Viral Mehta: Servant Leadership: Helping People Come Alive

In an ancient parable, three masons are sitting in a row, all chipping away at large blocks of stone. A woman observing them is curious about what they're up to. She asks the first man what he's doing, to which he responds, "I'm chipping away at this block of stone." Indeed, she thinks. She questions the second man similarly, who says, "I'm working to feed my family." Also true, reflects the woman. Finally, she questions the third mason, who responds, "I'm helping to build a beautiful cathedral."

Read Peter Drucker's What Makes an Effective Leadership

It's a powerful perspective -- holding within it a value for collaboration, agency, creativity, and meaning. What if we all could see our work in that way? What if our organizations supported us in holding that perspective, and to go one step further, how can we create institutions that release these core values? In his seminal 1970 essay "The Servant as Leader," Robert Greenleaf coined the term "servant leader" to describe someone who has that interest. For such a person, "It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead."

A servant leader -- one who wants to serve first and lead second -- strives to create a work environment in which people can truly express these deepest of inner drives. Servant leadership entails a deep belief that people are the greatest asset any organization has, and to nurture their individual growth becomes the basis for all organizational development. That growth goes far beyond the limited dimension of financial benefit -- it dives into our core motivations as people.

In his book Drive, best-selling author Dan Pink talks about the evolution in our understanding of what really motivates people, especially in our professional lives. According to Pink, the latest behavioral science research points to three key drivers: autonomy, mastery and purpose. Another way to frame this is empowerment, perfectibility, and purpose, and servant leaders endeavor to create a culture that fosters each of these three intrinsic motivations:

Empowerment:

People want to be engaged and also have some level of control over their environment. A servant leader recognizes that the people doing the work generally have the best ideas about how to improve the processes they participate in. Through tools like rapid improvement events and PDCA (Plan Do Check Act) suggestion systems, servant leaders practice participatory decision-making, empowering employees to be innovators and co-creators in positive change. Such leaders are also enablers; they spend a significant amount of time at the workplace, making direct observations, and then striving to create systemic improvements that add value to the work of their employees.

For a concrete example of this kind of engagement, in "Improving Healthcare Using Toyota Lean Production Methods," Robert Chalice reports that Toyota Corporation employees globally generate 2 million ideas a year. And they come from all over -- more than 95% of the workforce contributes these suggestions, with each person submitting over 30 ideas each. Even more importantly, over 90% of these ideas are implemented. Leaders who understand how to unleash this kind of creativity build systems that support idea generation. But this kind of empowerment is also grounded. Servant leaders promote learning by doing and testing iteratively in a scientific way, and they demonstrate accountability. It's a great example of assuming value in all people, which soon translates into a scientific, transparent system for everyday improvement, which in turn fosters a culture of continuous perfection.

Perfectibility:

Perfect is a verb -- and every person can tap into an intrinsic drive toward perfection. A carpenter can strive to be a perfect craftsman, a nurse looks to provide perfect care at the bedside, and Michael Jordan was known to inexorably seek the perfect shot. The role of servant leadership is to create a culture and context in which that inherent drive toward improvement is channeled in a way that benefits the whole. If people are engaged in perfection as a journey and not a destination, then they are constantly looking for ways to innovate.

This brand of innovation follows a very conscious design philosophy -- one that is inherently collaborative. All of us are smarter than any of us, as the adage goes. Far from being a cold, individual, strictly rational process, servant leaders design highly collaborative systems that balance the scientific method with in-depth engagement of people from all levels. They also actively break down silos and promote a shared view across functions and departments: in healthcare (where I currently work), that view is: "how can we maximize the real value to the patient, and as they move along the care delivery stream, what improves their well-being?" In that sense, servant leaders have a worldview of interdependence, and recognize that they have to own the entire value stream (including suppliers and partners), on behalf of the patient.

Purpose:

In the words of Picasso, "The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away." In healthcare -- and especially in serving the underserved population -- it becomes all the more important (and necessary) to create structures that enable us to give in concert. Atul Gawande, the famed surgeon-author, uses a sports analogy to urge modern healthcare (though it's easily generalizable) to evolve from "cowboy medicine" to "pitcrew medicine," referring to the unbelievable preparation, synchronization, and seamless way in which a pit-crew services a race-car in the thick of intense competition. If a pit-crew can deliver flawless results in less than 12 seconds, imagine what a team of people can do longterm in the service of better care for all.

