Revenue Journal®

There are countless articles and books on what you should do as you attempt to grow your business. But very little advice focuses on the aspect of your daily business life that has the most effect on your company's success: your character.

For good or ill, your character affects everything you do every day. It affects every decision you make - or fail to make. It determines how your employees perceive your ability to lead the company - and their enthusiasm or discouragement. It affects how much your customers trust you and how much your competitors fear you - or not.

As we go through life, we develop habits of character. We tend to rely on certain skills that we have practiced since childhood, and turn a blind eye to most of our deficiencies. Friends and loved ones try to point out how much our deficiencies are hurting us, and every so often, we admit that they are right. But it's easier to keep doing what we've always done than it is to actually make changes.

It is surprising how successful we can be, even though we fail to improve in our weaker areas. Of course, we're also currently operating in a very robust economic environment. When that changes, the "little things" will have more of an effect on our success.

The most common - and most damaging - character flaws that I find in CEOs and entrepreneurs are closely related. They are: Avoidance, procrastination, and rationalization.

Avoidance. Of the hundreds of company owners and leaders I have worked with, I can count on one hand the number of them who face every issue with the same forthrightness. Sometime in their lives, those few people had made the decision that they would never run from dealing with a problem. Needless to say, they are very successful.

If you are this person, you'll need to hire like-minded people (other face-it-now types). If you change your ways and shift from being an avoider to a face-it-now person, expect that the avoiders who work for you will become very uncomfortable. They will either stomp out or you will let them go (sooner rather than later, because you have changed your ways). Replace them with other face-it-now types, and expect success to follow.

What do you typically avoid? Tough decisions? Necessary confrontations? Conflict? The least effective leaders are those who will attempt to avoid conflict at any cost. After a few years, they pay the ultimate price. If they're working for someone else, they lose their job. If they own a company, they lose the company. Yes, that's right. Sooner or later, that issue they have so skillfully avoided comes around to bite them, and the result is a disaster from which recovery is impossible.

Procrastination. You may decide that you need to face something unpleasant - which is a good decision - but then you decide to face it "tomorrow."

How many times during each business day do you find yourself saying, "I don't want to deal with this right now"?

In our age of myriad distractions, it's much easier for the self-employed entrepreneur to look at the latest video on You Tube or read a political rant online than it is to buckle down and attack something difficult on the to-do list.

For the CEO managing other people, it's much easier to have a pleasant meeting with a respected employee or consultant than it is to face the fact that one of your employees is just not cutting the mustard, or that an important process just isn't working effectively anymore.

There are many "cures" for procrastination - such as "doing the worst thing first." But no cure will work if you don't first face the fact that you're hurting everyone by putting something off.

The best, first thing you can do is ask yourself: "What am I avoiding, and why am I avoiding it?" Then use whatever method works for you, to face it, analyze it, and deal with it.

Rationalization. Let's say you've been avoiding an issue, or decided to face it "later." Now you have to deal with the fact that you knew better, but you did the wrong thing anyway. So you rationalize - to yourself and to others. You try to convince yourself that you're still OK.

You'll say: "This other thing was more pressing/important/critical." Or, "I really didn't have the energy to face it, after killing myself on that other project." Or, "I can't deal with this right now. That other issue was so emotionally draining that I just can't cope with another serious problem." Or, "I've been putting this off for hours/days/weeks/months/years, and it hasn't hurt me yet."

All plausible, but the fact remains that you still didn't do what you knew you should have done.

Here's a suggestion for you. Create a special to-do list on a 3x5 card or in your PDA. Call this list the "Important things I'm putting off" list. Attack one of those things every day. The goal is to get to the point where there are no items left on that list, and no new items get added.

Rationalization only makes matters worse. It gives you a way to feel good about being bad. Meanwhile, the world keeps moving on without you. That competitor who does a better job of "getting around to it" will someday drive his company right through your habitual weakness.

You don't want to be the person who suddenly realizes that your weakness turned into the big opportunity for your worst competitor. That's one of the most unpleasant moments in the course of a business life. Time to face up to the unpleasant issues and make it impossible for any competitor to find a chink in your armor.

It's so easy to rationalize. We are so eager to think of ourselves as successful, to have others think of us as successful, and to want things to turn out a certain way, that we are willing to ignore all the signposts along the road and keep driving, full-speed, until we realize that we have driven right off the cliff and we are on our way down. Even then, we rationalize.

"Gee, this isn't so bad. I'm sure I'll survive."

When it comes to generating revenue, rationalization is one of your biggest enemies. It's especially common for entrepreneurs to ignore what their own customers are telling them. "Oh, they always say that," is a common response we get from the rationalizing entrepreneur or CEO. In other words, "I don't think this problem is worth worrying about, it's always been that way, and I'm still here."

Many rationalizers manage to limp along for years, in spite of themselves, when they're lucky enough to have a product that people actually need. But when things get tough, or the market shifts, or buyers become more skeptical, those rationalizers start to slide downwards. As they slip, they start to panic, and do all kinds of crazy things. They become deceptive and manipulative, desperately pulling vendors and customers down with them as they start to swirl down the drain.

