The 3 Must Do Priorities for 2009

As you prepare for 2009, here are three universal priorities that will have a significant impact on both you and your company:

1. Focus on Strengths
Instead of hiring more (and extremely difficult to find) surveyors to keep up with the growth, one of our clients focused on making his current surveyors happier and more productive. How?
He took a page from strength guru Marcus Buckingham. I had read his highly successful book, Now, Discover Your Strengths, but had never really understood the power of his ideas until thinking about them in depth.

One of the finest communicators I’ve ever read, Marcus drove home the point that we waste way too much time trying to fix our individual weaknesses and should instead play to our strengths, focusing on activities that energise and make us strong, while finding ways to delegate or eliminate those activities that drain us. To do this, Buckingham suggests taking a couple of weeks and documenting all those activities you either love or loathe (I’m doing this right now as I write this column).

This is precisely what my client has his surveyors do, noting all the activities that are energy draining and keeping them away from their primary strength – surveying. He then compiles this list, eliminates those activities no one should have to do (they creep into every job) and then uses the remaining list to create a job description for a new position. He then finds someone whose strengths and passion matches this combined list of activities. Result – happier, easier to retain, and more productive surveyors while minimising the need to hire more.

2. “Stop Doing” List
A perennial New Year’s exercise, I’ll keep emphasizing the importance of saying “no” so long as I’m writing for and advising leaders of growth firms. As Jim Collins emphasizes in his book Good to Great, we need “stop doing” lists more than we need “start doing” lists.
Along the same vein of Buckingham’s strengths revolution, 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.

As part of your annual planning process, decide on two significant “stop doings” for 2009 – services that need to be eliminated; activities that can be halted; ‘C’ & ‘D’ customers with whom you’ll spend less time; poor performing team members to let go. Anything that’s brining the company down, purge from organisation. Until you close some doors, others can’t open.

3. Three Concrete Objectives
Circling back to Marcus Buckingham he reminded us of the brilliance of New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s clarity of objectives when he first took office. Faced with a city wracked by a myriad of major problems, it would be easy for any leadership team to feel overwhelmed. Yet, 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:
Rid the city of the squeegee guys using 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). Eliminate graffiti from the subways. Make the taxicab drivers wear collared shirts.

In 2009, rather than babble on about generalities like improving customer service or driving revenue or reducing costs, get concrete and specific. Name three specific and measurable changes, like reducing turnaround time from 2 weeks to 5 days, you expect will create a positive chain reaction throughout the organisation.

There you have it: Focus on Strengths; Create “Stop Doing” Lists; and outline Three Concrete Objectives for 2009. Here’s to a profitable and growth-oriented 12 months!