“Jim is inspiring. One of the best presentations I have heard." MITRE See what they are talking about.

At the root of such collaboration is still each person's own connection to greater purpose. Civil Rights leader Howard Thurman said, "Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." Perhaps that is the essence of servant leadership: to facilitate people in coming alive. Interestingly enough, when we support people in tapping into that part of themselves that is most alive, then their most selfless motivations surface. So people who've come alive are naturally amenable to working in a collective.

In this way, by supporting people in finding purpose, servant leaders inspire true, collective service. And it's all done invisibly, such that people can truly feel that they are each "helping to build a beautiful cathedral." In the ancient words of Lao Tzu, "The Sage is self-effacing and scanty of words. When his task is accomplished and things have been completed, All the people say, 'We ourselves have achieved it!'" via huffingtonpost.com

Since 1987 as a nonprofit foundation we've helped organizations create competitive advantage to bring about fundamental change, put their competitors into a reactive position, cause their partners and suppliers to make adjustments, and deliver so much value to their customers that their market share grows larger still. We work with government, corporations, and small business owners like you. See our client list.  

We seek to make a difference. Learn about our entrepreneurial and leadership academy for students to end poverty, reduce school dropout rates, and end abuse.  Contact us to schedule an appointment.

Seven Powerful Ways to Gain More Confidence in Your Creative Work | Lateral Action

One of the biggest problems creative people face isn’t a lack of time or money. It’s a lack of confidence.

If you love writing, drawing, composing, designing, or any other creative activity, you might have started out doing it simply for the pleasure of creating. Once you start looking beyond that – to building an audience, and even making money from your art – a lack of confidence can be crippling.

Low confidence might be pretty obvious, when you keep thinking “I’m not good enough” or “No-one will want to read/view/listen to this”. But it might also feel like a deep-seated Resistance to create, or constant procrastination when it comes to putting your work out there in the world.

I work with a lot of writers, both in one-to-one and group situations. Some of those writers have huge amounts of talent … but very little confidence. I always want to wave a magic wand and open their eyes to their own skills and abilities. Sadly, I can’t do that for them, or for you. But I can offer you seven powerful ways to grow your confidence.

Photo by Yuri Arcurs via BigStock

 

1. Show your work to a professional

This might seem like a scary one to start off with … but it’s one of the best ways I know to get a reality check on your writing. If you’ve got any sort of contact with professionals in your field, find someone (preferably someone known for their kindness rather than their brutal put-downs!) and ask them to take a look at a small piece of your work. Ask for their honest opinion. Is it at a publishable or produceable standard? Do they see any key strengths in the work – or any weaknesses that could be improved?

You’re unlikely to get feedback telling you that your work is pure brilliance. But you may be surprised to find it’s better than you think. And hopefully you’ll get some suggestions for areas that need a little more development: this helps build your confidence by giving you clear and specific ways to grow.

2. Enter competitions

Whatever your preferred medium – words, pixels, paint, notes – you’ll find plenty of competitions to enter. Even if you don’t get as far as the short-list, simply the act of entering can help build your confidence: you’ll have a clear deadline and, often, some sort of subject matter to help you think inside the box.

If you do manage to get placed in a competition, it’s a huge confidence boost. You might not walk away with first prize – but a second or third prize, or your name on the shortlist, is a clear indication that your work has real merit.

3. Don’t rush your process

If you’re pressuring yourself to get your creative work out there as quickly as possible, then you may be uncomfortably aware that it’s not as good as it could be. Perhaps you’ve had some disappointing feedback, or you simply feel that you’re not very proud of your work.

Taking a little extra time at each stage of the process means you’ll at least be able to have confidence that you’ve done a good job. That might mean allowing more time for planning or research at the start of a new project – especially if you tend to jump at new ideas, only to give up when they prove more difficult than you expected. It could mean giving yourself time to create plenty of rough sketches of a planned painting, or to edit your first few drafts of a short story.

4. Get paid for creative work

Although money might not be your first goal as an artist, getting paid for your work can give you real confidence. Even if you’re not getting paid for your ‘real’ creative project – so you’re writing magazine articles, say, instead of a novel – you’ll still know that your fundamental skills are good enough that someone wants to pay you for them.

