We strongly encourage all the entrepreneurs we work with to go through our LifePlan retreat. Getting clear on the life they are intended to live is a crucial first step in having the clarity and conviction it takes to get their business working for them. Once they have their ideal life in clear focus, doing the work it takes to re-engineer their business to support that life becomes a foregone conclusion…
The organizations you lead and the roles you play there, should support and fulfill the purpose for your life, not the other way around. More often than not, we see leaders completely unaware of their calling or purpose other than what their vocational role might dictate.
It is our contention that you are not only created for a particular purpose, but that your Creator desperately wants you to know what it is. The clues are written on your heart, have been evident throughout your life, and are fully embodied in the things that bring you greatest joy, deepest pain, and get you out of bed in the morning.
When I look at the life of Jesus, for instance, He seemed to only do and say what the Father told him. In fact, He routinely walked past the opportunity to do good, because He seemed to be called to other places and things. Often that thing was simply spending more time alone with the Father.
As a Christian, it is hard to look past the opportunity to do good. As a Type-A person who has spent a lot of time trying to do good things for God, I’ve had to come to the sobering reality that God would rather have me do a few things with Him than do a lot of good things apart from Him.
This is the time of year, when hope springs eternal. With 365 days (minus about 25 now), we can accomplish almost anything. But in the chaos of the tyranny of the urgent, even the best laid plans we’ve made begin to fade. Like sets of endless waves crashing on the beach, the day to day issues we face in our lives and enterprise, can begin to wear us down.
It is the beginning of a new year and every intentional leader I talk to is hoping that 2016 will be different than 2015. They’re seeing the new year as a grand opportunity to chart a course toward a different future. Believing that maybe this is the year where a sense of team emerges, their biggest challenges and frustrations get addressed, and they have a huge celebration at the end of the year to celebrate all they’ve accomplished.
Jesus spent the last few crucial years of his earthly ministry pouring into a group of seemingly incapable chuckleheads. He emptied His cup into them so that they could advance the Kingdom of God here of earth. He took a group of men likely less capable than the current leadership of our organizations and handed over a mission far more important than anything we are doing. I am little embarrassed by how hard I find it is to do the same.
I was hanging out with some new Australian friends doing some coach training in Portland, OR last week. When talking about distraction, we both simultaneously uttered the word "squirrel." As I reflected this morning on the juxtaposition of their situation and ours, I was reminded of Paul’s charge to the Philippians. It really is an issue of focus and perspective. It is about not being distracted by what has happened before, but keeping a razor-sharp focus on where you are headed.
1. Find Your Passion With These 8 Thought-Provoking Questions
Warren Berger, author of A More Beautiful Question, collected the provocative questions top designers, tech innovators, and entrepreneurs ask themselves to spark creativity.
2. Here's Why Conflict is Actually Good for Business
Workplace disagreements and squabbles aren't just inevitable, turns out--they can also help your business.
3. Welcome To The Purpose Economy
How can we create an entire economy geared toward good? Focusing on personal, social, and societal purpose.
4. The Difference Between What You "Should" Do And What You "Must" Do
If you aren't doing what you love, it's time to examine your ideas about calling, career, and how to chase both toward success.
5. Stop Being So Nice. It's Hurting Your Company
As much as you may want to be liked, when it comes to dealing with underperforming employees and other sticky business situations, you need to be firm and decisive.
6. The Benefits of Being Managed
I’m certainly not suggesting that a leader abdicate responsibility for running his or her organization. And I’m not advocating some sort of democratic structure of checks and balances that limits the authority of a CEO. That’s the purpose of a board of directors. What I’m talking about is leaders knowing that there are times and situations in which they should be accountable, even subordinate, to the people they lead.
7. Why Incentives Don't Actually Motivate People to Do Better Work
As it turns out, workplace incentives don't necessarily create harder working employees.
8. How To Create A Workplace People Love Coming To
Glassdoor recently announced their sixth annual Employees' Choice Awards, which uses employee ratings to determine the top 50 places to work. Here's how to create a workplace your people will love to be in--and want to work hard for.
9. How to Talk to Your Employees About Compensation
Discussing pay can be uncomfortable. Here's how to make the conversation easier and more productive.
10. The Compelling Case for Giving Employees More Freedom
Allowing employees more room to roam makes them happier and more productive. Here's how it worked for one 10,000-person company.
Click Here to view SummitTrek's 2014 Top Reads digital magazine (articles added monthly) via Flipboard on your computer, tablet or smartphone (iOS or Android). Don't forget to hit Subscribe (upper left corner) once you open the magazine on your tablet or smartphone.
