? Let’s just say if we’d known about
the challenges the year would bring our way, we very much doubt we’d have
bothered to stay up past midnight to welcome in the new year with a bang. We’d
have slept right through the whole thing and dropped all expectation that the
year would be our best yet.
But despite its
devastations and disappointments, the year has presented some valuable
opportunities for learning and growth, and these takeaways shouldn’t be
forgotten as 2020 rolls into 2021 in a few days’ time.
1. Planning is
the Basic Step for Success.
You won’t know
where you are going unless you know where you want to go. Confusing? Well
that’s exactly how your business would be, if you do not keep things simple and
organized. Planning is the basic step to succeed in business and planning
accurately and developing strategies will lead you to a healthy and growing
business. That means reframing the top down objectives in your organization.
Don’t just work with only the large goal in mind. Set immediate and short term
goals that fire up your team. Celebrate achieving those goals and adjust as the
culture and needs change… We live in a very fluid business world where things
change fast. Create a team that is able to change along with it.
2. Demonstrate
Clear Goals & Vision
Creating a
successful business is usually a result of clear goals and oftentimes, leaders
who achieve such goals have an outstanding vision of new ideas, technologies,
and industry specifics. A visionary leader can recognize new, emerging
technologies and find ways to apply them in certain areas at early stages of
development. This can give a competitive edge to such businesses and may
inspire employees to easier gain trust in such leaders and excel in what they
do.
3. Communicate
the "Why" Behind your Idea.
Regardless of
the brilliancy of your vision, your team needs to feel part of it and not that
they're merely being told to do something. If you're giving them the
opportunity to really understand why the process is happening, you're also
hopefully giving them the tools to be able to innovate on that process and
drive even more value back to your organization.
4. Become a
Better Listener.
Many people
don’t know how to truly listen. The good news? Following the lessons we learned
in grade school—pay attention, don’t interrupt, don’t be distracted—is all that
we need to do to become better listeners.
Of course,
listening doesn’t just mean paying attention to the words that your team
members are saying. It means understanding the emotions behind those words, as
well as the nonverbal cues, including body language, tone of voice, and
mannerisms, that speak to your team members’ state of mind. If communication is
80 percent nonverbal, as is popularly claimed, then focusing only on the words
being spoken means you’re only getting 20 percent of the message.
5. Lead by
Action and Example
An effective
leader never orders anyone to do anything he wouldn’t be willing to do himself.
If you’re going to expect certain things of your followers, then it’s
imperative that you lead by action and example. You don’t actually have to do
everything on your own, but if you occasionally reach down and contribute to
mundane tasks and entry-level work, you’ll gain the respect of your employees
and possibly even learn a thing or two in the process.
6. Instill
Confidence Among Employees
A great leader
can easily instill confidence among the staff. In order to maintain the
positive work atmosphere which inspires creative thinking and new ideas, staff
members have to feel confident about their work. A leader that simply nitpicks
about everything and demonstrates extremely negative reactions for every
mistake made will eventually ruin the positive energy in the work environment
and ruin the self-confidence of the majority of staff members. A great and
effective leader can inspire staff members to improve their performance and
productivity by actively working on their confidence improvements. Publicly
acknowledging those who perform well in certain areas can significantly
contribute to this cause.
7. Challenge
People to Think
If you are not
thinking, you’re not learning new things. If you’re not learning, you’re not
growing – and over time becoming irrelevant in your work. The most successful
leaders understand their colleagues’ mindsets, capabilities and areas for
improvement. They use this knowledge/insight to challenge their teams to think
and stretch them to reach for more.
Some of the
best ideas can come from employees. They interact with clients and customers
every day and have an intimate knowledge of how well practices and procedures
are working. Hear them out about ways to make improvements. Make changes that
will improve their ability to do their job.
8. Cultivate a
Culture of Innovation.