There are all sorts of different ways to get paid for something you’ve created. You could work as a freelancer, producing designs or jingles or articles to order. You could create a micro-product to sell online. You could run an event, and sell tickets. Don’t fall for the lie that ‘there’s no money in art’ – find a way to make it work.

5. Take a course or class

Although I’ve had a lot of writing-related education over the past few years (including formal degrees and more informal courses), I still attend conferences and classes on a regular basis, particularly for my fiction-writing. Yes, I’m now pretty confident with all the fundamentals – like creating engaging characters, writing dialogue, and setting a scene – but I find that it’s often good to have a reminder of the things that I should know but occasionally forget.

If you want to learn something new in your field, or if you just want a bit more reassurance that you do already know the basics, a course or class should help. That doesn’t need to be anything expensive or time consuming: you might be able to find a simple day course or a series of evening classes in your area, or you could look for an online program to join.

6. Track your progress

When you’re in the trenches with your creative work, it can be hard to think back or think ahead. In the moment, you might be struggling with an aspect of your work-in-progress – and you may fear that you’ll never get it right.

By tracking your progress over time, you can easily look back and see how far you’ve come. You might want to list specific achievements, especially any “firsts” – like the first time you entered a competition, or the first time you showed your work to someone who wasn’t a family member or close friend. You could also record your feelings at different stages of a project (you might realise, for instance, that you inevitably go through a period of doubt at the almost mid-way stage, before everything gets much easier).

7. Push yourself to try new things

Finally, keep on trying new things. Yes, this can be terrifying – but successfully getting through a new challenge is a great way to grow your skills and your confidence. You won’t be perfect first time (no-one is), but you probably will realise that it wasn’t as bad as you were expecting.

This could mean trying a new area within your current field of creative work (perhaps writing poetry as well as short stories) or it could mean experimenting with a new form of creativity. I’ve started working with video and audio in my online teaching materials; it was really tough at first, but now I feel much more confident with using new mediums, and I also know that if I can get through the initial discomfort and fear, things will always get easier.

I know that none of these tips are easy. If there was a quick, painless fix for lack of confidence, none of us would have any problems! But by taking a step forward – even when it’s scary – you will find that you gain the confidence you need to progress with your creative work.

Over to you

Which of these tips resonate most strongly for you?

What has given your creative confidence the biggest boost to date?

Any other tips you’d like to share?

About the Author: Ali Luke is currently on a virtual book tour for her novel Lycopolis, a fast-paced supernatural thriller centred on a group of online roleplayers who summon a demon into their game … and into the world. Described by readers as “a fast and furious, addictive piece of escapism” and “absolutely gripping”, Lycopolis is available in print and ebook form. Find out more at Lycopolis.co.uk.

--> via lateralaction.com

Hire Jim Woods To Speak to Your Organization

CEO & President 

Innovation, Growth, & Hypercompetition Consultant/Speaker/Business Coach

 Website: InnoThink Group

Request a consultation: Office: +1 719.649.4118 or complete our form.  

 

Innothink Group is a strategic management, innovation and business coaching consultancy. 

Our Guarantee. Where many consulting firms are reluctant to bear risks or tie their rewards to project outcomes, we decided to build a better model. We align our success with yours. We’re outcome obsessed, outcome paid, putting nearly two thirds of our fees at risk subject to hitting predetermined milestones. More than a guarantee we wanted from the outset to create true partnerships with shared responsibility. See a few of our clients.   

We provide broad ranging advice covering innovation, commoditization, competitive advantage, business policy and strategy, as well as global strategy and implementation. 

We help clients to: 

·                      Build strategic supremacy through disruption and dominance

·                     Predict customers’ emerging needs and translate them into a breakthrough value proposition.

·                     Establish new rules of the game to challenge evolution

·                     Define a clear role for innovation based on understanding its hypercompetitive contribution.

·                     Exploit competitor’s weaknesses

·                     Build rapid short term advantages for long term profitability.

·                     Tackle the challenges of collaboration, both internal and external, as a driver of innovation.

·                     Reduce costs by increasing innovation and competitive advantage into the core of your business

·                     We provide continuous innovation and competitive advantage support

 

Can You Really Attract Into Your Life Anything You Want?: Remez Sasson

Follow Us

Can you really attract into your life anything you want?

