Kent Business Solutions
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By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  Image by Roy Harryman As a business leader, have you encountered situations where you weren’t sure how to encourage a good employee after a major failure to get them back on track? If so, I’d love to share with you some tips inspired by the Kansas City Chiefs' recent victory in the AFC Championship game. Their third trip to the Super Bowl in four years would not be possible without a handful of players who struggled for much of the season by turning it around in this game. 1. Don’t Give Up on Your Employees Rookie Skyy Moore started off the season returning kicks with little success. They pulled him from return duty yet kept working with him behind the scenes to improve. With multiple punt returners unavailable due to injuries, the coaches brought Skyy into a tie game to return a punt with less than a minute to go. Not only did he catch the ball, he ran it back for a big gain to put the Chiefs in great field position for the eventual game-winning field goal. Tip #1: After big failures, let your employees know you still believe in them. Give them guidance, or training if needed, in areas of weakness that can help prevent them from making similar mistakes again. 2. Continue to Cast a Vision for Their Future Kansas City's defense is loaded with rookies this season. KC’s coaches threw them into the fire, telling them they were going to be a big part of the team. Not surprisingly, these rookies made plenty of mistakes that resulted in numerous penalties and opponent touchdowns. But the coaches kept them in the fire, trusting they would eventually succeed. In the biggest game of the season, they did turn things around and came up with HUGE plays that directly contributed to the Chiefs winning the game. Tip #2: Continue to cast a vision of where you see your employees going despite any mistakes they make. And after big miscues, let them know you still want to help them on the growth journey you’ve started together. 3. Express Confidence in Their Ability to Succeed Harrison Butker is one of best kickers in the game; however, he’s had his worst season to date. Due to a sprained ankle, he missed three games, and when he returned, he missed a lot of field goals and extra points. With the game tied and a few seconds left on the clock, the Chiefs confidently sent Butker into the game to kick the game-winning field goal, and the rest is history. Tip #3: Let your employees know that any past failures they’ve had are in the past and that you have complete confidence in their ability to succeed. Speaking of overcoming failure, how many of you have had projects go south because of poor project management? That’s where I love to help! I excel in quickly organizing projects and rallying your teams to accomplish them in quick order with tremendous success. If you’re interested in learning more, I’d love to schedule a chat with you! Click the button below to get started.
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By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  Image by rawpixel.com on Freepik With constantly changing economic conditions, business leaders often encounter the daunting task of improving their organization's profitability. Some may not know where to start. A great way to do that is to optimize their organizations. Check out the following five steps an organization can focus on to optimize their organizations -- because who doesn't want to elevate their profitability? 1. Craft a Culture Employees Can Embrace According to McKinsey, companies with cultures ranking in the top quartile of the Organizational Health Index post a 60% higher return to shareholders and 200% higher than those in the bottom quartile. There's no easy formula for creating a great culture; doing this subject justice in a 500-word blog could prove quite challenging. The foundation starts with valuing each individual, giving them a voice in everyday matters, and creating an environment where employees love to come to work. Then, build from there. 2. Work Closely With Employees to Develop Goals They'll Support When business leaders establish top-level goals and all levels of the organization establish their goals in support of them, that's an excellent place to start. However, the employees have to buy into their plans. Executives must cast a vision of where the organization is heading and the employee's role in getting there. If employees don't connect to the big picture, productivity can suffer, and the organization's profitability could follow suit. 3. Make Effective Use of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) Successful organizations use KPIs to measure progress toward their goals. Even if you're currently using KPIs, you want them to tie directly to your most critical operations so you can stay on top of the progress toward your goals. You'll be alerted when measures are trending downward by monitoring your KPIs so that you can intervene more quickly with solutions. 