Ever suffer from “call reluctance?” It strikes all of us, not just sales people. Sometimes we think we will get to it “soon.” Sometimes we are avoiding something we do not want to do or say. And sometimes, we just want to take the hour, afternoon or the day off. OK, but what if you made a list of the people you should be calling but aren’t. Next to each name, put the reason for the call and the goal you want to accomplish with it. Now, write what is holding you back from making that call. Be as specific as you can. Now put an “A” or “B” next to each call. “A” means very important. “B” means not so important. One of the traps of lists is assuming that everything on it is of equal importance. Look at the “As” and look at what is holding you back and think about the outcome if you achieve the goal of the call. Try the toughest one first. The point is, think of all the times in the past you have faced up to a difficult task and accomplished it. Not a bad feeling, is it? So make your calls, achieve your objectives and go home happy.

Verne Harnish, CEO of Gazelles, Inc. (www.Gazelles.com) has become the guru of best practices for growing companies by searching for the smartest people with the best ideas and crystalizing them into workshops, books and documents like the One Page Business Plan. These resources can help every business owner and CEO nail down a successful plan that aligns strategies and tactics with Vision and gets everyone on board and keeps them there. So here are two recommendations: first, get a copy of and read the book Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Fast-Growth Firm by Verne Harnish; and second, sign up to attend the Mastering the Rockefeller Habits Workshop on Friday, February 24, 8am to 5pm at Linden Hall in Columbia. Space is limited so sign up early. For more information and registration, click here.

Every business, regardless of size or industry, has four basic internal functions. Each of them must do its own work and also support and be supported by the other three functions. The functions are: Sales & Marketing, Operations & Production, Finance & Administration and Human Resources & Organizational Development. The detailed job descriptions of each function may vary from industry to industry, but the four functions must be present and working in every organization. The right people must in the right jobs doing the right work. Each function must understand its role in the overall success of the enterprise.

The big job of executive leadership is to keep the four functions working together and to preserve the political balance between them. The more specialized we are as individuals, the greater our tendency is to see things and to define problems and solutions through the lens of our specialty. This situation is further complicated by the differences in peoples’ styles and ways of processing information and seeing things.

We are fond of using team sports or military analogies in defining issues and solutions. There is a clarity of both mission and outcomes in team sports and military endeavors that supports the use of the analogies. Team sports and the military are not without their share of political imbalances that deflect success. But when the successes occur, you hear how strong the various parts are and how well they work together.

So in your planning for the coming year, take a measure of your four functions. Do you have the right people working in them? Do they work together well? And, when the inevitable conflicts arise, are they harnessed to gain improvements? And if you are still doing all four functions. has the time come to build an organization around you?

We all need goals. They keep us pointed towards the future and things we want and need to do. You could even say that we are wired to have them and work towards them. But, we also have to realize that goals need to be replaced once they are reached. We further need to realize that many goals are not just destinations; they are also journeys that need to keep on going. There is an old saying that says “Success is a journey, not a destination.”  If your definition of success is a certain income, or a certain job or a title or the ability to have something or someone in your life, then what do you do when you have achieved it or that certain someone is in your life? One of the most familiar goal/journey situations is learning. Graduations mark an event. They are called commencements because they signal the beginning of something-continuous, lifelong learning not simply the end of going to school. So, look at your plan for 2012-how many of those goals involve on-going journeys and not just the objective itself? What will you be doing to keep on actively learning? Is your business involved in continuous improvement? There’s a great example of a journey that has multiple goals and milestones, but it never ends.  And finally, what tools -training, equipment and support and assistance do you and your people need to make those journeys successfully? Travel well and as that great old baseball player once said, “Don’t spend a lot of time looking back, somethin’ might be gaining on you.”

One part of your business that you may have not gotten to in your planning for the coming year is employee (and owner) compensation. There are two links in this blog for you to use to gather some input for your compensation strategies: one is to an article from a recent newsletter from Payroll Network, Inc., a mid-Atlantic region independent payroll and human resources information processor and another is from Dave Ryan, a partner in Chesapeake Compensation Strategies, LLC. If you want more information from either or both sources, I am sure they would be happy to provide it.

Some of the greatest innovations have come from people who figured out what people wanted before they even knew. In the case of things like power brakes and power steering in the late 1940s, the automobile manufacturers figured out that many more people would be driving in postwar America-more women especially. They didn’t ask if people wanted those innovations. They asked how they wanted life to go and how they would be using their cars. Steve Jobs was famous for not asking what people wanted in a computer or a phone. He and his colleagues figured out how to design technological devices designed to operate in certain ways that would change people’s lives.

