Executive and Business Coaching: Is Your Ladder Leaning Against The Right Wall?

Mar

Three weeks ago, I sent a short broadcast to my clients and prospects about the importance of gaining crystal clarity for leaders of organizations. In that short email, I asked the question: “Is Your Ladder Leaning on The Right Wall?” To my surprise, that brief article generated some important feedbacks that made me decide to go into a bit more detail on the topic of vivid vision as fundamental leadership skills requirement for success.

If you’ve been following my articles, you probably noticed that I write/talk so much about crystal clear vision. Although this is not the only very important business success strategy there is for any organization, but in my Executive Business Coaching work with senior executives, I have found it to be the Number One principle for building any successful organization.

Vision speaks about where you’re going. It is a leadership development skill that it tells about the direction of the future you are trying to create with everyone in your organization. The problem is that if you don’t define your direction very clearly, you’d possibly lead your people to a destination you did not plan, and that’s just easy to do. To lose sight of the long-term objective of your company is quite easy; just stop focusing on your key deliverable and get really busy with short-term fire-fighting activities, dealing with some emails, and some telephone calls.

Be interested in rumour-mongering and resolution of staff conflicts. Allow your employees and teams to work independently on important projects, so that everyone will be really busy on key projects in different directions. If you do this, your organization will certainly be wrecked not too long from now.

Defining Right and Wrong Walls

The difference between the right wall, and the wrong wall is in the multitudes of decisions and choices you’re making right now for your life, business, or career. We all know that the most important thing to do with every slightest opportunity nature throws at us is to put the first things first. But in your own situation, what do you do? We live in a world of abundance, where you are the architect of your own result, the captain of your ship.

What do you do before you start a journey? To many people, the right thing to do is to imagine the distance first and be aware of how long it would take to them to reach their destination. In my opinion, that’s not hard to do because by default, you have unique endowment of imaginations and self-awareness already in you. The same is true about managing your life, running your business, or managing your career. You cannot afford to invest so much resources, time, money, and energy to accomplish a goal, only to realize that the outcome was not what you expected.

Sometimes you want to pursue a goal simply because someone you know is achieving similar goal. By all means, you don’t want to take the time to consider whether this goal will serve your purpose, or in line with your worthy ideals. If your goal does not inspire you, or serve your life’s purpose, that might be a signal that your ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.

Setting The Stage For The Right Wall

Through my executive coaching business, I have been privileged to experience a behaviour pattern among some senior executives of companies and business owners in their effort to achieve improved business growth While growth is the result of consistent execution of planned actions over a period of time, planned actions are the products of customized best strategy for the purpose of meeting the organization’s mission.

Sometimes, CEOs and senior executives of organizations tend to believe that they know it all especially if their organizations have been around for a while. I was speaking with an executive who works for a company that has been around for about 25 years. The discussion was about creating a scalable organization and building sustainable corporate culture that fulfills their long-term objective. The response I got was surprising; he said to me: “Nkem, if we don’t have clear vision, we wouldn’t be posting profits!” But don’t be deceived; profitability is not a measure of clarity of direction.

But you could post huge profits at the expense of your employees’ personal development, leadership skills, or professional well-being. Worse still, if your customers think that you’re not doing enough to keep them singing your chorus, you may not have a company to post further profits.

Action Exercise:

“What one thing could you do now (you aren’t doing now) that if you did on a regular basis, would make a tremendous positive difference in your life, business, or career?”

If you have any comments, suggestions or idea you want me and other readers to be aware of, please post it on the comment box below.

I hope you’ll find this useful.

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If you want to learn more about how Executive Business Coaching can help you to achieve your business objectives and grow your organization faster, sign up now for a Free “Business Growth Mastery Coaching Strategy Session.” You will gain clear vision of your direction and be inspired to build a sustainable profitable business. To receive free business growth strategies from Nkem Mpamah, Subscribe to Breakthrough Newsletter.

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Decision Making, The Power for Change and Better Your Life

Feb

It is not by accident that you’re made with infinite capability to live abundant life. By default, you have the power to envision, and create magnificent works of goodness. There is a giant wrapped in every cell of your being that is always ready and willing to perform extra-ordinary inventions beyond your imagination, and the imaginations of anyone you can think of.