4. Improve Your Processes Organizations with streamlined business processes experience reduced costs, increased revenue, and improved profitability. Take Merchants Insurance Group. After streamlining their Portfolio Management area operations, they improved on-time project delivery to 80% and achieved a 758% revenue growth in the first two months. For your operations, focus first on improving your processes, which are the most significant cost drivers and have the most time-consuming tasks. By doing so, you're likely to experience more significant gains on a shorter timetable. 5. Automate Your Processes When organizations automate their business processes, it's a powerful tool for reducing costs, improving productivity, and increasing profitability. It's common for productivity to increase by over 300% with workflow automation over previous processes. A great plan is to automate recently improved processes. Doing so can achieve even more significant cost reductions and productivity increases than process improvement alone. Speaking of automating processes, Michael Cantu's and my best-selling book on Amazon, No-Nonsense Digital Transformation, discusses the power of automating processes. Not only that, we dive deeper into how to transform cultures and encourage employee buy-in of organizational initiatives. So it isn't just for digital transformation fans! If you're interested in learning more, click the button below. By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  Image by KamranAydinov on Freepik As a business leader, have you and your team embarked on a carefully constructed business plan only to find it quickly unraveled as you executed it? To avoid this trap, here are five suggestions on how to ensure your plans lead to successful outcomes: 1. Bring Your Best to the Table When you develop a plan, include a broad range of opinions, expertise, and experience. In other words, your team's input is essential to plan success. Ensure that your team is included upfront in the planning process so that your plan will result in a well-rounded approach. 2. Develop Contingency Scenarios Even the best plans can go awry when unaccounted-for situations arise. That's why it's important to brainstorm multiple possibilities upfront to ensure your bases are covered if things don't go as you would have liked. A good formula to follow is IF THIS, DO THAT. When such an event occurs, consult with the team to decide which contingency plan would work best (when there are multiple options) and, if need be, adapt your choice to your circumstances. 3. Communicate Plan Changes When you experience changes to your plan, ensure that all your team members and affected stakeholders receive notice of such changes. Doing so will help prevent misunderstandings and potentially wasted effort spent on a previous version of the plan. 4. Create Avenues for Gathering Feedback and Data Make it easy for team members and stakeholders to give you feedback during plan execution so that you can make adjustments along the way. This will help ensure your path to success. Providing a forum for regular reviews where feedback is encouraged is a great way to do this. Monitoring progress through data collection as you execute the plan is also essential. Ensure that your data collection techniques are rigorous enough to ensure data integrity. 5. Plan for Regular Progress Reviews Having everyone on the same page is crucial for plan success. Ensure your team meets on at a pre-determined frequency, considering plan speed, complexity, scope, team availability, and size. The planned frequency and required attendance for particular team members for reviews can change later if the need to do so arises. Here's some good news: a great way to accomplish all these suggestions is through Scrum, a proven, best-practice approach. It just so happens that it's one of my passions! What is Scrum? In short, it's a streamlined way to manage projects. It allows for regular reviews with stakeholders and synergistic daily meetings (called Daily Scrums) that keep communication lines open amongst all team members. Plan changes can be made on the fly and quickly communicated to team members and stakeholders. Better yet, projects can often finish much faster than traditional approaches. You don't need to take my word for it! Click on the button below to download a case study about one of my clients. By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  As business leaders, we sometimes make big mistakes that can be hard to shake from our minds and consciousness. What steps can we take to turn things around? All-Pro Defense Tackle, Chris Jones of the Kansas City Chiefs, is a great role model for handling missteps and charting a path to success. He used the mistakes he made in a crucial game last year that ended their 2021-2022 Super Bowl run, miscues that he used as fuel to achieve tremendous success this season. In Chris Jones’ own words, “Last year stuck with me. I had two critical plays that I should have made that I missed (in the AFC Championship Game). We know how the game went.” Here are three things Chris did that we can use to turn our mistakes around for good. 1. Work With a Mentor After last year’s tough loss, the Chiefs brought in a new defensive line coach. Chris said about his coach: “Bringing him in as a mentor for me and a defensive line coach has completely [transformed] my game, whether it’s the run game or the pass rush.” As a result, he’s won two awards this season for being the best defensive