Entrepid

Clate Mask, posting at Small Business Trends, cautions against On Again, Off Again marketing.

His first point:

You are a marketer, not a provider of product x or service y. You are a marketer.

There’s more, so be sure to read the whole thing. 

Next, Paul Michelman, posting on HBR’s Conversation Starter, tells us How to Resist the Urge to Overreach.

We all need to take a cold hard look at our spheres of responsibility and make sure we’re dedicating the right resources and attention to the right things. Have you taken on too many responsibilities? Could burnout affect your performance and your ability get the most from your part of the organization? It serves no one best interests to let that happen. More so, when your performance suffers, you lose control of your agenda. (emphasis mine)

This is a problem I see consistently with my business owner clients.  They have 50 things on their To Do list and every single one of them is urgent.  Then, on top of that, they have a dozen new products or services that they want to introduce by next week.  It’s a recipe for losing focus at a minimum, and, in the worst case, serious burnout.

Finally, a little levity from Donald Luskin at Chronicle of the Conspiracy.  He offers up a few pics from the road in California.

My question is this:  Is the owner of the car in pic #1 being ironic?  Since it’s California, you can’t be sure.

Pic #2 is a perfect example of my personal philosophy that there are a million ways to make an honest dollar.

For the last year-and-a-half I have been a member of a small network of business advisors who get together twice a month to swap stories, celebrate victories and learn from each other. We are now in the middle of a series of workshops for small business owners on topics of interest (and need) to them. If you’re in the Baltimore area, you can find the details here.

In yesterday’s workshop on managing and motivating employees, Sheila Cox, executive coach, presented her Delegation Quiz. I liked it so much that I asked Sheila’s permission to post a copy here at OODA Central, and she graciously agreed. It’s a short 8 questions, and if you answer honestly you’ll gain some insight into your delegation style. You may just find out that your inability to delegate may be holding back you and your business.

The Delegation Quiz is here in pdf, and Sheila’s blog, Executive Coaching Journal, can be found here.