Contrary to our original Blueprint, there is a growing gap between the life we desire, and our current state. Many times our desires conflict with our actions, and this makes us indulge in certain behaviours that sabotage our ability to create the things we truly wanted. Very often, your strive for comfort zone widens the gap between what you want and what you get. I covered this in-depth in my book, “The ART of Achievement and Fulfillment,” and went further to explain how to better your life and make a difference in your world.

If you are not making important decisions about your life everyday, you’re probably not growing. Decision making is the powerful force of change that will help you to improve your life, and live a happy life. But the moment you stop stretching, seeking, and risking… you actually stop maximizing your potentials. That’s the time to be worried about. The whole trick about personal growth is awareness, vision or dream. You cannot maximize your potential if you cant dream it; and even after dreaming it, you need another force to take you to level of achieving the dream; you need to make a decision!

Many people give up their dreams because they can’t make a simple decision to go for it. They see decision-making as a game of risk. But truly speaking, if you want to stretch, achieve your dream, and grow, and reach out to the world that needs you, your first step in the ladder of progress is to make a decision. Your decision to go to the next level of life is a conscious fundamental choice that can be made by no one else but you, and at any time, the decisions you make have three significant lessons:

· Sensitivity of Time

Time is the gap between what you want to achieve, and when you actually have it in your hand. You have the power to collapse the gap or widen it. Many people procrastinate with important issues of their lives. They constantly put off important decisions about the things that matter the most in their life until they become too late before they blame someone.

If you must achieve your goal to take your life to the next level, you must position yourself so that time will work for you, and not against you. Decide to take action as quickly as possible on the important things that will bring the change you’re looking for. Do not wait for the perfect time as non-exists.

· Sacrificial Pain

Any time you make a decision to do something towards improving your life, that’s automatically a decision to discontinue an old way of living. That decision to move to the next level always comes with a price – a sacrificial pain. It is not always an enjoyment to discipline oneself from socializing with friends at pubs and cinemas just because you want to learn new skill. But you must decide for what is most important for you – to go to club/cinema or to sit down and learn?

On the other hand, next level results come in phases and almost with pains initially. If you want to achieve sustainable success, be prepared to observe the three natural seasons of life, planting – cultivation – harvest. From my own personal experience, cultivation period is synonymous with patience. It is the most painful period of all because it simply keeps you waiting, and you don’t have control.

· Risk

Regardless of research and analysis, your decisions will burst sometimes, it happens. What would you do if this happens to you? Sometimes we see decision in a positive perspective, but many times the things we want don’t appear as we thought. When this happens, a risk has occurred.

A risk can occur as a result of delay, government policy, natural cause, or a change in the economy. Each of these has a great potential to stop us from achieving our next level goal. But if you are determined, and have emotional strength to IGNITE the giant in you, you must always find a way out; I promise!

At any moment in life, there are four wonderful decision-making criteria you can apply to help you get going. I learned this from Bob Proctor and you can apply them.

Whenever you’re faced with the challenge of how to make a decision, ask yourself these four decision making questions:

1. Do I want to be, do, or have this?

2. Will being, doing, or having this move me in the direction of my goal?

3. Is being, doing, or having this in harmony with God’s laws or the laws of the universe?

4. Will being, doing, or having this violet the right of others?

If you answer ‘YES’ to the first three questions, and ‘NO’ to the last; make the decision and get going. The whole essence of life is to grow and serve but you cannot serve meaningfully unless you live a happy life and fulfilled.

If you have any thoughts, insights or questions, please share with me below.

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Nkem Mpamah is founder and CEO of Cognition Global Concepts and author of The ART of Achievement And Fulfillment. Nkem inspires ambitious individuals to turn their dreams into reality, transform their lives and maximize their potentials.

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Customer Service Satisfaction Skills, The Key for Business Growth

Jan

Many small business owners, including medium and large businesses tend to forget very easily that the only reason they are in business is to serve their customers extremely well. This is a fundamental requirement that every business executive must constantly bear in mind.

