You can’t manage what you don’t measure...

Last week, I was at an advisory board meeting for one of my new clients. This client has two different divisions with two separate operating managers and it was the first time both managers were presenting together.

The first manager went and listed out several dozen monthly numbers for sales and expenses. She had nice graphs showing lines going up and to the right. Many of them had rolling averages and YTD comparisons that made everything look very successful.

The second manager went and presented a completely different set of numbers with different charts and different comparisons. Some of which looked better, others of which looked worse.

The advisory board began asking some questions, but it quickly became apparent that nobody could make sense of the situation or really understand what was happening in either division.

The two sets of information were from the exact same company, using the same business model, just selling to two different markets. They were using very different numbers and metrics to measure the business, which was making it impossible to comprehend the situation.

Unfortunately, this is not uncommon. It’s easy to print out reports for accounting systems and make pretty charts and graphs that look like things are going swimmingly.

When we started to dig into the numbers, we saw some key information about what was actually happening in each division. We found important differences in their operations and performance.

The fact remains: you can’t manage what you don’t measure.

In this case, the “what” was undefined. And by defining a handful of important measures that drive your business— inventory turn, gross profit margin, cost of sales, and warehouse labor to name a few—you can keep an eye on the metrics that matter most to your success.

Recently, I wrote an article for Inc.com about several key metrics that any business can use to create insight on performance.

While every business will have several unique metrics based on their model and strategy, these are five that can be used in just about every situation.

Here is the article…

Struggling to Make Sense of Your Company's Financial Data? Here Are 5 Key Financial Metrics You Need to Know

Don’t have a good set of metrics for your business?

Start with the five in the article, then ask yourself: what is key to our success? Create a list and select the top 8-12 to look at daily. Adjust them as you see new insights and as your strategy develops.

Need help? Send me your list and we’ll jump on the phone for 30 minutes. I’ll help you select the best ones for you situation. Click here to book a time in my calendar.

Bruce
bruce@eckfeldt.com
Cell: 917-385-7330

P.S. As Lou Holtz famously once said, “In this world, you're either growing or you're dying so get in motion and grow.” Whenever you’re ready... here are 4 ways I can help you grow your business faster, and with less drama:

1. Take the Growth Readiness Assessment
Download the 24 questions, send me the results, and set up a free one-on-one call to review the results and identify where you can accelerate your growth with the right focus. - CLICK HERE

2. Come to my one-day Planning Intensives
About once a month, I hold a one-day intensive for Founders/CEOs to help them find the current bottleneck in their business and develop a 90-day plan for breaking through it. The in-person intensives are held in Manhattan, but we’re scheduling virtual programs, too. - CLICK HERE

3. Try my Leadership Team Intensive
Every team can get into a rut—leadership teams are no exception. My half-day intensive helps the top team take a step back and see what’s working, what’s not, where they can develop new, better habits, and where they can break old ones that aren’t working. It’s like a B12 booster for your entire company. - CLICK HERE

4. Let me facilitate your next annual or quarterly planning meeting
Want to kick your planning sessions up a notch? Have me come in and we’ll work together on your annual or quarterly plan. Set goals that will really drive strategy, and create an action plan that will make sure everyone has clear accountability for results. - CLICK HERE

4 traps that get managers into trouble (and how to avoid them)

As a business and executive coach, the one I see my clients struggle the most with is people management. It requires you to develop a diverse set of tools for dealing with different situations, and successful leaders know that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to this job.

Read more

https://www.inc.com/bruce-eckfeldt/4-traps-that-get-managers-into-trouble-and-how-to-avoid-them.html

3 common problems and 1 simple trick to fix your daily huddle

One of the keys to any successful team is developing the right meeting rhythms. For leadership teams looking to scale the business, this rhythm is even more critical. Meeting too frequently will leave people frustrated and disengaged, but meeting to infrequently will result in a lack of alignment and coordination. Getting the timing and agendas right will create the momentum you need to accelerate your growth and improve your performance....

Read more

https://www.inc.com/bruce-eckfeldt/having-trouble-finishing-your-daily-huddle-on-time-try-this-1-simple-trick.html

6 lessons from extreme sports to increase your concentration

Flow states allow you to engage your senses and create intense focus. Know how to enter flow and multiply your productivity on critical tasks.

I've done my share of extreme activities and sports: hiking Kilimanjaro, diving the Coral Sea off Australia, skiing a 55 km ski marathon in Wisconsin, running several marathons, and an Ironman triathlon are all on my resume. Each of these experiences taught me different lessons in life--how to plan, how to train, how to recover, how to overcome challenges, how to stay present, and how to push through--which have served me well.

However, one lesson has given me great advantages throughout my business career as an entrepreneur, CEO, and leadership coach. It has allowed me to tap into my best talents and capabilities and create value and progress with ease and comfort. The lesson I learned is the power of finding and staying in my flow state.

