"Time Waits for Nobody"

In the words sung by the immortal musical genius, Freddie Mercury, “Time waits for nobody.”

I don’t know about you, but the next 6 weeks for me are absolutely crazy, and it’s like this every year. With so much to get done, there is just never enough time. There certainly wasn’t enough time for Freddie, who died from AIDs-related pneumonia at the age of 46 this week in 1991.

Looking back on the lives of those who have shaped your life, and your world, the question begs to be asked: What will you do with yourself, your family, friends, talents, business, and your ability to make the world a better place before time runs out for you?

Not to be morbid, but really, what CAN you do to make a difference?

Do you carve out dedicated time for your family and friends? By all means, and absolutely, YES! 

Do you share your talents with up and comers, or just focus on moving your own organization forward? What about your staff and partners? How can you – together – make an impact on the world in which we live?

Answering the question you say, "Our mission is to “blah, blah, blah, blah; that’s how we make a difference.” Really? Great! How can those efforts, combined with others, be used to make an even bigger impact?

As the year-end holidays begin this week with Hanukkah and Thanksgiving, consider how you and your team can work together to make a difference in a new way. Here are a few ideas:

• Conduct a short fund-raiser for another organization, such as the Red Cross; given the unprecedented need in the world today, every dollar counts. 
• Call your local food bank and ask them what specific food items they need. Don’t just assume they need turkeys and cranberry sauce. Not everyone in need celebrates Thanksgiving in the US; really.
• Schedule a team-building (or family only) exercise by calling your local homeless shelter or hot soup kitchen to volunteer to serve on a day or week outside a holiday. They need help every day – not just on holidays. 
• Keep in mind that every group's needs are different. Who knows, they may prefer that you bring specific items or donate cash instead. Again, never underestimate the power of a single dollar for a nonprofit. 
• Work with other local groups, such as your church or synagogue, and identify a local nonprofit to adopt for the year 2014 and beyond. Consider free health clinics, under-privileged housing, after-school programs, etc. Imagine the impact they could make with your help.

This Holiday Season, as you celebrate Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa or a holiday I unintentionally left out; consider finding a way to share the joy of the Season with others by building a years-long partnership with your local nonprofits. 

In doing so, you can unequivocally make a huge impact on the lives of so many others. If you have other ideas, please feel free to comment. That, too, can make a big difference! 

Remember, “time waits for nobody.”

Before founding her own consulting firm, Dawn Gannon served as a respected management professional in the nonprofit military, higher education, and healthcare fields for 25 years. As a Lean/Six Sigma Green Belt, Dawn’s commitment and personal mission to improve the lives of others through service to the community focuses on providing administrative and volunteer management, consumer education, public outreach, event planning, relationship-building efforts, and strategic planning. She is also a published author on the topic of childfree living.

Why the Successful Celebrate Failure

We all know that everyone makes mistakes. In fact, our humanistic nature absolutely guarantees that we will all fail at one thing or another during our lifetime; most likely, many things.

In its September 2004 Special Einstein Edition, Discover magazine pointed out that even Albert Einstein made mistakes – big ones. And yet, many of those mistakes led to a tremendous number of future successes for which we are all grateful today.

As a business leader, I suspect you make time to celebrate the big successes of your team. What about the smaller successes, and even the failures?

Multiple studies and best-selling books, such as Heath’s Celebrating Failure, tout the positive impact of mistakes. From continuous improvement of a product or service to the innovative creation of others, small successes AND mistakes are more often than not serve as catalysts to forward progress. After all, you know what won’t work as a result of the mistake; don’t you? Or, do you just brush off the mistake and put it down to the incompetence of the person/people who made it?

In their book TheLeadership Challenge, Kouzes & Posner point out that effective leaders not only encourage mistakes, but celebrate them by getting personally involved as well. What better way to lead, than to get in the trenches with your team? By sharing the experiences of their challenges, and celebrating both successes and failures, you can reinforce the team’s courage to continually drive innovation, while building on the strengths of an open, collaborative corporate culture.

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, what will you celebrate this week?

Before founding her own consulting firm, Dawn Gannon served as a respected management professional in the nonprofit military, higher education, and healthcare fields for 25 years. Dawn’s commitment and personal mission to improve the lives of others through service to the community focuses on providing administrative and volunteer management, consumer education, public outreach, event planning, relationship-building efforts, and strategic planning. She is also a published author on the topic of childfree living.

Strategy that Focuses on the Mission

Does your organization have a clearly defined mission, or does your leadership team just work toward achieving specific measurable goals delineated in a long-term strategic plan instead?

Stop reading this blog for a minute, and look at your mission statement.

Now, look at your strategic plan, and the goals outlined for completion by the end of the year (7 weeks from now!).