The old maxim that “Customer is King” is as valid in business as though it was propounded yesterday and can be interpreted to mean that the quality of excellent service you constantly deliver to your customers will determine whether you’ll remain business or not.

Having established my own businesses from ground floor up and helped other successful small business owners and chief executives of medium and large companies to grow their organizations, I have experienced that it takes hard work and consistent effort to build a successful business as it takes determination and “the extra mile” to maintain a sustainable profitable growth.

But there are very simple things you can do to improve your customer service skills and therefore your customer service quality. With advent of the Internet, smartphones, and other electronic gadgets, customers have become very sophisticated, choosy, and more enlightened than before and your ability to constantly meet and exceed their needs will always put you ahead of your competition.

In every business irrespective of sector, size or geographical location, there are three key customer service satisfaction skills that will kill or save an organization. These can be grouped into:

1. Develop Extreme Quality Service Focus

Think about this, what are the factors that make a loyal customer to walk or derive constantly past other companies in similar business to buy from you? The answer is – Great Customer Service!

If you have superior customer service, you’re in business even if your prices are slightly higher than your competitors, as long as your customers find you friendly, knowledgeable of your products and services, and responding quickly to their needs. For small businesses, it is always a bonus if you know your key customers and call them by their names.

2. Own the Voice of the Customer (VOC)

Earlier in this article, I mentioned that, “Customer is King.” Very many Kings have similar characteristics; they love it when their constituents listen to, and respect them. This is also the case in business. If you believe that your “customer is king,” it means that you should pay attention to him/her.

Owning your customer’s voice is synonymous with listening to them and understanding their needs. Inside and outside your office/shop, you need to engage with them either by email, telephone, or social media to know what you’re doing that they like. Get them to give you their personal honest opinions about you, your business, your employees could potentially make them take their patronage to your competitors, then tailor your service to meet their needs based on the feedback you receive from them.

Often in my work with my clients, it’s fun when we engage with customers in forums and listen to them talk to us about their expectations, and what should be done to keep them. It is at moments like these that great organizations are built.

3. Recognize Your Moments of Truth

In every business organization irrespective of how big or small it may be, there are a number of things you cannot afford to take for granted. These can be referred to as “moments of truth.” They are the key things you must do flawlessly right in your business as seen by your customer.

Take for example in a restaurant or food business, key moments of truth can be cleanness, good food quality, and reasonable pricing. Within professional services, customers would expect extreme responsiveness, deep knowledge about key services or financial products, knowing the customer by name, and good pricing. For majority of other businesses, friendly service, extreme customer focus, and fantastic price may form the moments of truth.

If you maintain an office space that has toilets, make it one of your primary responsibilities to ensure that your bathroom/toilet is insanely clean. As a matter of fact, it should be cleaner than the one in your home. Why? No serious customer will cope with a dirty toilet, and it leaves a lasting impression about you in his or her mind many days after they have left you. And if you’re running a food or restaurant business, this is a Must Do for you!

Although most customers want the best product or service at the cheapest price, research has shown that when you own the voice of the customer by implementing the customer service strategies above, majority of them will reciprocate your good gesture with loyalty. Isn’t that what you need to grow a successful business?

Winning a customer is a strategic business objective you must pursue daily and retaining or keeping them is by far the most important customer service satisfaction strategy to adopt, because that’s what helps you build walls of defense around them to stay with you.

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Nkem Mpamah is CEO and Founder of Cognition Global Concepts, the Business and Leadership Development Specialists in Cambridge.

Nkem helps business owners and executives optimize performance, double productivity, and increase profit margins by delivering customized business growth coaching and other interventionist tools that create extra-ordinary results.

He is author of “The ART of Achievement and Fulfillment.” You can contact Nkem and find how he can help your business grow.

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Why Leaders Should Not Drive With Their Eyes Closed – Part Two

Nov

In the first part of this series I tried to clarify the very frequently misunderstood concepts Mission, Vision and Values statements and explained why leaders should promote these regularly in their business routine. In Part two, I’ll look at the relationship between having a clear vision and business profitability.

How Can a Clear Vision Lead to Increase in Profitability?