Can you really use the power of your thoughts and imagination to create what you want?

Does the law of attraction really work?

Are all the claims of people who write and teach about the law of attraction true?

If you followed the instructions found in books or articles, you might have sometimes succeeded, and sometimed you did not. It is also possible that some of you could not succeed at all, and quit this subject, with a feeling of disappointed.

Why some people succeed, and some don’t? If the law of attraction is a law of nature, why it sometimes works, and sometimes it doesn’t? Can you really attract into your life anything you want?

The answer is simple.

• Not every article or book provides the necessary instructions for correctly using the law of attraction.
• People tend to skip instructions.
• It is not enough just to visualize. You must also have a strong desire, an open mind to recognize opportunities, and have the courage and willingness to use them.
• How many times did you say or think you wanted something, but you didn’t really want it? The law of attraction, which is one of the fundamentals of creative visualization, requires some work and action, not just thinking for a few minutes and waiting for miracles to happen.

 

There is another point you should be thinking about. Even though most people want to be rich, how many really and truly want o be very rich and have a rich lifestyle? How many would accept all the responsibilities and activities entailed? Subconsciously, they might be afraid to be rich, due to negative mental programming.

Do you want to have billions of dollars? Can you really manage this sum of money? Let’s leave aside lotteries, where will the money come from? If you visualize a lot of money, and really believe you can have it, how is it going to arrive? It might arrive by implementing ideas that could come into your mind. You might be offered a new job, or an opportunity might pop up. But will you be willing and ready to take action?

Great amounts of money are done through business, but not everyone is qualified for business, or wants to make business. How visualizing a lot of money, and not wanting to do anything about it, is going to bring it to you?

Every accomplished goal and dream bring responsibilities, changes your lifestyle, and requires certain actions, certain tasks, and certain skills. You need first to analyze and think if you are willing and able to take these responsibilities, and whether you have the skills. Of course, if you don’t have the skills, but your desire is strong, you can always develop the necessary skills.

The law of attraction and creative visualization do work, but you have to use common sense when using them.

• You need to be sure that you really want what you are visualizing.
• You must have a strong desire.
• You have to add feelings into your mental images.
• You have to visualize several times a day.
• You need to treat this subject seriously, and be willing to invest the necessary time and energy.
• Not all books are equal, and not all give you all the necessary steps. You will need to read several books to understand this subject.
• In the beginning, choose small, simple, everyday goals, and only when you get experience and faith try to do bigger things.
• It is a good idea to imagine yourself in the situation you want to create, before starting to work on it, and ask yourself if you really want it, and whether you feel comfortable in this situation.

Take action, when action is required. Don’t just visualize and forget about it, thinking that you don’t have to do anything. Creative visualization and the law attraction can sometimes work in miraculous ways, but in many cases, you will be required to act. If you are too lazy, or expect miracles, with no effort on your part, you might lead yourself to disappointment. Look at the successful people in the world, do they just dream, or do they also act, strive, and work to make their dreams and goals come true?

There are a lot of articles and books about this subject, some useful, and some less useful. If you browse through this website and blog, you will find many articles on this subject, as well as the book Visualize and Achieve, where I wrote and explained this subject clearly and in a simple language. It is a book focusing on practical information, showing step-by-step what to and how. It is actually a textbook for teaching how to use creative visualization to attract into your life what you want. via successconsciousness.com

Searching For New Ideas Attract and Retain More Customers? Looking to gain competitive advantage; Strategic and Innovation Advisor to work on retainer? A riveting speaker? Contact Jim Woods. Start Today!

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group; a leading Strategic Management and Innovation Consulting Firm in Denver, Colorado. He is an author, speaker, and a strategic innovation and hypercompetition expert to profit, non-profit organizations and municipalities. He advises clients with an objective view of their competitive capabilities and defines a clear course of action to maximize their innovation return on investment to achieve profitable growth. Build a capability for ongoing competitive innovation across your company. Call 719-649-4118 or complete our form: contact us for more information on hiring Jim to advise or speak for your next event. Business, Career or Life Coach. 