The longer I'm in business, the more I have come to appreciate the business owner or leader who doesn't rationalize, but who faces reality square-on, and starts dealing with it. When we present a report on what customers, prospects and partners are saying, the realist pores over the report and the analysis. In subsequent meetings, it's obvious that he has taken customer comments and recommendations to heart, and has thought hard about them. He engages with the bad news, rather than dismissing it.

Therein lies the difference between the rationalizer and the realist. The realist jumps into the ring. The rationalizer runs away.

The realist is not afraid to face the problems revealed in candid, in-depth interviews. We find in these interviews that the same perceptions of a company - and its products, people, processes, policies and website - are shared by almost everyone we talk to. Patterns emerge after just a few conversations. People even use the same phrases to describe a problem or a positive trait, even though most of those people have never talked to each other. When we bring these results and recommendations back to the realist, he is pensive and thoughtful. He makes sure he understands exactly what is going on. He asks intelligent questions. When he is satisfied that he understands the problem, he sets to work with us to solve the problem.

Projects are designed and implemented. People are put to work. New policies are created, tracked, enforced, and improved. Whatever the market has said to this leader becomes his new reality, and he adjusts his actions to conform to this new reality.

What happens? The problems get solved. His revenues go up. Customers and prospects always appreciate and reward the realist. "Oh, look - this was a problem and now they've fixed it! My friends should know about this."

The rationalizer, on the other hand, gets the report and starts making excuses. "You just didn't talk to the right people," he'll say, even though the same care was taken with that contact list that was taken with the realist's contact list. "You didn't ask the right questions," he'll say, even though we always ask open-ended questions that result in the interviewee saying whatever is on his or her mind. "This isn't what I expected you to find out," he'll say, as a way of dismissing the results completely.

As Benjamin Franklin said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result." This is what the rationalizer does. Instead of accepting the messages that his customers, prospects, and partners are sending, he either decides they just don't know what they're talking about, or he blames the messenger. Or both.

One of the CEOs I have worked with hired a listening coach for leadership team meetings. One of the best things that coach said was that the responsibility of communication lies with the person creating and delivering the message, not the person receiving the message. Marketing and selling is all about creating and delivering messages, messages that reflect reality. Reality is not just the positive, but the negative as well.

Sure, there are "problem customers," people who are unhappy no matter what you do. But when a dozen customers, who have never spoken to each other, describe the same disappointment, we're not talking about an isolated, dismissible case. We're talking about a real problem that is costing you sales. Unhappy customers tell others to stay away, which creates a countervailing force against all of your marketing and selling efforts.

Unhappy customers also keep looking for another solution, and will abandon your poor product or service as soon as they find something better. They're easy pickings for aggressive competitors, especially competitors who have figured out what your weaknesses are. Don't forget, that's easy for them, since they're "interviewing" your customers all day long. After they hear those tales of woe, they then claim to have a solution. Even if their solution doesn't really solve the problem, if your customers are frustrated, they believe the sales pitch and jump ship.

In fact, if you think about it, your competitors are probably interviewing your customers more than you do, which means they are more aware of your weaknesses than you are. Hmmm.

No matter how much we wish it would disappear, reality just doesn't go away. Left unattended, real problems only become more pressing. The longer you ignore reality, the more serious your problems become.

I recently interviewed a number of applicants for the Executive Director position for one of the largest sailing organizations. One of them, a lifelong sailor, said that he believed in the sailor's ethos, which is that a problem isn't fixed until it is really and truly fixed. That little leak, that broken fitting, that chafing line are all little problems that can quickly turn into a big, serious problem in a second, given a downturn in conditions.

Of course, the joke among sailors is that the real "salty" repairs are so good that the rest of the boat can disintegrate around it, but the repair will still be standing, doing its job, long after the boat is on the bottom. You don't necessarily have to be that thorough, but it sure won't hurt to approach the problem with that kind of intensity.

Are you rationalizing about anything right now? Is there something you know is "broken," but you just keep putting off "fixing it"? Is there a theme to the issues that your employees and customers keep bringing up, and you continue to dismiss it? Do you have a bad habit that you know is bad, but you continue to ignore it? Maybe it's time to decide to start facing reality, head-on, and solve that problem once and for all.

If you do, your revenues will increase. That's just the way it works. Markets always reward realists, and punish rationalizers.

"That does it. I've had it."

That declaration is provoked by someone "stepping over the line." They've "gone too far." It's "too difficult."

All of us - low functioning and high functioning - have these lines, drawn over many years of interacting with others. I have an autistic brother, who is considered "low functioning," because he has no concept of the danger of traffic, the need for money, or the need to work. I could point to all sorts of areas where Michael is higher functioning than many "normal" people, and he has shown me more than you can imagine about human behavior, but that's not the subject of this article.

What is important here is that one of Michael's low-functioning traits is his inability to ignore or move beyond his demarcation lines. In certain situations, even though he's in his late 40's, his behavior is similar to that of a three-year-old. Even the most caring person, just helping Michael with a simple task, can unknowingly cross one of those lines. Suddenly that person is facing someone who is very unhappy and very demonstrative about it.

In my experience, the demarcation lines develop early in life. Regardless of where we end up on the "functioning" scale, the lines develop as we begin to discover what pleases us and what upsets us. And, as we interact with more and more people, we start to categorize those people in terms of whether they please us or upset us. What separates the low-functioning folks and the high-functioning folks is how we manage our behavior in spite of those demarcation lines being crossed.