You may be wondering how having a clear compelling vision would increase productivity and profits in your business. Well, as I said in Part 1 of this article, vision is the inspiring picture of what you and everyone else in your organization is working so hard to accomplish together. It is the reason you go to work every day, the impact you want to make to your customers and the world.

Many businesses struggle because they lack clear vision, and those that have it fall down completely when it comes to what they do with it. True vision reflects the products and services you want to create for your customers. It defines the benefits you and your business will be remembered for, and also the strategies and various ways you can go about creating them.

Develop a “Shared vision”

For your vision to be truly effective, it has to be shared with your people. Visions are shared when the ideas are clearly and consistently communicated for everyone to see and understand. The reason many leaders do not make significant positive impact in their organizations is because no one else sees the vision they see, and when no one understands where you’re going, they will be unwilling to follow you.

Shared vision energizes teams and employees to perform with more enthusiasm and coordination. Nothing grows an organization faster than having inspired employees and teams who are moving in one coordinated direction to achieve common goals. This movement occurs only when leaders help their followers to see their own individual future in the mission, vision, and values of the organizations they work for.

No matter how clearly and compelling your vision may be, if you do not over-communicate it to your world, it will never be achieved. Shared vision brings focus and holds the people accountable. It gives a sense of security and direction to employees who believe that their own future are fulfilled when they accomplish their company’s objectives.

So reminding employees and teams regularly about the future of your organization (the Vision); where you are going will keep them constantly motivated to press on with you. You can achieve this by sending monthly email broadcasts, newsletters, or posting them on your websites; notice boards, or as screen savers on your company’s laptops and desktops.

Many times leaders get caught up in the definition trap by using terminologies such as core-values, corporate values, shared values, etc, etc. From my experience of working with CEOs and business leaders, you can determine your mission, vision, and values statements and still have your organization not successful.

What makes a Vision Statement shared vision is the ability of leaders to over-communicate them to their constituents. This means that the best MVV can fail if the people, two to three levels down in your organization does not know it. Rather than defining Values, I would stick to arguing on what leaders can do to reach their vision for the benefit of their organizations and stakeholders. And in my opinion and experience, consistently over-communicating the vision at every slightest opportunity is the key.

Let me know your thoughts about this article on the comment box below and if you’re ambitious about growing a sustainable successful business faster and increase your profit margin by at least 22% in 12 months or less, follow this link and tell me more.

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Nkem Mpamah is Founder and CEO of Cognition Global Concepts, and author of “The ART of Achievement and Fulfillment.“ Nkem works with CEOs, business leaders, and professionals to turn ideas into reality.

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Why Leaders Should Not Drive With Their Eyes Closed – Part One

Nov

Having a crystal clear, compelling, and extremely well communicated vision is without doubt the number one business success principle for building any successful organization irrespective of size, industry, or geography. Notwithstanding the enormous benefits organizations stand to gain from having a vivid vision, the concept has been so overused, trivialized and misunderstood by many people that it has resulted in the terms Mission, Vision, and Values (MVV) being seriously confused.

Let me begin by clarifying this confusion, and take a step further in part two of this series, to explain how you can increase your effectiveness, productivity, and profit margins as well as build a sustainable organization by simply clarifying your vision.

So what is Mission, Vision and Values statement?

A Mission Statement is the description of what you or your business is meant for. It captures the purpose and primary objectives for your being, living or establishment. In other words, for an organization, a mission describes the solution you are meant to provide to your employees, customers, communities around you, and the world at large through your products and services.

Every mission must answer three basic questions about:

• Why do we exist?
• Whom do we serve?
• What value or benefit do we give our stakeholders, community, or the world?

A Vision Statement describes where the organization wants to be (when it grows up), and the directions it would take to get there. Vision statements paint a vivid image of how the future will look when the organization and its employees get there in such a way that everyone knows well in advance and recognizes it when they get there. Vision is futuristic – it is the dream or image leaders have in mind about what their businesses will be say in five, 10 or 20 years from today.

Values Statements are different. They are the fundamental beliefs, behaviors, and commitments that organizations agree to abide by. Unlike mission and vision, values are not created; they evolve from the character and behaviors of both leaders and employees within the business and are the codes of conduct by which the business is built.

