Resources to run a better business.

Many of the entrepreneurs I know have a strong sense of urgency. It makes sense. It’s how they will entire businesses into existence. But as the business gets more complex, that sense of urgency can become a liability.

One of the greatest gifts you can give your team is the gift of understanding. Specifically, understanding why your company is doing what it’s doing. It’s annual planning season. That means leadership teams everywhere are putting in tremendous effort to shape the vision of their company for the next 12 months. But your leadership team cannot execute on that vision alone. If the vision is appropriately ambitious, you’ll need every employee to contribute in some way.

Join us for this one-hour webinar where we’ll reveal why a strong HR strategy is essential to maximizing your company’s value—and how to fix common HR mistakes that often scare buyers away.

Q: When should annual planning begin? A: Now if not sooner. Here’s the misconception about annual planning (and most strategic planning, actually). It doesn’t start on the date of your annual planning meeting. That session is extremely important, but it’s a time to align the team and prioritize together. If you walk into an annual planning meeting without a very good sense of what your goals will be for the next year…you haven’t done your homework.

“Morale is down.” No business owner wants to hear those three words. When employees have low morale, it affects customers and the overall growth of the business. In a toxic workplace, the reason for low morale is obvious. But if you’re a leader who tries to be kind (not necessarily nice) and generally has a good culture, you might be stumped about why morale is down. In my experience, there are three main reasons for low morale in an organization.

When companies are disciplined, they grow—provided they’re disciplined about the right things. In the commercial painting company I own, our sales team and project managers are extremely disciplined about three things: beer, lunch, and dinner. Yep, going out to eat is our primary marketing strategy. We track it as one of the top metrics on our senior level scorecard. It’s called the BDL.

People are 90% of your success. You know it. I know it. Every business coach, advisor, mentor, and guru knows it. So, question for you: Why aren’t you bringing in top talent?

I write a lot about making decisions. It’s one of the most important roles a business leader has. It’s a skill, too. You don’t have to be naturally gifted at decision-making; with practice, you can get better. In general, having more information—at least, more relevant information—leads to better decisions. The more you know, the smarter your choices. But there’s another aspect to making decisions we don’t always consider. Who’s delivering that information.

The biggest difference I’ve found between winners and losers: Winners want to win more than they fear losing. Their benchmarks are higher than everybody else’s. They don’t let head trash get in their way. I recently rediscovered my will to win—out on the open water.