2009 March

What will your employees say about you around their dinner table?

Are you a Good Boss or a Bad Boss? When an employee in your care goes home for dinner with their family, are they praising your leadership or looking for another job? Remember people quit bosses, not companies. Below is a quick and simple check of your leadership. How do you rate?

 

            BAD BOSS:  I’ll be higher up!

Good Boss:  I have to go lower down to understand and ask questions in order to know what’s going on.

 

            BAD BOSS:  Everyone must tell me when I’m right!

            Good Boss: Tell me when I’m wrong.

 

            BAD BOSS:  I give the orders around here!

            Good Boss: I bring order to what others do.

 

            BAD BOSS: Protection Strategy: I’ll be protected for taking blame.

            Good Boss: I’ll protect others by taking blame.

 

            BAD BOSS:  Problem Solving: I can avoid problems.

            Good Boss:  I must seek out problems every day. I need to understand why!

 

The Good Boss understands their people by asking open-ended questions, not “yes or no” questions. The Good Boss gives clear direction and evaluates performance daily. They welcome negative feedback. The Good Boss is always firm but fair and is sincere when giving praise.

 

So, how are you doing? I’m guessing the majority of you are Good Bosses. Bad Bosses usually don’t take the time to read and further educate themselves. Here’s to Good Bosses who build great teams. We’re depending on you!

 

Joe Kiedinger

 

ACTION PLAN: Share this Wisdom with five of your friends who are in leadership positions.

Coaching Your Way to Success

Football is a great sport. Even if you don’t know all the ins and outs of the sport, I think we can all understand the metaphor of being a coach. Since I’m in a national football town, football is the backdrop of this metaphor! Think of the head coach as the Brander-In-Chief. It’s their job to focus on strategy by understanding the talent they are working with and creating a “game plan” around those players and coaches.

 

The assistant coaches: quarterback coach, running back coach, receiver coach, etc, act as the managers of a business in specific areas. It would be logical to say that quarterback coaches are not better quarterbacks/athletes than the players they are coaching… right?

 

The same goes with your business. The BIC’s (Brander-In-Chief) job is not to be the best at the specific areas of their business; it’s to find the right talent and synergies for pulling together a profitable strategy. This is fact! BICs are the most profitable business leaders who figure out how to assemble tremendous teams to carry out the plays to perfection. Notice I said, “figure out”. The BIC rarely knows who and how to carry it out; they simply are humble and patient and look for opportunities.

 

If you’re busy throwing the ball instead of calling the plays, then you are a Brander Technician. Brander-In-Chief philosophy is based on other successful companies built by successful leaders who coach the game, not play the game. Get out of the game and be the COACH!

 

Speaking of football, we need your help. We need more guinea pigs for a new concept we’re trying to flush out. Please see the ACTION PLAN below from a request from Bill, our Laboratory Scientist who’s working on a new idea. He is conducting a focus group of people who like football and would like to better understand the game. See below!

 

And remember to be the coach!

 

Joe Kiedinger

ACTION PLAN:  Sign up for a 60 minute, WebEx-based focus group on learning football strategy. The first session is planned for Friday, March 27^th from 2:30 – 3:30 PM and Tuesday, March 31^st from 6:30 – 7:30 PM.  Contact bill@billzeinert.com to participate.

 

There’s Nothing Like a Brander-in-Chief with CLASS!

Since my new book, The Brander-in-Chief, was released this past November, I have had the wonderful opportunity to speak to hundreds of business professionals about the BIC (Brander-in-Chief) philosophy. Many people are searching for the one thing that could get them started on their BIC journey. It’s funny because even before the days of Ponce D’ Leon searching for the fountain of youth, we Americans are always searching for the magic fairy dust that transforms average to great.

 

I’m excited to inform you that I’ve captured and discovered the fountain of BIC and it lies in two qualities of great leaders: Humility and Patience. Humility, in that BICs are open to new information and understand from the beginning that they don’t have all the answers. They are always searching for books, seminars, courses and knowledge to help them grow.

 

They practice patience because they know that all great things take time. They leave their impatience at the door, which provides clarity and vision for the future. Am I describing you? Are you the person who is always seeking out ways to improve? Are you patient in achieving your goals? Don’t mistake patience with inactivity. The BIC is always moving things forward, but they’re patient while figuring out the best way to accomplish great things.

 

If you have the desire to learn and the patience to experiment we need your help! We have invented a system called a Mantrix (pronounced MON-trix). It reveals your company’s “Mantra” and provides a blueprint for marketing your company. Every decision you make goes back to the Mantrix. We have successfully accomplished the Mantrix System with a variety of small business owners and they feel great having this easy to understand blueprint.

 

Here’s what we need help with. We need 10 volunteers who would like to participate via a Webex presentation on April 2^nd from 11:30p.m. – 1:00 p.m. with our own instructor and co-inventor, Bill Zienert. He calls it Lunch and Learn! Hey, I like. Grab a sub and a soda and follow along to create a marketing blueprint for your company. Let me know if you’re interested.  E-mail me!

 

Here’s to Patience and Humility leading the way to success!

 

Joe Kiedinger

 

ACTION PLAN: Be sure to sign up for our Lunch and Learn. The first 10 will be our guinea pigs!

“The Man Who Sold Hotdogs” (Author unknown)

There was a man who lived by the side of the road and sold hot dogs. He was hard of hearing so he had no radio. He had trouble with his eyes so he read no newspapers. But he sold good hot dogs. He put up signs on the highway telling how good they were. He stood on the side of the road and cried:  ‘Buy a hot dog, mister?’ and people bought.

He increased his meat and bun orders. He bought a bigger stove to take care of his trade. He finally got his son home from college to help him out during break. But then something happened. His son said, ‘Father, haven’t you been listening to the radio? Haven’t you been reading the newspapers? There’s a big recession. The European situation is terrible. The domestic situation is worse.’

 

Whereupon the father thought, ‘Well, my son’s been to college, he reads the papers and he listens to the radio, and he ought to know.’ So the father cut down on his meat and bun orders, took down his advertising signs, and no longer bothered to stand out on the highway to sell his hot dogs as often. And his hot dog sales fell almost overnight. ‘You’re right, son,’ the father said to the boy, ‘we certainly are in the middle of a great recession.’

The above story was sent to me via e-mail and I love it! If you’re like me thinking, ‘I’m not participating in the recession,’ the only way you can truly live recession-free is to focus on what you can control. Don’t open your 401K envelopes, stop reading about it, and stop listening to it. Invest in yourself. When I think stock market vs. Joe’s business, I’m choosing Joe’s business. My return is bound to be far greater than the stock market in a great year.

 

I’m choosing to focus on what I can control. Who’s joining me?

 

Joe Kiedinger

 

ACTION PLAN: Choose to avoid all newspapers and all news programming for one week. Focus only on what you can control and surround yourself with information and people who can help you achieve next week’s goals. Now March Forth and succeed!