For example, an organization’s values may be honesty, integrity, professional development, transparency, or customer satisfaction. These written codes define how each person within the organization behave to one another in the course of executing their tasks. It is important to understand that while most businesses tolerate errors and mistakes that often occur in their day-to-day business execution processes by employees, any violation of one aspect of its values can be viewed very seriously by senior management as breach of a fundamental code of conduct, and can be severely punished.

In my next installment I’ll be discussing how clarifying the above statements can help a business increase profitability. Make sure to read on.

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Business Growth through Clear Mission, Vision and Values

Sep

In the last couple of months, I have found it quite rewarding helping my clients to grow their businesses and careers by gaining crystal clear understanding of where they are headed.

I thought it would be useful to make a short video clip and share this success business principle so you too could benefit as well.

In this video, I explained the confusion many people usually have in understanding the terminologies – Mission, Vision and Values. Rather than going academics and defining these terminologies, I went a step further to explain how you could increase your performance, and the performance of your employees and teams by gaining clarity of your vision and communicating extremely well.

I hope you found this video useful? Don’t forget to leave brief comment of your thought, and feel free to email me your questions at info@cognitionglobal.com

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Building Trust Through Effective Constructive Feedback

Aug

After working with several business leaders and professional, I have recognized that a great number of executives and managers struggle immensely with the use of effective feedback as a tool to improve performance and promote organizational growth.

There is no doubt that giving feedback to employees is a useful tool you can use to train your team and raise awareness of their strengths and weaknesses. It helps also to identify the steps they can take to make reasonable improvements in their work. Providing feedback in communication helps to increase confidence and team performance.

Over the years, my experience is that most business leaders perform awful in giving the type of communication feedback that promotes change and enhances growth. Knowing what I know today, and looking back to my days in active employment, I realized that some of my managers didn’t bother to give feedback for varying reasons.

I discovered that the same reasons that kept my managers from embracing this powerful leadership tool apply to many leaders today. Does it apply to you?

Here are the three main reasons why you don’t give feedback:

a). You don’t want to be perceived by your subordinates or colleagues as being confrontational, so you prefer to “let the sleeping dog lie”;

b). You are afraid that you might get disliked;

c). Like many leaders, you don’t know how to give a constructive feedback because you haven’t been exposed to a leadership mastery process in order to develop the skill;

There are no easy ways to provide feedback or become competent in giving feedback except by actually doing it. You will agree that the best way to become a leader in any market or industry is to spend time in developing oneself in the area of competitive advantage. This personal development discipline is usually the thin line between success and failure.

Here are 3 ideas you can implement to improve your skill for giving feedback:

1. Decide exactly what you want

The starting point in developing an effective feedback skill (as in every thing else) begins with your ability to look inward, identify the need, and make a decision to change the way things are.

Think about the consequences of not helping your team to become aware of their strengths and weaknesses, and improving their performance. How does this affect your own performance as a leader?

Also, think about how things would be if you decided to take responsibility to support your employees and help them to perform at their peak. The moment you decided to learn how to give constructive feedback and overcome your fear of the negative perception of other people, you have scaled the most hurdles. It all begins with your personal decision.

2. Get some training

Paraphrasing Jim Rohn, formal education will make you a living, while self-education makes you a fortune. If you see yourself as a true leader now or in the future, you need to develop the ability to communicate openly and honestly with your team. Great leaders are not afraid of speaking about the “white elephant” in the center of the meeting room. Instead, they develop courage to evaluate how well the elephant has helped to increase performance, productivity, and growth within the organization, while recommending ways it could perform better.

Effective leaders are good in communication and one aspect of effective communication is learning how to give feedback. if you want to improve your leadership skill in this area I will encourage you to find a good leadership skills development coach that will support you with genuine accountability to develop the necessary components that will help you to become effective in delivering constructive feedback to your team, both in formal and informal settings.

3. When you start going, keep going

In my work with organizations and leaders, I have discovered that the best way to apply learning is to just do it. The moment you have decided to improve your leadership skills through personal development training, you must start immediately to practice what you learnt until you see the required improvement. Practice they say makes improvement.

