How will you do in 2012?  I think the key to your business’s success is pretty simple.  It all comes down to execution.

For many, this is easier said than done.  You’re either  going to dig deep inside and turn the switch from pilot light to ON or you will move through 2012 with a lot of talk about what you need to do.

Step 1:  Ignite the pilot light

Step 2:  Turn the switch to on

Step 3:  Prepare for lift off

Step 4:  Set your sights on immediate short-term success

Step 5:  Move quickly to get your first win

Step 6:  Celebrate each victory with your team

Step 7:  Implement your next strategy

Step 8:  Repeat steps 4-7!

With each success, you will find the fire building within.  Capitalize on this momentum.  Plan on less talking about “it” and more doing “it” as you walk down the path you desire.

Until next time…soar to new heights with your flame aglow and leave the hot air behind.

When it comes to priorities, sometimes it feels like we are constantly trying to balance on a teetering see-saw with an unpredictable person on the other end.

This out of balance feeling seems to be impacting everyone lately from businesses to individuals. We are all under constant pressure to do more, to give back, to network, to Tweet, to eat slow food. We don’t want to be the lone slacker so we do more and more every day.  But we soon find ourselves doing fewer things well (and waiting a long time for our dinner).

The solution, in my opinion, is clarity. If we will individually and collectively take a rest from doing and spend a little more time contemplating, we will be in a better position to identify the things that really matter. We need a sense of purpose that helps us prioritize not only our daily activities but also our corporate goals and objectives.

At BDCo, we have gotten some great insights from thinking about and articulating our firm’s purpose, which we call our “Why” statement. The idea came from Simon Sinek’s book, Start with Why. The idea is a simple one but its power is quite amazing. Just by staying focused on those things that matter most, you start making better decisions.  It happens when you start thinking about your core beliefs and then look for others who share them.

We have seen this approach make a difference in wineries, in charitable and civic organizations, and in businesses of every sort. But it starts with each one of us as individuals. Take a few minutes to first define your personal beliefs and then think about actions you can take each day in  support of those beliefs.  How do your personal beliefs line up with those of your company? What can you do today that gives you a sense of passion?

Define your beliefs and then use them to set priorities. I believe in you. 

Why is it that young pups believe the next big customer lies just around the corner?  What’s not to love about this optimism?  For in it exists the creative drive often needed to reach people. 

I just read a report that said social media had no impact on retail sales.  Does this mean we should all abandon SM?  Of course not.  SM is still very young and there is a lot to be learned.  I would argue that SM is a unique platform for connecting with people.  More importantly, it is a place for those who share a common interest to stay connected with you.  Strengthening your relationship with existing customers is going to be more profitable than trying to lure the next guest to your website to purchase wine. 

We have all seen the impact television can have on influencing consumers with one-way communication.  Imagine the impact your winery can have when a dialog is formed.  This is where I believe the real power of SM lies for the small business.  Learning how to keep this channel open and active with interesting conversations will be the challenge.  What do you think?

Until next time…make sure you know what you’re hunting.

They have functions and formulas and fonts.  They offer symmetry and order – all of the things that matter to accountants. When we’re feeling creative, we can apply conditional formatting to any spreadsheet cells that deserve a little extra color. We can auto-filter our way through a massive list of details to find only the pertinent information. We can sort a list of values so  the largest dollar amounts are at the top. We can combine strings of text to make other strings and we can turn data into tables.

We can autosum to create a total that we then underline in just the correct way (single line above, double line below). We can add comments and images.  We can modify the precision of any number that we display (to add or remove decimals) and we can add a “$” whenever one is needed.

And best of all, if we make a mistake while living in our spreadsheet world, we can use the undo button.

So how might we use our new Microsoft Excel-lent Brain? Imagine being able to auto-filter all of the information you receive in the course of a day. You could just click a triangle in your brain to pull out only the positive feedback and filter out the negative. You could color code all of the really important images that pass your visual cortex so you could always locate your car keys. You could sort out the most important tasks from the meaningless ones, and keep track of your food by caloric impact. Every time you spend money, you would see the total of your expenditures in a single column with properly applied commas and decimal places.

