Ritual Builders™

Its Getting Harder & Harder To See...

It’s an afternoon when you could use a good sugar buzz and caffeine jolt.  The thought of that effervescent snap and pop inside your mouth causes you to salivate.  Are you reaching for a Pepsi or a Coke?

Maybe you don’t care for soda but the lessons that we can glean from these corporate monsters come at us like ripples in pond.  So let me toss this pebble in  the waters of small business... ...what is your competitive advantage?  What are you doing to separate yourself from your competition?

Communication Is Changing Communication

In the late 80’s and early 90’s it was so much easier to identify your competitive advantage. We didn’t have nation of hyper-connectivity where one could instantly share their opinion with friends across the globe.  Within moments of a customer’s experience with you, a chain reaction of 1000s is set in motion via e-mail, text message and more recently global blogs.

If you say your competitive advantage is customer service, or location or even price, I hope for your sake you have they business and human capital systems to back it up.  Over 88% of small business owners claim customer service as a priority of business, yet less than 10% have written plans that consistently communicate this to their staff as a priority.  Even less have a system of measures to ensure that the customers’ experience mirrors that of their efforts.

Any Claim You Make Not Backed By A System

Spells D-A-N-G-E-R

If you claim anything as a priority to your staff or customers and don’t deliver it, the nature of today’s hyper-connectivity means that the masses are hearing that you don’t mean what you say. They are hearing that you are in-authentic. OUCH! We are in a world of BUZZ that is so over-stimulated with unsubstantiated claims that our hearts are crying for authenticity. Employees are disgruntled and frustrated with their employer’s lip-service and customers no longer believe what you say.... Everyone is looking at what you do.  Business models that specifically design your competitive advantage are quickly becoming the only way to build a sustaining and fruitful enterprise.

The pressures of today’s hyper-connectivity are only slightly outbid by the onslaught of messages about what it means to be successful.  It’s like the anxiety one experiences late at night, on a dark and icy road when your car takes on a life of it’s own, sliding across your lane and into on-coming traffic... ...your life flashes before you and you are forced... ...to deal with the urgent.  Life has become a bundle of emergencies that need our immediate attention at the loss... of what is truly important.

The world of business in the new millennium is forcing your business and mine to be more than cola.  Mainstream is no longer enough for customers to be impressed.  In this GLOBAL economy we have the “Wal Mart factor” to deal with, that ability to choose and to do so at a better price.

The Future of Small Business Lies in the Owners’

Ability to Create and Communicate

a Competitive Advantage.

The best thing one can do today to chart this course, is to set sail for a new horizon of thinking.  We can’t think out of the box, we need to leap into a completely different box.  One from which we can make a paradigm shift.

Your business must become an idea factory, one where you and your staff work in harmony to create a symphonic melody of thought and action.  Most small businesses are full of employees who are caught up in the whirl-wind of urgency. Their lives are simply more important than your outcomes as a business owner.

What a great opportunity to create an environment of authenticity!  As a small business owner you have power in the palms of your hands to shape the lives of your staff.  Are they working a job or building a life?  In their minds... ... what does your company stand for? And what does this have to do with their individual and/or career aspirations?

A wise choice you can make today is to focus on skills and attitudes of your staff.  Wouldn’t it be great to have a staff full of self-initiated go-getters that want to make a difference in the world?

Guess what, everyone wants to make a difference in the world... but they must be given a vehicle that allows that expression to become a part of their everyday experience.

Your execution of developing in them the skills & attitudes that create a dynamic company culture and high performance team synergy will illustrate to everyone within your organization that the tools for change and improvement are right in their newly tailored job descriptions.

The time has come for your business to be designed to make this world a better place.  If you think you have already established this with your business, take a moment to look at your staff... ...how motivated are they by your vision?

The world is changing faster than we are, and if you create a home for the hearts of your customers and staff, you will have the biggest competitive advantage of them all.  TEAMWORK!

If this post inspires you, check out my website @ www.AllAboutTeamwork.com... Where you can learn to... “Boost Profits... Using Teamwork as your Competitive Advantage.”

