By Carla Walter & Cynthia Spradlin
Have you ever wondered what it might be like to level up your business with greater ease and speed? Core Performance Leaders know that this is the time of year to evaluate what is working well and where improvements can generate better results going forward. Here are 10 Top Performance Tips to Revolutionize Your Business in 2015.
10 Things to Focus on to Revolutionize Your Business Performance in 2015.
1. Set the bar to be the best. Set your intention to bring your best self to work every day in 2015. Share with your team and employees that you expect them to do the same. You and your team won’t be able to achieve your highest visions for personal and business success if you don’t strive daily to bring your best to the table.
2. Stay on top of the N.E.W.S. In order to bring your best selves to work every day, every single employee must bring their optimal energy to work every day. To accomplish that, each person must make positive changes towards optimal nutrition, exercise, water, and sleep.
3. Master the mind. What you think and believe about yourself, others, your boss, and your company, has a significant impact on the actions you will ultimately take and the results you are able to achieve. You must focus daily on choosing thoughts and beliefs that will support you in achieving your goals. Imagine what impact it would have on your business if every single person on your team did this.
4. Engage employees. Research shows 70% of employees are not engaged in their work. It’s quite difficult to achieve significant success if only 30% of your employees are truly engaged in their work. Engaged employees come to work more often, are more productive, have fewer errors, are more innovative, and interact more positively with customers. You must have and implement a plan to increase employee engagement.
5. Engage potential and current customers. How do you plan to reach out to potential new customers in 2015? What’s your plan to engage those individuals as well as your current customers in your company’s mission, conversations, products, and services so you can grow your tribe of engaged and loyal customers who love your products and services? What do you need to do to offer the best possible customer service and to keep your customer satisfaction needle moving in a positive direction?
6. Focus. Most people and businesses are trying to do too many things. It’s extremely difficult to achieve the highest levels of performance and be a standout from the competition if your time and efforts are dispersed in too many different areas. You need laser focus in a few areas to achieve significant increases in performance. Determine the few things you or your business want to be the best at. What will it take to make that happen? Be rigorous about taking everything else off your plate.
7. Put it on paper. Put your personal goals in writing. Per your business goals in writing. Share the business goals with every employee so they know what they are working towards every day. Have every employee put their goals in writing. When plans and goals are in writing and every single person knows the goals, every single mind goes to work on making them happen.
8. Control the calendar. Dedicate time on your calendar every single day to implement the specific plans to achieve your goals. Be religious about making sure that little to nothing that does not support the goals makes it onto your calendar. Teach your employees to do the same things with their calendars.
9. Master interruptions, distractions, and time wasters. Technology beeps and buzzes, ringing phones, co-workers who walk into our offices without an appointment, spending too much time in email, on Facebook, or on the internet, mental and physical health, personal organization, non-productive meetings, all of these things distract us from achieving our goals. Every time you get interrupted it takes about 23 minutes to get re-focused on what you were doing before you were interrupted. In addition, interruptions, distractions, and time wasters cost U.S. businesses $588 billion dollars every year. Master the distractions and you can significantly impact positive productivity and performance.
10. Know your numbers. Track progress towards your goals on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual schedule. What do your employee engagement and satisfaction scores look like compared to your goals? What about your customer satisfaction scores? How about sales, revenue, and expenses? If you know your numbers you know exactly where you stand today and what the gap is between where you are and where you really want to be. Once you know that, you’re better able to make any adjustments necessary to help keep you on track to meet your goals.
1. Set the bar to be the best. Set your intention to bring your best self to work every day in 2015. Share with your team and employees that you expect them to do the same. You and your team won’t be able to achieve your highest visions for personal and business success if you don’t strive daily to bring your best to the table.
2. Stay on top of the N.E.W.S. In order to bring your best selves to work every day, every single employee must bring their optimal energy to work every day. To accomplish that, each person must make positive changes towards optimal nutrition, exercise, water, and sleep.
3. Master the mind. What you think and believe about yourself, others, your boss, and your company, has a significant impact on the actions you will ultimately take and the results you are able to achieve. You must focus daily on choosing thoughts and beliefs that will support you in achieving your goals. Imagine what impact it would have on your business if every single person on your team did this.
4. Engage employees. Research shows 70% of employees are not engaged in their work. It’s quite difficult to achieve significant success if only 30% of your employees are truly engaged in their work. Engaged employees come to work more often, are more productive, have fewer errors, are more innovative, and interact more positively with customers. You must have and implement a plan to increase employee engagement.
5. Engage potential and current customers. How do you plan to reach out to potential new customers in 2015? What’s your plan to engage those individuals as well as your current customers in your company’s mission, conversations, products, and services so you can grow your tribe of engaged and loyal customers who love your products and services? What do you need to do to offer the best possible customer service and to keep your customer satisfaction needle moving in a positive direction?
6. Focus. Most people and businesses are trying to do too many things. It’s extremely difficult to achieve the highest levels of performance and be a standout from the competition if your time and efforts are dispersed in too many different areas. You need laser focus in a few areas to achieve significant increases in performance. Determine the few things you or your business want to be the best at. What will it take to make that happen? Be rigorous about taking everything else off your plate.
7. Put it on paper. Put your personal goals in writing. Per your business goals in writing. Share the business goals with every employee so they know what they are working towards every day. Have every employee put their goals in writing. When plans and goals are in writing and every single person knows the goals, every single mind goes to work on making them happen.
8. Control the calendar. Dedicate time on your calendar every single day to implement the specific plans to achieve your goals. Be religious about making sure that little to nothing that does not support the goals makes it onto your calendar. Teach your employees to do the same things with their calendars.
9. Master interruptions, distractions, and time wasters. Technology beeps and buzzes, ringing phones, co-workers who walk into our offices without an appointment, spending too much time in email, on Facebook, or on the internet, mental and physical health, personal organization, non-productive meetings, all of these things distract us from achieving our goals. Every time you get interrupted it takes about 23 minutes to get re-focused on what you were doing before you were interrupted. In addition, interruptions, distractions, and time wasters cost U.S. businesses $588 billion dollars every year. Master the distractions and you can significantly impact positive productivity and performance.
10. Know your numbers. Track progress towards your goals on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual schedule. What do your employee engagement and satisfaction scores look like compared to your goals? What about your customer satisfaction scores? How about sales, revenue, and expenses? If you know your numbers you know exactly where you stand today and what the gap is between where you are and where you really want to be. Once you know that, you’re better able to make any adjustments necessary to help keep you on track to meet your goals.