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Are you Settling?

March 10, 2014 by Jeanne Goldie Leave a Comment

If you settle too often you might as well quit swinging — What’s your batting average? When was the last time you swung for the fences?

Are you Settling?

There are times when only a “duct tape” fix will do. You may not have the resources to do things exactly as you wanted or planned. It may have to wait. But at what point do you need to insist on doing things YOUR way?

If you are ALWAYS settling, and your products or projects are becoming something you wouldn’t really want to put your name on, or can’t imagine talking about if asked to describe any career highlights in the last year or so, it’s time to do a self-inventory.

1. Are you settling to get something truly more important done?

2. Are you settling just once, or does it happen every time?

3. How important are the details you are compromising on?

I realize this might sound contradictory to the advice to consider a minimum viable project, but being an effective change manager means you try to hit a delicate balance that ultimately, moves the team forward. Holding out for perfection at all times gets you nowhere, but compromising into an endless series of “meh” results also will get you nowhere.

“Sometimes you win, Sometimes you lose, Sometimes, it rains” – Bull Durham.

What’s your batting average? Are you winning? Are you losing? Bunting? When was your last home run? If you’re losing more than you’re winning, it may be time to change your approach. Or at least your batting stance.

Pick your pitch and connect. Hard. Get the free steak (but put your headphones on if you’re watching in the office! )

book by Jeanne Goldie — Speed Read an Organization with our Easy Guide

If you can’t figure out why you’re losing, maybe you need to look at your company and your place in it with fresh eyes. Get our free guide to Reading the Terrain and do a deep dive on what’s going on.

Do Women Tend to Sell Services while Men Build Products?

March 2, 2014 by Jeanne Goldie

male and female hands pulling on US dollars — Does the type of business different genders choose to start affect their ultimate profitability?

Do Women Tend to Sell Services while Men Build Products?

Now before you kill me, understand that I am aware of the danger of sweeping generalizations and also that many women, including those in the technology field have built some amazing products (see my article on a favorite app, Unstuck, which was built by SYPartners, which is led by Susan Schuman, a female CEO). But when I attend various entrepreneur groups, or watch pitches for venture capital, it seems that women tend far and away to build service-led businesses, often heavily dependent on the principal’s time, background and continued future involvement and difficult to scale. Whereas the men tend to build products, ideas or applications that can be sold and don’t require the continuous input of the founder over time.

Now to be fair, I have been spending a great deal of time at technology-based pitches of late, so this is strictly anecdotal evidence, and it’s well known that technology is a male dominated field at the moment. But considering that a product based business might be more easily sold down the line, are women shortchanging themselves by creating service-based businesses?

An example, at a recent series of pitches, a male-led team pitched the creation of an app that would allow you to order your favorite drink the minute you entered a crowded club, and have it served to you wherever you were, without having to engage the bartender personally. A female-led group pitched a service creating copy for websites and technology offerings. Regardless of your feelings on instant lager delivery vs. great copy editing, one product was basically a “one and done” item while the other would require quite a bit of ongoing effort to have value in the marketplace that would allow the founder to sell.

I’m not sure if this is the crux of the question on the relative divide on male and female success in the current business climate but it gives me pause. What are your thoughts? What do you see in the marketplace?

P.S. Some great reading on Building a Business to Sell by John Warrilow.

Just Say No

February 27, 2014 by Jeanne Goldie Leave a Comment

Sometimes just saying "no" is the most powerful choice you can make. — Sometimes just saying “no” is the most powerful choice you can make.

Just Say No

What if you could free your day from the “Should do’s” “Ought to do’s” and only focus on the things that really move you towards your goal? What if you said, “This just isn’t going to happen” and crossed it off your “to do” list.

Say no to the networking event that never yields anything.
Cross off the “nice to have” product improvement that is sucking energy and time from your team but wont measurably increase usage or sales.
No, I’m sorry, we’ve done all our pro bono work for this year.
No, we’re not going to pursue that business line.
No, that sales/tech/ superstar just doesn’t fit our culture, lets stop pursuing him/her and find a different solution.
No, I don’t have the bandwidth for that.

What would you get done TODAY if you just said “No”?

But say YES to our free guide “Reading the Terrain” a field guide to understanding the corporate landscape…it may help you understand why your boss is saying NO to something you want to do! Subscribe today.

Admitting Failure, Rewriting the book on Burying Mistakes

February 25, 2014 by Jeanne Goldie Leave a Comment

Admitting Failure, Rewriting the book on Burying Mistakes

This morning I came across the Admitting Failure website. This fantastic site, a collection of well intentioned projects gone wrong, is the brainchild of Engineers without Borders, a volunteer group of Engineers who commit to doing engineering projects around the world. It’s an offshoot of their original “Failure Reports” that they compiled each year to detail projects that had not worked out as planned or not survived after they left.

Most businesses don’t keep “Failure Reports.” Most prefer to bury the mistakes as quickly as possible and move on, so perhaps it’s not unexpected that it took the analytical mind of engineers to not only catalog and categorize their mistakes but actually share them publicly. (By the way, physicians do it too, with their Morbidity and Mortality conferences where they review cases gone wrong). What was particularly interesting was that the public website came out when one of the participating engineers realized that the volunteer teams began to actually look forward to reviewing the annual “Failure Reports” to see what they could do differently.

The format of each story is fairly simple, What you set out to do, what happened, what went wrong, what could you have done differently, what do you do differently now? But inside each one is a world of truth. About setting clear expectations, trusting your gut, not being swayed from a proven success formula by outside pressure to hit a goal, knowing your customer.

We fail. We fail often. For every heartwarming “feel good” success or rocketing business success, there is a landscape littered with failures. The challenge is to learn how to fail forward, so the next time, the learning is faster and moves you to a higher ground.

Looking for a methodology on failing fast? Try Lean Startups by Eric Ries for ideas on how to fail fast and build something designed to be responsive to the market needs.

Want to see if your organization is ready for change? Read “Reading the Terrain” A field guide to the Corporate Landscape. You can get your free copy here.

Pull the Tooth.

February 23, 2014 by Jeanne Goldie

Pull the Tooth.

What aren’t you doing? What are you spending all your time, your energy, your thinking, and inevitably, your business resources, NOT doing?

There’s always one thing. And it takes a ton of time and energy to ignore it, work around it, to sidestep it. We procrastinate, or worse yet, design elaborate ways to avoid doing that one thing.

Maybe you need to cut off the client that makes you crazy. Maybe you need to fire someone. Maybe you need to admit that the plan just isn’t working. Do you need to make a sales call you dread? Remedy a customer situation that went sideways? Tell an employee they’re not cutting it? Find a new supplier? Admit that the big number you’ve kept on the “Accounts Receivable” ledger, just isn’t ever going to be paid?

What would happen if you did it today? Yes, there might be some pain, or even a little bloodshed. But in the end, you’ll be able to focus on what you need to do to go forward. And you will be amazed at all the time, energy and space “pulling the tooth” will free up.

Just do it. Today.

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