The Silver Bullet of Business Success
3 Powerful Questions that will Quickly Unleash the Extraordinary and Profitable Leader in You!
1. Do You Really Understand What Is Really Important?
When a leader can truthfully and accurately answer this critically important question, the power of the 80/20 Principle can then be tapped and exploited to motivate the type of behaviors that will drive positively focused actions that ultimately unite organizational oneness in ways of purpose, attitude, goal and labor.
In other words, if everything is important, then nothing is. When an organization has too many ‘urgent & important’ things routinely in process, the organization becomes disconnected and disables its ability to successfully keep ‘real’ progress in motion.
Too many competing and changing priorities will naturally dilute and weaken employee focus; steal valuable time, talent and energy, and will consequently lead to high employee frustration and an increased number of non-value added outcomes. Relationships begin to wither, trust starts to wane, and as result the organizational community and business as a whole suffers.
Leaders that fail to set the right priorities and tone for their organizations accelerate the effects of The Second Law of Thermodynamics that says; “everything in the universe is running down, becoming less organized and more disordered.” In essence, these leaders become the primary source and cause of compounding distractions, chaos and dysfunction.
Why do so many organizations seem to live in a reactive mode? There are many reasons, but three major factors are:
- The leaders in these organizations lack self-management skills.
- They have weak management tools and systems.
- The organizational structure by design counter-acts productive teamwork.
The combined negative effect of these three destructive forces will dramatically reduce employee relational-capacity, morale and organizational potential to the extent and proportion of their existence.
The key to overcoming these three factors is to develop and integrate an ‘80/20 Thinking’ process into your organization’s business management system that will lead to identifying the issues that have the greatest possible impact on the success of your business. Then invest the majority of your time working on the one-fifth (20%) of the opportunities that will deliver four-fifths (80%) of the desired results. That is the power of 80/20 simplicity! I call it 80/20 Leadership™.
2. Do You Really Understand People?
Human design and health are intrinsically linked to a person’s emotions. You can really know and master a multitude of facts, but still be miserable if you are controlled by negative emotions.
Human emotionality has been studied for centuries and understanding how emotions work is a critical leadership skill as well as a key factor as it relates to one’s success in life. Emotions are commonly found at the heart of most workplace matters and are manifested as human behaviors in literally 100’s of ways.
Organizational fitness is predominantly a people issue – after all, people really are the company. 80/20 Leadership™ recognizes that humans are genetically designed with an 80/20 DNA. Great leaders know and act on this fact because emotional balance is key in both the workplace and life. Therefore, it is wise to know how to manage human emotions because it is the pathway to emotional health and business success.
3. Do You Really Want To Be The Best Leader You
80/20 leaders know that intellectual preparation is not the same as emotional readiness. The mind and the heart work at different speeds and on different timelines. The 80/20 leader is a mission-minded master of singular-focus who honestly cares about the growth and development of people and is absolutely driven to improve total enterprise well-being. As result, the 80/20 leader discovers and realizes more of his/her own hidden leadership potential while simultaneously elevating and bringing out the best in others.
Theodore Roosevelt’s assertion; ‘nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care’ can be a reality built on authentic actions and words. 80/20 leadership provides a way for leaders to engage all their people on an emotional and intellectual level that motivates them to take inspired action that consistently achieves positive results.
80/20 leaders realize that their role and purpose is not about them so they aren’t obsessed or worried about matters of presentation. Instead, they diligently pursue an ongoing conversation with their people demonstrating an earnest desire to make deep genuine motivational connections (i.e., remember, humans are 80% emotional beings). 80/20 leaders see themselves much like a flywheel working to maintain momentum. They continuously build and store productive organizational energy that becomes self-sustaining and proportional to the growing employee interaction created and fueled by enthusiasm and focused action.
Buckminster Fuller said, “If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don’t bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.”
By Curtis Chocholous
Curtis Chocholous is the Founder of BIZOPEX, Leadership Simplified. After his three-decade career across four industries responsible for plant management, supply chain and continuous improvement, Mr. Chocholous decided it was time for a change and charted a course to strengthen entrepreneurial manufacturing companies. He believes that an organization’s culture, much like family culture, should be invested in daily to ensure healthy, productive and prosperous growth. Curtis currently resides in Springboro, Ohio with his wife Laurie.
Contact at info@bizopex.com
