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Change or Die

Written by: David Levine

Article Overview: To Change Your Organization, Hire a Business Coach

Change or Die

To Change Your Organization, Hire a Business Coach
It is a common business axiom – change or die. As a small or mid-sized business owner or a manager, there will be times you will need to make changes in your organization but may not be sure how to go about it.

Change is hard to implement and even harder to sustain. Think about all of the people who have trouble sticking to a diet or quitting smoking or keeping up with an exercise program, let alone just starting. If changing yourself is hard, how can you change an entire business, organization, process or department?

As a Certified Business Coach, one of the biggest challenges my clients face is this issue of change. Did you know there are eight reasons why organizations fail to change from a lack of urgency to underestimating the power of vision to failing to create short-term wins? The eight reasons are:

1. Lack of a sense of urgency
2. Failing to create a sufficiently powerful guiding coalition
3. Underestimating the power of vision
4. Not communicating the vision
5. Allowing obstacles to block the new vision
6. Failing to create short-term wins
7. Declaring victory too soon
8. Neglecting to anchor changes firmly into the corporate culture

Take the third reason, for example, underestimating the power of vision. A clear vision helps direct, align and inspire actions on the part of large numbers of people. Lack of vision, on the other hand, leads to lots of debate and confusion. Think about the organizations you have worked for or know. When everyone understands the vision, work gets done, employees are energized, and processes get put into place. Without a guiding vision, employees lose passion, urgency and focus. And, it is just as critical to communicate your vision – reason number four – instead of keeping your vision in your head, communicate it to your employees, vendors and clients – often.

How can a business leader do it all – create and communicate a vision, get the work done and make a profit? Business coaches help business leaders step back and create the processes necessary to communicate and sustain their vision for their organizations by focusing on sales, marketing, systems and team building. One strategy I use is to facilitate a team alignment day. I often start out with a number of traditional and non-traditional teambuilding exercises. Then, I introduce a game called “Leverage: The Game of Business,” in which employees learn the five key areas to impacting the bottom line. By playing the game, each employee learns how he or she plays a pivotal role in making the business work and impacting its cash flow. By the end of the day, the team is aligned with the business owner’s goals as well as the team and the business manager being aligned as people. When everyone is on the same page, change can take place and things happen more efficiently and effectively.

A recent article in Fortune Magazine, entitled, Executive Coaching – With Returns a CFO Could Love, stated, "Asked for a conservative estimate of the monetary payoff from the coaching they got, these managers described an average return of more than $100,000, or about six times what the coaching had cost their companies."

My goal as a business coach is to help business owners step back and think about new and innovative ways to achieve profitability and business growth … and to do it in a way that provides a good return on investment of a business manager’s time and money. The ability to change, while remaining focused, is an integral part of this philosophy.

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Re: Spellcheck? - [quote="TheAnonymousMan":2f894q6j]When discussing the majority of people I would definitely say that most people hit the "Change" or "Ignore" button without thinking too much about the correct spelling of a word. All bosses are concerned about is getting the report to the Directors meeting on time.[/quote:2f894q6j] That probably depends on what the "majority" are trying to accomplish. I have word set to alert me about misspellings and grammatical problems, so I fix most as I go. But I also add names etc to the dictionary because I get tired of seeing the red and green squiggles when I know the info is right. If you're only going to click "Change" or "Ignore" then why bother to take the time to use spell check????? Business people that I work for want the info compiled in a timely manner and they want it right - which is fine because that's the way I strive to do any project. Sending out a memo, letter, report etc with obvious spelling and grammatical mistakes makes the person and the company look bad as far as I'm concerned. Shri
Re: e-Commerce and e-Payment providers - Hi GT It is only fairly recently that people in South Africa have been able to get full use of Paypal as we were only able at one time to make payments but not receive them. Fortunately this has now changed. I have received money through Global X Change for one of the affiliate programs that I promote and have found them pretty good as the money is normally transferred directly into my bank account within 2-3 days and I have not had any problems with them. MichelleJ
Re: Obama Wants Social Security for Illegals - [quote="Alan Mater":3kaa8sg4] Obama WILL make changes... but they're not the changes we as a country need or should look forward to.[/quote:3kaa8sg4] Sad but this is exactly how I feel about it. Change is coming - but unless I'm really wrong, it is not a change this country needs. Amazing how much a good speaker with a good speech writer can do. If you paid attention to the things he said "off script" - much of it is frightening. Chris
Are you an Opportunity Addict? - 1) if you find yourself saying yes without thinking about how it will affect your other priorities 2) you have over 10 projects/inventions going on at the same time and this seems normal to you 3) you have spent hundreds and thousands of dollars on manufacturing, prototypes, etc. not to mention thousands of hours of your time....but you havent followed through on any of it 4) most of your projects are falling behind or have completely fallen off your radar....which is fueling your frustration The first step in recovery is to recognize this as a pattern of self sabotage. If you are clear in what your overall goals and objectives are, you should be able to create a lens through which you measure opportunities. You create your life, and your to do list. Change, Add, Remove, Adjust time-lines - whatever you like. But remember that every piece of unfinished business - stays that way J
You are too young - I don't really believe (I've been into web designing for 7 years now... I started in 2000) there is any web design laws. Besides the fact that you can't use copyrighted images on web design without permission from the original author. Also, any web designs you do you may want to have it copyrighted so other's can't steal your idea's or whatever... of course, you can offer a "Copyright Change" option for a bit more money that will allow you to be able to transfer the copyrights and give exclusive rights to the purchaser. All in all, don't worry about the laws... you should be fine, just remember that if your in the U.S. that if your making over $400 (or maybe its $600) in revenue, you'll have to pay taxes to the government... and please get a LLC, although its not a big thing with web designs, you could get into legal trouble somewhere in the business. Lastly, use contracts for when your selling or use agreements to clear the air so that you can have a safe business and you'll have some backing up if you ever are taken to court.


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