Now, Discover Your Strengths

In his excellent book, “Now Discover Your Strengths,” author Marcus Buckingham and co-author Donald Clifton discuss the work they did for The Gallup Organization to find out what makes successful people successful. What do those successful people have in common that makes them high achievers?

So they sifted through over two million interviews that Gallup had conducted over the years. Two million! The interviewees were doctors, lawyers, policemen, and firemen, white collar and blue collar alike, from many different occupations. The only thing they had in common was that they were successful at whatever work they did. Buckingham and Clifton wanted to find out why. Here’s what they learned.

Successful people understand their own strengths, and they work to nuture those strengths, focus on them, and leverage them. They don’t spend a lot of time trying to shore up their weaknesses.

In our culture, if a child is really talented at math and science, let’s say, but struggles with English and history, what do we do? We get that child a tutor or Mom and Dad work with the child to improve in English and history. Buckingham and Clifton would argue that it makes more sense to invest that extra effort in math and science. That’s where the child’s natural talent lies, so we should work to develop that talent to its utmost.

The lesson for those of us in business is two-fold. First, look at ourselves. Are we wasting time struggling with activities that we’re just not very good at? If so, wouldn’t we make a bigger contribution to the company if we off loaded that stuff we don’t do very well to someone else and focused on things where we really excel?

Second, look at your employees. When you identify someone who is not performing well, consider the possibility that they have been put in a position where they are unable to use their real strengths. Instead of trying to give that person remedial help in an effort to make him or her better at the job, maybe you should ask if the job could be modified to take advantage of the person’s strengths, or if not, maybe those strengths would make the greatest contribution to the company in another job.

When asked, “At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?”, out of 1.7 million employees in 101 companies from 63 countries, only 20 percent answered in the affirmative. 20 percent! While that an appallingly low number, it reveals an enormous opportunity. What if we could position the other 80 percent to do what they do best every day? It boggles the mind.

For more small business blogs, visit my website at www.rocksolidbizdevelopment.com.

One of My Favorite Management Tools

No quote this week. I want to offer a tip you will find useful, but I didn’t have a quote that would complement it.

One of my favorite management tools is a trailing 12-month average. If you’re familiar with this tool, stop here. You already know what I want to tell you. But if not, please read on.

Have you ever seen a chart that looks like the scribble of a 2-year old? You can’t tell if the trend is up, down, or flat? A trailing 12-month average overcomes that problem with a smooth trend line that doesn’t lie. And it works for any data you want to track . . . sales, gross profit, expenses, net profit, or any other statistical information. Here’s how.

Let’s say you want to track sales. Imagine a chart where the vertical axis is dollars or units, and the horizontal axis is months of the year. We can start in any month we like, but for this example, we’ll start in January 2007. The first point of our graph will be the sales results for January 2007 plus the preceding eleven months, totaled and divided by 12. So the sum of sales, February 2006 – January 2007 divided by 12. The next point on our graph will be February 2007 plus the preceding eleven months . . . March 2006 – February 2007, divided by 12, and so on. Each point on the graph represents the current month plus the preceding eleven months, divided by 12. You don’t really have to divide by 12 . . . the trend line will be the same whether you chart the monthly average or the entire 12-month total. But dividing by 12 gives you a monthly average that you can then compare to your actual month’s result.

Since each point on the chart represents an entire year’s worth of activity, seasonal ups and downs get leveled out as do one-time sales spikes (as for instance, a large sale that you don’t expect to repeat). As a result, you get a nice, smooth trend line that tells you clearly and honestly whether the data you’re tracking is going up, down, or flat. It’s a terrific tool to quickly and accurately identify trends that need corrective action. It’s also a tool that can be used as a budgeting or forecasting aid.

For more on this and many other management tools, I recommend “CEO Tools” by Kraig Kramers . . . it’s crammed full of useful ideas to help you improve productivity, results, and profits.

For more small business blogs, visit my website at www.rocksolidbizdevelopment.com.