Business is an endurance sport.
This sentiment is not strictly my own. It’s borrowed and collected from a number of businesspeople and sources, including our own publisher.
In addressing Springfield Business Journal’s print refresh and launch of the sbjLive video platform earlier this year, Publisher Jennifer Jackson likened our media business to that of a boxing career. She quoted world-champion boxer Oscar De La Hoya: “There’s always space for improvement, no matter how long you’ve been in the business.”
Improving involves learning. So if we’re always improving, we’re always learning.
Business management is learned. In the Dec. 12 issue of Springfield Business Journal, you’ll receive 90 ideas for management and business practices from the sharpest CEO minds in our market. Yes, 90 proven and promising ideas in one place. If you act quickly enough, you’re one of a couple hundred people who will hear these ideas firsthand at SBJ’s first 90 Ideas in 90 Minutes event on Dec. 6 (
SBJ.net/90ideas).
But all of these ideas will fall flat if nobody listens. I’m listening, and this stuff is too good not to pass on.
While editing these 90 ideas, I had Donald Miller’s podcast “Building a Story Brand” playing in the background. I noticed some crossover from our local CEOs. Miller interviewed management expert and author Ken Blanchard. He’s best known for co-authoring “The One Minute Manager,” and he wrote the foreword for “Who Moved My Cheese?”
The “Minute Manager” emphasizes regularly spending a minute each with people on setting goals, praising them and reprimanding/redirecting them.
“I’ve been trying to make common sense common practice,” Blanchard tells Miller. “Does it take more than a minute to be an effective manager? Sure. But it doesn’t take you more than a minute to check with somebody if they understand what a goal is; it doesn’t take more than a minute to praise somebody’s progress; it doesn’t take more than a minute to stop them and say, ‘I noticed your performance isn’t going the direction we talked about. How can I help?’”
Seems simple enough.
Now, let’s connect the dots between our local CEO’s ideas and Blanchard’s sage advice:
On leadership …
“All leadership is about going somewhere. You’ve got to really be clear with people about where you want them to go,” Blanchard says, emphasizing today’s effective leadership style is side by side rather than top-down.
Mary Kellogg-Joslyn of Titanic Museum Attractions echoes this one. She says, “Be a leader, not a manager. Leaders lead, and managers control.”
On goals …
“All good performance starts with clear goals, duh. Once people know the goals, you ought to wander around and see if you can catch them doing anything right and cheer them on,” Blanchard says.
Butler, Rosenbury & Partners Inc. principal Geoffrey Butler agrees. “Manage by walking around,” he says. “It is hard to manage anything, much less real people, sitting in a nice office with your door closed.”
On visioning …
How about this: Act like a third-grade teacher. That’s the stated approach of Max De Pree, legendary chairman of Herman Miller Inc. “I have to say the vision and values over and over and over again, until people get it right, right, right,” De Pree told Blanchard.
Teresa McGeehan, an owner/operator of 15 McDonald’s franchise stores in the area, likens it to showing staff a North Star. “Clarity is a very important aspect of your business plan,” she says.
“Your team must be able to answer: What are we doing? Why are we doing it? And where do I fit in? If they cannot answer, we haven’t focused on it long enough.”
On creating …
The ever-present challenge for businesses is the need to “manage the present and create the future at the same time,” Blanchard says.
I can see how companies get tripped up when day-to-day producers are tasked with planning the future, and thus threatening what lies ahead. Brick & Mortar Coffee creator Jonathan Putnam says, “Excellence speaks to process. Developing a consistent discontentment with your process and product helps to constantly streamline underperformance.” Again, that speaks to two types of people: the doers and the planners.
On re-energizing …
One thing often not seen in the game of business is quiet time; to reflect, recharge and recreate.
Crystal Webster of Breast Cancer Foundation of the Ozarks leans into that thought: “Our culture embraces busyness, but being busy can be so inefficient. Establish your priorities, examine how you spend your time in context with those priorities and stop being busy.”
I like the sound of that.
Springfield Business Journal Editorial Director Eric Olson can be reached at eolson@sbj.net.
