Do you subscribe to the idea that specific actions produce specific results? If so, where do you look when you’re not getting the results you want? Are you quick to point the finger at someone else?

After attending a training session about the effective use of KPIs and dashboards, a member of our sales team suggested that there were only four possible reasons for falling short of a desired result:

1. The desired actions weren’t communicated clearly.
2. The actions weren’t completed effectively.
3. The prescribed actions were wrong for the desired results.
4. The actions weren’t completed at all.

Genius, if you ask me (thanks Eric). I couldn’t think of any others. Can you?

The interesting point here is that most of the possible reasons for falling short of expectations are leadership issues. As the leader of my team, it’s my job to create and manage a simple process for getting results. I must (#1) clearly communicate how we do things and (#2) make sure the right people are trained to do them. If (#3) the things we do aren’t effective for getting the results we want, it’s my responsibility to help find a better way.

The only time I should start by looking anywhere other than the mirror is (#4) when things aren’t getting done at all, but only after careful reflection about how well I’ve held up my end of the bargain.

Yesterday, I received the following letter in the mail:

March 20, 2009

Rocket IT
Attn: Matt Hyatt
2905 Premiere Parkway
Suite 210
Duluth, GA  30097

Mr. Hyatt,

Because I’ve accepted a position with another company, and my employment with [company name withheld for privacy] is coming to an end, I want to take the time to recognize several of your employees I’ve worked with. These three individuals have made my experience with Rocket IT one that I highly recommend because of the top notch service I have received.

Eric Henderson, Joe Reinert, and Robert Sanchez have been a pleasure to work with. During every support request, site visit, and phone call, they have been very thorough, professional and knowledgeable. Not only do they quickly help resolve any issues we may have, but they do it with a smile and a laugh. I appreciate their balance of professionalism and a sense of humor; it makes the easiest part of my day resolving any IT issue.

I recommend, and will continue to recommend, Rocket IT and your staff. Thank you for providing such a high level of customer service and IT support.

Thank you again,

Erica Larsen
Project Assistant

Isn’t that a nice letter?

Ms. Larsen didn’t leave her forwarding information, but we’re hopeful that our paths cross again soon. We’ll certainly jump at the chance to work with her again.

Please don’t leave YOUR monkey on MY desk. 

In other words, feel free to come talk to me if you want to discuss ways to handle a problem you’ve uncovered. But don’t come just to complain. If you want to tell me about a problem, be prepared to tell me how you can help resolve it. Don’t just leave it on my desk.

Gary Vaynerchuk, host of Wine Library TV, has appeared on Conan O’Brien, The Today Show, Nightline, and others.

So my blog post this evening is short and simple.

If you’re stuck in the mud at work, go do something else for a while.

Go ahead – the world can wait! Take a walk. Take somebody with you. Laugh and have some fun. I bet you’ll come back feeling great and more productive, too.

While I like to think that I’m a pretty smart guy, I have to admit that I often feel I am a slow learner. I started my business 14 years ago, for example, and I’ve only recently begun to feel that I’m getting good at running it. If I could go back 14 years to talk with my former self about what I’ve learned, these are the top 6 things I think I’d share:

1. Get lots and lots of help. Starting and running a business isn’t easy, but you don’t have to figure it out all by yourself. There are millions of people that have started successful businesses, and many of them are all too happy to offer a helping hand. Attend trade shows and networking events, take people out to lunch, and join or start a peer advisory group. Ask questions. The ideas and information that you get from others, often for free, is priceless.
2. The way you expect your business to be run won’t be obvious to anyone but you until you communicate it, clearly and often. It took years and a unique set of thousands of circumstances to create the collection of thoughts and ideas that guide my daily actions and expectations. Unfortunately, it also took me years to learn that I must regularly share my values, ideas, and expectations with my team, in a simple and positive way, to get the results I want.
3. You cannot expect employees to always be as committed to the business as you are. It seems obvious now, but it didn’t initially occur to me that my business wouldn’t automatically become the top priority for every new employee. As the business owner, it’s up to me to create a culture and environment where employees want to help the business succeed. Believe me, that’s a lot easier to say than it is to do. However, I have found that if you are clear about your expectations from day one, and you show genuine interest and concern for each member of your team, most will leap over tall buildings to help you succeed.
4. Borrowing money is giving up control. Even if the debt is unsecured, borrowers will be slaves to the payments, interest, and obligation until it’s paid back in full. I wish I had figured this out before borrowing money to fund my business, but now that I have, I am working hard to pay it all back. I wish I could convince my former self to figure out how to pay cash and avoid the endless worries over debt. I wouldn’t say “don’t borrow money,” necessarily, but I would try to force myself to think long and hard about the alternatives.
5. People lie during interviews. I’m not talking little tiny white lies, here. I’m talking about big, honking, wow-I-can’t-believe-you-said-that lies. Like the guy that said that his former employer loved him and didn’t want him to leave the company, only to accidentally reveal months after being hired that his former boss was his own mother. Wow. Really? Trust, but verify.
6. If it feels like something might be wrong, it probably is. So many times I’ve picked up a strange little vibe about a prospective new employee, customer, or vendor, only to forge ahead and find out later that I was right. Trust that funny feeling. Your gut reaction is probably correct.

Of course, there are some things that I’m glad I didn’t have a clue about when I started my business. If I had known these things, I might not have had the courage to start at all. If given the chance, however, I would absolutely encourage my former self to forge ahead. I am fully aware of all these things, after all, and I would still do it all over again (only better, I hope).

1. Having a job is much, much less stressful than having a business. There’s no way around it – starting, building and running a business is hard. Very hard. Business owners think and worry about their businesses constantly. The business becomes so tightly woven into our personal lives that it becomes nearly impossible to separate the two. However, if you dream of owning a business and have deep passion for what you do, you might just find that it’s all worthwhile.
2. Neither my business nor my leadership will ever be perfect. I’m only half-kidding here. As a recovering perfectionist, I can honestly say that I used to think I could build a business without problems and that I could somehow become a leader that everyone would love and follow. I couldn’t have been more wrong, of course. But I have learned that there is great satisfaction in building a business that works through problems and in becoming a thoughtful leader that is well-loved by some and endured by others.
3. It might take many years to become an “overnight success”. When I started my business, I envisioned quick success. A few years of hard work and I’d be home free, I thought. More than a decade later, however, I was beginning to have my doubts. It was only recently that I realized that my idea of “success” had been a moving target, like the end of a rainbow. No wonder I hadn’t arrived! I now understand that, in some ways, my business was an “overnight success” years ago. In other ways, it’s an ongoing success, sustaining and fulfilling me and providing value for many others on a daily basis. And in still others, success is as elusive and far away as it’s always been.

What Would You Add?

What are the most important things you’ve learned since starting your own business? I’d love to hear about your advice for someone just starting out in comments below (or write a blog post about it and leave a link to it in comments below).

By the way, I’m facilitating a live panel discussion near Atlanta on January 20 related to cloud computing and its effects on business IT. How Cloud Computing is (Finally) Changing Business IT Forever. Attendance is free. Sign up here.

Although a recent Nielsen study shows that Facebook has almost four times the number of active users as LinkedIn, the latter is growing nearly twice as fast. The study also reveals that while Facebook is most popular among visitors 25-34 years old, LinkedIn still reigns in as the favorite among visitors 35-49.

Clearly, a choice to limit communications to one social network may mean giving up a sizable audience on another. Finding time to keep up with one network can be a challenge, of course, let alone two or more. Fortunately, a growing number of tools exist to improve communications across multiple networks. Facebook supports status updates via Twitter, for example, and vice versa, making it easy to update both networks at once. Until connectivity among social networks is universal, however, it may pay to visit more than one.