The 10-Minute Strategy Session That Will Recharge Your Business | Fast Company

Follow Us

My recent post, "Why Small Businesses Should Scrap Strategic Planning," set off a barrage of conversations, mostly from entrepreneurs who agree. Big companies have to make all their strategic decisions at once during an annual strategic planning session because it is too difficult and costly to get their team together more frequently. Small companies get to take the opposite approach: They tackle strategic choices as they come.

Consider Zor Gorelov, the CEO of SpeechCycle, a company transforms how phone and cable companies like Telstra, Cablevision, and Cox deliver customer service. Last week I got a chance to sit down with Zor in the SpeechCycle headquarters. Deep in Wall Street, next to a sunny window overlooking the Statue of Liberty, I asked him to lay out the strategy that’s driven such dramatic growth (SpeechCycle was recently recognized by Deloitte as a “Technology Fast 500”). He walked through five pivotal decisions that collectively compose a disruptive strategy that, so far at least, position them as the uncontestable leader in what they do.

1. The perfect exit: Before launchined SpeechCycle, Zor, a 25-year-old Russian engineer, recognized that while Soviet-era hospitals could not afford even basic sheets, they still wanted cutting-edge IT systems to keep up with the West, so he started building them. He launched a software company and saved just enough to buy tickets and get out of the Soviet Union with his wife and young son.

2. The search for meaning: After a stint at Bell Labs and Microsoft, followed by launching and selling BuzzCompany.com, one of the first Internet messaging software companies, Zor became fascinated by how humans extract meaning from speech. This lead him to launch SpeechCycle with several cofounders to realize a simple insight: They could help large firms use software to listen to and understand their customers better. Because they focused early and intensely, they now have unparalleled expertise using proprietary “High Definition Statistical Natural Language Understanding” technology to understand certain types of conversations.

For example, they know the virtually infinite ways a customer might complain about a slow Internet connection. Do you? If you don’t, you might want to try SpeechCycle, which would enable you to have your phone system simply ask, “What is your problem?” while your competitors guide their customers through the torturous “Press 2 for an option you don’t want” process.

3. Borrowing a road: In their first days, Zor and his cofounders, who bootstrapped the company, figured their best target customers would be electronics firms like HP. They were desperate to win clients so they sat down with a list of 1,500 consumer electronics companies and started cold-calling to win their first customer, a second-tier printer manufacturer. It soon became clear they were barking up the wrong tree because most customers call their phone and cable service providers when they have a problem. You don’t call Linksys when your router is down, do you? You call your Internet service provider first. SpeechCycle now serves leading telecom service providers instead. 

4. Use the cloud: On a high-stakes phone call with HP, their target client told them that HP is very unlikely to buy software from a small software company. They simply don’t do that. So years before “software as a service” or “the cloud” were known terms, SpeechCycle adopted that model.

5. Sell value: Early on it was difficult to get customers to take a leap and pay this relatively young, unknown company to do something they were not convinced yet was possible, so the SpeechCycle team pivoted their pricing plan, saying, “Only pay us when it works.” If a customer calls and cannot solve their problem through the automated SpeechCycle enabled system, if they hit “zero for an agent,” SpeechCycle does not get paid. 

Now, somewhere at Harvard Business School, a professor is telling impressionable students that the way to create a strategy is to sit down, think, and then document a set of decisions like this. They might even call up SpeechCycle as an example, and argue the company’s strategy is disruptive because they focused on:

1. Getting better than others at extracting meaning from utterances

2. Serving service providers, not hardware makers

3. Moving early to the cloud

4. Adopting value-based pricing

5. Creating a pricing plan that makes it easy for potential clients to sign on

And while this is true, it overlooks how innovative disrupters like SpeechCycle arrive at their strategy. They strategize immediately, as needed, not in November every year. They strategize in 10 minutes in the hallway, not over three days in a boardroom.

The key to outthinking your competition is to make smarter decisions at every turn. So the next time you make a decision, stop what you are doing and think for 10 minutes. Break your thought process apart into five steps. My book, Outthink the Competition, provides tools to manage these steps precisely, but here is a short version:

1. Imagine: What do you want to achieve? Real-life example: I am about to get on a phone call and want the others to hang up motivated and in action.

2. Dissect: What must be true? They have to (a) see we are making progress, (b) hear excitement in my voice, and (c) know what to do next.

3. Expand: Come up with 10 or more ways to achieve what must be true. I can list out all my achievements this week, I can put them in the right order, I can drink an espresso, etc.

