Why you never wash a rental car?

So on Tuesday I was at my Academy of Chief Executives Group meeting and the speaker was a guy call Mark Fritz. The subject was, 'Why you never wash a rental car.' Immediately my alarm bells went up as I was expecting some kind of brash American telling me what I was doing wrong and what I needed to do to put it right.

Well, that couldn't have been further from the truth. The takeaway value of his session was huge and I think I ranked him the highest speaker I have heard at #ACE.

Why was it so good I hear you ask???......There were so many nuggets to takeaway and I don't mean chicken ones….actual golden ones!

In delegation…….."Deciding what you don't need to know"
Become Outcome focused rather than activity focused - is it important to make 50 cold calls a day or 5 calls and secure 5 appointments. The outcome outweighs the activity. It is all very well being too busy being busy rather than being busy and productive!

Our job as leaders is to create the conditions that enable success, whether it be the processes, the people or the behaviours.

We also spent some time talking about bringing an outcome approach to meetings and to do this what would need to happen. Well he showed us that before we even think about an agenda for that meeting we have to decide what the successful outcome of the meeting would be. This would take place well before setting any kind of agenda. In fact setting the agenda would be at step 6 meaning there are 5 more important things than the agenda in preparing for a meeting!

'Lightbulb' moments were plentiful in this invigorating and educational session and my thanks go out to Mark Fritz for his presentation, and to Brian Chernett for having the belief to book him.

If you want to hear what Mark has to say contact him at mark@markfritzonline.com

Thanks guys!

Best

Simon

Integrity and Morals in Business

So here I am sat at my desk with steam coming out of both my ears.  Why I hear you ask?  I said....Why I hear you ask?  Thank you, do keep up!

A competitor of mine has emailed my entire sales team and most of my management team asking them to go to them and join their 'winning team.'  Now is it just me or is this not the done thing?  It seems to be the kind of thing that lacks any kind of integrity and/or morals.  What makes this even worse was that it was one of industry trade associations that provided the data and technology to send the blast.  There are some cracking companies that we compete against on a daily basis.  They are professional with excellent levels of service and even seem to have integrity.  Unfortunately there are some that are not.  I am sure this is the same throughout most industries.  Now the company that has sent this 'spam' probably thinks
that they have done nothing wrong, after all the mailing list was provided by a trade association.  Even so I just feel it 'stinks'!

There are so many places to find really good team members without directly attacking a competitor.  From Social Networking sites, job sites, recruiters, press, networking.  I am also a huge believer in making an excellent place to work so that the team are happy and talk about it.  Word will spread that such and such is a great place to work and before long, new good members will want to join your team.

I was talking the other day with Mrs P and I think the 4 little P's were in the car with us.  It was a conversation regarding Merchandise Mania and what makes us good at what we do.  I summed it up with the word 'Integrity' 2 of the little P's picked up on the word but could not say it properly.  (oldest little P is 5!) Eventually we agreed that it was a word daddy used at the office a lot and daddy should not talk about the office on daddy days!!(weekends)  So we stopped talking and went to the park!!

Integrity and Morals, Why do we bother?  Answers on a post card or via a comment below!!!!