Strategic Discipline Blog

How much time during your business day are you truly concentrating on your work? During the day, the average person is interrupted once every 11 minutes. It’s been estimated that it takes the human mind approximately 25 minutes to get up to speed on anything.

Last evening while reading the book I’d purchased on Civil War battles the enormity of the decision making these generals had to make occurred to me. It must have weighed on them heavily. We view the decisions of generals to delay or attack and fail to grasp the gravity of the situation. Each decision they made would lead to deaths. A decision to delay or dig in, while easily second guessed today, easily might have been that general’s effort to reduce the burden of killing more soldiers. 

“The battle Chancellorsville was one which I believe neither side, the Union nor the Confederates won. Both sides made major mistakes that hurt them in their efforts to win the war.” With these words our guide from the National Parks Service opened her 45 minute presentation on the battle of Chancellorsville and the events surrounding the death of General ‘Stonewall’ Jackson. 

This past weekend I attended my oldest sons wedding in Fredericksburg, Virginia. While there several of us attending the wedding including my son Daniel took the time to visit several battlefields from the Civil War. That area of Virginia as several important battles from that era that had a major impact on the outcome of the war, and most of them are within a relatively short distance of each other. Learning the history of several of these battles it became more aware to me that history does repeat itself if only we take the time to listen and examine the outcomes. Forgive me if you’re not a history buff like I am as I unravel the lesson I learned from the Battle of Fredericksburg.

Marketing is often considered to be a creative position. If you want your marketing to sparkle and get results you need to hire someone who has great creativity right? At Gazelles we’ve discovered that’s not necessarily true. Marketing is knowing who your cus tomers are, where they are, what their needs and perceptions are, how to communicate with them, and how to attract them.

“I don’t need core values, I’m just a small business, why do I need to spend time working on core values?”

Answer for me today what is your #1 priority? Do you know it? Did you have to think about it, or did you just finish working on it? 

Last blog I mentioned one of my clients who is in the business of selling copiers. He’s struggled for a long time with his sales process and has been continually refining it to get it down to a system he can depend on. He’s done several things in this area including developing a recruiting and hiring process to spot better performers, and purchasing a sales software program so he can closely monitor his staff and provide them with reminders to ensure follow up is being conducted. Performance has always been the bottom line and if you know anything about business to business sales it can be a wild roller coaster unless your people are following a regimented routine to each day work on getting new customers. 

    


After much delay, the following is a letter from my co-worker Troy Simon's wife recounting the days leading up to and events surrounding the loss of their home during the June flooding in Cedar Rapids:

A couple of my clients are having issues with their employees right now. One of them a copy sales company has had issues with performance with his sales people and has been continually working to find the right balance of stress and nurturing to get production. More on that in the next blog.