There is a life intended beyond the one we know and finding that is more assaulted than anything else I’ve ever known. You could almost recast that verse to say that because Jesus came to offer us abundant life, our enemy is waiting to destroy us. For if you can find the life coherent to the one He uniquely created and intended for you to live, everything changes. It is the game changer of all game changers.
I may have a hope in the coming Kingdom that my Albanian acquaintance, Mirjeta, didn’t appear to have, but she has a cornerstone experience that is essential to all of us who believe. We were born into a world at war and we will live all of our days there. The context of that reality in the story we live in, makes it all the more brilliant and easier to understand.
1. Management Tips From A Boss Who Actually Gives A Damn
Listening to your people--and following up on what you hear with empathy--could be the key to leadership success.
2. 3 Ways To Handle Criticism Like A Pro--And Actually Grow From It
Be Smart about the way you ask for feedback and you'll quickly realize you can't live or learn without it. Here's how to ask the right questions and get the answers you need.
3. 8 Easy Ways to Be an Extraordinary Boss
High-class leadership means doing both the little and the big things necessary for your employees to flourish. Here's where to start.
4. How To Combat A Ridiculous Work Schedule And Stop Feeling So Overwhelmed
What's mental breathing space? Exactly what you're missing.
5. How to Masterfully Explain Online Why Your Stuff Costs So Much
Embrace the subject of pricing. Whether it’s digital or in a face-to-face conversation, you’ve got to change the way you talk about this subject if you want to overcome the concerns of your prospect and earn their business. And like Tom BIHN, embrace who you are. Embrace what makes you special.
6. If You Can Solve This Equation, You're Ready To Build Your Brand
Driving brand innovation is not easy, but it is simple--solve the Innovation Equation and your brand will grow.
7. The Big Problem with the Phrase “Add Value” in Content Marketing
So do yourself a favor. Don’t listen to the naysayers. Don’t pay attention to the internet police. Don’t allow your art—however you create it—to be squelched by those who feel they’ve been assigned the job of defining a phrase that simply has no tangible definition in the first place.
8. What Shake Shack Knows About Growth that McDonald’s Has Forgotten
The idea that organizational growth comes from doing a few things well is popular and proven. But debate remains on how to direct your firm’s focus as you grow.
9. Why It's So Hard to Turn Fickle Millennials Into Leaders
In an era of job hopping and fast rises, how do you turn young talent into leadership?
10. Yes, You Do Have Time To Mentor--Here's How To Make The Most Of It
Mentoring is a way to be smart about investing in your future. Here's how to fit it into your busy life.
Click Here to view SummitTrek's 2014 Top Reads digital magazine (articles added monthly) via Flipboard on your computer, tablet or smartphone (iOS or Android). Don't forget to hit Subscribe (upper left corner) once you open the magazine on your tablet or smartphone.
It is in living the transformed life you were uniquely created to live where God’s glory is most manifest. It is the catalyst for others in our world as we “unconsciously give others permission to the do the same”. I would say that a little stronger: Our living the life we were meant to live makes it incontrovertible for them to live any other life. It is highly disruptive to the status quo.
In both small business management and consulting work, sitting in front of a whiteboard (and sometimes a flip chart) is a familiar occurrence. A blank whiteboard holds the potential for endless possibility and the sobriety of painful truths. It should also allow clear room for our Father to speak. May it be that the power of interpretation in our lives be sourced more from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit than our own mind, will, or emotions.
Once we have walked through that doorway and eternity is procured; our enemy has lost that war. The battle lines, however, get redrawn. Our enemy now comes to steal, kill, and destroy the abundant life purchased for us. So that we don’t live in the victory, joy, and the fulfillment afforded all of us. In order that we might walk in the quiet desperation that wouldn’t attract any others to join us for that ultimate prize.
We hear lots of talk these days about the power of “storytelling”—and why it’s so critical for businesses and brands as we continue to rush forth in the digital age. But like so much of this other stuff we yap about in the marketing and branding realm, storytelling has always been important. It has been the essence of the greatest and most successful communicators since the beginning of man.
As the owner, do you also think of yourself as a coach? Embracing this part of your role - to help your people grow while your business does - is more important than ever before. Because even if they don't always say so, everyone on your team wants the same thing: to feel that their work mattered today, to you and to them.
No great strategy was born without careful thought. That’s why the process of planning a strategy itself is an important vehicle for setting priorities, making investment decisions, and laying out growth plans. But for many companies, the activity has devolved into either an overexplained budget or just bad amateur theater – lots of costumes in the form of analysis, charts, and presentations – but with very little meaningful substance that can be translated into action.
Help them make real-world connections, and make it fruitful for the mentor, too.
