Step Back From Your Business.

    When’s the last time you clicked your own “Refresh” button? After bursting out of the New Year’s gate, it’s only natural to get a little weary rounding the home turn, headed toward Valentine’s Day! But NOW is the perfect time to adjust your course and your attitude about the course that you’re on (this, btw, is not an endorsement of happy hour).

     You already have your goals. And they’re specific, flexible, realistic and due-dated. Your new value-added products and services are off to a good start. Prospective customers are filling up the sales pipeline.

     Cutbacks haven’t left you with as many disgruntled employees as you imagined and most, in fact, have been rising to the occasion. Your marketing programs are working off sparser budgets and dipping into some unknown territories.

     You’ve innovated the innovations and things feel okay.

     Well, don’t shoot the messenger, but guess what? If things feel okay:

A) That’s not good enough. Maybe “okay” would have put you in cruise control a few years ago, but not in this economy, and not in this supersonic-tech-paced lifestyle. Things have to feel a whole lot better than “okay” to survive and thrive.  

B) A rolling stone gathers no moss (Thanks, but no — I didn’t make that up. Actually, my version has always been “Some action is better than no action”!). The point is to save the lounge chair and iPod for vacations and retirement. 

My friend Kevin Bousquet who runs www.InterlakenInn.com — a GREAT place for meetings — once said about tending to management transparency (as Jonena Relth calls it at www.TBDConsulting.com): “There’s plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead.”  

C) Do the 10-minute escape-to-reality thing, and in all probability you’ll surprise yourself. It’s not hard; in fact, your 3 year-old will help if you get stuck. Ready?

1. Step back from what you’re doing, clean off your eyeglasses (or take a couple of deep breaths http://bit.ly/Bb1Tw while you press gently against your closed eyelids for ten seconds), and

2. Take another nine minutesand 50 seconds to clean up, straighten out or rearrange something in/on/at your worksite that will help you be more effective.

3. One last step back, away from what you’ve just done. Another deep breath can’t hurt. And look at what you’ve just done. Critique yourself. What did you just learn about your self that you can apply to re-energizing and adjusting the course you’re on? Who can best help you?

What are you waiting for?  What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for? (Valentine’s Day is on the way!)

Hmmmmm? 

……….Visit Hal’s Guest Blog Posts………. 

GOT A SICK WEBSITE?> @http://bit.ly/6iYe6g 

WHAT’S YOUR T-SHIRT SAY?> http://bit.ly/7K0s4a

 LEADERSHIP SEARCH?> 12/30 @http://bit.ly/XhN1h

 DOES NO BEAT MAYBE?> 1/6 @http://bit.ly/74qlG5

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It’s the Lightening Up

of Corporate America!

     You’re a management trainer and corporate economic climates have taken the wind out of your sails. You’re looking around for community college adult education courses to run. You’re doing drips and drabs of HR consulting with some old friends. Times are tighter than your shoelaces. 

     Stop beating yourself up; stop doing all the things you’ve always advised and taught others to not do. Take some of those deep breaths you advocate. The message is this: L-I-G-H-T-E-N    U-P ! Lighten up the programs you’re proposing. Companies do not want any in-depth, heavy-duty, psycho-analytic training programs for their managers right now!

     They want L-I-G-H-T agendas combined with good relaxing fun and team-building. Corporate America may be stupid about growing business and productivity ratios and revenue streams and job creation, but they know when it’s time to lighten up the stress that their loyal managers have been shouldering. 

     And it’s time now.

     I had my own management training company for many years. I ran over 2,000 workshops and training programs, and had over 20,000 participants in 50 different cities and half a dozen different countries.

     It was everything from Maslow’s Hierarchy to Quality Circles, One-Minute Manager, TA, Theory X, TheoryY, Theory Z, Empowerment, Assertiveness Training, Anger Management, and my own inventions: Corporate Entrepreneurship, Doctorpreneurs and Teacherpreneurs.  

     Then is not now. Then corporate executives charged trainers with the responsibility to teach them how to be better, more effective, more efficient, more productive executives and how to be better humans. This took some doing, and tons of analytical diagnostics and psychotherapy.

     Today, the word is L I G H T. As in S I M P L E and having F U N while gaining firsthand leadership and teamwork experiences with fellow employees. A best buddy of mine, Kevin Bousquet, who runs Interlaken Inn Executive Resort & Conference Center www.InterlakenInn.com in Northwest Connecticut, agrees.

     You may have seen my plugs here for Interlaken. It truly is THE premier business escape (2 hours/NYC and 3 hours/BOS) with the finest location, facility, amenities, meals, service AND budget-conscious prices that any management trainer or meeting planner will find. (If you call, tell Kristy I sent you and get a special gift!)

     Kevin tells me that the programs that are having the most success are those with the least stress and the most fun. Not all fun and games, but fun and learning. Interlaken’s Executive Ropes Course, lakefront boating and golf options and gourmet challenge programs are the busiest and most talked-about. Dump the heavy stuff!

Think of it as the Lightening Up of Corporate America!  

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Input always welcome: Hal@BusinessWorks.US

(”Businessworks” in subject line) or comment below.

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals and God bless you!