As it is widely believed, that the taste of the pudding is in the eating; the miracles of knowledge and wisdom are in the application of learning. So you will need to engage in constructive discussion with your colleagues and teams everyday and do your best to listen actively to understand their points of view.

You cannot be great at giving feedback if you do not first of all understand other person’s point of view. You can leverage the power of active listening to learn how to give constructive feedback.

In conclusion, the moment you start to train, you could find it useful to measure your effectiveness in a variety of ways essentially by enlisting the support of others to genuinely provide feedback on your performance. This will help you to keep track of your progress.

There is no doubt that you will build a strong and successful organization if you help your team to develop awareness of their strengths and development areas by providing effective constructive feedback.

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Starting Small Part 2 – Use Love Money and Seek Alternative Income Streams

Jul

In part 1 of this series Starting Small – Bootstrap and Act with urgency, I discussed some of the options available to those of you who want to turn your BIG ideas into a full-fleshed small business. Here are two more aspects you might want to take into consideration:

1. Start with Love Money

Most startup business owners face the challenge of finding the initial finance to start their businesses. Some do all sorts of hard work initially to find them before starting, as they could not get help from the bank.

Without doubt, cash is a vital resource to business as oxygen is to the brain. A business can die prematurely overnight if it runs out of cash, so does a business idea. I worked in banks for more than 18 years, and I know that banks do not lend money to start up new businesses. Banks are in business only to give “good loans” to customers whom they are sure would repay with interest. To obtain a bank loan, you must prove to the bank that you have $2 to back up every $1 you want to borrow. They will require personal guarantees from you; your wife/husband, and anyone related to you that have the type of assets they could seize if you fail to repay your loan.

Most successful startup businesses started with what is known today as “love money.” Love money is seed money or capital given to you by family members or friends for the purpose of starting a new business. Love monies are usually lent on qualitative terms of agreement based on the relationship that exist between you and the lender, rather than on a formal risk analysis outcome. Love money can be money from your personal savings or borrowings from friends and family members who are willing to take a chance on you.

Angel investors can be a good source of love money and very often the only way a business can start off the ground. This type of business financing allows for gradual and steady growth that would almost be impossible if you were to seek traditional financing options.

2. Consider Using Alternative Income Streams First

Instead of giving up your idea of starting a business and building a successful business organization for lack of money, you may consider embracing alternative second income stream opportunities such as multi-level marketing or what others call network marketing.

It is surprising to see how many people neglect to see the huge opportunities that exist with multi-level marketing business model. To begin with, network marketing offers excellent second income opportunity backed up with vital business development skills and training at very low cost.

As life itself is about selling, network marketing gives you the opportunity to learn the art of selling, organizing, making presentations, accounting, team building, negotiating, persuading, and communicating. All these skills are more than relevant in building a successful organization. From my personal experience, more than 85 percent of everything you need to start a new business idea and build your own successful business can be learned easily from operating a network marketing business. This is how many successful entrepreneurs started.

The problem is that your uninformed friends tell you lie about what they did not have knowledge about, and you believed them without a proof. They tell you “it doesn’t work, it is a pyramid, a scam, or a get-rich-quick thing…” But you must always bear in mind, that when you are starting a business, you must be careful of whom you talk to, and what you share. Be mindful of the type of people you surround yourself with so that you don’t get talked out of your vision by chance.

Despite criticisms about the multi-level marketing industry today, there are several successful billion-dollar network-marketing organizations that are still thriving and helping millions of people to build a successful business and achieve financial freedom. If you want to know more about this, contact Rehoboth World, the experts in the world of opportunities.

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Starting Small Part 1 – Bootstrap and Act with a Sense of Urgency

Jul

I used to think that every successful entrepreneur started big.

This thought frightened me whenever I tried to make progress with my ideas to start a new business. My fears were indeed well-founded because I was hugely limited by my background. I had no money, neither did my parents; and banks could not help as I had no collateral and personal guarantees that they could seize for the amount of money I wanted to borrow if I defaulted. I was intensely afraid of taking risks with the little money I had as it was very obvious that it would go nowhere to building the type of business I wanted.

