Math is not my strong suit and it never will be.  The day before my final exam senior year, my math teacher encouraged me to “memorize” a certain problem in order to insure I passed!  Now many years later, I “do” math but it’s certainly not something I enjoy.  I can read a balance sheet, understand numbers and manipulate them to get answers but if I had to deal with numbers every day I would be an unhappy, unproductive person. 

The Gallup organization has spent forty years researching what the best workers have in common.  The most significant findings from this research are that most organizations have two misconceptions about their people: 1) people can learn to be competent in almost anything and 2) peoples greatest room for growth is in their greatest area of weakness.    

Gallup discovered that people will actually grow in their greatest area of strength and that if their strengths are not geared towards, let’s say math, they will never be a productive member of the team in that area.

However, if people are placed in areas where they are able to utilize their strengths then they are 6x more likely to be engaged in their work!  Talk about increased productivity!

Discovering the strengths of your team and how they work in correlation with work flow will increase productivity which will increase your bottom line and those are numbers even I can be happy with.

To learn more about strengthsfinders and how it can improve your teams productivity, email me for more information lbeck@thebeckagency.com.

None of us know what the future may hold but for many of you it has to “get better” than the present. Peter Drucker says, “the future is unpredictable but can be created. Planning especially strategic planning is difficult and risky but is the primary responsibility of management.”

As management what decisions are you making daily that will create the future? Decisions can only be made in the present but by making decisions based on the future you wish to create you will move forward irrespective of economy or environmental conditions.

The secret to strategic planning is not to create a plan that is set in stone but to instead define the proverbial 50,000 foot view and then everyday take action that moves you towards your end result. Which means all strategic plans should be “in motion.”

For strategic success, all plans should have a secondary layer of tactical initiatives and action steps that are reviewed and adjusted based on environmental conditions you encounter along the way.

Not having a strategic plan is like driving to a new destination without plugging in the address to your GPS system (or mapquest for you old-schoolers). How can you make decisions for the future without knowing where you want to go?
The present is the time in which we create the future. Make a plan.

My daughter Meghan had a friend over the other day and they were happily jumping on the trampoline, when the little girl from down the street came over and asked if she could jump as well. As a mother, I cringed because in my experience two girls are fine; three girls are trouble waiting to happen. Sure enough it wasn’t very long before they wandered into the house trying to “be nice” but having difficulty. I quickly announced it was time for everyone to go home. Meghan and I started her bath and a conversation about “playing nice.” “Mom, it’s not hard to be nice but when I’m not expecting her to come play and she comes, it’s hard because I want to play with my other friend.” “Hmm, I countered so it’s easy to be nice when you want to be nice but you don’t want to be nice all the time?” To which I got the expected response, “oh, mom”

Play Nice is a phrase all mothers have uttered and all adults heard from someone at some point in their childhood. As an adult, I find myself wondering what happened to “play nice.” It’s never hard to be nice when we want to be, when things are going our way, but what about when we are in a hurry, when we catch “every red light” or when we choose “the wrong line” at the store. Road Rage, grocery store lines, waiting for a doctors appointment everyday occurrences that each of us experience and I dare say we don’t always play nice.

The word “nice” has an image problem, says Linda Thaler who wrote the book The Power of Nice, and I must say I agree. How many times have you said, that’s nice, but you don’t really think it is nice at all. Being nice is perceived at times as a negative in this world when actually it is the ultimate positive. Think about the following: Nice is luckier in love. People who are low-key have half the divorce rate of the general population, says a University of Tornoto study. Nice makes more money in his book Primal Leadership, Professor Daniel Goleman found there is a direct correlation between employee morale and the bottom line. One study found that for every 2 percent increase in the helpfulness of staff the company saw a 1 percent increase in revenue. Nice is healthier. A University of Michigan study found that older Americans who provide support to others had a 60 percent lower rate of premature death than their peers. Nice is good for your love life your wallet and your health.

As a mother raising her children to “play nice”, I want to challenge all of you to “play nice.” This is more than a random act of kindness this is a habit of using manners, caring about others and in general being nice. Remember it’s good for you.

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