Great business
leaders drive their teams to step out of the confines of routine and achieve
the extraordinary. Building teamwork and rewarding collaboration are key to
achieving your goals.
Cultivating a
culture that values innovation is one of the most difficult responsibilities a
business leader has. Here's how the best nurture innovation in their companies:
• Proactively introduce mechanisms that
naturally boost creative and innovative thinking.
• Make incremental improvements in the
workplace to facilitate out-of-the-box thinking.
• Use tools to measure how employees spend their
time.
• Encourage practical shuffling of duties
and departments to help employees gain a wider perspective of the
organization's work.
• Show employees how they can use
time-tested methods of creative idea generation (brainstorming, mind mapping,
story boarding, etc.) by organizing and participating in sessions.
9. Take Lots of
Leaps of Faith
Making a change
requires a leap of faith. Taking that leap of faith is risky, and people will
only take active steps toward the unknown if they genuinely believe – and
perhaps more importantly, feel – that the risks of standing still are greater
than those of moving forward in a new direction. Making a change takes lots of leaps of faith.
10. Reward
Successes and Learn From Failures.
Too many
leaders don't stop to reward success or recognize employees' outstanding work
but are quick to point out what people do wrong. While it's good management to
learn from what went right or wrong on a project, it's also important to
celebrate achievements.
No one is
perfect. Everyone makes mistakes. The important thing is to learn from them. Be
willing to accept the blame and move on. Use your errors to make adjustments to
the way things are done so that the same mistake does not happen again.
Constantly be looking for ways to grow and improve.
11. Strive to
Learn Something New Every Single Day.
It is easy to
get bogged down in the same old, same old. In order to fully realize potential,
you’ll have to add knowledge, skills, and experience. Don’t expect your
potential to spring forth in a final draft; it takes time to hone your skills
and build your confidence. This could come from formal schooling, from the
school of hard knocks, or from both. Either way, your education is the house
your realized potential will live in. The opportunities for learning are
multiplying every day in this information/technology age. Learn at least one
new thing every day. Improve your mind and enhance your skills. Never stop
learning.
12. Learn More
from Reading.
Far too may
business executives believe leadership skills stem from some sort of wondrous
epiphany or other such flash of insight. Sure, great ideas can come to any of
us, but being a bona fide leader also means study. Read books, attend seminars,
and pick the brains of colleagues to see what works for them. Read an article;
discuss a new approach with a colleague; research what other organizations are
doing on the Web. It can be a long education, but one with rewards that
multiply with the more knowledge you have under your belt.
13. Work
Smarter Not Harder.
Productivity
comes from working smarter, not harder. That is the difference between
effectiveness and efficiency. You can be effective without being efficient,
but, the key to productivity is to do both. Sometimes, those job inefficiencies
are not very obvious. However, if you can specifically identify them, then
those inefficiencies can be eliminated and staff can become more productive. By
distributing the tasks and responsibilities around, you not only become more
flexible and able to respond to changes more quickly, but you involve more
people in the improvement process. This can increase work satisfaction as well.
14. Devote Time
Each Month to Employee Development.
Most people want to learn and grow their
skills at work. Encourage experimentation and taking reasonable risk to develop
employee skills. Get to know them personally. Ask what motivates them. Ask what
career objectives they have and are aiming to achieve. You can make their
career. In order to get the most from your employees, you need to invest time
and resources in their development. Annual performance reviews simply aren’t
enough. Make a point to sit down with each employee on a monthly basis (or more
frequently, if possible) and provide them with specific feedback and areas of
improvement.
15. Show
Respect to Everyone
Everyone
desires respect. Everyone. Regardless of your position or power, ensure you
show everyone respect. Everyone wants to be treated fairly.
Demonstrating
respect for people goes beyond just being nice to them. Showing respect in the
workplace is all about the relationship we develop with other people and how we
value them.
Respect for
people means developing employees latent skills in both on the job and off the
job training. It is easy to invest money in new technology, software, or
equipment. It takes time, effort, and planning to invest in employee skills
development.