Humanistic.... Or Mechanistic (Part 2)

In yesterday’s post, we discussed the sociological impact that the mechanistic practices of business are having upon the lives of your labor force. No longer are employees willing to be simple spokes in the wheels that move business... they need meaning, purpose, and passion in their work. My experience tells me that when organizations deliberately provide this (through a commitment to professional development training)... something magical begins to happen.

This goes beyond team building; personifying the epitome of Corporate Synergy and touching on the fringes of Collective Intelligence.  When people have passion and purpose around the work that they do... organizations will experience it where it matters to them most... the bottom line.

There are two reasons for this.

1. People only operate from a place of self-interest
2. Philosophically there is movement among leadership circles where the purpose of business is being re-visited and re-evaluated.

Neither one of which are complicated, but do require some explanation.

FACT: Employees have a secret desire to be business savvy and possess the business skills that create industry dominance.

A Changing Labor Force

As you hear these words, hundreds of thousands of employees are sitting in their cubicles right now searching the Internet for a better employment opportunity... and they are finding it. Whether it be; a self-employment opportunity, a related industry or the competition, the demand for competent help is so massive, that the new competitive arena in business is the pursuit to attract, keep and develop talent.

The Machine itself has created a massive need for the expression of meaning within the lives of its humanistic parts... If this need where among your consumer base, millions of dollars would be poured into R & D, and in 90 days to 6 months the rush to market with goods and services would ensue.  But because it is NOT your consumer base, this need will continue to go unmet. 

The future will bring demands for a talented workforce that are so strong, that eventually businesses will be forced to find a way to meet this humanistic need for purpose and meaning as a recruiting and retention tool.

The Ritual Builders blog has an intention of providing & discovering proven concepts that are intoxicating and effective because they philosophically shift the consciousness of “The Machine”. What exciting things will begin to happen when organizations shift their thinking and commit to human capital systems that stimulate personal responsibility and self-directed effort!  When you do this among individuals within the structure of a high performance team, something truly magical begins to appear.

Tomorrow’s Professional Development Looks Different

Business skills are sorely lacking in organizations today.  Even high level executives are pathetic at running and executing a simple meeting, why else are employees so reluctant to attend? In the New Economy, the best sort of compensation that you can offer your labor force is an education in the skills that make their lives more successful. The best place to learn these skills is at work... and within the structures of a team.

Here’s why... Once your employees realize that “The Machine” exists not only to produce profit, but to produce skilled, enlightened, and self-actualized professionals, you have a labor force that recognizes cause and effect relationships between “Corporate Mandates” and their own individual need to pursue meaning and purpose in life. When you bring these together, you have power and with it an increase in loyalty, performance and profit.

Humanistic... Or Mechanistic? (Part 1)

Employees burn out and check out when their daily lives are about “Feeding the Machine”. 

“The Machine” is a perfect metaphor for the way executives have been looking at business.  Generating profit is what the machine is built to do.  You see a machine finds efficiency in the perfect execution of order and in an effort to meet the demands of shareholders and our entrepreneurial aspirations; we’ve mechanized the process of business.

This model was ideal in the late 80’s and early 90’s when it allowed us to use technology as a means to capitalize on an emerging global market.  However we are entering a tail spin where “The Machine” has created a sociological quandary in which the humanistic pieces are wound way too tight.  Businesses are living, breathing entities... with an identity and a soul. Innately business... is about people and the lives that they lead.  Individuals function most effectively when money isn’t even involved. The concept of profit is basically mechanical and remains an enigma to even the most motivated and successful VP who, like the janitor, is over-mortgaged and stressed with credit card dept. 

Money and profit is a mechanistic concept perpetuated by those that operate the machine as a mechanism for power, and control.  Although we remain under the ether and at the mercy of “The Matrix”... for the first time, we collectively comprehend that it truly exists. It is within this comprehension that a social change is taking place within the consciousness of the labor force.

A Sociological Quandary

We know we  are stuck... in order to “live life” we have a two income family so that we can live in the neighborhood, drive the vehicles, belong to the social groups we desire and on Monday start our week, once again... feeding "The Machine." It’s a seemingly endless cycle that is eating away at the souls of Americans and they are starting to get fed up. They’re asking themselves the question... is this all there is to life? ...and deep down they recognize the answer...  is NO.