Managing employees is not easy, and for the most part, human resource policies in large organizations are designed to simplify things. But sometimes, in their tendency to focus on risks and avoid worse-case abuses, these policies serve to discourage supervisors from doing what makes sense. By allowing workers more control over the “work” part of their lives, direct supervisors can help them achieve the balance they need to meet both work and family commitments.
Why is customer experience so difficult to get right? The main hurdle is translating boardroom vision into action at the front line. That’s even more important in an era when optimizing individual customer touchpoints is no longer enough —when you have to focus on holistic customer journeys, instead.
Employee mentoring starts with accepting the real responsibility that lies in having authority and influence over someone else’s paycheck, not to mention the rest of their day. That’s why it’s one of the most essential components in our coaching curriculum.
If you want to build a culture of accountability in your team, you need to set the example and be more accountable yourself. Get started with these four simple tips.
You have to integrate the behaviors you want into your team’s daily routines in order to normalize those behaviors within the organization’s culture. If feedback is something that happens only at unusual times (such as a performance review or when something’s gone wrong), it’ll never really be an organic part of the organizational culture. It has to show up in everyday life — on a walk down the hallway, at the end of a meeting, over a cup of coffee.
The start of a new year is always a great time to think about what we want to see happen in the coming year, and to resolve to pursue those objectives more actively. If you have been feeling torn between resolutions to exercise more and to be a better working parent or spouse, then this should come as great news: You can do both.
Click Here to view SummitTrek's 2014 Top Reads digital magazine (articles added monthly) via Flipboard on your computer, tablet or smartphone (iOS or Android). Don't forget to hit Subscribe (upper left corner) once you open the magazine on your tablet or smartphone.
It is the opportunity to not just exist, but to have a life worth living. To be a change agent for the lives of others. It is what lies at the end of the rainbow. It is what we were created for. It is our mantle and heritage. It is the secret and sometimes desperate heart cry of all mankind. It is the world’s one great hope. But rather than requiting that deep desire, we seek to anesthetize it with all manner of ridiculousness. We are consumed with less-wild lovers when the one great Lover of our Souls, and His great mission here on earth, await.
Sometimes we are blowing it and the Lord does choose to not come to our rescue at times, but we also have an enemy set against the beloved of God. Our opposer has come to steal, kill, and destroy those that would claim citizenship in the Kingdom of God. Sometimes the frustration and confusion we find is rooted there. A good interpretive grid of spiritual warfare not only helps you interpret the situation, but will help lead you to resolution.
“And once you live a good story, you get a taste for a kind of meaning in life, and you can’t go back to being normal; you can’t go back to meaningless scenes stitched together by the forgettable thread of wasted time.” Donald Miller
One of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite authors. Donald seems to clearly understand that once you get a clear mission set in front of you, all other things seem to fade into relative insignificance. His Storyline conferences inspire individuals to write a better story with their lives. The things you once worried about might even be found laughable in contrast to one really true and significant thing.
While this is obviously true for individual lives, it is no less true for organizations. A collaborative of individuals, organized around a transcendent mission, can find momentum, clarity, and purpose in focusing on one great imperative. Clear and obvious examples can be found in sports or the military, moving toward championships or a targeted mission.
The digital must serve the physical, must support a real human experience that is truly remarkable. The digital era demands not only a vision for what’s possible right now but an equal focus on the timeless basics. Is your business ready to get physical in order to succeed in a digital world?
How do you find focus in a world that is noisy and chaotic? While it's easy to blame technology and co-workers, the answer might be found in the mirror.
The world is filled with forgettable brands. Outrageous claims. Overly designed logos. How will your brand stand out in the new year?
Compassionate coaches are not just positive cheerleaders but also committed guides, conscious of the state and progress of their team and the individuals in it. They are also timely provocateurs, offering the right dose of tough love when necessary.
We aren’t born with a good reputation -- it’s something we earn over time. And the same rings true for your business. Your brand isn’t necessarily just a product of your marketing efforts and the messages that you put out to the world. It goes deeper than that. In fact, it’s based more off of what your customers and prospects believe about what you offer and stand for over anything else.
Entrepreneurs are always busy. But being effective is another story.
In the short-term, it’s almost always easier to avoid conflict and come across as being a “nice” manager. But more often than not, being a little less nice might be the best thing for your people, your organization, and you.
It's not enough to just ask for feedback once. Research shows that the most effective leaders also follow one rule: Get lots of feedback.
The number one driver of whether a habit change is a success or not is how big the initial goal is. Everyone, if they're consistent, will eventually achieve something massive. But the people that end up failing are the people trying to achieve overnight success.