The rubber meets the road when you want to have a positive relationship with another person, and that person is doing something that upsets you. That other person could be a spouse, child, relative, or (and here we get to the "revenue" part) - a customer, employee, or business partner.

In these situations, we will be more successful if we take a new approach to these lines. We can still have the lines. But, we can also choose to let the other person step over them, as an attempt to meet them "more than halfway," setting an example that the other person will hopefully follow. The goal is to come to agreement, rather than stubbornly sticking to pre-defined lines that will obviously lead to a bad outcome.

If the other person tries to take advantage of your generosity, you've just been informed that you are dealing with a jerk. Nothing you try to do with that person is going to lead to a positive outcome.

If the person is willing to play nice, it won't be difficult to find ways to work together. If you're working with the person on a project, you will get things done.

What if the person who has just stepped over your lines is a customer?

Let's say you sell a software product that does most things well, but also makes one common task too difficult. Yes, I know, we've just described most of the Microsoft Office products. If you own the market, you can get away with half-baked products. But, if you don't own the market - and most companies don't - even one smallish product flaw can hurt your sales.

When a prospective customer asks one of your current customers how they feel about your software, your current customers will say, "Well, overall it's a good program. But there's this one irritating flaw. Every single time we go to do X, it's too difficult. And we do X about twenty times a day. We've talked to them about it several times, but it's still not fixed."

Guess what. Your smooth sales process just stopped dead in its tracks. Your potential customer has just gotten some very negative and damaging information. Not only does your software have an irritating, 20-times-a-day flaw, but you haven't fixed it.

The question is, why haven't you fixed it? Because it's "over the line." Your sense of entitlement and those demarcation lines are preventing you from fixing it. Your rationalizing mindset is making it easier for you to minimize the problem and make excuses for yourself. Sure, you have heard "a few" customers bring it up, but "overall, you have a great software program." And you're so busy! You have to keep focusing on making sales! Plus, it's really, really hard to fix that one irritating aspect of the program, because of the way your software is designed.

The situation I've just described happens in both product and service companies. I would even say it is one of the most common cause of company deaths, right up there with poor cash flow management and never listening to customers.

How do you make sure you aren't being killed by your own demarcation lines? Let's see where they come from - and what can be done to retrain your brain.

Demarcation lines come from a sense of entitlement. We see them quite clearly in marriages: "I'm your [husband/wife], and you shouldn't treat me that way." We have an idea of how people should treat us, and we get upset when they don't treat us that way. In the revenue situations, it's the feeling that "I'm already working too hard, now you're asking me to do THIS??!!"

I should note that it's OK for you to acknowledge this thought when it occurs. It is understandable that you would feel this way.

But it's what you do in the next moment that will determine how high you go on the success ladder of life. The "stuck on a mediocre rung forever" person will not get beyond this feeling of indignation. In fact, they will wallow in it, and may even throw a full-blown hissy fit.

The "moving on up" person will calmly note that a personal demarcation line has just been crossed. OK, noted. Then, they will look at the situation without paying any attention to the demarcation line or the associated sense of entitlement. This allows them to stay on good terms with the other person, no matter how aggrieved they may feel, and work towards a mutually agreeable solution.

If you were the CEO of the software company whose product had that irritating flaw, and you were a high-functioning type of person, you wouldn't get angry and start making excuses. Instead, you'd say, "This really is stopping our sales in their tracks. It's a really tough problem, but it looks like we have to fix it, if we want our sales to go up."

Then you'd get to work. You'd focus on fixing the problem. To start with, maybe you could come up with some simple documentation - a little half-page tutorial - on how to get around the irritation. You'd send it to all of your current customers, and put it up on your website in a special place just for them.

You would also set to work on the long-term solution, creating a work plan for solving the problem programmatically. Within three months, the problem would be solved, and what was once a product flaw would become a product feature.

Your current customers would be pleased that you "heard" them, and they'd start using the workaround. Next time a potential customer called, the current customer would say, "It's a great program. There was this one irritating flaw, but they've helped us work around it, and they are working on a permanent solution."

The potential customers would think, "Wow. Look at this. A CEO who listened to his customers and is responding. Time to schedule a demo."

When it comes to demarcation lines, technologists can be the worst offenders. Brilliant technologists who start companies often believe that the industry owes them something. They are wrong. Even if they have played a major role in the development of a technology, once they develop a product and put it out into the market, they are playing on a level field. They must serve customer needs. We have seen these technologists literally go into shock when they realized that customers weren't impressed with all the bells and whistles on their products. "It's the most advanced product on the planet! And now you want it to be easy to use?!"

There is no such thing as entitlement. You are only entitled to the money you earn by treating your customers with respect and doing everything you can to make it easy for them to find you, buy from you, use your products, and tell others about you.

Next time you think, "That's it! That's the last straw!" Or, "How dare you...!" - make a mental note. You've just encountered one of your demarcation lines. Do yourself an enormous favor. Step beyond it. See what happens. You'll be very pleasantly surprised. And you'll start movin' on up - out of the Entitlement Trap.

