After spending two days speaking to a groups of builders and contractors, there is an unspoken question that most have and is revealed when we begin to talk about the chaos they are feeling.

What most builders and contractors want to ask, but struggle to open up about is simply, “how do I manage my small business successfully”.  

They know what features the clients' desire.  They know how good structures are built, and yet they quietly live with an inadequacy of building a  structure of their business with the same integrity, the same stability by which they build their projects.

In the volatile market environment we are in now, material delays, pricing increases, and employee challenges, how is a business owner to manage the business so that the business doesn’t end up managing them?

A journey back into the annals of history can help us gain perspective on our current reality.  Where there is no vision, people become detached, scattered, and alone.  It’s proverbial…it’s a natural law.

If you have written and regularly communicate vision, then you have clarity, you have direction, you have aim = clarity and purpose.

If you DO NOT have written and regularly communicate vision, then you have confusion, chaos, and aimlessness = frustration.

You cannot manage what you do not see.  You cannot see what is not laid out plainly in front of you or your team.

The first element every business owner must have written and installed in their business to have a business they manage instead of a business that manages them is a written, detailed snapshot of the future of their business.  In short, this is a written vision story.

A business without a written, communicated vision, is simply an idea in an entrepreneur's head that people are forced to gamble to be true.  

Lacking a vision is like a transit bus with a full load of passengers driving particularly nowhere.  Where there is no vision, we run out of gas at the worst possible times and places.

In order to have a compelling vision, you must have the 3 RPMs of great leadership: repetition, predictability, and meaning.

Repetition is the mother of all learning as made evidence by Aristotle’s oft visited quote, “we are what we repeatedly do.”

Predictability seems mundane, uninteresting, and boring…but predictability is the lifeblood of scale and delegation.

Meaning is the communication of significance.  Money is not meaning.  The best predictor of engaged team members has more to do with highly communicated meaning (vision, mission, and values) than it does with the accumulation of more and more money.

The second awareness to managing a business that does not manage you is committing to hiring humans, and not playing chess with “human resources”.

There is a word that is being suggested in the public discussion of psychology right now that is worth taking a look at…the word LANGUISH.

To languish is to “lose or lack vitality… being forced to remain in an unpleasant place or situation”

Author and Organizational Psychologist Adam Grant says it’s not burnout, because we still have physical fuel, and it’s not depression because we still have hope.

What is causing us to feel weak and withered, to feel LANGUISHED?  

DISTRACTION

Translation of distraction?  We are willfully allowing ourselves to be pulled apart… pulled away.  

William Danforth, former Chairman of Purina, wrote in 1953 of the power of a good, distraction-free walk… 

"(Walking) is the best medicine! This is not only the best but cheap and pleasant to take.  It suits all ages and constitutions.  It is patented by infinite wisdom, sealed with a signet divine.  It cures cold feet, hot heads, pale faces, feeble lungs, and bad tempers.  If two or three take it together, it has still more striking effects.  It has often been known to reconcile enemies, settle matrimonial quarrels, and bring reluctant parties to a state of double blessedness.  This medicine never fails...and you have it in perfection as prepared in the great laboratory of Nature."

When was the last time you went on a walk, with no distractions?  Give it a try and see if you don’t begin to gain a clarity that you are finding it hard to discover of late.

Human resources is the discipline of managing distracted people so that the company comes out on top.

Hiring humans in contrast means understanding the thing that most hinders us from living out our skillsets, and providing the best possible environment, the best “stage” by which each person can thrive, leading to the thriving of the organization.  

When hiring humans, in a humane way, we invite them into a collective that breeds culture.

Culture is a biology term!  

Culture is not lunch on Fridays, soda fountains in the break room, bean bag chairs, and unicorn rides for the kids 

The ingredients you put into your culture are the ingredients you grow out for all to enjoy… or not.

The culture you have is a DIRECT result of the ingredients you have planted.  If you like it, keep planting.  If you don’t like it, plant something different.  Either way, YOU MUST GET IN THE FIELD AND PLANT WITH Repetition, Predictability, and Meaning.

To create a business you manage instead of a business that manages you, it is crucial to commit to a written vision, a process for hiring humans, and planting the seeds of desired culture; all with repetition, predictability, and meaning.