If you say the wrong thing, you would just apply the undo button or choose not to save the file. And then there’s the autorecover feature…

To learn more about some of these Excel features and others that would be useful brain features, join us for a free “Eat and excel*” gathering on May 13th.

*The cool name for our gathering, ”eat and excel” was provided by Debi Cali at Baldacci Vineyards. I am pretty sure there were creativity-enhancing spirits involved in the creation of the title.

Growing up as a kid my family referred to me as “Mr. Neg”.  I didn’t see the glass as half-full but really questioned whether the glass would be there for future use.  Boy, what a joy it was to hang out with me.  Many years have passed since then and I have gained a greater appreciation of how my perspective impacts those around me. 

Now you might be thinking, “Gee Craig, what a revelation. What took you so long?”  and I respond yep, you’re right!  Recognizing your short comings is one thing, changing is another.  So here is my point:

Each of us leaves an impression with those that we interact with.  We have a choice to create a positive or negative impact.  The ripple effect will continue throughout the day for not only you but those you communicate with. 

I now choose to have my interactions with others to be a positive experience.  I admit this can be a real challenge for Mr. Neg but I have seen the impact and know it’s worth the effort.

Until next time…what is your perspective?

How it works.
Recently I found a great example of “nudging” behavior at the Napa Valley Vintners offices. We were teaching a class there and had served food and beverages. We were cleaning up the food items and went into the kitchen to throw away the trash. 

That’s when we had to make a decision – we had to choose between two different ways of disposing of our waste:

Option A – Recycle

Option B – Don’t recycle
 

Here’s what struck me about this setup — it was the words they chose on each of the bins:

Option A was to  ”Recycle” . It made you feel good to do the right thing.  

Look at the wording for Option B. They didn’t label the second bin “trash” or “garbage.” They labeled it “Landfill”. I had a visceral response to that word. I could barely force myself to put anything in that bin. Who wants to be the horrible person responsible for adding to a landfill? Your natural inclination is to avoid that bin at all costs.  The word creates a powerful visual image in your mind and motivates you to put as much as you can into the recycling bin. 

What they didn’t do
They didn’t need a single sign encouraging me to recycle. There weren’t lists of what qualifies and what doesn’t. There was no hall monitor watching to report any garbage infractions. They inspired me to do the right thing. One simple word choice made all the difference. Kudos to the smart person at the Napa Valley Vintners who took the time to think about the little things.

How can you make it easier for people to choose to do the right thing in your company?

After noticing that the surname of the “stranger” was the same as that of Maria Bonde Hollenstein’s brother-in-law,  I responded that, yes, I was their great-great granddaughter. Since then, a delightful correspondence has sprung up between me and my fourth cousin who, I have now learned,  is a teacher with a toddler and lives in Idaho.

In the process,  I have put her in touch with my other internet contact from my Danish ancestors and they are putting their heads together too.  We are women of three different generations descended from Danish immigrants who lived in Arizona a long time ago.  We are working together from three different states towards the common goal of knowing a bit more about some of our ancestors.  It kind of boggles my mind when I stop to think about it.

Maria Bonde Hollenstein

Although we may never actually meet face to face, we have reached out to each other via the social media network and the connection has been nothing short of magical.  I can hardly  wait for the next e-mail from either of my new friends or, dare I hope, from another connection on the ghost network.

Being (more than) a bit of an introvert, I put myself on the internet in a very modest sort of way, yet the unexpected returns that I have experienced have been incredible.  It really does boggle my mind to consider the returns that a carefully orchestrated social media campaign could yield.

Something to think about…

But there are a couple of stretches on the road where I pay extra attention to my driving speed.

It has to do with these signs.

This gets my attention.

Not only do these signs get my attention, they  also cause me to change behavior. I actually try to reduce my speed to get under the posted speed limit.  I enjoy seeing the relationship between my actions (putting pedal to the metal) and the digital numbers on that sign. I am motivated by information and by the connection between my behavior and the resulting outcomes.

