When a customer, employee, or vendor conducts a transaction with your business, they arrive with a predefined set of expectations about how that event will occur. These expectations are shaped by any number of prior experiences they might have had, either with your business or other businesses or people interactions. They can even be things totally out of both your and their control, such as the weather or personal items going on in their lives.
Speak with just about any business leader about their team, and you will get some disconcerting dialogue about their impression of how some of their employees don’t seem to be as engaged as they used to be. Some will tie it back to the pandemic and how once staff returned from working at home, they just don’t appear to have the same interest in their job. Others will associate it with the generational differences between this group or that group. Still, others try to look past it and push forward, hoping it will somehow magically disappear if they don’t acknowledge it.
In a marketplace bombarded with product and service offerings, differentiating your organization’s items can be very daunting. Years ago, it was all about identifying the unique difference your products or services had in the marketplace compared to the competition. Some of this is still needed, but…
Most leaders have heard the framework of “Plan—Do—Check—Act.” It has been around for many years and has been reworded to fit into a variety of approaches to helping organizations be more successful. It has been used and applied over the years because it is straightforward at its core.
As we wrap up the fall and winter football season, there are many business lessons leaders can take away to help them build their organizations to the next level of success. These lessons include everything from how to celebrate amazing wins to graciously accepting tough losses. They also include…
As we continue our launch into 2025, there always seem to be many discussions and roll-out efforts regarding the strategies and plans for the coming year. Congratulations to all those organizations that took the time to plan out the goals and objectives for 2025 and are taking additional time to share them with the team. That may sound like an odd statement, but over the years, when interacting with leadership and team members alike, it always amazes JKL Associates that transferring strategies, plans, goals, and objectives is not always as straightforward as one might expect.
We typically do not set out to fail in whatever endeavor we pursue, but it can sometimes happen. The more significant challenge is not that we fail but what we learn from our failures. Can we apply what we learned and grow from the experience?
As 2025 begins, we have a unique opportunity to start over once again. We can look back on 2024 and think about all of the various things that went right and the equal, if not greater, number of things that did not turn out as desired. This new beginning is a time of alignment or, in many cases, re-alignment. We need to challenge ourselves and see if what we think is aligned with what we say and then what we actually do. It appears simple, but it is a struggle when working with many leaders.
A new year is upon us. New hopes, dreams, and challenges await the next 300+ days in our future. It is critically important that we never lose our hopes and dreams. They propel us and allow us to persevere under some of the most challenging events of our times. We do not know what tomorrow brings, but together, we have great capacity to get through it and thrive and build upon it. 2025 will be a significant launching point for the good our society has to offer. Let us not be distracted by the noise that offends our ears and clouds our minds.
A toast to an outstanding outcome in 2025 for whatever you are pursuing!
As we close another calendar year, we take this time to reflect on all that has taken place in 2024—the good, the bad, and the unfortunate. It is a time to rekindle hope for our future and be vulnerable enough to allow ourselves to truly learn from the past so we can be collectively better in the future.
Happy New Year!
May 2025 be all you desire it to be.