Get Great Results with 3 Simple Ideas for 08/09

This month's top tips come with a little help from the guru himself, Marcus Buckingham. After reading his highly successful book, “Now, Discover Your Strengths” and then seeing a client put Buckingham’s words into practice, I really started to understand the power of his ideas.

Our top tips this month are simple and straightforward and requires some ‘out of the box’ thinking, but they are very powerful and will have a significant impact on both you and your company, once put into use:

1. FOCUS ON STRENGTHS
Quality not quantity – invest in and play to your teams’ strengths.
Instead of wasting valuable time and money on recruiting more Surveyors to keep up with growth, try focussing on making your current employees happier and more productive. By concentrating on activities that energise and make them strong, while simultaneously finding ways to delegate or eliminate those activities that drain them, you will see an immediate improvement in morale, performance and loyalty.

How do you do this you ask? Just like Buckingham suggested, my client had his Surveyors note all the activities that were inhibiting them from their primary strength – Surveying (I am doing this right now as I write this column). He then compiled the list, eliminated those activities no one should have to do and used the remaining list to create a job description for a new position. This allowed him to then find someone whose strengths and passion would thrive within that job, whilst the performance of his existing Surveyors improved ten-fold.

2. CREATE A ‘STOP DOING’ LIST
The importance of simply saying NO.
Two inspirational men agree on this philosophy. Jim Collins, emphasises in his book “Good to Great” that we need “stop doing” lists more so than “start doing” lists. Buckingham’s strength revolution says “if you are unhappy with anything, whatever is bringing you down, get rid of it. Because you’ll find that when you’re free, your true creativity, your true self comes out.”

So, what do you do? Write a ‘stop doing’ list as part of your 08/09 planning session, don’t go overboard, and just pick 3 - 4 significant issues within your business that need addressing.
A ‘stop doing’ list sample:
1. Eliminate services that are unprofitable
2. Cut ties with “C” and “D” list clients that are taking up too much time
3. Let go of poor performing team members
4. Stop activities that are just not worth continuing

Add to your list anything that is inhibiting the company’s performance. Until you close some doors, other doors can’t open.

3. SET THREE CLEAR, CONCRETE AND VISIBLE OBJECTIVES
Simple clear direction can lead to vast improvements.
When planning for the year, it is so easy to be too general and waffle on about high level objectives, for example, improving customer service or reducing costs. This year try to name three specific and measurable changes that will create a positive chain reaction throughout your organisation.
Buckingham again reminds us of this strategy through the brilliance of New York Mayor, Rudy Giuliani’s clarity of objectives when he first took office.
Faced with a city wracked by a myriad of major problems, Giuliani stayed focused and picked one single priority and message – a priority he believed would be the first domino that would create a chain reaction of other good things to happen in the city.

He decided to focus on enforcing the city’s petty crime laws, enacting a “no tolerance” policy; his theory being that hardened criminals start as petty law breakers. Then he got even more specific, outlining three concrete and visible objectives:
1. Rid the city of the squeegee guys who were breaking jaywalking laws (for those unfamiliar with these people, they would linger around tunnel entrances and major intersections and clean your windshield and then expect a tip)
2. Eliminate graffiti from the subways
3. Make the taxicab drivers wear collared shirts
So as you can see, thinking more specific and setting concrete and visible objectives can have a major impact on the rest of your organisation, without wasting time planning a myriad of unachievable objectives.

I can’t emphasise enough the importance of trying these top tips in your Surveying practice. I myself have conducted the above ‘must dos’, so I can say first hand I have put my advice into practice when writing and advising leaders of growth firms. Give it a go and watch the growth in your Surveying practice over the next twelve months.