Your flow state--or as some call it, the zone in sports--allows you to push past physical and mental boundaries that would otherwise be impossible to cross in a normal state of mind.

When running the last five miles of an ironman while your legs are cramping so badly that you can see the muscles knotting in your legs between each step, or diving a 3,000-foot shelf, at night and in the dark, while someone accidentally kicks off your mask leaving you temporarily blind, getting into and staying in your flow state is not just helpful, it can be lifesaving.

But finding your flow state doesn't need to be death-defying. You can find this same flow state at work. When you do, it allows you to hyper focus on the tasks at hand and bring to bear all of your talents and skills to do amazing work.

Everyone has a different flow state. Getting into yours might take a little experimentation, so here are some variables you can play with to discover how you can find, and stay in, your zone.

1. Create a conducive environment.

Your surroundings will have a large impact on your ability to get into and stay in your flow. This doesn't mean a sensory deprivation tank. One of my best flow environments is a busy coffee shop. And I know executives who love long-haul flights for finding their zone. It just needs to be a place where you're not interrupted or distracted. Experiment with background noise/music, temperature, lighting, seating, work surface, etc.

2. Choose the right time.

Everyone has a natural energy cycle during the day that effects focus. I'm a morning person, but other people I know are night owls. Some people have weekly cycles as well. Mondays are bad for me while other people loathe Friday afternoons. Track your energy level over the day for a week and see when you're most dialed in.

3. Establish a pre-routine

Getting into your flow is a process and the right pre-routine can set you up for success. Working out and eating a light and healthy meal is key for me. For others, it might be meditation or journaling. Think about what gets you ready to focus and create a ritual that clues your mind into preparing to focus.

4. De-clutter your mind.

Clearing the thoughts bouncing around in your head is key. Take a minute and right down all of the things in your head: ideas, tasks, reminders, etc. Put them on a list and promise yourself you'll get back to them after you finish your work at hand.

5. Set a time box.

It's good to create a little positive time pressure. Knowing you have a limited amount of time will not only create some urgency, but also let your mind know when you'll get back to other tasks. Generally, I try to do 90-180 minutes. It can also be helpful to work in time chunks such as pomodoros--25 minutes on, 5 minutes off--to create a rhythm.

6. Don't wait, just start.

Getting into a flow isn't like falling asleep; you don't wait for it to happen. You need to push start it to create the momentum. For tasks like writing, pushing through the first paragraph gets me going, then I'm in the zone and the momentum carries me forward. Don't just sit there. Start doing it and flow will come.

Finding your flow in your day-to-day work isn't like the adrenaline rush of dropping into a chute on a double diamond. However, done well and with careful intention your zone can be used to consistently create great periods of extremely high productivity to help you go farther, faster.

This article was originally published on Inc.com: http://on.inc.com/2Dcr2M2

Save 15 hours a week by delegating these 6 small tasks – and why it will help grow your business

43 min 24 sec video

Worldwide101 recently joined up with five-time Inc. 5000 list Founder and columnist for Inc., Forbes, and Business Insider, Bruce Eckfeldt of Eckfeldt & Associates, to chat about the 6 tasks every business owner should start delegating right now in order to save 15 hours per week, and how to truly delegate them most effectively.

Want to improve your leadership? Become an agile leader using these 7 approaches

Great executives know how to adapt their style to the people and the situation. Here are 7 approaches that will expand your leadership toolkit.

When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The same is true for leadership. If you're great at driving your team by calling the shots, then you'll seek out situations--and even create ones--where making tough calls quickly is critical. However, like any highly developed skill, overusing one kind of leadership mode quickly becomes a liability.

The fact is that business throws us all sorts of challenges, and we need different approaches. As your business and your team grows, you'll need to develop a more robust and multifaceted set of leadership skills. Here are seven modalities that successful leaders use in the different situations where they are most effective.

1. Directive

For driven entrepreneurs, this is the most natural and the easiest approach to use. In this mode, you're giving direction and expecting action. It doesn't mean that you're barking orders to underlinings. Rather, the message you're sending out is clearly focused on what needs to be done, how it needs to be done, and by when it needs to be done. This approach is critical when time is limited, indecision comes at a high cost, and weighing the options is a luxury that you just can't afford. However, this is often an overused approach and can become a crutch for those who become overly reliant on it.

2. Supportive

Here you're letting others take the lead and serving as a supporting force who's providing resources, information, and authority to your team members. Servant leaders lean heavily on this approach to support their teams and allow them do what they feel is best. My word of caution here is to make sure you're supporting a team who has a clear direction and is highly motivated rather than falling back on this mode because you're just not sure what to do.

