Month: 4
Year: 2006
One of my clients came to me with an issue that was causing him a lot of trouble. That issue was completing the "Internal Tasks" needed to move his business ahead.
John had been a high level executive in an international firm for a number of years before starting his own research business.
Even though he had been in business on his own for over seven years, he found that he couldn't complete internal tasks and projects on time. The definition of internal projects for him is: "work for my own business rather than client related work." I asked him if there'd been a time in his professional career when he did get things done, and felt very confident in completing all of the things that he was supposed to. He said "Yes. When I was an executive, I never missed a deadline. I always handled everything that I had committed to." So the question became why wasn't he able to complete the things that he needed to do in his own business.
I asked him about the time when he was very successful in his business as an executive. I asked him to tell me what was he doing, what were the systems in place for him? What kind of support did he have? His answer was that he always hit the ETAs of commitments to his clients. He never missed a deadline.
Now in his own business, he found that he still completed all of the clients obligations, but was not able to complete the important tasks of moving his own business forword. Examples were generating marketing materials, writing articles, meeting industry specialists, etc...
He told me that he felt like he had to "just work harder" and if he worked harder he would be able to get everything done.
As a business coach, I don't like this approach. I prefer to work with my clients in a way that maximizes their strengths. I'd rather have my clients work smarter rather than harder. Here's how we solved John's problem:
There were two things that I felt I had to happen for John to become successful in completing internal tasks. The first was I asked him to consider himself as two people. "John the Boss" and "John the Doer". I told him that "John the Boss" would determine the ETAs for all of the work inside his business.
The second thing that I asked "John the Doer" to do was to treat all the ETAs set by "John the Boss" as if they were client's ETAs. John's business became, in effect, a client of his.
I asked John if he thought this would be a good solution for the problem. He was ecstatic. By building on top of his strengths, and not asking for major changes in behavior we implemented this change easily into his business.
Jerry Wistrom - "Small Business - Made Easy"
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