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The Search for Meaning

I wanted to take this opportunity to share with you a story that I had written in a previous blog almost three years ago. My reason for this is that, in spite of the difficulty we have faced with our economy these past ten years, I think we all still have a lot to be thankful for. Frankly, I couldn’t think of a better way to remind ourselves of that fact than to share this story of Victor Frankl once again. I hope you enjoy it.

Throughout the crazy events sometimes surrounding us, it’s often difficult to find meaning – in effect, to make sense of things that are occurring every day. Victor Frankl was a survivor of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Nazi Germany. Many entered Auschwitz; few survived. Victor Frankl in his book entitled Man’s Search for Meaning explained that the key to survival was that people needed to do six things. There may be some guidance here for us, too.

First, he said, “Realize that the game of life has changed.” Isn’t that applicable today with our worldwide economic situation? As Frankl stated, the old game is over, a new game has begun. That’s true for your industry, as well. We’ve got to operate under a new set of assumptions because the old game is over. Be open to change – it’s already coming!

Second, every day, you must find something beautiful. For Victor Frankl, from his cell, he could see a mountain range. For us, maybe it’s a sunset.

Third, every day, you must find something humorous, something funny. For Frankl, it may have been the way one of the guards walked. As you face the stress of working through any situation, find some humor each day. We all need it.

Fourth, every day, you must find something to be grateful for. Instead of focusing on what you’ve lost or what you don’t have, focus on what you do have; something you are grateful for!

Fifth, every day, you must find some way to be useful. For Victor Frankl, it was helping others by listening to them. What will it be for you? How can you be useful to someone else or to your industry today?

Finally, every day, you must find something to help you prepare for the future – a big goal, for example.  We all need a bigger goal beyond this current experience. For Frankl, what kept him going was his goal to write his book: Man’s Search for Meaning.

As Dan Sullivan, founder of The Strategic Coach organization says, “All progress starts by telling the truth.” So, remember, as Victor Frankl stated, realize the game has changed. We’re in a new experience. The sooner we realize this, the sooner we’ll be able to rise above it. Also, don’t forget the other five steps to success:

Every day, find something:

  • Beautiful
  • Humorous
  • To be grateful for
  • Some way to be useful
  • A reason to prepare for the future – A Goal!

Try this today. I think you’ll be glad you did!!!

 

Wanting What You Want!

I know what you are probably thinking, after reading the title of this blog. Wow, that sounds demanding, perhaps even childish. If so, I have to say that my initial impression was very similar. I can honestly say that because it was a concept that my own business coach Dan Sullivan introduced at a workshop that I attended. Gee, I thought, we spend most of our life being told to be more modest about our specific wants. You know: just cover your basic needs, don’t stand out too much, “Be average…” Instead of being “just one more performer among many,” this concept almost sounded self-centered. But wait!

I started thinking about this more and thought, “No, this isn’t self-centered at all! What else would you want out of life?” If you cannot answer that last question, you have two choices. Either stop reading this blog or give it some very serious consideration. That statement applies if you are a businessman, a sales representative, a service provider to the industry or a stay at home Mom. Being your best will undoubtedly have a more positive impact upon our society and economy (perhaps especially for the stay at home Mom and the great citizens she can create!). You have probably noticed. Generally speaking, do things get better when we all move toward the average? No. They get better when we make big improvements, create new ideas, and build new services! Henry Ford never did a “Focus Group” to see what his customers wanted. If he had, they would have told him they wanted a faster horse.

So, what is the central theme of this “Wanting What You Want” concept? I believe it is really about deciding what you want from your business and life, and then pursuing those objectives. Once you have the goals written down, develop a plan to get there. What steps will you need to take to reach those goals? What obstacles are you facing and what are the options available to overcome them? What is a reasonable deadline for reaching your objectives? Once you have given serious consideration to these items and actually written them down, you are almost there.

