Article Archives

No Agenda, No Attenda

I had a great conversation with my Growth Whisperers podcast partner Brad Giles about how we're both very fierce about managing our calendars.

We generally don't have a lot of free time for ill-prepared and ineffective meetings, between our busy businesses and personal lives - never mind requests for meetings that are a waste of time or from people who just want to catch up.

So, how do you deal with those meeting requests that Brad calls no agenda no attenda?

If someone can’t clearly tell us about the agenda for the meeting, or the desired outcome, we’re not going to be there.

Protecting your calendar means having a filtering process to make sure what goes in your calendar:

Is relevant and important to you
Allocates the right amount of time (I think five-minute meetings are a great thing)
Has a clear agenda so that you can be prepared and see the value of the meeting.

The Challenge

What are your criteria for accepting productive meetings?

Listen to more on this episode of The Growth Whisperers podcast.

Lawrence & Co’s work focuses on sustainable and enhanced growth for you and your business. Our diverse and experienced group of advisors can help your leaders and executive teams stay competitive through the use of various learning tools including workshops, webinars, executive retreats, or one-to-one coaching.

We help high-achieving leaders to have it all – a great business and a rewarding life. Contact us for simple and impactful advice. No BS. No fluff.

by lawrenceandco

Why Good Employees Leave

It's important to understand why good employees leave your company.

After our client lost a key executive, we dug deeper into the initial story. Did she really leave because she was offered more money somewhere else? She was a perfectionist and a high-performer. Someone you would dream of having on your team - and over-consumed with work. She didn't want to drop the quality of her work or reputation and, ultimately, left because of the stress she felt being a Rockstar at work. She was trying to take care of herself while taking on the challenge of being an amazing mother. Leaving was the only way she could save face.

And her manager didn't pick up the clues when she couldn't keep up the pace.

So, how is your environment set up for high performers? Does it allow them enough space to talk about what they need to be successful?

Why Good Employees Leave and How to Prevent It

In Your Oxygen Mask First (Chapter 3), I talk about the importance of resilience and how managers should guide and support their people to be strong and healthy, and to perform at their best.

One of our recommendations is to encourage each team member to set quarterly and annual goals. Set three or four related to work, one or two about their own resilience and growth and, in some cases, one or two that relate to their life.

You can take it a step further by including important life goals for each team member. It’s a way of getting people to fully understand and support what’s important in each other’s world. This puts the message on the table that you want them to succeed in all facets of life: to thrive at work, be healthy, strong and resilient and to enjoy the fruits of their labour.

You might even improve their performance.

The Challenge

How can you help people in your organization to be more resilient and thrive?
How can you help your high performers who want to stay?

Do you allow enough time to really be curious and hear what they need to sustain their success?

Hear more on this episode of The Growth Whisperers podcast.

We help high-achieving leaders to have it all – a great business and a rewarding life. Contact us for simple and impactful advice. No BS. No fluff.

by lawrenceandco

Do You Love Your Business?

I had a great conversation with my kids and some friends recently. It reminded me of a wonderful gift that I forgot I have: I absolutely love the work I do. I love this business and the team we have built at Lawrence and Co.

In the conversation, we were talking about investments with our kids and the types of businesses to get into. Specifically, businesses that can be built and sold versus ones that can't. While a consulting business can be solid and enjoyable, it's not like some others that can be built and sold for buckets of cash.

That’s when a friend reminded me of how, while many people could sell their business for tens, hundreds or millions, they don't love it every day, like I love my business.

It reminded me to be grateful to have a business I love so much. More importantly, that I also want other people to have that same gift - to have a business that gives joy and fulfillment. And not one that they feel they need to endure on a daily basis.

So, here’s the question for you. What would you need to do, in your business, if your happiness was on the line?

The Challenge

What would you need to change about your business to really enjoy the next 20 years? Make this list even if you don't think it’s possible.
What would you change about your team, customers, processes, specific responsibilities and how and where you spend your time?
What would you change about your team or your culture?

To hear more, listen to part one of two of this Growth Whisperers podcast, and check out Chapter 4, Invest in Your Sweet Spots, in Your Oxygen Mask First.

We help high-achieving leaders to have it all – a great business and a rewarding life. Contact us for simple and impactful advice. No BS. No fluff.

by lawrenceandco

What Can You Stop Doing?

I once worked with a naturopathic doctor who solved an issue for me by asking me to stop doing something. My face had been reacting to something by breaking out and, after tests, the solution was to stop eating eggs and almonds.

It’s a great example of how, sometimes, solving problems is not what you think it needs to be.

Sometimes, to fix a problem you just need to stop the input that's messing it up.

In the great book Necessary Endings: The Employees, Business and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward, Dr. Henry Cloud talks about the benefit of proactively ending things in order to make our professional and personal lives better.

After all, we only have so much time and so much energy. And when you look through this window, you think about what you are doing and why – and then contemplate what to stop doing to free up the system and move forward faster and better.

For example, from a personal perspective, some people stopped drinking alcohol because they didn't like how it made them feel - and some people started because they liked how it made them feel.

From a work perspective, some people decided to stop producing reports that create no value or to eliminate key parts of a process that are only done out of habit.

The Challenge

What one or two things might you stop, in each area of Work, Self and Life - no matter how risky or uncomfortable for you or someone else – that causes you stress or drag?
How can you remove that friction so that you can feel better?