Creative work takes a lot of time. And if you don't consciously set aside that time, it won't happen. That means finding balance and setting boundaries.
Click Here to view SummitTrek's 2014 Top Reads digital magazine (articles added monthly) via Flipboard on your computer, tablet or smartphone (iOS or Android). Don't forget to hit Subscribe (upper left corner) once you open the magazine on your tablet or smartphone.
The critically acclaimed television show “Mad Men” is set in New York City. According to the show, the term “mad men” was created by the advertising executives themselves from their offices located on Madison Avenue. The series takes place in the early sixties when Americans still largely believed everything they heard and saw, especially through the major media channels.
The series walks us through the cultural shift from taking most things at face value to the questioning of nearly everything in the late 60′s. Political scandal, uncertainty of war, and changing social mores, all played into a general sense of innocence lost. America was now a long way from “your word is your bond” and only doing business with people you knew on a handshake.
Thoughtful leaders are truly respected. Here are six traits that make them so admired.
Taken as a whole, many small actions can strengthen someone’s foundation or they can tear them down. The Gallup survey suggests that there is more erosion than building of the human spirit happening in the American workplace. Be someone who builds others up rather than tears them down. Little things matter in a big way.
Mentorship isn't a one-way street. And it doesn't happen only from the top down. Learn this and you could see greater employee engagement and less turnover.
You need to be intentional about your brand. Your brand statement is a means for you to communicate within your company the core of what your customers will feel about your company.
This year, use your strategic planning process the way the Lords of Strategy intended: To change the things you do so that you can change the results you achieve.
Don't rush the hiring process, and four other top tips for growing the right way.
Research shows you'll do better work if you take more down time.
"We're sorry" is a terrible thing to say to a frustrated customer. That is, unless you've already fixed the problem. Apologizing before you've fixed the problem, as we all know first hand, can get things going downhill fast. This is rapidly approaching common knowledge in the business world, so why do so many businesses still miss the mark in the moments that count?
When someone derails a meeting, it’s easy to assume that they’re the problem and the solution is to rein them in—but your assumptions may also be off-track. For smoother meetings, try these techniques.
You want to grow your business. You survived those first few harrowing years that most don’t, but you find yourself stuck in a rut. You did what ‘had to be done’ to survive and maybe grow a bit, but you start to see that your business has picked up some bad habits along the way.
Click Here to view SummitTrek's 2014 Top Reads digital magazine (articles added monthly) via Flipboard on your computer, tablet or smartphone (iOS or Android). Don't forget to hit Subscribe (upper left corner) once you open the magazine on your tablet or smartphone.
Online marketing is becoming increasingly complex. By following these three steps, you can boost your returns considerably.
Everyone wants more time. Efficiency is one way of adding minutes or hours to your day. Here are eight tips effectively used by the most efficient.
To have a truly wonderful day, getting it started with your best foot forward.
Design Executive Officers certainly do. And the authors of the new book, Rise of the DEO: Leadership by Design, believe they're the future of business.
At the end of the day, it’s not the things that you have that define your business or career. It’s the things you do. It’s not really the lack of resources that hold us back. It’s the poor choices we make about how to invest those resources.
Because marketers have more in common with Walter White than they might realize.
Marketing dollars are a terrible thing to waste. Here are three powerful tips for getting the most from what you spend.
Are your personal values engrained in the identity of your entire organization? Let's find out.
“Product development” and “customer/user-experience design” can sound cold and calculating, but done right, it will take you right to the heart of your company’s reason-for-being. It’s a place to ask the deep questions that probably don’t get enough of your attention in the day-to-day.
Every employee needs to be noticed. Sure, you're busy, but taking the time for a conversation can pay off.
Click Here to view SummitTrek's 2013 Top Reads digital magazine (articles added monthly) via Flipboard on your computer, tablet or smartphone (iOS or Android). Don't forget to hit Subscribe (upper left corner) once you open the magazine on your tablet or smartphone.
One of the great things about having older kids is the luxury of both time and expendable income they enjoy. It affords them the luxury of cultural relevancy. (I think that thing about being “connected” in that informational technology sort of way probably has something to do with that as well.) When it comes to movies or music, they seem to be perpetually informed of the latest, greatest, and the “not to be missed”.
My wife and I took in the latest recommendation from the kids by catching a showing of “About Time” on a recent date night. The trailer reveals the most important and determining plot element; the males of a family are given the privilege of traveling back in time. The young protagonist uses his newly awakened ability to procure the girl of his dreams. It was a story that was clever enough to hold my attention and infused with enough heart and sentimentality to hold my wife’s as well.