What are the primary challenges that we need to overcome in this process? Allow me to provide you with several:

  • 95% of us don’t actually know what we want. As a result, we often spend more time thinking about what we don’t want. So, instead of worrying about the fact that you do not want your banker asking you for more information, why not work on a plan to pay off your loans or, at least, get refinanced at a bank where you will be happier. Either way, you must decide what you want.
  • Society seems to want us to be average. Remember the first time you outscored everyone in your class on an exam? What did most people say to you? “Hey, lighten up. You’re making us look bad…” These forces of average must be overcome. Why not be superior? Outstanding? The first step will be to decide what you want to accomplish and set up the necessary steps to get there!
  • The greatest problem with many folks today is this. They suffer from TOM’S disease. That stands for “Terrified of Missing Something.” As a result, they will try just about anything, in an effort to get ahead. I assure you – you cannot afford this anymore. If you are currently living with the thought that you can, you are headed for big financial challenges…

Here’s the deal. We all know that business is getting tougher, so why not strive to develop a plan of action that will take you closer to your goals. Decide what you want, determine what actions you need to take to reach them, and remember that these can change as you proceed. Set some deadlines for your actions and their related goals, and then measure your results. Most of all, I think it’s perfectly acceptable to “want what you want.” Besides, you aren’t taking anything away from someone else when you seek your own goals. After all, they should have their own objectives. Think about it!

Living on “Someday I’ll…”

I still remember hearing a speech in the early 1990’s by Author Denis Waitley. He talked about how many of us spend a lot of time on “Someday I’ll.” You know the place, as we all do, only too well. As he describes it, “Someday I’ll” is a very comfortable location, where little changes from year to year. Your intentions are to make dramatic improvements in your business or your life, but there always seem to be distractions from the process.

Yes, you have wanted to boost your business’ productivity, but what if costs get too high? Your banker or accountant will be reminding you that you need to cut these costs, if they appear out of line with the rest of your industry. You know that you really should fine tune your labor efficiency somewhat but, “Hey,” you rationalize, “Joe has been with me for 20 years, even when we were barely getting by. I’ve got to keep him on my staff. Maybe ‘Someday I’ll’ be able to improve this cost area, at least by the time Joe retires…”

You know the type of employee I am referring to, don’t you? He is the guy that when you drive onto a business and see him standing around, you ask: “How long have you been working here at ABC?” to which he replies, “Ever since they threatened to fire me.” I think you get my point. It is time to start moving to higher levels.

You may recall the comedian Gilda Radner and her now famous quote: “When I was young, I always said I wanted to be someone. Now that I’m older, I just wish I’d been more specific.” While we find some humor in that quote, what was she saying? Set some new goals for your business. Prepare specific objectives for your operation and measure them regularly.

I often hear about measuring so many objectives in “real time,” and I agree that for some items that may be ideal. However, if an objective isn’t currently being checked weekly or monthly, I seriously doubt if it will get monitored minute by minute. Besides, sometimes we can become overwhelmed with too much information. In my own experience, I find establishing Goals is the first step to reaching them. After that, you should compare your actual results with what you have projected as your objective as often as you reasonably can.

You should make these SMART goals, too. This stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. In other words, they should be clearly defined. They should be something you can measure, yet be something you can, in fact, accomplish. Finally, the goals should represent something that matters to you and your business, as well as an item on which you can put a date by which you will accomplish it. I also suggest that we all need to be careful that we don’t set the horizon as our goal, because, have you noticed, it constantly keeps moving further away, and, eventually, you will get frustrated because you never can “reach it.”

What are some areas within which you can set goals and then monitor your results? How about Labor Productivity, e.g. how many units you produce per hour of labor input? What I find interesting is that if you get your entire Team involved in setting these goals, as well as monitoring them, your overall results can accelerate. Your Team will be excited about reaching them, primarily because you communicated these goals with them.

Sound ongoing communication will be the key in this process. Your employees realize that if you do better, they will benefit as well. I believe that most employees do not go to work, intending to do a bad job. They want to succeed, and, in reality, they want you to do better, too. Sharing goals with your Team will guide them to help you reach them more quickly. At least, this has been my experience. Make a point of setting some new goals for your business today, so you don’t get caught living on “Someday I’ll.”

To learn more about the points mentioned above, check out my website for financial tips at: www.success-strategies.com.

“There are no unreasonable goals, just unreasonable deadlines.”

Dan Sullivan, Founder of The Strategic Coach

 

Is it Time to Automate More of Your Business?

Have you started to automate your business yet? Before you say “No,” consider some positive areas that you’re probably not thinking about. Do you manage the finances of your business using a program like QuickBooks or are you still tracking everything with paper and pencil?

When you are considering an investment in new equipment or updated facilities, do you still study this potential purchase and its expected returns on a sheet of paper, writing only by hand? Perhaps you do this initially, but I expect that before long you are using Excel or at least a calculator. If you run a successful, growing dairy operation, are you still using paper based cow cards or have you adopted software like Dairy Comp 305?