It was frustrating to see how my new business ideas were almost abandoned when I could not find anyone to support me with the finance I needed to bring them to reality. As I dwelt deeply in this condition, one day, I decided to take a risk on my time and play with the little money I could find.

That single decision made a whole lot of difference in my life and my business. What I learnt eventually was that most successful organisations started off broke. A few that had money even went broke or almost broke many times on their way to starting a business. I also realised that many would-be entrepreneurs abandoned their dreams of building a successful business organisation while others took theirs with them to their graveyards because of fear of failure and lack of finance.

In this two part series I would like to discuss four different ways I have learnt to help start and build a successful business.

1. Bootstrap your business

When you start a new business, you will need an x amount of money to keep your business going. As a business owner, you will never have enough money to the extent that you don’t need any more. Every successful entrepreneur is adept to cash flow management to guard the amount of money that comes into the business as well as the amount that goes out. This is because what looks like a successful business today can collapse tomorrow if it runs out of cash.

If you are serious about turning your new business ideas into reality, you must be prepared to take risk with your time and money. One way you can do this is to start small, sell vigorously, and grow by reinvesting all your profits in the business. This strategy is called “bootstrapping.”

Bootstrapping is the process of starting on your own with no external resources. When you bootstrap, you are taking a chance to start and grow slowly on your personal effort and hard work until you succeed. Bootstrapping helps you to get far more disciplined and experienced than you would if you started with too much money, and your chance of succeeding in the business will be higher if you have courage and belief in your ability to succeed.

Although bootstrapping means that you don’t have all the money you needed for your start up business initially, it helps you to develop sound cash flow management skills over the little money that comes into your business to ensure that you make the most use of it for your business growth.

2. Act with urgency- Don’t wait until everything is “just right”

I have discovered that the majority of young entrepreneurs who started their own businesses without a guarantee to succeed were the most successful. On the other hand, those that failed waited until everything was just right before they could start.

There is a very thin line between the people that succeed with their new business ideas and those that don’t – so thin that sometimes it’s barely noticeable . Successful entrepreneurs didn’t wait until everything was right before they struck. In my own case, the only thing I did right was making the decision to start; every other thing was done by trial and improvement, and of course with persistence.

There is usually no better time to start a new business than now. Successful people make decisions with a sense of urgency and with no guarantee of success. What happens is that as they work towards their goals, doors of opportunities begin to open on either side and they take them up. How would opportunity appear if you were not in a forward motion towards your goal?

If you have an idea you want to turn into a business organisation make the decision today and start working on it. The more simple actions you take everyday to build a successful business organisation, the more likely that doors of opportunities will open for you. Don’t wait for the right time; there is no such thing. If you want to wait until everything is all right before you start, you will probably wait forever.

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What is Executive Coaching

Jul

Many times, my friends and prospects ask me to tell them in clear terms, what is coaching, what is executive coaching, or what does a life coach do. Each time I explained the subject of coaching, there is usually a new insight/awareness that occurs. Rather than repeating my thoughts every time I get asked to talk about this, I decided to share these thoughts on blog with a view to update it regularly as new thoughts occur so you can be aware.

The purpose of every business coaching relationship is to create sustainable transformation. I have not said this because I read it from any book; instead, my training and working as a business coach, helping and inspiring the growth of many successful organizations and leaders across the globe has offered me the opportunity to deeply understand how businesses behave prior to seeking help from business coaches, and what they become during and after the coaching process.

So, here are my thoughts on what business coaching, executive coaching, or leadership coaching is…

1. Crystal Clear Vision

Maintaining a crystal clear vision is without doubt the foundation of every successful organization. It is the compass for achieving business objectives and no organization succeeds without creating a compelling vivid vision. Your business coach has the responsibility to help you clarify your vision, ensuring that what you see aligns with your business objectives and passion. Your coach challenges you to demonstrate how your vision evolves in reality over a period of say; three to five years (short term), or ten to twenty years (long term). This time-traveling process is powerful and helps to put you in perspective of the type of goals you want to achieve for your organization.

By applying effective questioning around this objective to clarify the reason behind your vision, the value it brings, and your target beneficiaries (niche); and supporting with genuine encouragement and inspiration, you will begin to see or feel a sense of enlargement in the scope of what you want to achieve, or where you want to be with your vision. This in turn creates a strong conviction and confidence in the direction your business is headed.