3. Inquisitive

Your role here is to ask questions that get the team members thinking in new or different ways. In this mode you're helping them to consider new options or criteria. By asking the right questions you can allow them to see an opportunity they haven't considered or a big risk they may need to avoid. However, don't use this as a cover for the directive mode. If you really want the team to turn right, just say so. Don't try to lead them down the garden path.

4. Encouraging

Sometimes a team has the right information, great organization, and a plan that will win, but they lack the mental willpower and confidence to take the summit. In this case, give your team words of encouragement, remind them of past successes, and keep them focused on pressing forward. This can be very hard if you're a driving leader who gets frustrated, so be careful of grabbing the wheel too quickly.

5. Empowering

Here you're expanding the team's authority and purview. This could be giving team members greater ability to make decisions or the ability to execute without getting prior approvals. When a team has proven their ability to make effective decisions and you've found that reducing bureaucracy and paperwork will increase implementation speed and motivation, this a powerful approach. Be careful however, a team who has been given greater control can be very reluctant to give it back.

6. Reflective

This can feel similar to the inquisitive mode but it includes one subtle difference: the focus here is look at past events, actions, and results to spur the team to self reflect and to generate new awareness. From this awareness comes insight and creates different--hopefully better--options and approaches. This mode is a powerful leadership mode, but it's also the most difficult because it requires you to put aside your views and motivations and let the team discover its own path forward.

7. Visionary

While somewhat cliché, the visionary mode is a very important. For some people, this approach comes naturally and for some it takes focused effort. When you're the visionary, your job is to paint a vivid and detailed picture of the future desired state. Think of Kennedy and his We Choose To Go To The Moon speech. Use this approach sparingly; its power comes in its infrequent and strategic use.

To be a great leader learn to leverage your natural skills and develop your weaknesses. But most importantly, learn which approach is best in which situation and avoid overusing one just because you're good at it.

This article was originally published on Inc.com: http://on.inc.com/2nhKF05

2 questions you must answer before designing your sales compensation plan

There's more than one way to pay sales people. Here are the two key questions you need to answer before you decide which model to choose.

If you ask ten CEOs how they compensate their sales people, you'll probably get eleven different answers. Everyone has a different plan and has changed it more than once. As a business and executive coach, it's a question I get all of the time. And it's not an easy one to answer.

There are two basic questions you need to address before deciding on a compensation plan for your salespeople.

First, you need to know what you can afford.

Start by figuring out the total value of a new sale and then back out your costs. Total value is the total lifetime revenue of a new account, less delivery costs and the related portion of overhead. I typically look at 6-24 months for most industries.

Secondly, you need to look at your sales process and decide who manages which risks.

I do this by determining the uncertainties in the sale and who is in the best position to impact these. For example, if pricing is variable and something the salesperson will decide, I want to design a compensation plan that make their compensation dependent on profit not revenue so they negotiate the highest price.

Once you have your budget and know the variables, you can look at any of these six strategies to create your compensation plan:

1. Fixed base salary

I've seen more than one company take this approach. Here there is a clear set of expectations and measures of success, but there is no variable compensation, just a base salary.

I find this works well when the sales team is tightly coupled and involved in delivery and overall company performance. It's also a cultural decision for your company. If you're a very collaborative culture, you might want to consider this type of model.

2. Commission on closed sales

The opposite of a fixed-base salary is an "you eat what you kill" approach. Here, compensation is totally dependent what you sell and you make a fixed, or possible graduated, percentage of the sale price. This works well in highly competitive environments where the sale is transactional in nature and the product is a commodity.

This typically does not work well when there is a lot of consulting, configuration, or customer services involved in the sale. Often salespeople on these types of plans will promise the world and leave the rest of the work up to the delivery team. Not a good formula.

3. Commission on lifetime value

This is a slight twist on the previous option. Instead of basing the commission on just the first transaction, the commission is paid out over time based on repeat sales by the same customer.

This works best when the true customer value is based on an ongoing relationship. This model will create incentive for sales people to close deals that will build a relationship, not just on the first transaction.

4. Commission on gross profit

This model pays a commission, but only on the gross profit and not on the total sale price. Use this model when your salesperson is involved in configuring the solution or the choice of customer has a strong impact on cost of delivery and service. The salesperson is compensated for choosing a good customer and selling them the right product or service that can be profitably delivered on.

5. Performance bonus

In this model, a salesperson has incentive to work more and harder for certain types and amounts of business based on specific sales targets and metrics. This could be anything from sales of a specific size, location, business type or target accounts.

I've seen this work well when a company has certain strategic goals and these goals do not easily tie back to revenue or profit calculations. I've seen companies, using this style of compensation, cap bonuses to diversify risk and clientele or to gain market share in emerging sectors.

6. Team bonus

This approach can use any of the above models, but the compensation is calculated based on aggregate team numbers, or overall company performance, rather than individual performance.

