Mental Meals!™

When Bad Times Tell You About The Good Times

Are you suddenly doing things in the down turned economy that you weren’t doing when it was in full swing?  Such as taking care of clients with a personal touch?  Maybe you should look at what you are doing now and think about doing it all of the time.

I was talking to a client the other day and he related this story to me.

It seems he had a financial advisor for many years that was supposed to be taking care of his mid-6 figure portfolio.  Interestingly enough, the advisor rarely ever contacted his client.  Until the economy took a turn for the worse.  Now he wants to have coffee, ask for referrals, etc.  My clients portfolio is now worth less than 50% of it’s value two years ago.  Yes, perhaps he should have been watching a little closer, but then, why have an advisor as well?

My client told me “I haven’t heard from him during the good times, now that it’s in the tank he wants to wine me and dine me.  What I am going to do, without telling my current advisor, is move my money to another guy that I talk to all the time.”

Clients are lost when they are not cared for.  Worse, you won’t know it until it’s too late.  Be consistent with your care of your clients, which includes keeping in touch.

Bart Gragg

925.757.7473

In Business It’s About WINNING - Not surviving.

It’s about winning in the long term.  Just surviving for the long term is painful.

In my rare, spare time, I like to play the card game Hearts, and I like to   play Chess.  In order to do that successfully, you have to keep your head  in the game.

The good players just sort of follow the rules and dump and duck and   survive.  At a cost.  They never win a streak, they don’t improve their game and for the life of me I cannot figure out why they continue to play if their life is full of frustration and anger and blaming it on others. When they start to lose they quit looking at the whole picture and go into what I call “fright, fight and flight” mode.  I see a lot businesses owners and managers playing with their businesses in the same way.

They quit thinking strategically.
They look for excuses and others to blame.
They look for a bailout.

The GREAT players, however, keep their heads in the game.  Yes, they have setbacks and losses.   Yes, sometimes others are to blame.  But just as often, they are able to see and take advantage when others do mess up.  The great players will sacrifice now for a win later.  They will go so far as to help their opponent now, so that the game stays alive.  Because once the game is over, it’s over, folks.  No more chances to win.

The great players have a strategy.

They stick with their strategy.

They may make changes in their strategy when conditions or learning evolve, but they are thought out and executed.

Rarely do the successful players make a ‘Hail Mary’ pass.  They do make them, but they are not nearly as consistently successful.

What is your strategy?

Are your people thinking forward clearly and executing on a well thought out strategy?

Even given the turmoil in the economy as I write this, those that intend to win are at least thinking through a strategy and not tossing everything into the wind.

Bart Gragg
925.757.7473

What I Learned While Writing My Book

For those of you that ever thought about being an author let me encourage you as I was encouraged by my mentor, Jim Horan, author of The One Page Business Plan. I started on an adventure that is still not complete.  Jim sent me the format he uses for his Executive Briefing, a short, powerful look at how and why the One Page system of planning works.

When I asked him to mentor me through the process he told he would under one condition - “Bring full-on Bart!  Don’t hold back.  Write it the way you see it and we’ll go from there.”  Later he then encouraged me with these words - “Don’t make it perfect, just get it done.”

I followed all of that advice.  Here is what I learned while writing “Managing or Mangling - A Brief Plea to Executives for Sanity in Management!”:

• I know more about my business now.  I have greater clarity.
• I realized I know a lot more about my area of expertise than I thought I did.
• And then I realized I know a lot less, as well.
• There are those out there that need my help.
• And yours.
• I understand my clients pain far greater than I thought.  I have some relief for them.
• You do, too.
• I enjoy the thought process, the wordsmithing.
• I like taking the mundane, everyday stuff and using the power of humor to make a point.
• My readers do, too.
• You should as well.
• I can scream at the world.  And then go back to work.
• There are people that care about others.  In fact, those are actually in the majority, dear news media!
• Tell the truth.  People love it.

Probably the biggest single thing I learned, so far, is that people crave the ‘tell it like it is’ style.  People want honesty.  I did not have to try to be politically correct.  If you respect people, you don’t have to try.  Your respect shows through.  If someone takes it too sensitively and it wasn’t your intent, oh, well…  There is always going to be someone like that.  Can’t please all of the people all of the time, dear Government. Too many of us think that being ‘PC’ means we have to beat around the bush.  People like that even less.

When I thought I was done writing Jim taught me the second biggest thing I learned.  He asked me “What is it that you have not written?  What story have you not told?  What are you afraid of writing?”  My answer?  The story that now appears as the first chapter in the book - “They Don’t Talk About Management By Gunpoint”.

What are you avoiding writing or talking about?

The power of writing is much greater than simply producing another potential stream of revenue.  In short, the process of writing with a purpose allows freedom to create and the focus to understand ourselves and our clients even more.    The writer grows and matures as well.

Bart Gragg
925.757.7473

Tags: Bart Gragg, Blue Collar University, Managing or Mangling

Recognizing and Dealing With the Highly Expressive Person

Remember that people are ‘blends’ of different behavioral styles.  Here we focus on general terms for the expressive person. (On the DISC Behavioral Assessment they are the “High I” - Robin Williams is a great example.

Behavior:  The more expressive a person is the more they are on the move.

Their body language is movement - they ‘talk with their hands’, their head is always moving, they love to talk about anything and everything.  They may include lots of detail, but even the detail will be superfluous.  They are good promoters, influencing people to do things with and for them.  They can’t sit still.  I have one IT client that you can’t beat for knowledge when my computer crashes, but as long as I have worked with him as both a client and vendors, he never quite seems to get all of the loose ends tied up.

Read the entie article here…

Tags: behavior, DISC, expressive personality

I Don’t Like Surprises

I don’t like most surprises.  All too often in business when surprises are sprung on us they feel like steel bear traps.

In these tough economic times surprises have come to be the norm, and we tend to either become numbed or stricken like the proverbial deer in the headlights about our businesses and employees. 

Sage advice comes from Dr. Marcia Ruben at Leadership Tangles and a great post here:

Leadership Communication Tips in VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity)

Take a minute to read and heed this advice.