You must bear in mind that your vision to accomplish the desired results, the mission and values of your organization must be clearly defined and extremely over-communicated to your teams, customers, and other stakeholders. Your coach or business mentor will help you to achieve this. o

2. Strategic Action Planning

Every successful organization I have come across focus intensely on “identifying and doing” only the most important things for the success of their business. The primary challenge here is usually how to identify, and constantly focus on doing what is most important.

When business coaching tools are rightly applied it opens up the best options you must implement to achieve your business goals. Not only will you know them, your coach will inspire you with the required accountability for implementing the agreed actions within agreed time lines. Talking of accountability brings to mind the thoughts of some of my colleague’s on this. Some believe that the word accountability is harsh and frightening to clients.

My belief is that irrespective of what you call it, it is the primary responsibility of business owners and leaders to do whatever is ethically morale to make their organizations successful. They owe it to themselves and every stakeholder, and have the privilege to hold their employees liable for achieving them. But who holds them accountable on a continuous basis to ensure that they are constantly focused on doing their own part of the work to achieve the overall objective? The Coach of course!

I have noticed that in almost every organization, employees are either afraid of expressing their minds genuinely to CEOs, or questioning some of the decisions they make. The reason is obvious; they are on the organization’s payroll and may lose their jobs for acting in what might be misconstrued as disrespectful or insubordinate behaviour. This attitude breeds lack of open, honest, and robust communication in the organization and ultimately creates dysfunctional working relationship that sabotages performance and achievement of corporate goals.

In executive coaching or leadership coaching as the case may be, we fill the gap between chief executives, managers or leaders and their employees. We question some of your decisions to make sure that they are in sync with the mission, vision, and values (MVV) of your organization. We also help you to see the impact your decisions will make on your organization, team, and customers… I hope you’re getting the idea?

3. Disciplined Execution

The best business coaching strategy will deliver no results until it is backed up with disciplined execution on the part of the client, in this case you. What you will notice is that every day, CEOs, leaders and entrepreneurs develop all kinds of ideas in the name of strategies some of which are great though. They know what to do but they don’t do them, and very often don’t know how to do them. This is one of the major problems most executives face, something I refer to as the “knowing-doing gap.”

Execution is the discipline of putting the right strategies, actions, and techniques to work to create the desired results. What I have discovered from working with organizations is that it is more difficult to make strategies work than it is to make strategies. Every implementation strategy requires commitment, accountability, and discipline to achieve the set goals. Execution sits in the overall objective of vision, strategy, and result, without which the later is never achieved.

So where does the business coach come into this? Good question. Experienced business coaches understand the importance of goal setting and they focus single-mindedly to provide every support their clients may need to achieve it. You coach will help you to take baby steps, focusing on the smallest but most important part of the actions to get started. As you progresses in the execution process, week after week and begin to feel some positive energy as a result of working with someone you trust (the coach) who neither judge nor ridicule you when mistakes are made, your confidence level increases and you begin to take on more work. The same is also true with your team as your coach works with them to help develop the same level of commitment and execution in order to achieve your corporate objectives.

4. Skills Upgrade

As I said earlier, the primary purpose of every business coaching relationship is to create transformation in the business organization. In an ideal situation, your coach will never leave you at the same spot he met you. It is impossible!

Why did I said this?

During the business coaching process, your coach looks out for any skills-gap that might be impacting your business negatively. Typical of these are leadership skills, communication, delegation, time management, team building, customer/stakeholder relationships, effective planning, marketing and sales, and much more. He provides the support and motivation to help you to upgrade and become more effective in managing these areas to create more effective organization and achieve extra-ordinary results.

If you want to learn more about how Business Coaching can help you to achieve your business objectives and grow your organization faster, visit Cognition Global Concepts and request a Free “Business Growth Mastery Coaching Strategy Session,” and you will gain crystal vision of your direction and be inspired to build a sustainable and profitable business.

Visit this page frequently as we intend to update with new information regularly; and feel free to let us know your thought on this subject.

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