Take Your Values And Make Them Your Cause

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Most companies have corporate values that they hope embody their company, their employees, and the way they wish to be viewed by the public. Unfortunately, many organizations’ values statements are pages long. Too dense to be remembered and too complex to be ingrained in the company culture. Ours were.

We’ve learned there is power in simplicity, and that is why we at National Life Group have shifted our focus to three simple, authentic values: Do good. Be good. Make good. Just six words, but we’ve been able to translate them to a cause and a mission that drives everything we do. You and your company can do the same.

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About the Author

Mehran AssadiMehran Assadi serves as president and chief executive officer of National Life Group. Since taking that role in 2009, he has led major growth in sales of National Life’s life and annuity products and worked to build a culture of collaboration, engagement and empowerment among employees. Mehran and National Life Group were highly featured in the recently published book CAUSE! A Business Strategy for Standing Out in a Sea of Sameness, by Drs. Jackie and Kevin Freiberg, about the power of creating cause-related companies.

National Life Group® is a trade name of National Life Insurance Company, Montpelier, VT, Life Insurance Company of the Southwest, Addison, TX, and their affiliates. Each company of National Life Group is solely responsible for its own financial condition and contractual obligations. Life Insurance Company of the Southwest is not an authorized insurer in New York and does not conduct insurance business in New York.

References

1. American Enthusiasm to Shop with a Conscience at Record-High, but Doubts About Corporate Impact Persist, Cause Marketing Forum, October 2013. http://www.causemarketingforum.com/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=bkLUKcOTLkK4E&b=6430205&ct=13344211&notoc=1
2. Culture of Purpose, Deloitte, 2014. http://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/about-deloitte/us-leadership-2014-core-beliefs-culture-survey-040414.pdf
3. 2014 Edelman Trust Barometer Executive Summary, Edelman, 2014. http://www.scribd.com/doc/200429962/2014-Edelman-Trust-Barometer#fullscreen

Management Observation Program Best Practice 17 – Paired Observations

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StrategyDriven Management Observation Program Best Practice ArticleManagers translate leadership’s vision into the day-to-day actions of the workforce. They do this through their decisions, published standards, and operational procedures. They reinforce desired behaviors through organizational performance measures and management observations. But how do executives ensure their manager and supervisor direct reports understand and properly translate and reinforce their vision with the workforce? One method of doing so is through the conduct of paired observations.

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About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.

Driving for sales success? Jim Rohn is the fuel.

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The root of your sales success lies in your sales philosophy. How did you develop yours? Mine came from a combination of home environment, books, education, mentors, personal development programs, personal experience, and observations.

You establish and revise the basic principles of your philosophies by exposure to information, your experiences, and listening to the belief of others – especially those you respect. You try to only accept “the good stuff” and then adapt it to (or change) your way of life.

One of the most respected was Jim Rohn. Jim passed away a few years ago, but was and still is considered by many (me included) to be America’s foremost business philosopher. Growing up on a farm in Idaho, Jim developed principles and philosophies that were gleaned from his dad and his first employer and mentor, Earl Schoaff.

While you may believe that you determine your own philosophy, much of it is pre-determined or influenced by your home environment during childhood. After that, it’s up to you to seek influencers and mentors. People who impact the way you think, and create the motivation that drives your actions.

Some people are under the misconception that their personal philosophy and making a sale are not connected. Wrong. Your philosophy is the umbilical cord that provides the “essence of life” to your ability to sell.

Here is the essence of the sales success life cycle according to Rohn:

  • Philosophy drives attitude.
  • Attitude drives actions.
  • Actions drive results.
  • Results drive lifestyles.

Frustrated with your lifestyle? Not meeting your goals or expectations? Here’s how Rohn breaks it down:
If you don’t like your lifestyle – look at your results.
If you don’t like your results – look at your actions.
If you don’t like your actions – look at your attitude.
If you don’t like your attitude – look at your philosophy.

Here are some philosophical quotes and concepts that drove Jim Rohn — and may put gas in your car and bucks in your knowledge bank:

Balance. Life is a combination of “want to” and “how to,” and we need to give equal attention to both.

Activity. The few who do, are the envy of the many who watch.

Career Growth. The most important question to ask on the job is not “What am I getting?” The most important question to ask is “What am I becoming?”

Goals. Set the kind of goals that will make something good of you.

Reality. You must get good at one of two things. Planting in the spring, or begging in the fall.

Motive to Educate. Motivation alone is not enough. If you have an idiot and you motivate him – now you have a motivated idiot.

Personal Development. Formal education will make you a living. Self-education will make you a fortune.