4. Analyze: Choose the 1-3 ideas that will have the biggest impact and that are the easiest to do. I decide to list out my achievements and put them in an order that weaves a narrative of momentum.

5. Sell: Think about how to communicate your plan. Since the people on the phone are analytical, I will communicate my achievements with numbers (e.g., we had 2 new pitches, raised $3 million in new commitments, etc.).

Try it out--and if you have a breakthrough, tell us about it in the comments. 

[Image: Flickr user Michael Broxton]

via fastcompany.com

Doubling Down on Your Business Plan To Thrive

Follow Us

Economists say the Great Recession--the longest and deepest since World War II--ended 18 months ago and that the U.S. economy is, in fact, growing again. But growth is relative. Even the rosiest economic forecasts for 2011 come in well under 3 percent growth. Unemployment is still high, and consumer spending is still sluggish.

"However optimistic you may be about your business, you need to let the overall economy temper your expectations," says Scott Shane, an economics professor at Case Western Reserve University and author of The Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths that Entrepreneurs, Investors and Policy Makers Live By. "You need to assume that the recovery is going to be tepid and plan accordingly."

That doesn't mean sit and wait for things to improve. Rather, retool for the economy that exists today, and will be lingering for many tomorrows. Here are 10 places to start.

1. Overhaul your business plan. In a climate as unforgiving as this, stasis is death. So dust off your business plan and scrub it of any assumptions you may have made three years ago. Roll up your sleeves, do the math and zero in on the best strategy to grab market share and win new business. Then start treating your business plan as if it's a work in progress. Create hard benchmarks and measure results often. That's how you improve performance, says Tim Berry, president and founder of Palo Alto Software Inc., developer of Business, a small-business software tool that creates plans and financial projections.

"Planning means tracking how assumptions change and reviewing progress and plan versus actual results," he says. Rethinking your business plan also can help you spot new opportunities and point your company in the right direction. For step-by-step advice, check out the U.S. Small Business Administration's guide.

2. Double down on what works. Whatever paid off in 2010 is worth investing more time, money and resources next year. Ask yourself: What was your top-selling product or service, and how can you get your customers to buy more? What money-saving strategies went straight to the bottom line? What incentives or promotions got your customers' attention?

Elyissia Wassung, CEO of 2 Chicks With Chocolate, a South River, N.J., chocolate maker, is doubling down on in-store demos, which have boosted sales. When she learned a chain retailer was planning to order exclusively from 2 Chicks for Christmas, she says, "We decided to double our demos with them this holiday season and blitz all of their stores on the same day. We are also giving away prizes to the top performing stores."

3. Experiment. The best time to try something new? When the old isn't working. It may feel safer to stay in your comfort zone, but sticking with the same old product, service or marketing strategy might actually be riskier.

The best new ideas often come from conversations with your customers, suppliers and, most of all, employees. "The unexpected can often be the obvious," says New York business and personal coach Carol Vinelli. Talk less, listen more and really tune in to ideas that could lead to breakthrough products and services.

Need some inspiration? Check out Seth Godin's bestselling book Purple Cow about how to make your company remarkable.

4. Fire your D-grade customers. "High-maintenance, low-margin customers are an impediment to deploying time and resources more profitably," says Joseph Fulvio, a consultant in Doylestown, Penn., who specializes in growing small businesses. "Get rid of them."

Make a list of your customers and give each of them a grade. Then dump everyone below a C--or a B, if you can afford it. Once you've separated the winners from the losers, put a plan in place to turn those laggards into A-listers. Going forward, use those criteria to size up new business.

Though most businesses worry whether they'll meet clients' expectations, "it's actually a two-way street," Fulvio says. A better vendor-customer fit should produce a healthier bottom line.

5. Become an 'A' customer. When prices are low, as they are now, it's generally a good time to lock in long-term contracts with your regular vendors, contractors and suppliers. Indeed, you might be able to negotiate a lower price in return for the promise of your business. Small-business management expert Tim Sciarrillo of The New England Group in Milford, Conn., suggests asking your supplier for a volume discount and to hold the goods until you need them.

Instead of ordering 10,000 custom labels five times a year, for example, order 50,000 at once but have them delivered in batches. This lowers the supplier's manufacturing costs, reduces your unit price and speeds delivery on future orders because the labels are already printed.