Business is about profit.  And while that remains a constant, it also remains a significant problem. What’s in it for me... employees ask?

I don't think that anyone questions the purpose behind any professional development program should be about acquiring the very skills that allow your team to produce more and better results... in other words... INCREASE PROFIT.

Yet so few organizations invest in "business design" training that allow the skills of their labor-force to go from theory to application.  Some organizations get it... most do not. Through the development of better people comes better organizations... better business. We must become more mindful of the complexities of human development and how to infuse this into our corporate mandates of professional development training.

Better Business & Social Responsibility

Professional development is an awesome industry... evolving in its own right to a level of pushing individuals beyond "career success" to pursue and mature personally and spiritually as well.

In reality I see the "improvement movement" becoming a "spiritual movement". This makes sense because deep down each and everyone of us are spiritually starved; eventually  realizing that life becomes a journey of defining for ourselves... this spiritual path. What would happen if organizations became a conduit for pursuing this path with intention?

The Global market place is an optimal space for small business to capitalize on this most authentic of human needs.  Professional development is becoming a mandatory component of business success but my experiences dictates that small and big business is missing the fundamental opportunity within professional development training to ignite the lives and careers of their labor force.  Passion and purpose is not only the missing component of most organizations(because they're mechanical)... it is also the missing component of our lives(because we are so influenced by the organizations within our lives).

There are two reasons this single distinction can revolutionize company culture... a culture poised for peak performance and profit. 

These will be the discussion of tomorrow's post... until then... let your mind & heart explore the far reaching benefits of professional development to business, society, and the individual lives of those who live within them.

Deep Down In Your Soul...

It starts deep down in your soul.

It scurries and hides, yet always rears its ugly head. For some reason it only wants your attention when your pre-occupied with the details of a life and career.

That sense of self-doubt... that lurks in dark corridors of the human psyche. 

Even if you are the most accomplished of individuals, you know exactly what I am talking about... and you know the exact ways in which it takes you away from being more of the person you strive to be.

Inside the dark corridors of my own psyche, a rage full conflict has consumed me; I've spent countless hours in and out of self-doubt. It has been the source of every "hard to accept" failure in my life. IT IS A MONSTER that I have spent a lifetime learning to tame.  But it has also fueled my desire to learn. It has served me greatly, this struggle, and has become an irritating friend of sorts...  creating a dissatisfaction in my life, career and relationships that has driven me to find answers. Answers that have allowed me to grow... answers that have allowed me to succeed... answers that I know can help you in your quest for more.

My philosophy... sussess in business is about the age-old, humanistic struggle to discover the authentic-self and how this dynamic plays out through our workplace relationships.  Whether you battle with self-doubt, addiction, anger, or real human deviance... it effects everyone... and therefore, the organization for which you work.

As I have learned to tame this monster, I have discovered some of the most ground breaking, eye opening, and relevant means for creating a rich, meaningful, and inspired direction in life and career.  Every company on this globe strives for a results oriented, self-acutalizing corporate culture. I've worked with thousands of professionals and helped them discover a sense of meaning and community. Executive teams become focused, committed and more profitable when they embrace "self-actualization" at work.

From Neuro-Linguistics and hypnosis to leadership communication and persuasion I spent years spinning my wheels with knowledge and tools that alter lives.  But only recently, have I found a way to tame the beast that is so alive in the minds of man. I have been fortunate enough to find my purpose... I've even developed a few original concepts of collective intelligence and their application/relationship to high performance team dynamics. It is only with other people that we begin to discover who and what we are... It is only with other people that we can become who we are meant to be.

In this blog, we join together to more effectively discern the human experience, to exlpore the meaning of "self-management" and how the journey of personal/professional/spiritual development within the confines of a new "corporate culture" serve to fuel your sense of value as an individual and member of the team.

We'll discuss business, as a humanistic evolution with a responsibility to the world and the people in it. This is a business blog where we come together to learn how to fulfill the most noble of career aspirations. It should involve heated discussions, outlandish opinions, and the single core belief that what makes business better... is better people.