Disrupting Your Business

What the heck happened? There you were, thriving in a growing economy with unprecedented unemployment and enough work to keep your firm busy for months if not years. In a flash, it all evaporated.

I look at our current state of affairs (changing daily) and what you need to do to, not just get through this crisis, but to come out of it stronger, more resilient and better off.

We will look at best practices to deal with your employees, your clients, your finances and your business processes. We will discuss how to create the business plan of the future by examining the opportunities that COVID-19 presents and reflecting on your firm's values and culture.

• Employee and client health and well-being

I rant about Project Management KPIs. Too many firms are concerned about the numbers but don't question the underlying data. Better yet, too many KPIs are not informative. They leave you without knowing if you should take action or what action you need to take. 

Link to my blog article where I also list the 15 KPIs that every Project Manager should have at their fingertips (in real time). 

Indulge me while I rant about how most firms are absolutely idiotic about tracking their staffs time. Sure, it's often needed for invoicing purposes, but nearly every firm that tracks time does it stupidly. I think I'll make Rant Day a regular thing.

Check out my blog article on this topic.

Today, I’m speaking with Leslie Shiner.  Leslie is an author, speaker, and coach with more than twenty-five years’ experience as a financial and management consultant. As a business coach, she has worked with both small and large businesses to help them better understand their business practices and maximize their profits.

I’ve frequently bumped into Leslie at industry conferences where she’s constantly amongst the most highly rated speakers because of her amazing ability to make financial management interesting, understandable, and even entertaining.

You can visit her website at http://www.shinergroup.com/

and follow her on Twitter @LeslieShiner

Today, I’m speaking with Jordanna Eyre. This was, for me a really difficult interview. As you know, my hope with this podcast is to bring you ideas that might be applied to your business or at least inspire you to do other great things but which might also be challenging and maybe even controversial. I decided to tackle this subject because it’s totally out of my area of understanding.

You’ll be able to hear this in my voice and as I fumble around searching for ways to connect with our guest. This is no fault of hers. It’s really that I decided to take on a subject which is way outside my wheelhouse. And I don’t even have the proper vocabulary to have a truly valuable conversation.  

As a brief introduction. Jordanna is the founder of Modern Day Sorcerer. She has created an online, accredited leadership academy called - Sorcerer School. The reason why I was interested in speaking with Jordanna is because she works with leaders from many different industries. In fact - this has nothing to do with whether you are an engineer, an architect, lawyer, accountant - or run a grocery store. What’s interesting to me is that she works with leaders to dissolve the separation between our practical and spiritual lives.

In principal - I really like this idea. It’s somewhat related to my thoughts about reading books that are outside one’s typical area of interest. Or reading a business book about an industry that is totally unrelated to yours. There are things that we see and learn from - on the other side of the street that can help inform us as to brilliant new things we can do in our own  yard.

So my desire to speak with her was to find out more about her work which ultimately is intended to redefine our conventional definition of power, money, relationships - both personal and in work. In fact - her sorcerer powers also extend into working with people in government.

Not only do I not see anything wrong with this - but if you go back and listen to my brief 15 minute podcast titled THE NATURE OF BUSINESS - you’ll understand my thoughts that the structures we have devised for ourselves - the way we run business is totally a matter of chance. Who happened to be in the driver seat at all these pivotal moments in the evolution of business is what shapes our reality. It’s not that hard to insert an ingredient into anything that can totally change things. I think she’s on to something and I am quietly cheering for her and those of her ilk that are looking to bring out the uniqueness in each individual so that they can bring their humanity to every aspect of their lives - from the personal, to the business and to society without any regard to the current expectations and limitations.

Please feel free to comment directly on our podcast page at Podbean or shoot an email to [email protected]

Speaking of bqe. This podcast is made possible through the generosity of BQE Software. BQE provides service professionals with business and project management software that helps drive their business.

Feel free to download a free copy of her "Powerful Beyond All Measure Meditation" 

Today, I’m speaking with Doug Sleeter. We start with a bit of his backstory including his time in the early days at Adobe and then as an evangelist for Apple. We move on to a topic that he’s championed called Agility Trumps Ability which really talks about the need for businesses to be more than just competent - then must really be more nimble in order to survive. And by nimble, this isn’t an iteration we’ll be talking about. It’s a total re-write. We move into the esoteric world of the blockchain and more importantly - what’s going on with these new technologies that will require a total rethinking of how service professionals are going to operate in the future - if they exist at all.

I am sharing my thoughts related to how man has evolved over the past 200,000 years and then looking at the brief history of business. My thesis is that we are off to a bad start and there's much more evolution that needs to occur before we nail down this "business-thing".

Kicking off this series with an interview with Ram Iyer from The Business Thinking Institute in Princeton, NJ. Ram shares with me his background in engineering and robotics, getting two Master's degrees and starting 4 companies. We touch on goal setting and what he calls the "silent killers" of success. He shares with me his philosophy about business for which he has developed the acronym CLIMB.

At about 30 minutes in, we get to his current project, The Business Thinking Institute and talk about how not just business owners, but anyone engaged in business can alter their thinking to bring value and perhaps profitability. 

We also discuss the definition of success and how that relates to our work and thinking.

As my first formal interview, I apologize for my lack of skills, both as an interviewer as well as a producer. I expect that I will be improving with each subsequent interview.