This works well when the company culture is much more collaborative and people work together to sell and close deals. It's also a good choice when there are different roles and services required for the sales process, such as technical engineers who help design and configure solutions for the potential client.

Often times companies start with one approach and evolve to others as they figure out what works best for them, their markets, and their people. In the end, the best approach is the one that delivers profitable clients, creates a happy sales team, and aligns with your company's core values.

This article was originally published on Inc.com: http://on.inc.com/2DhQO2q

Yes, remote teams can be high performing. Here's how to make them work

Having been a team coach the last decade, I've seen many of these distributed teams struggle, but I've also witnessed many of these teams excel, too. The best ones do not achieve this success by overcoming their challenges, rather, they turn their challenges into advantages. If you're on a distributed team or your company is building a distributed team, here are a few key considerations to keep in mind.

7 leadership styles allow great executives to tackle any situation

When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The same is true for leadership. If you're great at driving your team by calling the shots, then you'll seek out situations--and even create ones--where making tough calls quickly is critical. However, like any highly developed skill, overusing one kind of leadership mode quickly becomes a liability.

Yes, remote teams can be high performing. Here's how to make them work

Teams that don't sit side-by-side every day have challenges, but they also have some advantages. Here are 5 ways to thrive as a distributed team.

Over the last two decades, I've seen outsourced development come and go. During the late 1990's and early 2000's, many companies looked to outsourcing technical services to drive down costs by finding highly-skilled talent at a fraction of the cost. As it turns out, people dramatically underestimated the complexities of managing distributed teams at that point in time, and these complexities led to inefficiencies, quality issues, and schedule delays.

Over the last decade, however, distributed teams have seen a resurgence. Not in hopes of financial savings, but rather to access unique and hard-to-find talent such as technology, design, and data analytics.

Having been a team coach during much of that time period, I've seen many of these distributed teams struggle, but I've also witnessed many of these teams excel, too. The best ones do not achieve this success by overcoming their challenges, rather, they turn their challenges into advantages. If you're on a distributed team or your company is building a distributed team, here are a few key considerations to keep in mind.

1. Create multi-channel meeting environments

Technology has evolved in so many ways. One of the most useful advances has been in the development of collaborative documents and video streams. I encourage my distributed teams to have two screens on during our meetings. One with the video feed and one for a collaborative document. Sharing a screen for these two functions limits interaction. Instead, fire up an online document and let everyone type at the same time while still being able to look everyone in the eye.

2. Formalize informal conversation

One of the biggest things distributed teams miss is the water cooler banter and chit-chat before a meeting starts. For my distributed teams, this is built into the meeting agenda. We spend 5-10 minutes at the start of each meeting with a conversational opener that has nothing to do with the meeting topic. Pick a question that gets people talking and learning about each other before you switch into work mode.

3. Leverage "always-on" technology

Technology and connections are so ubiquitous now that I suggest teams ditch the scheduled video call and move to always-on devices. Having a tablet next to you with a continuous video stream takes some getting used to. However, it's great (and worth it!) when you want to have a short conversation to ask a question. I've seen people spin their wheels for hours because they didn't pick up the phone to ask a simple question.

4. DJ rather than facilitate

Facilitation skills are key for distributed teams. I make sure everyone is trained as a facilitator. But I like to take it one step further. I suggest to whoever is running the meeting that he or she DJ the experience. This usually involves music and rituals at the start and stop of the meeting; this could even include cheers, chants, and call-and-repeats that create energy and focus. I've been in more than one meeting that has had a dance party at some point.

5. Master asynchrony thinking

The most advanced distributed teams I've worked with have mastered asynchronous thinking. Whereas co-located teams thrive on gathering in a meeting room to hash out ideas in heated, often quick-paced debate, well-distributed teams evolve ideas and build concepts over time using different communication channels. To use the Daniel Kahneman term, distributed teams are better at slow thinking, which is a much better mode to be in for finding solutions to complicated, multifaceted problems.

While co-located teams have many advantages, the fact is they are not always possible. Distributed teams are here to stay and will most likely become even more popular has technology continues to develop. And while it's no secret that distributed teams create some unique challenges, following these suggestions can help turn them from a liability into an asset.

This article was originally published on Inc.com: http://on.inc.com/2CVODBm

Looking for advice? That might not be the best option, try this instead

While giving advice might feel good, stepping back and sharing experiences can often be more helpful.

Business owners are often looking for advice on strategies, tactics, and key decisions. However, while offering straight up advice might seem like an obvious solution, in the big picture, advice-giving is not the best approach.

Groups like the Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO) have discovered the downsides to advice giving and have actually worked it into their values and ground rules. They follow gestalt protocol which prohibits members from giving each other advice. Instead, gestalt protocol encourages experience-sharing to help each other with personal and business challenges.