There are two types of situations where, in your business life, you are faced with a decision that tests your integrity: the big decision situation, and the little decision situation. We'll look at these one at a time, but before we do, let's look at the root of integrity: our conscience.

Now, there are a lot of people who say that there is no "right" and no "wrong." But I believe that most of us - with rare, pathological exceptions - have a conscience. That conscience is that little ping we get when we are faced with a decision. We intuitively know what the right thing is, and what the wrong thing is. What we decide to do after we get that internal message is the true test of our character.

What does this have to do with revenue? Everything. Looking at revenue from the buyer's point of view, which is what I always do, I can say with confidence that every time someone makes a purchase, they want to make it from someone they trust. The more expensive or complex the purchase, the more trust plays a role in their buying decision.

If you're selling - and we're all selling, if we're in business - then this means that the more people trust you, the more you will sell. Seems simple enough, until you're faced with making one of those tough decisions. Which brings us to the big decision situation.

The big decision

Someone has just given you the opportunity to profit in a big way. Let's say they've asked you to join them in a business venture, but in doing so, you will have to betray the trust of someone else, because of an agreement you have with them. What should you do?

On one hand, the offer is attractive, and it could mean big bucks for you and your family. But you don't feel right about betraying the trust of someone you've already made commitments to. That's your conscience talking.

The minute you decide to ignore your conscience, you are headed for trouble, and not just for moral reasons:

1) The person you are betraying, when he finds out he has been betrayed, will never trust you again, and will tell others that you are not to be trusted. This destroys your credibility and reputation.

2) Here's the not-so-obvious part - the person with whom you have entered into the new business relationship now knows that you are willing to betray a trust. So that person won't trust you, either. He will be suspicious that you will betray him next, and will tell others that he isn't comfortable having to depend on you.

3) There is no such thing as a simple little lie. Telling the truth is pretty simple. Something happens, and when someone asks you, you say what happened. Or someone says something, and when someone asks you, you say what that person said. Or you think something, and someone asks you what you were thinking, and you tell the person what you were thinking. They now know what you know.

On the other hand, lies get complicated, really fast. Something happens, and you're embarrassed that you made a mistake, so you try to cover it up. The person you're talking to thinks, "Wait a minute, that doesn't make sense," or, "That's not what I heard/saw." So the person starts asking you questions. Now you have to tell more lies, to make the first lie sound plausible. From one tiny seed, the lie grows into a twisted tangle, as you attempt to cover up the simple truth. If you lie habitually, you will end up spending a large portion of your thinking time trying to remember what you told to whom, and you will live in constant fear that you will be found out.

If people see you facing up to a mistake you've made, apologizing, repairing the damage and never making that kind of mistake again, they will always trust you to do the right thing.

Little decisions every day

There's another type of situation where integrity comes into play: the "should I do it right or should I cut corners" situation. All day long, we are rushing around trying to meet our deadlines. The demands on our time just keep pouring in. More than once in any given day, we are faced with a decision: do this right, or let it go, even though it isn't quite right.

Now, I'm not saying that you should be such a perfectionist that you never get anything done. But you know - thanks to your conscience - when you've truly done something correctly and when you're about to cut a corner. And cutting corners, just like those little lies, have a tendency to turn into complicated monsters.

When you cut corners in one place, the next thing you do that relates to the first thing will also be compromised. I see this all the time in complex business transformation projects. Someone along the line decides that they won't bother to do something right. Subsequently, all the people who take that one thing and try to build upon it will run into problems, to the point where the entire effort can fail because that initial neglect snowballed. You will really have a mess on your hands, because you have to fix all the problems downstream of that first deliberate screw-up.

This is terribly costly. It poisons the entire work environment. It saps employee morale and energy; no one wants to work on a project that is going to hell in a hand basket. It forces you to take people away from revenue-producing projects and put them to work cleaning up the mess. The word gets out that your company has made this mistake, and people who hear the story - potential employees, customers, and business partners - are less likely to do business with your company.

Bean counters are notorious for purposefully cutting corners in order to save a penny here and there. They insist on a cheap, plastic part in a product "because it's inside - and no one will see it." Ultimately this "no one will know" decision leads to malfunctioning products, frustrated customers, many returns, and a tarnished, revenue-sapping reputation. In the end, everyone knows.

You may well ask, "What about costs? How can a company afford to 'do everything right'?"

My answer is there are two ways to cut costs. One is to look for every opportunity to pinch pennies, which can be taken to a damaging extreme. The better way is to be fanatical about efficiency and simplicity, which result in more cost savings than the cheapskate approach could ever net you.

Employees who work in "do it right" companies are usually encouraged to come up with new ideas on efficiency and simplicity, and they do. Their ideas can revolutionize an entire manufacturing method, whereas that cheap little plastic part can only shave a tiny fraction of the product's cost - while risking the company's hard-earned reputation for building products that work.

The next time you are tempted to cheat or betray someone, to cut corners, or to hide the truth, your conscience will give you a little tap on the shoulder. It won't be as obvious as the other voice that is saying, "What the hell - no one will ever know!"

But you know which voice is right. And there is no doubt in my mind - based on years of observing hundreds of businesses succeed and fail - that the revenues that come from doing it right are bigger and more dependable than any revenues you get from the dark side. Not to mention the peace of mind that comes from knowing that you have no one to fear, nothing to hide, nothing but a good future ahead of you, and great memories behind you.