Hypocrisy. What we demand from our children, we must demand of ourselves. There must be a standard by which they live – and as parents, we must set it – and live it.

Motivation the wrong way. If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn’t need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around.

The nose on your face. Success is the study of the obvious.

Work vs. Pay. If you work at your job you will make a living. If you work on yourself, you will earn a fortune. Work harder on yourself than you do on your job.

Numbers. Get your personal numbers in line with your business numbers. Balance sales numbers with education numbers and health numbers.

Wealth. I found it easier to get rich than I did to make excuses.

Time. We can no more afford to spend major time on minor things than we can to spend minor time on major things.

Pay. You don’t get paid for the hour. You get paid for the value you bring to the hour.

Paid. My father taught me always do more than you’re paid for as an investment in your future.

Customers. One good customer well taken care of could be more valuable than $10,000 worth of advertising.

Happiness. Learn to be happy with what you have while you pursue what you really want.

Plans. If you don’t make plans of your own, you will probably fit into someone else’s.

Jim Rohn was the master of the crafted word. He took the situations of life that are the subtle difference between success, mediocrity and dismal failure — and empowered his listeners to understand their own world in a new, better, and more powerful way.

Sitting in his audience (as I did 25 times), I (and everyone in the room) was compelled to take copious notes – I have saved them for more than 20 years, and they provide the wealth of wisdom for you to enjoy, benefit from, and take to the bank.

Part two of the Jim Rohn philosophy will be presented next week.

GitBit. Want more thought provoking and inspiring quotes by Jim Rohn? Just go to www.gitomer.com and enter the words JIM ROHN in the GitBit box.

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey GitomerJeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].

Four Questions to Ask Before Scaling Your Business

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“Things are either growing or dying” is a famous quip. While it’s unclear who said it first, it’s been used regularly at business conferences to fire up audiences over the last few decades. The speaker often follows it up with a list of suggestions like “five tips to start scaling your sales”. However, it turns out one of the most dangerous things you can do is to prematurely start to focus on scaling.

This may seem like an odd statement coming from a entrepreneur turned venture capitalist and professor who has spent the last few years in my role at Carnegie Mellon studying scaling startups and teaching a popular graduate course titled The Science of Growth that was recently turned in as a book.

I’m a big fan of scaling up innovative ideas and making sure they have as much impact as possible. In our research, to try and understand the critical success factors of scaling a startup, we followed the journeys of 10 well-known companies, ranging from modern marvels like Tesla, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn all the way back to the retail juggernaut McDonalds – and then contrasts each story with that of a lesser-known startup that was created at about the same time, with a similar product, targeting the same market.

From these cases, we came to appreciate that there were a set of four what we call ‘prerequisites’ that startups needed to focus on BEFORE growth. Just as you can’t take calculus before basic arithmetic, these are the essential foundational elements of any startup before the entrepreneurs turn their attention to growth.

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About the Author

Sean AmmiratiSean Ammirati is a partner at Birchmere Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Pittsburgh, PA, and Palo Alto, CA, and is an Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University. Before that, he was the COO of ReadWriteWeb, one of the most influential sites about the future of technology and innovation. Sean was previously co-founder and CEO of mSpoke, a big data SaaS company that was the first acquisition of LinkedIn.

Value of Evaluating Business Operational Performance

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Does your organization need to improve its performance to remain competitive? Do you have a process to continuously identify the most value-adding improvement initiatives that will keep you ahead of the competition at a cost you can afford?
 

A lot of business leaders recognize a need to continuously improve their organization’s performance but either haven’t established a formal program to do so on an ongoing basis or worse yet, just don’t know how.

At StrategyDriven our experience working with leading companies around the world reveals that a formally defined, well-funded, and effectively executed business performance assessment program is the centerpiece for continuous performance improvement. Through this program, the business leaders we work with have enhanced productivity, reduced costs, and raised revenues by double and triple digit percentages.

Our Value of Evaluating Business Operational Performance video describes how to calculate the financial benefit of having a business performance assessment program that enables you to identify the actions needed to make your organization’s performance rise above the rest.

Business Performance Assessment Programs play a key role in the identification of value-adding performance improvement opportunities that will keep your company on top. If you don’t have such a program or are looking for ways to improve the value of your business performance assessments, register for StrategyDriven’ FREE Maximizing the Value of Business Performance Assessments video series. In this free, five part video tutorial, we’ll show you how to optimally synthesize your organization’s data into actionable performance improvement information.

Register for StrategyDriven’s FREE Maximizing the Value of Business Performance Assessments online training series

About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal, and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.