Lawrence Fine

Most large organizations, and many small ones, have a mission statement.

Wikipedia defines a mission statement as “A mission statement is a formal, short, written statement of the purpose of a company or organization. The mission statement should guide the actions of the organization, spell out its overall goal, provide a sense of direction, and guide decision-making. It provides “the framework or context within which the company’s strategies are formulated.”

If your organization doesn’t have a mission statement, I would strongly recommend taking the time to create one (and while mission statements are usually short in words, they do take time to do it right).

The real purpose of this post is to wonder, do YOU have a personal mission statement? Without one, do you really know your purpose, your direction, your overall goal?

If you don’t have one, take the time to give this a lot of thought and create your personalized mission statement. You might find this will help you organized yourself in a way to make sure you keep living within your values and morals

Have a great day!

Lawrence

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If you find yourself constantly having problems with various organizations and various people and don’t understand what the problem is, maybe it’s time to look in the mirror and realize maybe you are the problem.

If you notice that people tend to get into a lot of arguments when you are around, maybe it’s not them, maybe it’s you.

If you notice people are always bogged down in your groups, maybe it’s not them, maybe its you.

It’s important to really take a close look at yourself and realize you aren’t perfect (none of us are) and there are times when maybe you are the problem. Once you realize that, you might find it much easier to fix in the future

Have a great day!

Lawrence

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Take a good employee, add a second good employee and you would think at a minimum, you would have two good employees and hopefully, their productivity might increase to the point where they have a greater combined value than they did apart.

However, if they don’t work well together, two good employees might produce less together than they did apart and sometimes might end up producing absolutely nothing.

We must take into consideration the dynamics of the team and not just the individual abilities when putting people together. Otherwise, one plus one might equal zero

Have a great day!

Lawrence

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Some people are self motivated enough that they are able to set high standards and then strive to reach them. For many of us, this is difficult.

For many, it’s much easier to surround ourselves with people who challenge us. These people also encourage us, stretch us and overall, make us accomplish things we might not normally do on our own.,

If you aren’t able to raise the bar for yourself, go find someone who can

Have a great day!

Lawrence

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Here are some ways to learn

Do something
Watch others do something
Teach others how to do
Read about how to do

Here is a great way NOT to learn

Do nothing

A person almost has to try to do absolutely nothing. Go out, try something and learn

Have a great day!

Lawrence

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Here is a simple formula for success

1.Create expectations and goals
2.Create processes as guidelines
3.Hire the right people
4.Give the freedom to operate
5.Provide the support and resources needed
6.Monitor to ensure the results are matching expectations
7.Adapt as required

Following this formula will help ensure success in your organization. There are many other ways to be successful but following this formula will help

Unfortunately, many organizations do some of these but not all and this can be dangerous. For example, if you do all of these except for number 3, you might be giving the freedom for bad employees to destroy your organization. If you do number 3 but then don’t do number 4, these employees might feel frustrated.

This formula does require some trust and this is why the monitoring part is so important.

If you have a different formula that is working for you, great. If not, give this a try

Have a great day!

Lawrence

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If you do yearly evaluations of employees, and there are surprises in the evaluations, you might want to consider whether you are communicating effectively the rest of the year.

Instead of surprising them in their evaluation and putting it “on the record”, consider doing more informal regular evaluations so they can know where they stand, and hopefully make improvements, throughout the year.

Just a thought

Have a great day!

Lawrence

Tags: Management by Lawrence Fine
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If your competition is good, is really good good enough to beat them?

If a store has had a loyal following for years providing good service and good products, is being really good enough to get these loyal customers away from them? The answer is probably not.

You either have to be great or different in order to get loyal customers away from your competition. Great is good enough. Really different might be good enough. Simply being really good probably isn’t even close to being good enough.

Be great, be different but don’t just be really good

Have a great day!

Lawrence

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If you allow yourself to be a commodity at work you are putting yourself into a position to be easily replaced.

This means if many other people can do the same job you are doing, it makes it easy for them to bring in someone who might work faster, or cheaper or both.

Distinguish yourself in a way that you do things better, or different than anyone else and it makes it much more difficult to replace you.

Too many people are looking for a way to fit in at their organization, you should look for a way to stand out.

Have a great day!

Lawence

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Frequently we look at a situation and feel something has changed but are not sure what exactly has changed. If you can’t figure out what has changed, consider the possibility that you are the one who has changed.

As an example, recently, I was in a waiting room and some young children were running around. A guy sitting next to me started laughing and said “until a couple of years ago, those children running around would have driven me crazy, now that I have kids of my own, I have learned to appreciate them and now I find it cute”. In other words, the same thing that a few years ago would frustrate and annoy him, now he finds enjoyable. The situation isn’t different, he is.

We are constantly changing, sometimes for the good, occasionally for the bad but it’s important to realize that sometimes the only thing that has changed is us.

If you can’t figure out what has changed in a given situation, consider the possibility, it’s you

Have a great day!

Lawrence

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