More about this on this episode of The Growth Whisperers podcast where we also talk about the Stop Doing List.

We help high-achieving leaders to have it all – a great business and a rewarding life. Contact us for simple and impactful advice. No BS. No fluff.

by lawrenceandco

Are you Fresh and Relevant Today or Relying on Old Mastery?

I had a great conversation with friends, this week, about what people do to stay fresh and relevant.

I'm a person who likes to do different things and to stretch myself. It serves me very well in the work that I do.

And, when I look at many great people I've met, over the years, some mastered their craft in their 20s and 30s, but stopped learning as they milked and leveraged what they knew through their 40s and into their 50s and 60s. Others also mastered a craft early, and then continued to learn many new things in their 40s, 50s and into their 70s and 80s.

It’s the difference between a one-hit wonder in the music industry and an artist who continues to learn, re-invent and evolve their craft.

With the exponential pace of growth, knowledge and innovation, the world is just not the same as it was just 10 years ago, in every domain of life. Even sports are played differently now. To stay fresh and relevant, you have to continue to learn and evolve.

The same goes for the companies we work with, where we see the difference between early mastery and recent mastery:

Some already have with great momentum. So, we work to sharpen their strategy and strengthen their team so that their growth continues.
For those that have hit a flat spot and are not as in sync with the market as they need to be, we often have to resurrect their strategy or reinvent the team. And, sometimes, we have to look at strategies or approaches they have been relying on for 10 or 15 years. In this case we look for ways to evolve the thinking and working to be more relevant in today’s world.

Now, not all the cases are like this. However, we do find that most companies that continue to grow and thrive are masterful at the things that matter most in their business. Or they do enough new things – but not too many - to stay fresh and relevant.

The Challenge

Do you have enough recent mastery to keep your historical mastery relevant? Or are you too caught up in the past?
How might you change to perform better and be more relevant today?

For a deeper dive on this topic, listen to this episode of The Growth Whisperers.

We help high-achieving leaders to have it all – a great business and a rewarding life. Contact us for simple and impactful advice. No BS. No fluff.

by lawrenceandco

Do What You Love and Invest in Your Sweet Spots

If you want to be a high-performing leader, invest 80% of your time and energy to do what you love, the way you love doing it. In order to do amazing things in your work and in your life, you need to focus most of your energy on the things you enjoy - otherwise you just get drained and depleted.

How good are you at spending the vast majority of your time and energy doing things that you love to do and are good at?

Unfortunately, when it comes to conventional wisdom, most people put too much energy into trying to fix their weaknesses. They try to rehabilitate in the areas where they're not strong. Now, that might make sense logically, but if you want to be a high-performing leader doing amazing things in your work and in your life, you need to focus most of your energy on the things you enjoy. Otherwise, you just get drained and depleted. Never mind that you might not be good at those other things, and it's a waste.

Do what you love and outsource the rest

I remember years ago, I was taught by a mentor, "Never forget the things that you dread doing, somebody else loves doing." Find somebody who loves that work and give it to them. Let them have the gift of doing the things that they love, and then you can be freed up to go and do the things that you love, that give you energy - and likely end up being a much more effective leader.

There’s a quote at the beginning of the chapter in the book Your Oxygen Mask First: "Success is achieved by developing our strengths not by eliminating our weaknesses."

As I share it upfront, it's conventional wisdom to work on weaknesses. We do it with ourselves, we do it with our kids - it's just not a great idea.

You need to work on this if:

Most of your days feel like a struggle because you're doing a slew of stuff you just don't enjoy
If you don't feel inspired to do the work on your to-do list.
There are important high-value tasks you intend to do every week, but never get them done.
There are aspects of your work that are mediocre, but you don't have the energy or desire to improve them because you just don't care
You generally feel blah or drained at the end of the day.

All these things are indicators you're not working in your sweet spot.

Work and Environment

These are the key distinctions you need to think about to make this work:

There's the work you do - the things that you love doing and are quite good at and continually get better. There’s someone's willing to pay you to do it in the work context (in your life doesn't matter).
The environment you do it in

Some people love to work by themselves while others want to be surrounded by people. There are those who like work where the deadlines are urgent and others that like a huge amount of times to prepare. Some want to work on multiple projects, some only want one project at a time.

The truth is, it doesn't matter what it is, you just need to know your secret recipe for getting the best out of yourself. So, what is the work that you love to do? What is the environment that you love to do it in? Those two variables are quite different, and you’ve got to find where they intersect.

Key point: Invest 80% of your time and energy to do what you love, the way you love doing it.

The Challenge

Figure out your sweet spot.

What is it you love to do and do well?
What’s the environment you love to do it in?

If you find this hard to do top of mind, go to chapter 4 in the book. There's a whole bunch of exercises to help you understand your sweet spot. In addition, you'll gain insights about what has worked for you in the past and what might work for you going forward.

Download the Master Plan - the integrated plan for your entire life - in chapter 17.

The top center of that plan is your sweet spot - again, the kind of work that you love to do. Keep that front and center in your plans. The goal is to not get dragged doing things that you just shouldn't be doing.

We help high-achieving leaders to have it all – a great business and a rewarding life. Contact us for simple and impactful advice. No BS. No fluff.

by lawrenceandco