While withholding advice might seem counterintuitive when people are asking for it, there are several reasons why it's a bad idea and why experience sharing is more powerful in the long run.

1. You'll never know all of the details.

To give advice is to make conclusions about the data presented and to give a suggested course of action. The problem is that you can never really know all of the details. There are subtleties, backgrounds, and nuances that would take days to dig into. Which means that any conclusion you draw on someone else's situation will be missing some amount of information. It takes too much time to be able to gather everything you need in order to make a solid recommendation.

2. You assume your goals, values, and priorities.

Assuming you have all of the details, every decision also assumes a set of personal goals, values, and priorities. And even if you know the other person well, your values and priorities are ultimately different, so you'll bias your suggestions based on your own answers to these questions, not theirs.

You may value winning more than relationships or you might care more about experiences than money. These philosophies turn into choices and they have a considerable impact on the path you take.

3. You give them an out.

When you give someone advice on a decision or path and she takes it, she tends to own it if it goes well, but she will also tend to blame you when it doesn't. By taking your advice, he or she can make you at least partially responsible for the outcome. If your goal is to truly help the other person, this advice can get in the way.

4. You deny them the chance to learn and grow.

Often our greatest learnings come in the crucible of our hardest and most important decisions. In these moments we are forced to define our goals, articulate our values, and determine our priorities. When we rely on external advice we skirt the hard work and just go with what's presented as a short cut.

When you resist giving advice and share experience instead, you create new opportunities for others to learn and grow.

5. You give them new information.

Discussing past experiences focuses on sharing valuable information. It could be options you created, resources you developed, or relationships you leveraged. Often the best experiences are the ones that didn't work out so well. Explaining what led to a bad outcome can highlight something that the other person is missing.

6. You give them new perspectives.

Sometimes you don't need to add anything to the situation to be helpful; you just need to give it a different spin. We can often feel stuck because we assume things are a certain way or we have to approach from a specific angle.

Some of the best experience shares that I've been a part of have done nothing more than re-frame a situation in a more positive or neutral light. This can make all of the difference to someone who is feeling stuck.

7. You help create new options.

Choosing a path can be tough if you only see a limited set of options. Experience shares can open up ways of moving forward that you hadn't seen previously. Sometimes it is as simple as making simple tweaks to current ideas based on new perspectives. 

8. You allow others to build on your sharing.

If you're sharing experiences as a group, you create opportunities for others to build on your experience share by sharing their own, similar situations. Advice tends to incite debate and argument; experience fosters reflection and ideas.

9. You allow others to learn at the same time.

Many times I've been in situations where people are sharing to help one person with their challenge and they end up helping each other, sometimes in completely unforeseen ways. Hearing someone talk about a time when they grappled with a problem and discovered a solution allows everyone to learn from that lesson. If the person had just given advice, the rest of us would miss out on that opportunity.

It's easy to fall into the advice-giving trap. We love to help people and we want to fix problems. However, taking a step back and thinking about what experiences lead you to want to give that advice creates a moment of deeper reflection which can enlighten you, the person you want to help, and everyone listening in.

This article was originally published on Inc.com: http://on.inc.com/2CG1NmW

Developing your strategic plan & setting OKRs - webinar with Bruce Eckfeldt and Zorian Rotenberg

Strategy must connect to execution. View these “Expert Series” webinars to learn how to develop your strategy and enable great execution with OKR goals (what Gazelles methodology calls Annual Initiatives and Quarterly Priorities) and connect it to every individual’s performance via Continuous Performance Management and ongoing progress check-ins.

Just because you have a bad outcome doesn't mean you made a bad decision, here's why

Skilled entrepreneurs learn how to separate decisions from outcomes and learn when they make a smart decision or just got lucky.

One of the hardest challenges entrepreneurs face is making decisions in the face of highly uncertain and risky situations. Often, these decisions can make or break a product or even an entire business. Lucky founders get it right and make it big once. Successful, serial entrepreneurs know how make calculated bets and are smart about learning from their mistakes.

One of the tools used by great business minds is a simple two-by-two matrix which compares decisions and outcomes. This four box tool helps them learn from both successes and failures and make better choices in the future. Using this matrix prevents them from falling into the trap of thinking that all good outcomes are the product of good decisions and bad outcomes the product of bad decisions.

To illustrate, let's use the example of a simple wager on a single roll of one die. Assuming a six-sided die, the chance of any one number is one-in-six or about 16.6%. Let's look at the outcomes.

Good decision, good outcome

Say someone gave you the following bet: you have to pay $10 to play, and you get $20 if you roll a 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5, but you get nothing if you roll a 6. That leaves you a 5-in-6 chance of winning $10 and a 1-in-6 chance of losing $10. The total expected value is $6.67. It's a bet worth taking.

You roll a 3. Congratulations! You've won $10. You've made a good decision and had a good outcome. The decision was not very hard and the outcome fairly expected.