If you answered “Yes” on any of these questions, you have already started to automate parts of your business. Whether you currently operate a dairy operation, a farming business or any other type of entity, it’s time to consider additional steps toward automation.

I regularly hear Clients saying that labor costs are rising or that potential employees are becoming less available. These two factors and the basic economics of labor efficiencies will eventually dictate more automation. I am fatigued by the ongoing discussions of the political ramifications of the U.S. lacking a positive immigration policy. Maybe this lack of supply goes beyond just that factor. Could it be that the labor supply & demand is changing in its balance, nine years after the “Great Recession?”

Further evidence of the possible need for more automation is “Skills Availability.” I was recently in a store when its registers went down. Fortunately, I was paying cash, so I could be processed okay, but… getting the correct change was another story, not exactly a testimonial to the math skills being taught in our schools today.

Here’s an idea. Start to look for items in every sector of your business that you can automate. It will pay in almost every area within which you can boost your efficiencies. If your business is the type of operation that can be “commoditized” or produced elsewhere, be cautioned that you could become a target for competition. This is just one more reason to get more efficient through automation.

Need another incentive? A recent article in Peter Diamondis’ newsletter, Abundance Insider, was entitled “Tax the Rich and the Robots? California’s Thinking About It.” A member of the Board of Supervisors for the City of San Francisco has launched the “Jobs of the Future Fund” to help California offset the societal effects of more automation. As their website describes it, “As workers are displaced, the companies continue to pay a portion of the lost tax into a fund that can then be used for education, retraining, and targeted investments in new industries.”

I thought that was why we already paid taxes, to educate and train future employees… This, in my mind, is just another reason to start to automate more. Perhaps, we can get “grandfathered” in before the Jobs of the Future Fund and its followers levy a tax on all new automation.

So, as I asked last month — if I was to ask you about your present and future labor efficiencies, how would you respond? How many units of production does your work-force produce daily? Is it more than five years ago? Are there opportunities for automation in your processes? Can you use robotics to your advantage? Even in my own business, I have started to offer more “automated services” for Clients and I believe it is the wave of the future.

I have two Clients who have expanded their dairies, and, as they added free stall barns, rather than building a new milking barn for huge money, they continued to use their older milk barn and simply add robotic set-ups in their new facilities. It’s just a different approach to expanding and applying automation without “breaking the bank.”

Please visit us at www.success-strategies.com for future updates on their automation. You may just find tools in our Financial Analysis section that you can use to evaluate your own efficiencies!

“Leave the Crown in the Garage”

In a moment, I will explain the title of this Next Level Thinking blog, but I wanted to start by sharing with you the thoughts of a business leader, whose work I recently read about on LinkedIn. Her name is Indra Nooyi, and she is the Chairman & CEO of PepsiCo. In the article, she described the seven critical lessons she has learned for running her company. I felt you might be interested in learning these, too. Here they are:

  • “Everyone needs a vision.” – When she became CEO of PepsiCo, she decided that she wanted to bring a new sense of meaning to the work she and her employees did every day. With this in mind, she added that, in order to continue recruiting and retaining world class talent, they needed to meet the changing expectations of a new generation of employees. Sound familiar? I know it’s getting tougher to hire top talent in many industries, and the key will be to provide your Team with a vision that not only illustrates the direction of your business, but also inspires your employees to make it a reality. Are your people inspired?
  • “Think hard about time.” – By introducing these new programs, she felt they were now focusing not just on the short term, but on the long term as well. For many in agriculture, for example, 2015-2016 have been financially devastating years. Yet, this is an excellent time to think long term. Are you looking ahead and doing all that you can to boost your efficiencies for the long haul?
  • “Ensure that culture change sticks.” – Whenever you initiate programs that change items in your business management, you can expect to face resistance. To minimize this factor, be sure that you are getting “buy-in” from your Team. You will undoubtedly need their support, so be certain that you send them a clear & positive message.
  • “Listen carefully.” – I’m sure you’ve heard the expression about each of us having one mouth and two ears, meaning that we should listen twice as much as we speak. Believe me. I’m guilty as anyone of violating this rule. However, the point I want to share here is that often there are people in your business who have great suggestions on how to do things differently, often in ways that are far better than how we currently complete them… My question for you is this. Are you truly listening to their suggestions?
  • “Be a student for life.” – Do any of us know it all? Of course not. In all my business travels, I grasp every opportunity I can to learn more about how other people do certain tasks in business. Trust me – flying over 100,000 miles a year will provide you with plenty of lessons about how you should (& sometimes how not to) do numerous tasks in business. Are you learning new things daily? I offer you a suggestion: Please take a moment and visit success-strategies.com where you will find new items, such as articles, blogs and videos, posted every week. And, the good news is that many of them are free!
  • “People are everything.” – I wish someone had told some of my prior “bosses” this. Your Team is one key to your success. Be sure to thank your people when they do things well. A “Congratulations” today will lead people to back you up when the going gets tough, and at some point, it gets difficult for all of us.
  • “Leave the crown in the garage.” – Now for the explanation on the blog title above. Indra, the day she was promoted to President of PepsiCo, went home and told her Mother, who was visiting, that she had a big announcement. Her Mom told her that was great, but first she needed to go to the store and buy some milk. She went to the store, and then told her Mom the great news. She said that was great, “but when you step into this house, you’re a wife and a mother first. Nobody can take that place. So, leave that crown in the garage.”