Exclusivity is the key to a sweetheart deal like this. "At one client company, we reduced corrugated suppliers from five to one," Sciarrillo says. "The client received better service, reduced pricing and every time there was a price increase, the salesman usually kept our increase a percent or two below the standard."

Make sure your contract covers all the details, such as delivery cost, timing and quality guarantees.

6. Expand your network. Facebook and LinkedIn have their uses, but they'll never replace face-to-face meetings, especially to win new business and get referrals.

"Some folks aren't ready to go out there and mingle, but in today's economy, it is imperative," says Bryan R. Adams, owner of FAB Communications in Teaneck, N.J.

Think about it: A single coffee, meeting or lunch with a lawyer, financial planner or supplier could bring in dozens of new customers next year. If you're afraid to jump in right away, Adams suggests starting by searching Meetup.com for a group that matches your interests and attending local chamber of commerce events.

Once you find your groove (and refine your elevator pitch), consider joining a dedicated networking group such as BNI International, LeTip International or National Association of Women Business Owners. "Getting out there keeps you sane and you get to hear what's working and not working for other businesses," Adams says.

7. Leverage your brand. In this economy, it's more important than ever to avoid becoming a "me, too" brand. Low prices and quality service are no longer enough. Whether it's a YouTube video, an iPad app or a free tasting event, offer something to make customers take notice.

"What do you bring to the table that no one else is serving up to clients and potential clients?" asks Debra Condren, a New York business psychologist. "You must first understand what sets you apart and then become completely fluent in communicating to your target audience what separates you from the herd."

For more tips and tools on leveraging your brand, check out Entrepreneur's free online marketing guides at entrepreneur.com/marketing.

8. Get some credit. The mortgage market is starting to thaw, and that's good news for small-business owners who can tap their home equity for working capital. If you have good credit and some equity in your house, now may be the time to refinance before interest rates rise.

Be sure your credit score is solid and that your business shows positive cash flow before you start shopping for deals. You won't get the loan unless your bank is convinced you can cover the monthly payments.

"Banks are willing to provide credit but are still very selective," says Case Western's Shane. "Financials help a lot right now."

9. Fire up your employees. Think about creating a bonus plan to motivate employees to hit your 2011 goals. Bonuses, while not always successful, says Rich Armstrong, president of The Great Game of Business Inc., can help focus your staff's attention on key metrics such as sales, profits, productivity and customer satisfaction.

Armstrong's Springfield, Mo., firm provides training in the open-book management philosophy, which advocates sharing financial and operational information with employees so that they can make better decisions, and it gives them a stake in the company's success.

"Your people must clearly understand the goal, the improvements that are needed, how they can make a difference and what they stand to gain," he says. "Bonus-plan success will have everything to do with how well you communicate, educate and encourage your people to stay in the game and reach for the goal."

A bonus plan can work in all types of businesses, including manufacturing, sales, even restaurants. Goals can be tied to easy-to-measure numbers such as revenues, new business volume or gross margin. There's more about open-book management practices on The Great Game of Business website, greatgame.com.

10. Team up. Working with "channel partners"--companies that target the same market but with products or services different from yours--can be an ultra-efficient marketing strategy. They've already spent the time and money to attract the customers you want, and you can piggyback on those efforts. Naturally, your partners are going to want reciprocal benefits. Vinelli, the business coach, says, "Set aside time each week to brainstorm new ways to create added value to your relationships, fostering more referrals and new partnerships."

Anne Maxfield, chief visionary officer and founder of Accidental Locavore, a new-media venture in New York that demystifies farmers markets for shoppers, is partnering with companies that appeal to food- and health-conscious consumers. She's pitching a show to the Food Network and forging alliances with NYCH2O, a New York bottled-water company, and EcoPlum, a website selling green products.

"Our success in 2011 will come from partnerships [with companies] that consumers believe in and trust," she says. via entrepreneur.com

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A global management consulting firms specialized solely in helping organizations of all sizes in all industries catalyzing top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies. He is a former U.S. Navy Seabee and grandfather of five. To arrange for Jim to speak at your next event or devise an effective hypercompetition strategy email or call us at 719-649-4118 for availability. Subscribe to our innovation and hypercompetition newsletter.   

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on Linkedin

Follow us on Facebook