Those who follow through make more money than those who don't. This is one of those absolute business truths. It comes into play in two situations: daily interactions and long-term, transformational projects.

Daily interactions

I recently worked on a project with a team. One person on that team didn't bother to go the extra mile. She didn't double-check. She didn't think for a second before answering a question. She acted as if she was thorough, but in fact she was not.

Everyone else on the team always went the last mile. They double-checked before considering something final - even a simple email. They were thoughtful and deliberate. Very few mistakes were made, and the few that were made were minor and quickly corrected.

The skip-the-last-mile person, on the other hand, made a mistake on a majority of her assignments. We got to the point where we knew that there was going to be a mistake - unfortunately, we never knew what it was going to be.

Why does this matter? Because we're all competing for business, and the person who follows through is more likely to get that business than the person who doesn't.

If you're a vendor competing for a client, and you follow through, you're more likely to get the account than the vendor who doesn't. If you're applying for a job, or a loan, or funding, and you follow through, you are more likely to achieve what you seek than the slackers competing for those same funds. If you're selling a product, and you've paid careful attention to product quality and thorough documentation, you're going to get more referral business than the company that cuts corners and turns out shoddy products.

When we're on the buyer's side of the transaction, we all know this to be true. But when we're on the seller's side, it's easy rationalize and let ourselves off the hook, claiming we have more important deadlines to meet. We think we just don't have enough time to double-check, to think for a few seconds before hitting the send button, and to ask ourselves, "Is there anything else I should be doing with this?"

If it were possible to do a study comparing the success rate of those who went the extra mile with those who didn't, perhaps the argument for it would be more compelling. I know from personal experience that whenever a business situation involves a battle between two contenders, the contender who follows through gets the business. The buyer sees the attention to detail, the care taken, the thought put in, and thinks, "I can trust this person. I'm going to give him my business."

Long-term transformational projects

A lot of companies are going through some tough, long-term transformational projects right now. For example, after years of acquisitions and mergers, companies are standardizing processes and consolidating systems, so they have an enterprise-wide view of their data in order to make better business decisions. Smaller companies are finding that they simply can't compete without streamlining or improving certain aspects of their business.

The last mile concept comes into play, big-time, in these projects. They typically require several years of intense effort, careful analysis, effective communication, and the ability to make intelligent and informed adjustments as the project progresses. All of this can be accomplished - if, and only if - top managers don't lose interest.

Boredom is the enemy of follow-through the long-term projects. I'm talking about boredom in all its forms:

1) Exciting new projects are beckoning. Who wants to work on that same-old, "we've been talking about this for three years" project, when you can start working on a new, more exciting project? It's tough to keep everyone engaged when they've been working on the same old problems for so long.

2) Completing someone else's unfinished project is boring. Outgoing executive creates and starts to build a new system or process. Incoming executive didn't come up with the idea, so isn't excited about it. The consultants and employees hired to build the system now find themselves working for a cranky, penny-pinching, distracted executive who is seriously thinking of killing the whole thing and approaching the problem from a completely new angle. The company has just wasted years of effort and millions of dollars building something that will never be completed.

3) When it's not my kind of thing, I get bored. In cases where a new executive takes over a project, not only is she not the originator, but she simply isn't the same type of person. For example, if the original founder of a long-term project was a numbers-oriented person, the project would be designed from the start to have strong metrics built into it. If the person who takes over the project is not as numbers-oriented, the metrics will become neglected. The company's top managers, who were expecting to see strong metrics (this is usually the main promise that causes them to fund new projects), will never see the reports they have been anticipating. Top managers will decide at some point that the project is a failure.

4) I'm tired of beating my head against the same old brick walls. Every company, from the one-person business to the multi-billion-dollar enterprise, has its character flaws. It's easy to get some things done, and way too difficult to get others done. Company owners who understand this reality (I would say this number is about 1 out of every 100 CEOs) are ruthless about identifying these weaknesses and eliminating them. These companies blast ahead of their competitors - and stay there, as long as that leader remains.

The rest of the companies - the other 99 - are handicapped by their character flaws. Employees become demoralized, cynical, and de-energized by these all-too-familiar barriers. At first, it's merely frustrating. Then it gets really, really boring. After a while no one even bothers to start a project that will encounter one of these barriers.

In larger companies, the obvious barriers are entrenched bureaucracy and risk-aversion. In tiny companies, it's the owner's natural tendencies. For example, a sales type who starts a company will do a great job of bringing in new projects, and a bad job of completing them. He won't double-check details. Those who work for him will be frustrated by his "ship it, it's good enough" attitude, and his inability to focus on the details.

5) Nobody is doing this anymore. It's so uncool. Who wants to work on last year's fad when this year's fad is so much more exciting? Management trends have a lifecycle. About three years into the trend, the lackluster results become apparent. Everyone bails out. Time to find a new, exciting bandwagon to climb aboard.

6) That's the same old boring sales pitch. I've heard it a thousand times before. Transformations of any kind are not easy. They need to be sold to management, shareholders, employees, and customers. As the transformation takes place and processes are "under construction," everything becomes more difficult. The promised benefits seem far away - and they never seem to get any closer. After a while, the pitch that worked to get the project going gets a big yawn.