Bad decision, bad outcome

Now, let's take that same scenario and change the numbers. Say it costs $10 to play and you get $20 if you roll a 1 and lose if you roll anything else. The expected value is $-6.67. It's not a good bet, but you decide to play anyway.

You roll a 3 again and lose. It was neither a good decision nor a good outcome, and it was also not surprising.

Here is where is gets tricky...

Good decision, bad outcome

Let's go back to the first scenario: $10 to play, you win $20 if you roll a 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5. However this time, you roll a 6. You lose.

Was it a bad decision? No, it was the right decision; the odds were in your favor. You just had a bad outcome. If that same exact situation came up again, you should take the bet and roll again. And you would probably win.

Bad decision, good outcome

Now, let's look at the second scenario: you take the bet at $10 to play and you win $20 if you roll a 1, but you lose if you roll anything else. Not a good bet, but you decide to play anyway.

You roll a 1. Winner! But was that a good decision? I would say no because the odds were against you. However, you had a good outcome. And therein lies the rub. The positive outcome would seem to suggest you made the right decision. Not so, you were lucky not smart.

Many times in business we end up with bad outcomes on good decisions and good outcomes on bad decisions. However if we fail to realize these types of situations, we risk taking away the wrong conclusions and making similar mistakes in the future. Skilled entrepreneurs learn how to reflect on decisions and outcomes and learn from those situations to decide if they made skilled decisions or just got lucky (or unlucky).

One of the best tools for developing this skill is a decision journal where you lay out your decisions, the options, your assessment of risk and probability, and then record the outcomes and reflect on your results. This allows you to see your bias, develop new skills for assessment, and clarify your goals for future decisions.

While real business decisions are much more complex than rolling dice, they often boil down to the estimated probability of two or more outcomes. Looking at possible options and likelihood of possible outcomes allows you to develop better strategies and make better decisions in the future.

This article was originally published on Inc.com: http://on.inc.com/2BWKKM1

David Reiss from Jane.hr, Using ‘cultural fit’ to find the talent you need

Contact information:
David Reiss, Chairman at Jane - dave@jane.hr
Bruce Eckfeldt, Founder/CEO at Eckfeldt & Associates - bruce@eckfeldt.com

Startups: how to choose a compatible co-founder

Selecting a co-founder is one of the most important decisions you can make in your business. You'll be tied to this person for many years and go through the best and worst times attached at the hip. Some say it's like a marriage. I say it's like a marriage, but you spend a lot more time together, and you make much harder decisions, and rather than a few kids you end up with dozens of employees.

Depending on your startup's focus and your professional background, you might struggle to find anyone willing to go into business with you or you may be flush with options. Either way, here are the key considerations before tying the business knot with someone.

1. Define your core values.

Whether it's hiring an employee, selecting a vendor, or choosing a co-founder, using a solid and well-defined set of core values is a great place to start. Your core values determine your priorities, goals and the decisions you're willing to make.

Are you super competitive or more of a collaborative person? Do you want work-life balance or are you thinking business 24/7? Avoid values like honesty, integrity, and quality as these are table stakes. Focus on the values that make you truly different from others. They should be who you are, not who you hope to be.

2. Decide on which tradeoffs you're willing to make.

Once you have your values, I like identifying "anti-values." These are things you're willing to forgo to get your values. For example, if transparency is really important to you, are you willing to give up privacy, or security? Or if meeting deadlines is important, are you willing to work late hours and change your personal plans? Making these choices upfront will communicate to your potential partner what your priorities are and what you're willing to sacrifice.

3. Assess your own strengths and weaknesses.

We all have strengths and weaknesses, it's a fact of life. The key is becoming aware of them developing good strategies for leveraging strengths and mitigating weaknesses. Highly successful people have dialed this in and figured out where they excel and where they struggle; then they surround themselves with the right environment and right people. While it might be tempting to find a co-founder who is just like you, it's better to find someone who compliments you in the right way to benefit the future of your company.

4. Decide what type of personal relationship you want to have.

Are you working side-by-side every day or checking in once a week? Are you grabbing drinks at the end of each day or having a partner lunch once a month? Either is fine so long as you're on the same page and fulfilling each other's needs.

5. Make sure the other person can check their ego at the door.

One of the key tests for a potential co-founder is making sure they can put aside being right in order to do what's best for the partnership. This can be tough when you're looking for someone very technical and knowledgeable. This type of person can be brilliant, but if they have little EQ, they'll be difficult to work with over the long haul. Being humble, open to new ideas, and willing to collaborate on decisions is key to making a successful co-founder.

6. Ensure you both have the same level of drive and motivation.

You don't need to agree to work 80-hour weeks or be in the office until 2am every day, but you want to ensure that both of you have similar commitment levels. If you both have families and want to be home by 5:30 each night, that's fine, just make that known and agreed upon upfront.

