Routines are boring. One question I’m often asked is why do clients quit doing the Rockefeller Habits if they’re so successful? The answer is the repetitive nature of routine. Habits become mundane. We all love the feeling of independence. We yearn for the freedom to do whatever we want. Yet in business without the right habits we fail to achieve. You can tell the strength of a business and its leader by the strength of their routines.

Daily and Weekly meetings can become routine. After a while you begin to believe you’re not getting anything from them. If someone fails to make notes as to what transpires in each meeting you simply don’t recognize the value of what you learned, what people revealed, and what you acted upon through your daily and weekly meetings. In most cases you’re not aware of the actions you are taking because they simply become automatic. Even the last comment [One word or phrase close to sum up their feelings on the meeting today.] in the weekly meeting can provide in invaluable insight. In many cases it can reveal exactly where their heart and mind are at.

Many of us fail to see the value in routines because we exaggerate our smartness. We believe we can see the future without getting others input or hearing the issues and concerns from our peers and subordinates.

Imagine a captain of a ship who never checked his bearings. 99% of the time commercial airplanes are off course. Their internal compass gently nudges them back on course every few seconds to ensure they get to their proper destination. Just like an airline or ship, the meeting routines help us to stay on course. They keep us apprised of the challenges that are lurking around the corner, the metrics and accountabilities we should be attaining. They offer insight into the future and help us evade difficulties before they occur. Instead of being reactive you can be proactive.

Whether it’s brushing your teeth, or following your meeting patterns, routine plays an important role in our success. Habits are the success patterns that are vitally important to keeping us on course.

Discipline is the product of following through on the activities it takes to reach a goal. Jim Collins address at the 2009 fall Dallas Growth Summit on How the Mighty Fall reminded me of the importance that comes when hard times arrive. Those who have disciplined themselves to follow the right rhythms can hunker down and get through any challenge. It’s the companies that are not disciplined that fall into the crevices of uncertainty, doubt and disruption that ultimately leads to failure.

What are the habits you have that discipline you toward success? What are the habits your business has that help you achieve your goals and priorities? Have you noticed your best people have the discipline to stay on course and do what’s necessary to meet the company’s objectives? Is it time to make sure you have the right habits for your business?

I leave you with a reminder from Jim Collins, “A culture of discipline is not a principle of business; it is a principle of greatness.”

Recently, a client contacted me and asked for help in moving a sales opportunity along. After careful consideration of the facts, we realized that his current circumstances left him no opportunity to get this deal. In the same week, I was reviewing a situation where we were making tremendous progress in a company in getting all the employees to move in one direction to make the changes necessary to help that company avoid failure. Just 6 months earlier, the CEO had tried to mobilize these employees and was getting nowhere. I realized that while the circumstances in these two situations were different, success or failure was dependent on the same factors.

In the book “Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard” by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, the authors make the case that for any change to happen you must harness people’s emotions to give them the will to change and then direct them on how to accomplish that change. If you are not able to accomplish both motivation and direction with everyone involved, you fail. In my two examples, one client was attempting to change something outside of his company, while the other was seeking change from within. The bottom line is that all change requires appropriate motivation and leadership.

I have found that to get others to change, we must first get them focused on the right questions and motivate their passion before we can start directing their logic and actions. So let’s look at a real-life opportunity to demonstrate the point. I am working with a branch director in a very large financial institution who wants to purchase my services. He does not have purchase authority. He asked me for a lot of data which he wants to send to his internal people to help them see why our products and services are so good. Based on what he has told me about their internal processes, the cost of piloting our services is far less than the cost of continuing their existing processes and procedures, so I know what questions he needs to ask if he wants to get them on his side.

Are they:

• Tired of too many people not meeting quotas?
• Frustrated by not enough people being top performers?
• Concerned by the fact they really do not understand how to consistently select top performers?
• Do they believe their current approach and initiatives will fully address these issues?
• If they agree that these are legitimate issues, do they have the courage and desire to try new ways to address this problem or do they want to keep doing the same things and hope for a different outcome?

In my experience, if someone looks long enough and with the proper bias, they will find the reason to support changing or not changing.  It all starts with where their motivation is. You must inspire their motivation. Whenever an organization or salesperson sends information too early in the process the recipients look for information to support their own pre-existing bias. Worse, they fail to have the motivation to read the information. People without motivation usually look for reasons not to change.

Howard Shore is a business growth expert that works with companies that want to maximize their growth potential by improving strategy, enhancing their knowledge, and improving motivation. To learn more about him or his firm please visit his website at www.activategroupinc.com  or contact Howard Shore at (305) 722-7216 or shoreh@activategroupinc.com .

If you have not yet read Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath, put it on your “must read” list. In it, the Heaths refer to a study done by Brian Wansink, who runs the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University. In the study and his book, Mindless Eating, Wansink’s research identified one key factor that affected how much popcorn people ate when they went to a movie. Surprisingly, it had nothing to do with body type, gender, geographic location, or type of movie. …Continue reading »

Greatest is achieved first in your mind.  As Napoleon Hill said, “whatever the mind of the man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” Greatness starts when you conceive it in your mind and then cultivate your belief in it.  The more fully and vividly you conceive greatest, the more likely it will occur.

Recently, I was in Canton, OH for the NFL Hall of Fame Induction Festivities.  I was there to visit my in-laws and go to the Hall of Fame Parade with my 4 year old daughter.  As a life long Dallas Cowboys fan, it was exciting to watch one of my all-time favorite players, Emmitt Smith, ride in the parade.  However, that paled in comparison to what he would later do that day …Continue reading »

A great venture can not be built on the shoulders of just one highly talented and motivated entrepreneur.  Not matter what the business, it will not scale to any fashion without a team of the right people leading it forward.

“Individually, we are one drop.  Together, we are an ocean.”
– Ryunosuke Satoro

It is astounding to me to hear that there are companies in this high unemployment environment today that can not find the right people for their ventures.  Yet, in the last week alone, three separate entrepreneurs I spoke to mentioned …Continue reading »

Too often managers, mentors and colleagues sound very much like parents talking to children. When you want them do something differently you tell them a story about yourself.  In the business world feedback may sound like this:

“You should have done “X” because that is how I would do it” or “Back in the day this is how we did things.”

This self-centered approach to giving feedback has the same effect as when parents tell their children “when I was your age.”  People shut down. They hear nothing that is said after that. The reason is …Continue reading »

In today’s IntelligenceReport on Parade.com they have a quiz to test people on whether you know what Democrats and Republicans stand for http://www.parade.com/news/intelligence-report/quiz/hey-big-spenders.html. They used some the data in the book Presimetrics, by Mike Kimel and journalist Michael E. Kanell where politicians’ claims with the decisions they made from 1952 to 2008 are compared. In the survey you find a few interesting facts, such as: …Continue reading »