You are a business leader. Yet you suspect that your team is giving you the answers they anticipate you want to hear.
That thought is keeping you up at night.
You are a business leader who suspects that the folks in your company are a little too cozy in their current jobs. They aren’t gung-ho to implement processes and practices that make them feel in the least bit uncomfortable.
That realization is keeping you up at night as well.
You a business leader who is being treated like a coddled egg. That’s not leadership at all.
In cooking, coddled eggs are gently or lightly cooked eggs. They can be partially cooked, mostly cooked, or hardly cooked at all. (Wikipedia)
You are a business leader who has gotten used to be shaken but not stirred, of doing business that you are suspecting might be at half-strength at best.
You are a business leader in search of a sounding board to have “those” conversations. No one in your organization is willing to play ball with you and push back anymore.
Things are good, solid and stable at your company. Which, as a business leader, really keeps you up at night.
You created your company and grew it from a fledgling entrepreneurship to a successful small business. You are not sure whether you want, or need, to expand to get to the alleged, mystical “next level” of business evolution.
You hire consultants. They coddle you. They nurture your team. They nurse things along. It’s like the never-ending story.
At the end of the consultancy, you implement a few things for a month or two (if that long). And then your company slip slides back to where they were at ground zero: comfortable with everything in its place.
You are a business leader in fear that you and your team have lost your taste for competition. What’s worse is that you suspect you’ve lost your creativity and innovation along the way.
That thought continues to keep you up at night.
Yet are you really up for an in-your-face, honest approach about your business, yourself as a business leader of worth, and the value of your people, practices and processes?
That type of strategy will surely put you on the defense. After all, you got your company to where it is today.
It’s just that what you did to get your company to where it is today will not take your company to where it needs to go in tomorrow’s globally competitive business ecosystem.
You know it. You have analysis paralysis that keeps you up at night.
You are a business leader who does not need to be coddled anymore. You need to be mentored. You need to be coached. The race you are training for is within your grasp. It’s just outside your current business perspective.
Your current level of business comfort creates myopia: for you, your team, and your sales people. Even your customers are unimaginative in their buying habits because they have no clue about the breadth and depth of solutions that your company offers them.
It’s difficult to create a bold path for tomorrow when you can’t imagine, let alone see, today’s forest for the trees.
If you are ready for more than a sounding board for your ideas about your company’s future, you’ve come to the right place. I hold you accountable to agreements made: that is not for the faint of heart.
The difference is in your business outcome.
You are a business leader who does not want to be coddled anymore, anyway. It’s about time you got a good night’s sleep.
Babette N. Ten Haken, President of Sales Aerobics for Engineers®, LLC, is a management consultant and business mentor, coach and strategist. She doesn’t coddle anyone. Babette works with startups and small-to-medium manufacturing and service companies who have difficulty with unpredictable revenue streams. She was named in 2013 and again in 2014 a Top Sales & Marketing Influencer and Top Sales & Marketing Blogger.
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