Living Intentionally… Not Easy for an Individual But it is Even Harder for a Business

What you need to do is easy; it is the “living it” that is the hard part. One of the main ways businesses are living intentionally is by knowing that their Core Values are a vital part of how the company operates. This means the values are not just something on their conference room wall, but they are lived every day. Values that are lived every day show up in how a company hires, who a company fires, who is rewarded or recognized, how expectations are set, and how the team interacts with each other and their customers and vendors.

Setback, flop, mistake, screw-up, failure, fiasco, botch or—as I like to think of these things—wonderful opportunities to figure out how not to do something.

There is a great book called the One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey by Kenneth Blanchard, Hal Burrows, and William Oncken. In this book, they explain their philosophy that managers should not take on problems (monkeys) that are not theirs. When managers take on other’s monkeys, they end up becoming the hopeless bottleneck for the company.

I am sitting in a session with a client and we are making sure to flush out all the issues. The Sales and Marketing Director is going through his list as I write them up on the board and he finishes his list by saying, “and I need to be on the issues list as well.” This gathered a few looks but I told the group that we had bigger fish to fry so we were not going to dive into solving any of the issues just yet. We worked through the day, learning a new tool and setting our Rocks (priorities) for the quarter when we finally got to issue solving. The team’s interest was definitely peaked at this point so we started with the Sales and Marketing Director’s comment. He identified his concerns by saying, “I don’t have the skill set to do this job at the level the company needs.” As we worked through the issue, the group came to the conclusion that he was right and we needed to get a more experienced person for that position. He wasn’t in the right seat. But, then the owner said, “This definitely confirms you are the right person. What seat do you think would be a good fit?”

I traveled to Peru one summer to help build a school. My job was to construct the baño (bathroom). The area didn’t have electricity so we did everything with hand tools. As I dove into the job, I realized that it would take us three to four times longer without electricity. It was frustrating for all of us. We knew what we needed to do but we didn’t have the right tools for the job. This same thing happens every day in business. People are given a task but don’t have the right tools to accomplish that task. One of the biggest resources or tools that your people need is your time and attention. Not to take on their issue as yours but to help them think it through their task at hand and build their confidence so they can tackle their job.