So, the purpose of asking is not to justify your latest brainstorm, but to find out what people are thinking, what they are worried about, what would save them time or make life easier in other ways. Then you brainstorm and figure out the breakthrough ideas that give them what they didn’t know they wanted. (Of course, there is still plenty of opportunity to prosper in giving people what they say they want that is better than what they have.) The point is never stop asking. Never stop asking what your customers have on their minds. Never stop asking what employees are seeing and hearing from customers and prospects. Never stop asking your vendors what they think and what they see coming. Look for the patterns; brainstorm the ideas that address the patterns and go to market.

Think back on all the times in your life when you achieved something important-important to you or to others, or both. For how many of those achievements had you set the goal to reach each of them? You will probably find that you had set specific goals in terms of amount, timing and/or another result. So make the following resolution for 2012 and see how you have done a year from now.

Set three goals each for your business and for you personally. Be as specific as you can. Analyze why you have set each one. Make sure that there is at least some resonance between the business goals and the personal goals to minimize the chance that you will be pulling against yourself. Figure out all the people and resources that you will need to meet the goals and get them on board with you. The people are critical because we all need people around us who can help us learn how to take advantage of and use the tools we do not know how to use.

Write down your goals and give copies to your advisors and people who will help you. And, build yourself a structure where you are regularly tracking your progress. Carry them with you. Post them on or near your desk. Encourage your employees and your family to do the same. Share success stories to keep people moving forward.

This is the time to take stock of what went right and wrong in your business in the year that will soon end. Are the things that went right one time events or sustainable? Are the things that went wrong symbolic of deeper problems in the company or were they events that provided lessons for the future? What are your customers saying to you about what they like or don’t like? What do they say makes your company different than the competition and are you using that intelligence in your marketing efforts? What things have your customer contact people heard and noticed that should be taken into account for planning the year ahead?

Here’s a fine planning strategy that a local professional services company has employed over the past three years that has enabled them to sustain a tremendous downturn in their industry and survive and sustain company health in an industry decimated by high unemployment and firm closures. They project multiple scenarios-good and bad-for the coming year. The scenarios are based on actual experience in past business cycles. They run detailed cash flow and income and expense spread sheets (more evidence that programs like Excel represent one of the greatest technological inventions in history) and then run through the decisions that have to be made if each scenario occurs. This considerable effort pays off in several important ways:

1.    Very tough decisions are embraced long before they have to be made and the best strategies and tactics can be laid out and carefully considered. So, the confidence in those decisions is raised greatly and they can be implemented carefully and rationally when necessary.

2.    The projections create a structure for constant monitoring of company performance and trends which minimizes surprises, especially bad ones.

So what can really go right in the coming year is that you can be better prepared for what the economy brings and be more in control of your own destiny.

The short answer to this questions is, you can’t. That is because you really cannot motivate others. What you can do is to create the conditions in which your people become self-motivated.

Job #1: have a clear vision for where the company is headed. Communicate it over and over until everyone understands the vision and buys in. This includes everyone knowing why your company does what it does- “The Why” as Simon Sinek calls it.

Job #2: Be certain that each employee is in the right job doing the right things (or, as Jim Collins said so well in his landmark book, Good to Great… “the right employees are in the right seats on the bus.”)

Job #3: Make sure all employees learn how what they do is related to the vision and goals of the company and how each job relates to all the others to create value for customers and revenue and profit for the company.

Job #4: Create an ongoing system in the company where good ideas for improving company products and services and internal processes can be raised, discussed and adopted. (How energized are you when someone asks you what you think and really wants to hear the answer?)

Job #6: Develop a performance-based compensation system, carefully measure the results and accountabilities upon which the compensation is based and report on them regularly.

Job #7: Implement the company-wide practice of catching people doing things right and acknowledge them as soon as they happen.

Job #8: Celebrate successes, even if they are small ones. The celebrations do not have to be big and expensive.  In fact here is a link to a list of small success celebrations developed by business owners.

Payroll Network, Inc., a Kensington, MD-based regional payroll and human resources information processor, publishes a regular newsletter with helpful information, news and tips. A recent article updates us all on the IRS two-pronged attack on the use of independent contractors and the turn-over-every-rock to increase tax receipts. It is another reminder to make sure that your policies are clear and that your contractors can prove that they are just that-contractors.  Here’s the link to the full article.