7. Discuss how you will deal with adverse circumstances.

Every business and every partnership will go through tough times. Fundraising difficulties, cash flow shortfalls, employees leaving, and clients terminating contracts will all happen and they will put strains on the partnership. Making sure you and your co-founder have a strategy for dealing with tough times and be able to weather the storm.

Discussing these topics upfront is a great investment of time. The best business partnerships are successful not because of the heights they achieve, but because of the lows they survive. While you'll never find the perfect co-founder, taking some time to ponder these questions will ensure that you find the best one in the time you have.

The return of the 9-5 work day and why (some) employees aren’t complaining

Ever since Marissa Mayer nixed Yahoo's work from home policy in 2013, executives and managers have been grappling with the balance between accommodating employees' personal schedules and lifestyle demands with organizational management and productivity concerns.

Working from home is still seen as a big perk for many employees: commuting to work in your slippers and bathrobe and having lunch at home definitely have some perks. However, many employees are seeing real and significant downsides. First of all, the lack of separation between work and home creates challenges. Many work-from-home employees say they work later in the day and more hours overall. They also find that work time at home is less focused and home time is often interrupted by work. The lack of separation means that each world bleeds into the other which causes problems.

Some employers are bringing back office hours and work-from-work policies. And many employees are glad. Here are some of the reasons why.

1. Greater separation between work and home life

While some employees can create good routines and structures to keep work and home separated, the majority cannot. While few people would suggest they like their commute, it does create a physical and psychological separation between the two worlds and allows people to transition mentally, effectively keeping a healthy space between home and work.

2. More focused work environment

Creating a focused environment is difficult and working from home can present distractions. The recent viral video of Prof Robert Kelly doing a newscast with the BBC when his two toddlers inadvertently come into the room behind him shows the awkward situations that can occur. While the office has it's own set of distractions, it can be more easily optimized for work activities.

3. Better tools and resources

For folks that love tinkering and troubleshooting wireless printers, work-from-home can be fun. But for those who don't want to be their own tech support team, working from home can be a challenge. Taking computers to be fixed, waiting for technicians to arrive and install equipment, sitting on hold for hours trying to troubleshoot modems can be a nightmare. Having a professional staff to maintain infrastructure keeps employees focused on value-add work.

4.More face-to-face communication with coworkers

Even though most people are aware that the majority of communication is nonverbal and typing can be slow and difficult, work-from-home employees do most of their communication via email, text, and messenger. This means that not only is the communication quality poor but it's also slow. Working together in the office means you have a much better chance of meeting face-to-face with your colleagues and avoiding miscommunications and delays.

5. Higher levels of team collaboration

A recent HBR study showed that the nature of work has been changing over the last two decades and that more and more employees are engaged in highly collaborative tasks. While video conferencing services and collaborative documents have improved tremendously, they still don't compare to being in the same room with stickies and a whiteboard. Collocated teams can get more done, faster.

6. Strong sense of culture and community

Many work-from-home employees find that while the flexibility and avoidance of a commute is great, they begin to go stir crazy after a while. Especially for extroverts, working from home can be a prison sentence, but even introverts are social creatures, and we all need interpersonal interaction to keep us engaged and stimulated. Phone and video calls don't make up for in-person, face-to-face time. Furthermore, many people end up getting out of the house to work at coffee shops or co-working spaces, but, at some level, this defeats the point of working from home in the first place.

Companies who are trying to build a strong company culture and team morale have learned that having regular office hours and being collated is core to their objectives. Often, the desire to work from home stemmed from toxic work environments, so rather than creating work-from-home policies, companies should focus on developing productive, engaging work environments and cultures.

While some time working outside of the office is needed to give people flexibility to live their lives, making work-from-home your core policy comes at a high price for both the company and the employee.

7 ways successful business partners stay together

Those who have been in business partnerships know that it's not always a walk in the park. Everything starts off with grand ideas and big possibilities, but often, as challenges and obstacles crop up, conflict increases and the energy that got a partnership off the ground begins to wane.

Even the most successful partnerships go through tough times. In fact, successful partnerships are defined not by the height of their peaks, but by how well they can weather the storms of the valleys. Great partnerships put systems in place to keep members aligned and focused on the same goals, actively work to address differences before they blow up into open conflict, and put in processes to ensure that everyone is being treated fairly.

Here are seven things successful partnerships do to ensure they last as long as possible and are highly successful for everyone involved.

1. Define your core values, purpose, and vision

All conflict resolution is based on finding a higher purpose to overcome differences. Without a strong set of values, purpose, and vision for the future, partnerships are forced to work from one short-term agreement to the next.

However, once you have the bigger picture well-articulated, it becomes much easier for bigger ideas, plans, investments, compromises, and strategies to develop. Partners who share a strong vision of the future can make bolder, longer-term moves because they are clear on the end goal and driven by purpose.