Can you see a difference, if there is one? How many of the board-approved strategic initiatives fall outside of your stated mission? How many of those goals focus specifically and only on your organization’s basic product or service? Are there any that stretch the bounds of the mission to engage communities that share similar needs?

Strategic planning gurus, John Pierce and Richard Robinson (2011) suggest that a well-defined mission statement clearly states “the unique purpose that sets it apart from other companies of its type and identifies the scope of its operations.” ¹ Furthermore, it is designed to broadly reflect the organization’s intent and addresses the expectations of all its stakeholders; you know, your customers, those you serve, your staff, board of directors/owners, donors/investors, partners, and the general public, all of whom have different needs and expectations.

Strategic plans, however, differ from mission statements in that they are designed and approved by the board to meet specific goals in pursuit of achieving the mission. Many times, however, an organization’s leadership sets goals during the planning process that clearly go beyond the organization’s mission, which can negatively affect its public image, self-concept, growth, vision, and ultimately its survival. In short, they try to be everything to everyone.

The challenge for you as you plan for 2014 is to review your mission statement, and your strategic plan, to ensure that the goals and initiatives outlined therein fit only within the bounds of your mission. Once you can identify the boundaries of your mission, revise the strategic plan and say no to those tasks, projects and programs that don’t meet those requirements.

Very often, it is hard to say no to a particular stakeholder who feels that the organization “must” do this. However, it’s even harder on your organization, staff and other very limited resources to say yes when a service, project or program doesn’t fall within the boundaries of your mission.

In short, you can be good at a lot of things or, you can be awesome on just those few that actually fulfill your mission.

Reference:

Pearce, J.A. & Robinson, R.B. (2011). Strategic management: Formulation, implementation and control (12th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Before founding her own consulting firm, Dawn Gannon served as a respected management professional in the nonprofit military, higher education, and healthcare fields for 25 years. Dawn’s commitment and personal mission to improve the lives of others through service to the community focuses on providing administrative and volunteer management, consumer education, public outreach, event planning, relationship-building efforts, and strategic planning. She is also a published author on the topic of childfree living.

Partnering with Your Competitors - Guest Blog for Kristen Magnacca Darcy

In a guest blog today for Kristen Magnacca Darcy, I wrote about the benefits of partnering with your competitors.

While every business has its unique competitive advantage, continually enhancing the valuation of its services for clients is key to building customer loyalty, and can be a cornerstone of a well-rounded plan to attract new ones.

Check out the blog, and then let me know what you think!

What Can You Do for Me that I Can’t Do for Myself?

Did you see your calendar this morning? It’s November – really, it is. I know this is a cliché, but it seems to me that this year has flown by faster than those of the past, and yet, I find it amazing that January 2013 seems so far in the distance. From a business perspective, I am content with where I am today, but I definitely want more for 2014.

Recently I sat down to begin planning for the New Year, and as I reviewed my strategic plan, I found myself asking these questions:

• Have I reached all of the objectives set for 2013?
• If not, how close am I to reaching them, or do they need to be revised because of changing market conditions or other factors?
• If I have reached one or more, how do these successes help set new objectives? 
• What resources outside my business could be helpful in setting or reaching new goals?

As a successful business owner yourself, I am sure you have a plan for your business, and you are confident that what you have done in the past will continue to work for you in the future, as long as you keep your eye on the marketplace. After all, you've been in business for 10 years (more or less), and the number of new clients coming in each year is acceptable, if not better.

As a management consultant, I am often asked, “What can you do for me that I can’t do for myself?”

To begin, management consultants can conduct a review of your organizational culture and operational practices to identify any gaps or areas of needed improvement, without the cultural - albeit unintentional - bias of someone within your organization.

Outside consultants can also evaluate how well you gather, and then use, data based on metrics which focus on the Voice of the Customer (VOC), to further enhance the value of your products or services within your target market. Moreover, a consultant is less likely to be surprised or dismiss VOC data as incidental or "a one-time issue already resolved."

Although you can certainly do all of this yourself, consulting firms are uniquely positioned to take a fresh look at their clients businesses from an unbiased, open-minded perspective, which by its very nature stimulates innovative thinking and generates new ideas.

This is where firms like Dawn Gannon Consulting can be truly valuable. Supplementing your own efforts with the expertise of a management consulting firm offers a tremendous opportunity for growth based objects set as a result of an outside review of your company’s current situation, efforts and future plans.

As you begin to plan, or continue planning, for 2014, consider taking advantage of resources outside your organization, which could not only take you where you want to go, but beyond as well.

Before founding her own consulting firm, Dawn Gannon served as a respected management professional in the nonprofit military, higher education, and healthcare fields for 25 years. Dawn’s commitment and personal mission to improve the lives of others through service to the community focuses on providing administrative and volunteer management, consumer education, public outreach, event planning, relationship-building efforts,and strategic planning. She is also a published author on the topic of childfree living.