Recent Articles From EvanCarmichael.com http://www.evancarmichael.com/ http://www.evancarmichael.com/Business-Coach/3046/1-Simple-Time-Management-Secret-with-Huge-Benefits.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/Business-Coach/3046/1-Simple-Time-Management-Secret-with-Huge-Benefits.html A truly effective executive keeps his/her time commitments. Regardless the industry, position one holds, function you are in, or size of company, it is critical to take being on time seriously. In addition, I believe that if you do not get to most meetings at least 15 minutes early you are losing huge opportunities. While being on time and keeping your meetings is necessary, being 15 minutes early can be a gold mine. I have had clients partially apply this secret, and the results were automatic. http://www.evancarmichael.com/Business-Coach/3046/Are-You-Sending-Mixed-Motivation-Messages.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/Business-Coach/3046/Are-You-Sending-Mixed-Motivation-Messages.html It is so easy to send mixed messages to an employee. The best way to discuss this is to share a real live example where a client hired me to coach a partner. Then my client unwittingly made several decisions that totally demotivated his employee. http://www.evancarmichael.com/Business-Coach/3046/Never-Leave-a-Meeting-Feeling-Good.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/Business-Coach/3046/Never-Leave-a-Meeting-Feeling-Good.html Do your meetings result in everyone feeling good after they leave? Does very little get done in your meetings? If so, your meetings function like most, and they are probably worthless! Most often leaders are concerned with there being too many meetings, or meetings being too long, or some other wrong measurement. I would like to suggest that you change your measurement systems. For example, a good leading indicator that something important is being discussed is conflict. Other indicators of good meetings are the number of decisions made and the number of people held accountable for decisions made at the prior meetings. These are real indicators that your meetings are worthwhile. If you have a really good meeting, then everyone leaves feeling uncomfortable because there is so much more to be done, and they have a stake in it! http://www.evancarmichael.com/Business-Coach/3046/7-Time-Management-Secrets-that-Can-Make-You-Wealthy.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/Business-Coach/3046/7-Time-Management-Secrets-that-Can-Make-You-Wealthy.html Do you want to increase your earnings by 50% or more? Who wouldn’t? The challenge is how to do that and work less at the same time. Many of the ultra-wealthy in our country have figured out how to do just that. After all, at one point the person now earning $20 million a year probably earned $200,000 or less at an earlier point in his/her career. That same person is not working a 100 times harder today. That person has learned to maximize their own productivity and to help others in their teams do the same. There are 7 secrets to time management that can make you wealthy: http://www.evancarmichael.com/Business-Coach/3046/PeopleThe-Secret-Ingredient-to-Success.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/Business-Coach/3046/PeopleThe-Secret-Ingredient-to-Success.html In simple terms, you can measure your business success by how well you get customers, keep customers, and the efficiency of your operations. Many companies measure their success by revenues, income and other traditional accounting yardsticks. The problem is that the accounting approach measures how you did but not how you should have done. For example, take a company that grew 20% last year, and had $10 million in revenue. Its management team was weak, so it lost an additional 20% growth, missed out on another 5% in net margin, and had unnecessary turnover of 10% in client base. So this same company (assuming a 10% net margin) could have seen another $800K added to their bottom line. The one secret ingredient was “people.” http://www.evancarmichael.com/Business-Coach/3046/Delusion-of-Trust-is-Compromising-Growth.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/Business-Coach/3046/Delusion-of-Trust-is-Compromising-Growth.html Do you have absolute trust among your ownership and leadership teams? Do not answer yes too quickly. Every organization tells me they have trust, yet most do not. There has been no research around how much money lack of trust costs organizations every year, but I am confident that you can increase your revenue and profits substantially by facing this issue. If you have cracks in trust you are missing the foundation to teamwork and will find it impossible to achieve peak performance in your organization. http://www.evancarmichael.com/Business-Coach/3046/Take-Control-and-Increase-Growth--Article-3.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/Business-Coach/3046/Take-Control-and-Increase-Growth--Article-3.html The purpose of this article is to help business owners understand the key daily decisions that influence dependence on external funding and either limit or expand the growth potential of a business. There are essentially 4 decisions: 1. cash; 2. people; 3. strategy; and 4. execution. This article (#3) addresses strategy, which is the primary driver of growth. If you are not growing in the top tier of your industry segment you have a strategy problem. In this article are ideas to help you develop your strategy. http://www.evancarmichael.com/Business-Coach/3046/Fighting-Time.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/Business-Coach/3046/Fighting-Time.html Do you feel you’re in a constant battle with time? Does time seem to be winning, no matter which technology, process, and system one uses? While the amount of time in a day, week and year remains the same, people are attempting to fit more commitments into the same finite time spans. After many years of observing and working with senior management, I have found a fundamental flaw in how they approach time. This flaw causes significant bottlenecks in their companies. Worse, their poor leadership regarding time strategies causes others to have problems with time. http://www.evancarmichael.com/Business-Coach/3046/Goal-Epidemic.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/Business-Coach/3046/Goal-Epidemic.html Are you setting goals for yourself and/or your organization with conviction? Even worse, are you part of the audience at large that does not make a habit of setting goals? If I were to audit all the goals you set for yourself and your organization for the last 5 years, what percentage did you achieve? If you have success rate of less than 90%, you need to read this article. http://www.evancarmichael.com/Business-Coach/3046/Are-You-Playing-To-Win-or-Not-To-Lose.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/Business-Coach/3046/Are-You-Playing-To-Win-or-Not-To-Lose.html Emotions were running high in the last quarter of 2008, with the banking debacle, stock market meltdown, the soaring foreclosure rate, jobs losses, poor earnings reports. and dismal projections. Finally, the admission by the government, which had long denied the obvious, that we were in an economic recession. Nobody wants to use the word “depression,” but that’s the word that best describes the mood of the country. The result was that businesses and consumers put on the brakes. Most everyone started operating in a “playing not to lose” mindset. This mindset can be costly for your career and/or your business.