16. Get Out of
Your Office.
When you get
bogged down, distracted, or even discouraged rediscover the power of going to
see. There is no better way to experience the flow of value (or lack thereof)
than taking the same journey that an order, new product, patient or other takes
through your processes. Spend as much time as possible with employees and
customers. Learn the issues first hand. Expand your focus. Many look primarily
at the steps in the value stream and ask how to remove the waste. Reflect first
on the purpose of the process. You must ask about the support processes to get
the right people to the right place in the value stream at the right time with
the right knowledge, materials, and equipment. Work to solve problems when and where
they occur. Pay special attention to the way people are engaged in the
operation and its improvement.
17. Streamline
Your Processes
While you’re
assessing your productivity from the past year, start tweaking your processes
to help your team better reach its goals.
Analyze each
step of your day-to-day processes, and try to figure out where you can save
time, money or other resources. If you can save a minute here, or a dollar
there, you could end up saving countless hours and thousands of dollars over the
course of the next year.
Not only that,
but by streamlining your processes and decreasing the amount of “hang-ups” your
team faces, your employees will be more apt to dive in and get to work.
18. Focus on
Small Changes
Approach change
in small, incremental steps; if you improve by just 1% every day for a year,
you’ll be 37 times better than when you started. Test and implement small
changes. This increases the speed to improvement and reduces the pressures and
risks of implementing a major change.
To this end,
focus your improvements on solving the root causes of issues. This allows
employees to catch and contain small issues before they become larger and
costlier to eliminate, and it prevents the same problems from reoccurring.
19. Enforce
Improvements
It’s easy for
employees to regress to their old ways. Enforcing the changes you’ve made to
your processes is important for the improvements you’ve made to last, and it’s
key to sustaining continuous improvement in the long term.
In order for
improvements to last, they must be standardized and repeatable. Standardizing
work is crucial to kaizen because it creates a baseline for improvement. When
you make improvements to a process, it’s essential to document the new standard
work in order to sustain the improvements and create a new baseline. Standard
work also reduces variability in processes and promotes discipline, which is
essential for continuous improvement efforts to take root.
20. Be
Passionate and Open Minded
If you don’t
believe in your company, neither will your employees. Start each day with a
positive attitude and show enthusiasm for projects and initiatives. Take pride
in the services or products you provide.
21. Focus On What You Can Control
We need to let
go of how things “should be”, and instead focus on how things are. This shift
to acceptance will ultimately help us put our best foot forward in a situation,
rather than mourn lost opportunities.
People are
spending a whole lot of time and energy worrying about things they cannot
influence or change. No-one knows when the lockdowns will end, no-one knows if
there will be a vaccine, no-one knows what will happen to the economy.
It is a much
better idea to focus on the things you can control, and there are two areas that
you always have control over: What you are thinking and what you are doing. You
could spend your time thinking about all the things that have gone wrong, or
you could focus your attention on possibilities and opportunities.
It’s been some
year so far, hasn’t it? Who would have
imagined in January that we would all be living and working in pandemic
quarantine world? This was not on any
predictions for 2020 that I read before this year!
Now we use
whole new terms and concepts, like designer masks, social distancing, virtual
conferences, quarantining, pods of friends, outdoor meetings, “unprecedented
times”, the “new normal”, and so on, not to mention an entire vocabulary and
set of memes solely related to Zoom calls.
So much has
shifted – from bars and restaurants struggling to survive to businesses finding
out (to their surprise) that their employees can be productive working from
home. Schools have made some major
shifts, some managing well and some not so well. But it’s hard to think of very many businesses
or individuals that haven’t been impacted in some way by COVID-19.
But the
pandemic won’t be with us forever.
Eventually, we will move on to the new normal or the next normal or
whatever we decide to finally call it.
So today, let’s move away from wallowing in the misery of this year and
set our sights on planning for business success moving forward.