Her point was that we all have to determine our priorities, so she reminds us to never forget the multiple important roles that we play. I’m often reminded that all our employees have lives beyond their job responsibilities. I am sure you’ll agree that these roles are essential to their overall success, too.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these seven crucial lessons from Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo, and that you will find a solid application for some or all of them in your company. Remember, it’s your business!

Banking on a New Future

I wanted to share with you an excerpt of an article written by marketing expert Seth Godin, simply because I believe it has a powerful message, one that could serve as a sound directive to get our industry and, more specifically, our businesses back on track in so many ways. I hope you enjoy his thoughts, which fit any industry:

“New polling out this week shows that Americans are frustrated with the world and pessimistic about the future. They’re losing patience with the economy, with their prospects, with their leaders (of both parties).

What’s actually happening is this: we’re realizing that the industrial revolution is fading. The 80 year long run that brought ever-increasing productivity (and along with it, well-paying jobs for an ever-expanding middle class) is ending.

It is one thing to read about the changes the internet brought, it’s another to experience them. People who thought they had a valuable skill or degree have discovered that being an anonymous middleman doesn’t guarantee job security. Individuals who were trained to comply and follow instructions have discovered that the deal is over… and it isn’t their fault, because they’ve always done what they were told.

This isn’t fair of course. It’s not fair to train for years, to pay your dues, to invest in a house or a career (or business) and then suddenly see it fade.

For a while, politicians and organizations promised that things would get back to normal. Those promises aren’t enough, though, and it’s clear to many that this might be the new normal. In fact, it is the new normal.”

 

As I said in my first book A Roadmap for Success written in 2005, “Welcome to the Age of Possibilities.” Just as Seth Godin points out in his article above, the rules have changed. Is it fair? No. Is it pleasant? Not really, but it’s all we’ve got. It truly is where we currently reside in the management of our businesses, amidst uncertainty with a number of moving parts and variables that can often surprise us. I would suggest that we can no longer depend on politicians to help us out. Some things they complete are helpful, but we need to become more refined in our approach to business.

My suggestion is that we all need to focus on achieving greater efficiencies. In a recent discussion with one dairy industry Client of mine, he suggested that our primary focus should be on achieving greater Feed Efficiency and Labor Efficiency. Are you maximizing how much milk you are producing for each pound of Dry Matter that you are feeding your herd? How efficient is your labor force? If they have less to accomplish on their shift, do they simply move slower to “fill in the rest of their 8 or 10 hours?

Consider that there is a reason that more and more fast food restaurants are going to a fully automated ordering process. Even at mid-price restaurants like Olive Garden, they are offering mini-computer terminals at their tables, so you can order & then pay for your meal without using a waiter or waitress… It is a prime example of those businesses attempting to achieve improved labor efficiencies, partly in response to rising minimum wage laws and maybe, at least in part, due to a reduced availability of workers. Can you relate to that recently developed challenge?

So, if I was to ask you about your present and future labor efficiencies, how would you respond? How many units of production does your work-force produce daily? Is it more than five years ago? Are there opportunities for automation in your processes? Can you use robotics to your advantage? Even in my own business, I have started to offer more “automated services” for Clients and Prospects. I believe it is the wave of the future.

On July 31, 2017, our completely redesigned website at Success Strategies, Inc. went live, so take a look at our new monthly Success Videos and Tele-Seminars, which will be listed under our Financial Techniques at www.success-strategies.com. Take a moment and view a free sample video within the Success Videos section today. This is all new material, and, in conjunction with our Financial Analysis Tools included there, it might just be what you need to evaluate your own efficiencies!