ClickCease
Business, Faith, Faith at Work
Convene
Do Not Worry

‘Do not worry.’ We’ve read Matthew 6:25-34 in the Sermon on the Mount, but what does that look like on a day-to-day, minute-by-minute basis? God knows our every worry, fear, and concern – and He can handle it. Many thanks to Darrell Passwater, Convene Forum Team leader, for his encouragement to think about how our lives might be different by truly living out this scriptural principle.

Do Not Worry
Greg Leith
Who Will Lead Your Firm the Day After the ...

Got a quick minute to chat? I’ve been wanting to share something with you as you lead in the midst of the election cycle in the USA or when your political election takes place in your country. When the dust settles on the election and the new country leader is declared, one thing will still be as true as it is right now. You’ll still be the one leading your firm the day after the election. Your team members will still come to work the day after the winner is declared. They’ll still be looking to you for leadership, for a paycheck, for a sense of community at their workplace.

What do they want most that only you can deliver? It’s meaning. That meaning they’re looking for begins with you and your leadership. To be sure, what Washington DC does actually can impact your business significantly, however, the president of the United States or the leader of any country does not lead your firm. You do. It’s an enterprise entrusted to you to lead as a steward. It’s a place where people look to you for answers, where people want to be part of a team that cares about them and where people want to be valued, appreciated, and loved. The next president of the country will not show up this week at your office to encourage your team, fix a broken piece of equipment, hire the next team member, sell a big account, or cast a bold vision about how your team will reach your goals and impact the culture.

Who Will Lead Your Firm the Day After the Election?
Chip Neidigh
A Safe Place To Fall
A Safe Place To Fall
Dave Ulrich
3 Principles of Hope That Enable Transitions

As we find ourselves mid-October and a blink away from a new calendar year, it is an opportunity to prepare for how we view transitions. Transitions allow for reflection and renewal, for letting go and beginning anew, and for learning from the past and creating the future. Instead of laying out trends for the next year, I would like to comment on a fundamental enabler of any transition: hope. Leaders who want to improve, CEO’s who work toward excellence, HR professionals who aspire to deliver more value, and employees who seek well-being all achieve their transitions by realizing hope.

Hope integrates many of the positive traits that shape transitions for others and matter to me personally: learning, patience, service, faith, humility, optimism, gratitude, and so forth. I send hundreds of formal and informal e-mails every month to invite people to programs, to thank people for attending programs, to check in on those I mentor, and to stay connected to those I care about. I begin almost every one of these notes with “Hope you are well.” Hope is one of my personal desires, tag lines, and biases and an enabler of any transition.

If I could implant one trait in my family, friends, and colleagues who are undergoing continual transition, it would be hope. 

3 Principles of Hope That Enable Transitions
Business, Communication, Leadership, Talent
Brian Audia
Five Reasons to Build a People-first, ...

If you're a business owner or a CEO looking for ways to grow and improve your company, then Five Reasons to Build a People-first, Purpose-driven Company, by Brian Audia will give you a front-row seat to learning key principles you can implement in your business to outperform your peers!

Five Reasons to Build a People-first, Purpose-driven Company

social media

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Don’t Tweet! (Yet)…Four Foundational Growth Elements

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“Should I Be Tweeting?”… as a guy who has had executive marketing roles, I get my fair share of questions that are some form of “what should I do about” and then insert your favorite social media platform.

My normal response is, “Let’s get back to that.”

There are a lot of great people that can help small to medium businesses with a lot of good tools - Facebook, Twitter, e-mail newsletters, mass media, YouTube…and now, there’s more tools than ever.   And even better, the ability to have some measurement of what current and potential customers look at, open, click, etc. is a lot clearer direction than the days of “advertising is 50% effective, you just don’t know which 50%.”

But how do you know which tool to use?  How do you know if you need a hammer or a wrench?  You can’t do much building if you don’t first have a solid foundation.

There are four elements that are a great foundation for growth:

- Know “who” your business is

- Describe your target customer well

- Ensure the pictures match the words

- Define a simply understood strategy

I’ll write about these in the months ahead, but if you’d like, you can visit http://www.upstairsconsulting.com/#!blog/c154h to see the additions to this list posted in the weeks ahead (and / or subscribe to the monthly e-mail).

Know “Who” Your Business Is

As the owner of a small to medium sized business, who you are is a big part of “who” the business is.  What you hold dear is probably what the organization will also highly value - whether it’s stated or not.  Those you hire will likely have similar values – at least at first.

How well do others know you and what you value?   And if these are the values you want to continue on and cascade throughout the growing organization, you need to display them - in words, actions, and pictures.  Otherwise, how will others know?  How will they reflect the decisions that are made up against them?

There are some great resources to help you sort through the “who” of your business.  At my last company, since facilitation was a skill I’d developed over the years, we facilitated the sessions internally.  Jim Collins, from Good to Great fame, has some great free resources on his website (http://www.jimcollins.com/tools.html) and Patrick Lencioni has several free resources as well as more in depth kits that are based on his “Five Dysfunctions of a Team” book (http://www.tablegroup.com/teamwork).

If effective facilitation is not a skill you would say is one that is well developed in you or someone on your leadership team, then bringing in someone from the outside probably makes the most sense.  It either case, it will probably take a half-day or so to resolve “who” the business is, depending on how close the team is and how large the organization has become.  If you can carve out a day or two, you can go a lot deeper in the the team dynamics you’d like to see as a result of “who” you are as a company.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at mpowers@convenenow.com.