In my 30-plus years as an entrepreneur, I’ve faced some pretty tough situations in business.  We all do.

The hardest thing I’ve ever done is to counsel someone facing what seemed like an impossible crisis. Like the time one of my clients lost millions of dollars in one year and had several none-too-happy bankers considering calling their loans.  Or the client who realized that a long-time partnership was not going to work out and they were faced with a messy business divorce.  Or the client who was betrayed by a trusted employee who departed with a significant customer, instantly putting the future of the business and his family’s financial security in jeopardy.

The ability to hire and retain good people is the biggest challenge facing most companies today.  I often hear comments like the millennials don’t care, nobody has any loyalty anymore, the work ethic today is not what it used to be, etc. What that tells me is we have to be better at hiring the “Right People”.

Words like “Core Values” and “Culture” get so much press today that you can get numb to them. However, they are a key to solving the “People Problem” and enhancing your overall business.

As your company grows, everything gets more complex. Keeping everyone in the loop used to be simple, and as more and more people are added to your team, it can become very cumbersome to keep everyone in the loop. Processes, systems and communications that seemed to at one time happen automatically, don't occur so easily anymore.

Then it begins to snowball. Workarounds and additional steps get added. Bandages are put in place to cover up the loose ends. Longer hours and working harder become the norm “just to catch up.” At this point it becomes tough to even see what the real issue is.

Sound familiar?  

What’s in a preposition? Maybe everything when it comes to running your company. What I am talking about is the difference between BY and WITH.

Every successful company has a simple road map for their future. Among the mandatory items on that roadmap are: the company’s core values, the core focus of the company, its long-term vision, its marketing strategy for accomplishing that vision, its medium-term vision, its vision for the next year, the objectives it will work on for the next quarter, and a compilation of the opportunities and obstacles it doesn’t currently have the resources to handle. There may be other items on your company’s road map, but these are the basics.

Pressure is often seen by employees and managers as negative. But what if it isn’t?  What if people thrive on pressure? 

High performance demands a certain amount of pressure. Imagine you’re training for a 10K race. If you put no pressure on yourself, you don’t train, you don’t hire a coach or plan your calendar to prepare for the race, you will undoubtedly perform poorly. Conversely, if you put too much pressure on yourself, over-train and stress out, perhaps injuring yourself, you may not show up at the starting line.