7) I'm tired of finding the money to keep paying for this boring old project. When you first get funding for a project, everyone is excited about the outcome. The hard work hasn't started yet. Then, as the months and years drag on, it becomes less exciting to fund the project. New, more pressing projects or systems start competing for those funds. The long-term project starts to starve.

I believe that anyone can become a member of the "last-mile club." You begin by making it a key focus area in your life.

For the small-scale stuff, you make sure you invest that little bit of extra effort, to make sure that it gets the attention and effort it deserves. For example, every time you write something, even a simple email, you take that extra moment to double-check it. If it's really important, you even set it aside for a few minutes, and then come back to it and read it again before sending it. I guarantee there will be times when you find something wrong or embarrassing (usually both). You will be glad you waited and checked.

For the larger-scale stuff, boredom and complacency is your biggest enemy. You can never assume that you are "almost done." You have to be constantly on the lookout for those barriers and weaknesses built into your company that keep projects from finishing. If you honestly examine the success rate of your long-term projects, you may find that many of them are never finished.

Identify barriers and weaknesses, and aggressively replace them with more fruitful alternatives. You can also start thinking about ways to turn those long-term projects into shorter-term projects - projects that might actually get finished. There's nothing like a series of smaller successes to keep people interested in the larger undertaking.

It doesn't matter what type of business you run. It doesn't matter how small or large your business is. It doesn't matter what you used to do, before you became the leader of your company. What matters - the only thing that really matters, day after day, year after year - is how well you manage yourself.

Why is it so important? Because true leaders - the kind that other people actually want to follow - have mastered self-management. They instill confidence. They are calm, reasonable, and wise. They can consistently be depended upon to do the right thing. They don't fly off the handle at the smallest thing - or anything, for that matter. They don't obsess about one aspect of their business at the expense of other, just-as-important aspects.

When you can manage yourself, you can manage others - and work successfully with customers and clients. This is why it is so amusing when folks right out of college say, in their first job interview, when asked what they want to do: "I want to be a manager." Very few people straight out of college manage themselves successfully, much less others. Managers earn the right to be managers, because "everyone knows" - above them, to the side of them, and beneath them - that they are ready to manage.

Before we learn how to manage ourselves, we think of self-management as "self control" or "self discipline." While control and discipline certainly play a large part, they aren't "it."

When we focus on "control" and "discipline," we tend to swing back and forth from rigid discipline to blithe self-indulgence. When we disappoint ourselves, we judge ourselves harshly, and make sweeping promises to ourselves: "That was really stupid. I am never going to do that again," we will say. A week later, when faced with the decision to do what we know is right versus doing what we were never going to do again, we let ourselves slide. "I know I'm doing it again, after I said I wouldn't, but it won't hurt anything to do it just this once."

Self-management is much more long-range, more calm, and definitely does not swing from one extreme to the other. That's the whole point. You manage yourself, every single minute of every single day. In every situation, you take the same systematic approach. You observe, you analyze, you plan, and you take action. You don't take action until you have taken all of these other steps.

Of course, this requires patience. Ah, patience. Years ago, when my husband was dating, as he was waiting for his date to come downstairs, he and her mother were chatting. After a while, he pointed upstairs, with a quizzical look on his face. She said, "Patience is a virtue, possess it if you can. It's seldom found in woman, never found in man." It was the first time he had heard that quote (source unknown), and he never forgot it.

While this always makes me laugh, because there is obviously a lot of truth in it, I have to admit that I have found a number of patient men and women in business - and, not surprisingly, they are the ones who manage themselves well. They don't get frustrated - or if they do get frustrated, they manage it beautifully. For one split second, a look of frustration may flit across their features. Then they calmly take the situation in hand.

It's a real pleasure working for someone like this. Contrast this with the boss who is always frustrated and angry. Everyone hates working for someone like that. Daily grumbling is the norm, and turnover is always high. The least effective boss is the one who rants endlessly about his frustrations in meetings.

Nothing good comes from vented frustration. Oh, sure, the psychologists have told us for years that it's good for you to express your anger, that keeping it bottled up inside is not good for you. Well, success is even better for you.

What if you never got angry? What if you saw the situation for what it was, didn't take it personally, forgave the person who made you mad, and then figured out how to solve the problem? Isn't this more likely to lead to a successful outcome than just flying off the handle? Venting may ease your frustration somewhat, but it won't solve the problem that caused it. And it won't do much for your reputation either. You will look weak, threatened, and out of control. And, it certainly does nothing to improve your relationship with the person you're yelling at.

I have worked with several entrepreneurs who vented their frustration in meetings, as a way of "making themselves heard." The problem was, there was no consistency to their rantings. It was as if they had to be frustrated about something in a meeting, and one subject was just as good as any other. That's not leadership. That's management by intimidation, and it doesn't work. Over time, even the most masochistic employee will get discouraged. When these entrepreneurs learned how destructive their rantings were, and stopped doing it, everything got better.