Compare my  response to the top sign with my response to the speed limit sign below.  

This doesn’t get my attention.

I probably don’t notice this sign.  I may glance around to see if there is actual enforcement in the area, but generally these signs don’t get me to change behavior. Potential punishment does not effectively motivate me to change behavior.

Now let’s consider what might happen if I were offered a small reward for going the speed limit or less. Do you think I would pay more attention if I passed this sign on Highway 12?

Will this sign get my attention? Will it make me change my behavior?

I may pay attention to this sign, because it’s certainly unusual. I doubt it will make me adjust my speed for long.

How would each of these different approaches work for you?

Now take these ideas and apply them to your team, your staff, and your co-workers. Which of these three methods have you applied when trying to change behavior? Most of us use either rewards or punishment to drive our teams to take certain actions. 

What if you tried giving people more immediate feedback? Tie their actions to the outcomes you are measuring. Show them how they move the needle by capturing one more e-mail address for your database, by adding one more bottle of Cabernet Sauvignion to each tasting room sale, or by connecting with one more twitter fan.  Give individual actions meaning by showing each person how they contribute to the big picture.

Motivation is not always about money. Sometimes it just takes a couple of blinking lights.

Millions of tiny details are the reason one bottle of wine scores 92 points and another scores 89.  If the world was simpler, our choices would be  black or white, on or off, true or false, and there would be no need to have 51 pages on Wikipedia devoted to shades of red.  Sometimes the difference between two choices  is hard to identify and the impact is subtle, but other times it is obvious.  Even an untrained eye can tell the difference between a glass of  wine that is  ”Candy Apple Red” and one that is ”Cerise”.

I have been struggling with one particular detail since I first began working with the team at Brotemarkle Davis. It’s their almost maniacal insistence on referring to the people we serve as “customers” instead of “clients”.  

My career began in 1982 as a staff accountant with Deloitte.  Lesson one, day one in new staff training was about removing all references to the word “customer” from my vocabulary.  The only time you were allowed to use the word “customer” was in reference to someone who was listed on a client’s Accounts Receivable Aging report. Those people who owed debts to our clients were “customers”.  We had “clients”.

And now this firm is taking the reverse approach. 

BDCo  says the term “client“ reflects a traditional CPA firm view that people and organizations represent repeat business that will automatically return year after year, regardless of the level of service they receive. Customers, on the other hand, evaluate our services every time they visit.  We have to work hard to earn the right to work with customers year after year. We want to treat people as customers rather than clients.

Because I am slow to change,  I shall keep using the wrong terminology and shall keep getting back corrected e-mails, blog posts, invites, and FaceBook entries, while everyone here continues to treat people like customers.

And the devil shall keep popping up in my copy in his favorite scarlet cape.

It’s a simple enough statement. But it wasn’t clear.

At first, I was disappointed. It seemed they had a limited schedule.  But after a second, I realized they were open all week – every day but Tuesday. 

Who decided to list their open days in this fashion? And why was it hard for me to translate the days when they were presented this way? We are programmed to view a week from Sunday to Saturday, so I was required to make a mental translation in order to make sense of the information.  If I hadn’t taken that extra second, I might not have realized that the museum was open on Sunday, when I planned to visit.

So what’s the point? Words are important. Your arrangement of words when you form sentences can change their meaning. Take time to review your written word. Think before you speak. Strive to be clear when you communicate. Be efficient with your words and re-read that e-mail before you push the send button.

How many other ways could we describe the museum’s schedule ?

• “Open weekends and weekdays (except Tuesday). “
• “Open every day but Tuesdays.”
• “Open weekdays except Tuesday and all weekend.”
• Here’s how it appears on the website : “10 a.m. 5 p.m. daily, Closed Tuesdays and major holidays.”

Which one is easiest for you to understand? What about visitors from other countries, which version is easiest to translate?