2. Separate initial contributions from ongoing contribution

There are many levels of involvement in partnerships. Some members may be involved on a full-time basis, some may only be contributing assets, ideas, or even just reputation.

Separating initial contributions from ongoing contributions allows you to more easily quantify and track everyone's investment and exposure. In this step it's also a good idea to separate ownership from management. Decide who is going to be working in the business and who is an outside advisor, and then compensate them appropriately based on market rates.

3. Focus on equitable, not equal

Many partnerships make the mistake of trying to make everyone equal partners, going through hoops and contortions to make things perfectly balanced. Instead, make sure everything is equitable.

Calculate what people contribute to the business and share equity, rewards, and costs accordingly. In my partnerships, we convert everything into points that are used to calculate equity. Money, time, ideas, assets, and reputation are all converted into points to define equity splits.

And as time marches on and people make additional contributions, additional points are allocated and updated. These can include or exclude control and decision-making rights.

4. Define your roles and measures of success

Defining roles and responsibilities are keys to the success of any business, but it's twice as important in partnerships. Good partnerships get super clear on who is doing what, how success in each role will be measured, and how to hold each other accountable for delivering on expected results. When someone comes up short, the team works to support him or her and, if need be, the team redefines roles to make sure the best and most qualified person is taking on the jobs that need to be done.

5. Decide how to decide

This is critical in large partnerships, but even in smaller ones, defining how decisions will be made is key to smooth operations. Great partnerships have a well developed and balanced governance process.

They have a documented process for who will be involved in which decision and in what capacity before decisions need to be made. This gives them a clear path to follow. And they know that too much formality will bloat the process while too little creates conflict and turmoil later.

6. Have a plan for when you disagree

Disagreement is inevitable. It's impossible for everyone to agree on everything all of the time. Have a plan for what to do when you reach an impasse.

For lower level decisions, you may agree that one partner or another will have the final say. For mid-level decisions, you might agree to bring things to a vote. For major issues, you can agree upfront to have formal resolution processes that uses third party coaches, mediators, or arbitrators.

Furthermore, I always suggest that partnerships have a clear and precise dissolution/buyout process that maximizes the value of the company in case you reach a deadlock situation.

7. Quarterly partnership review and plan

One of the best things you can do as a partnership is to review what's working, what's not, and what changes need to be made to keep everyone aligned, on target, and fully engaged. I do quarterly reviews with my clients where we actively encourage issues and concerns to be discussed so that we catch them before they exacerbate into conflicts.

We also use this time to celebrate success and recognize the important and valuable work which has been accomplished. These small course corrections can help avoid major issues in the future.

While no partnership is without differences or challenges, partnerships that last do so because they make a point to take the time and energy to stay together. Expecting that a partnership will just work on its own and take care of itself is a recipe for trouble. Partnerships take work, and the sooner you do it, the easier it is.

Where's The Money - William Lieberman

William Lieberman, Founder & CEO, The CEO's Right Hand

Mr. Lieberman is the founder and CEO of The CEO’s Right Hand, a New York-based consulting services firm that provides a full breadth of strategic, financial and operational advice to founders, CEOs and Executive Teams. As an experienced entrepreneur himself, he has served in various C-suite leadership and advisory roles across a wide spectrum of industries. Mr. Lieberman has participated in, as well as assisted on, fundraises for many early-stage growth companies using a variety of security types.

Where's The Money - Julia Pimsleur

Julia Pimsleur, CEO, Million Dollar Women

Julia has raised a combined $26 million in non-profit and for-profit dollars. Founder of Little Pim, the leading language teaching method for young children, Julia is also the author of  “Million Dollar Women: The Essential Guide for Female Entrepreneurs Who Want to Go Big” to help women learn to raise capital and take their businesses further, faster. Million Dollar Women is addressing gender disparity in fundraising by educating women on the “how-to’s” of raising capital, as well as digging into the inner limiting beliefs that often hold women back. Partnering with corporations, non-profits, and government organizations, her mission is to help one million women reach one million dollars in annual revenues by 2020.

Where's The Money - Tom Watts

Tom Watts, CEO, Chief Investment Officer, Watts Capital Group

Tom is an ex-McKinsey consultant who afterwards founded a telecom advisory firm which he subsequently sold. He subsequently worked as a senior investment banker and analyst at Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns, assisting high-growth companies in raising financing and completing strategic actions such as IPOs and sales.  He has a passion for working with entrepreneurs and helping them turn their businesses into large financial successes. Tom guides entrepreneurs through important business and life transitions, including capital raising, sale of ownership stakes, and the comprehensive personal financial planning that assures these strategic actions achieve their desired personal results.  Where appropriate, he assumes a long-term advisory role with his clients.