Interestingly, the few people who managed to continue to be positive about working for a ranting boss always ignored the method of delivery - even if it was aimed directly at them - and focused on the content. One such person told me, "Well, the fact is, he is usually right." This is leadership behavior, on the part of the employee. This is precisely what I described a minute ago - the person saw the situation for what it was, didn't take it personally, forgave the person ranting, and then started thinking about how to solve the problem.

Unfortunately only about one in thirty people are capable of this kind of detachment, in my experience. Everyone else cringes under the attack, and starts thinking that life's too short to endure such abuse. They are not leaders. They must be led. And the person best equipped to lead others is the person who successfully manages himself or herself.

Successful self-management consists of several components:

Calm assessment. No matter how personal or chaotic things may get, you calmly appraise the situation, and decide what to do. Most of us are pretty good at deciding what to do, given some experience in similar situations. And when we stay calm, we are much more likely to see what is really happening. This includes not hysterically berating yourself, in your own head. If your inner drill sergeant is screaming obscenities at you for "being stupid," your actions will reflect that hysteria. You'll scurry around fussing, which will only make things worse - and will probably irritate anyone around you who is trying to help, or work with you to solve the problem.

Objectivity. Yes, that person might be yelling in your face. Think about the movies you've seen where someone terrible was yelling in the face of the hero or heroine. What made them the hero or heroine? They didn't yell back! They watched the person yelling, and heard what the person was saying, but they didn't "take it in." You should do the same thing. Or, perhaps there's a yeller in your head who is always trying to make you feel inadequate.

Sure, you have weaknesses - we all do. (Remember that next time you think you're the only person who makes mistakes!) The trick is to compensate for them. If you're always late, start doing things early. Prepare yourself ahead of time, rather than at the last minute. This is calm self-management. Keep it up, and you will develop a new habit, to the point where one day you will hear someone say, "You're always on time." You can smile secretly to yourself when you hear that, knowing what you had to overcome to earn that reputation. Just look at each situation as you would if you were helping a friend rather than dealing with yourself. That's what you're doing, after all, when you help yourself. You're helping your closest friend.

Forgiveness. Disappointment is a fact of life. No one on earth has managed to live a disappointment-free life. We disappoint ourselves, others disappoint us, and situations almost always don't turn out the way we want or expect them to. We get ill. The housing market takes a dive. Someone we love dies. Our business career doesn't take off the way we thought it would. We hire someone and find out later that they had faked their resume. What should you do? Get over it!

If we can't forgive ourselves and others, we get stuck. We carry that baggage around - everywhere we go, in everything we do. It becomes part of who we are. That disappointing story is woven into the fabric of our being.

It doesn't have to be, however. We can shake it off and let it go. The only way I know to do this is to forgive. I call this "real-time forgiveness" - where you forgive the person or the situation even as it is happening, so you can assess the situation calmly and make sound decisions as quickly as possible. After all, reality is the sum of all the people and the circumstances involved. When we see ourselves as the focus of the situation, we feel personally "wronged," our perception doesn't reflect reality, and our subsequent actions will not be appropriate.

Appropriate action. This is where those folks right out of college are at a big disadvantage. If you have never done something before, your changes of taking appropriate action are fairly slim. The more experience you have in any given area, the more likely you are to know what your options are. Our brains are wonderfully adept at running through the options - when we are calm, not obsessed with the emotional aspects, and have had some experience. Note that acting like a manager, as stars do in Hollywood movies, is not the same as being an effective manager, able to successfully handle all situations.

There are several people I know who swing wildly from one extreme to the other - periods of incredible, focused productivity to debilitating, deadening depression. The successful path is somewhere in between - a peaceful, reasonable, "no harm, no foul" place, where success is just a matter of calmly assessing what needs to be done, assessing priorities, and getting it done.

Sometimes we create unnecessary drama because we have a need to feel important; in a sense, that is what those venting bosses are doing. They feel that the very act of venting establishes their "leadership" in the situation. Of course, the opposite is true. They undermine their own leadership when they lose control. The frantic, "I've got so much to do, I can't do it all," person is also falling into the same creating-drama-to-feel-important trap.

If you feel yourself beginning to get angry, giving in to the anger will only hurt you. Successful self-management always starts with choosing calm objectivity over frustration. It is a choice, and how you make that choice can change your life - and increase the revenue you are able to produce.

When someone in business says, "He's a micromanager," it's not a compliment. They say, "He's a control freak," "he doesn't empower people," and "he's obsessed with details." The common wisdom is that micromanagers are not anywhere near as successful as the more hands-off managers, that micromanagers cannot change, and that they are not destined for the highest levels of management inside corporations.

The common wisdom is wrong. In fact, it's usually a weak defense offered by lazy managers who don't really know the specifics of what they are managing, don't pay attention to detail, don't get things done, and need someone to blame when things invariably go wrong.

Micromanagers are the most effective people. They are the ones who can run the show the way it needs to be run. No detail escapes them. Projects never spin out of control; small problems are spotted and remedied before they become big problems. They recognize other micromanagers and promote them.

A lot of entrepreneurs are micromanagers. They have high standards. They start their own companies because they believe in "doing things right," and they are frustrated by people who aren't doing things right where they work. The more they tried to get others to "do things right," the more they are out of step.

I was such a person. I can remember a meeting once - ages ago, before I had learned what I know now - where I was passionately trying to convince everyone in the room what the company needed to do to be successful. After I was done, there was a silence. Then one of the more casual employees looked at me and said, "Kristin, are you ok? I mean, you're not having a nervous breakdown or anything, are you?"

The other managers in that room weren't interested in leaving their comfort levels and doing what they had to do to be successful. But, the CEO had a different reaction. Soon after, he asked me to head up a new division because he wanted me to put that passion to work where he needed it most.

Micromanagement, when it's done right, separates heroes from has-beens.

Micromanagers are micromanagers because they have high standards. They believe that doing things right leads to a successful result. The problem is, not everyone shares their passion and dedication.

Since very few people feel ready and can afford to start a company when they first begin to work, these high-standard types suffer through years of "working for others" before they can finally set off on their own.

At first they are very successful, because clients and customers appreciate their high standards. As they start to hire others, however, the situation starts to sour. The same frustrations that led them to start their own company arise - as they attempt to get their employees to be as passionate as they are about serving the customer.

If they haven't had a skillful micromanager mentor, at this point emotion can start to take over. Their frustrations explode. They say things that make the target of the ranting feel very "unempowered": "I can't believe you did this! What were you thinking? This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen."

If the problems continue, at some point the frustrated boss says, "Stand aside. Since I can't trust you to do this, I will do it myself." The employee now feels worthless, helpless, and ANGRY. Most people who find themselves pushed aside in this manner start looking for another job.

These employees are angry because it all seems so unfair. First, their boss didn't give them the information or structure they needed to get the job done right, and then when they didn't do it right, their boss became abusive, dismissing their efforts as "worse than worthless," sweeping them aside, and taking over their job himself.

This all-too-common scene can be eliminated.

There's nothing wrong with a passion for excellence. It's the main driving force behind the successful endeavors. It's the "secret" ingredient that makes a product or service valuable to others.

Customers love companies that have a passion for excellence. They love it when they call a company, and instead of getting the robotic runaround or rude "complaint desk" treatment, their issue is addressed with a sincere, passionate desire to make it right. Remember the hotel manager in the movie "Pretty Woman," starring Julie Roberts and Richard Gere? That guy was the quintessential "make it right" micromanager. He even taught his client's hooker how to eat in a fancy restaurant. The casual manager would never even consider doing such a thing.

Rather than trying to stifle his inner micromanager, the micromanaging boss should take a completely different approach. He should start creating mini-micromanagers! Spread the passion! Empower his people to be as dedicated as he is.

Will they? I can hear you asking this question. Yes. In my experience, almost everyone who works wants to do a good job, even an exceptional job. It's up to their boss to give them the right information, and structure, and resources:

They need to know what's important - and what's important should not change from minute to minute, hour to hour, or day to day. If you make the right things important, it won't have to change - ever. For example, the right things could be, "We will make sure we solve our customer's problem, no matter what, and we will make sure that we never spend more money than we take in." Any business that makes these two things happen is going to succeed. Yes, that's right, it's that straightforward. If you are solving your customers' problems, and you never spend more than you take in, you will always have enough business and you will never run out of money.

You need to be absolutely driven about efficient processes and systems. What are they doing? How are they doing it? Where is the wasteful redundancy - in processes, databases, systems, employee tasks?

If you are constantly asking these questions, observing people work, and finding ways to eliminate the inefficiencies and "stupid systems," you will build an infrastructure that makes people happy to come to work each day. People start every new job hoping that things will make sense and be efficient. As they discover the nonsensical and inefficient aspects of their job, they become less and less passionate. The best people quit first.

Expect to learn something from your employees as you conduct your ongoing investigations into processes and systems. The people doing the work every day always have insights and ideas. Ask them questions until you understand what they are trying to do and where they run into problems.

As you learn and make improvements, create educational systems. One of the most neglected aspects of efficiency is proper instruction. Don't force people to "find out" what something means; spell it out. Make the information readily available, so when they get stuck, they can quickly get the answer, and go back to work. If they are groping for answers, they aren't working. They are probably interrupting other people who are trying to get their own work done. Build "education" and "documentation" into everything you do.

They need you to TELL them you are going to let them become their own micromanagers. "I know you don't want me to micromanage you. But I have to make sure you do it right. That's why I am so picky about the details. So, I'm going to do everything I can to delegate that micromanagement to you. I'm going to empower you to be your own micromanager! I'm going to help you develop the systems and processes that enable you to 'do it right.'"

Work with them to develop checklists, goals, and ways to measure and report on their ability to meet those goals. Make it clear that you will only micromanage them when they don't micromanage themselves.

Don't yell. If you haven't already, read last week's post ("Managing yourself"). Yelling is a complete waste of time and energy. Focus on solving the problem together, not playing the blame game. Splitting your own team into "offense" and "defense" means you're fighting each other, instead of working together. If you get frustrated, face it, calm yourself, and start working on a solution together. Someone has to be the adult, and set the proper, constructive tone. You're the boss. It has to be you.

Micromanagers, unite! Better yet, procreate! Create new mini-micromanagers, so you can expand and grow - knowing that things will still be done right. Spread your passion for excellence. Keep it focused - on customer needs and proper fiscal management - and you will convert your passion and frustration into a steady stream of revenue.