tackle in the NFL. Steps You Can Take: If you need a mentor or coach, find one! Your connections can be an excellent source for referrals to outstanding individuals. And if you are already working with one, fully engaging in the relationship to help ensure accountability is a perfect thing to do. 2. Use Mistakes as a Motivator Chris didn’t let his past mistakes plague him; instead, he used them as motivation to improve. During the offseason, he worked diligently with his mentor to enhance one of his weaknesses (tackling runners). His hard work paid off—he achieved a career-high number of tackles against "the run." Steps You Can Take: Objectively evaluate what you could have done better and develop a plan to improve. And if you're still in a place of regret, decide to put the past behind you. If doing so is still a challenge, consider the possibility that you may need to forgive yourself for your mistakes, an often overlooked action we can take that can yield tremendous results. 3. Finish Well In Chris' own words, "It's not about how you start. It's about how you finish." The Chiefs' defense had its best season performance in their last game. They struggled much of the year due to an overhauled, inexperienced defense. But after playing 17 games together, they’re clicking, just in time to bring their best game forward as they head into the playoffs! Steps You Can Take: Keep building upon your plan to overcome and succeed. Work with your team to build consensus and cooperation so you're all on the same page for goal achievement. # # # Speaking about goal achievement, are you properly positioned for success in digitizing your organization? If you have questions in the area, check out Michael Cantu's and my best-selling book, No-Nonsense Digital Transformation. It provides a step-by-step roadmap for preparing for and implementing digital transformation initiatives in your business so you can help ensure success even before you start. If you’re interested in learning more, click the button below! By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder at Kent Business Solutions  Image by Freepik How many of you have worked with exceptional leaders that have so many great qualities that you wish to emulate? Here are five traits that great leaders possess that you can mirror for your own leadership journey: 1. They Show a Personal Interest in You I’m sure many of you have worked with leaders or bosses that lacked empathy and only cared about getting the job at hand done. But truly great leaders go out of their way to learn more about their staff. And for those of you who struggle with being empathetic, here’s a great example of how you can approach this. Yesterday, I chatted with a young woman about the beginning stages of her leadership journey. She mentioned that she primarily operates from a logical point of view. After taking a personality test, she learned that to be a better leader, she needs to work on practicing more empathy with her employees. So, she's making a conscious effort to show a more personal interest in her employees every day. And it’s working! She had shared with them recently that she needed to improve in this area; however, her employees shared with her that they already see her as a caring individual. 2. They Regularly Encourage Others Excellent leaders encourage employees and help them become more successful than they currently are. They also consistently work to remove obstacles in their employees’ paths. 3. They Model Vulnerability Nobody wants to work with a robot! When a leader models humility and shares their humanity to those they lead, it levels the playing field and creates a more comfortable work environment. 4. They are Knowledgeable of Employee Weaknesses, but Focus on Their Strengths When leaders truly understand their employees’ strengths, they can assign them tasks that help their employees to excel. And when leaders can provide empathetic mentoring to help shore up employees’ weaknesses, that’s even better! 5. They Think Outside the Box Unfortunately, many leaders are currently doing the same things that they did 10 to 20 years ago. That’s a far cry from leaders who love to experiment with new ideas and challenge the status quo. This is especially important in the ever-changing business environment we live in. Leaders who don’t embrace new ideas may find themselves as a roadblock to helping their company achieve bigger and better things. Speaking about bigger and better things, are you looking to take your company to the next level in 2023? Do you have any projects in mind towards that end, but don’t have internal resources to spearhead them? If you’re in that boat, I’d love to have a chat with you! As a fractional Project Manager, I’m passionate about helping my clients jumpstart initiatives—accelerating projects to a quicker conclusion with outstanding results. If you’re interested in learning more, click the button below to schedule a chat! By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  Transitions--doesn't life seem to be overflowing with them these days? We all have gone through difficult changes in our lives, some by choice and others not of our choosing. There’s leaving a place, be it a job or physically moving, where we would love to have stayed but couldn’t. And then there are the situations where bridges were burning down all around us, and we couldn’t get off the bridges fast enough! Either way, it’s not fun, but how you handle these situations can make all the difference in the world. For instance, you can:
By doing so, you can leave those situations with high levels of integrity, self-respect, and goodwill. Here are three things you can try towards this end: 1. Recognize When It’s Time to Leave This may seem like a no-brainer, but sometimes when you're in the thick of things, it hard to recognize the signs that it's time to leave. To make my point, how many of us have stayed in a job too long with poor results? It’s happened to me too frequently! Here’s one example: I had just moved to Kansas City, didn’t know anyone, and had to take any job I could find. I landed a role as an admin at a good company. And I must admit that I admire admins for what they do because I am NOT good at it. I had a great boss, so I could tolerate it at the time. Even so, it was time to leave, but I wasn’t too motivated to make the change. Even so, I was experiencing the following:
Out of this experience, I’ve learned to recognize these signs of when it’s time to leave and then to do just that. Here’s my advice: Once you recognize signs like this, carefully consider if it’s time to make a move, and then decide accordingly. If you choose to stay, analyze why you’re experiencing these feelings and work towards a resolution. 2. Try to Keep Your Bridges from Burning Down In this same example, things got intense when new leadership came in. They started me down the path of firing me. Thankfully, I was able to find a great job before they could. Once I told them I was leaving, I decided to prove that I was not the slacker they thought I was. I prepared desktop procedures for my job, even though they didn’t ask me to. Throughout the whole process, I was respectful. I think all of this shocked them! Management accepted my two-week notice and gave me the second week off. Woo hoo! In the end, it paid off! My advice: If you are in a similar situation, be the bigger person--don't burn your bridges. Retaliation and non-conformance will get you nowhere. And you never know, you may have to cross those bridges at a later date. 3. Ensure Continuity Next, do something like what I did. Help the next person coming in to fulfill your responsibilities to be successful. A potential benefit is watching difficult leadership reframe what they think of you! Kill them with kindness, I say! These tips are just scratching the surface. You can do many other things to leave intentionally and graciously. Doing so can bring a sense of satisfaction, self-respect, and higher levels of integrity. And who doesn’t want that? # # # Speaking of burning bridges, many companies feel burned by past IT projects that didn’t succeed and now don’t want to step their toes into the water again anytime soon. That’s one reason why Michael Cantu and I wrote our book, No-Nonsense Digital Transformation! We wrote it with these rightfully cautious leaders in mind. If you’d like to learn how to successfully plan for and execute IT projects, then click the button below! By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  Image by drobotdean on Freepik With the Great Resignation in full swing, many business leaders are scrambling to find ways to help prevent their good employees from jumping ship. One way to help counteract the exodus of talent from organizations is through recognizing and rewarding employees for their service. Here are 10 creative ways to give kudos to your employees: 1. Share Employee Content on Your Blog If you have employees that like to write (and that's not their main role), share their content on your company's blog. 2. Recognize Outside-of-Work Success Share your employees' successes outside of work on social media channels, your internal website, or your company's website. 3. Showcase the Monetary or Volunteer Impact of Employee Efforts If an employee's efforts on a project contributed positively to the bottom line, highlight that in some manner to your employee base. You can also draw attention to employees who support charitable contributions through either donations or volunteer time. 4. Provide Stipends for Long-Distance Commuters Employees living far away or who often experience heavy traffic during their commutes could receive stipends to help pay for gas. 5. Use Gamification Apps to Fuel Productivity and Motivation Gamification gives employees an entertaining way to meet company requirements, such as training. What might often be a tedious process could be transformed into something fun. Check out what Edgagement, Hoopla, and Gametize apps have to offer along these lines. 6. Share Kudos from Customers Create an Employee Wall of Fame to highlight customer feedback directed at particular employees or teams. 7. Share Employee Kudos At the start of your meetings, recognize employees for the small, daily wins. These are often overlooked, but these shout-outs can go a long way towards increasing employee morale. 8. Surprise Employees with Snacks or Meals Bring in or order food during busy workdays. It lets your employees know you appreciate their hard work. 9. Provide Sabbaticals for Long-Timers For employees who have been with the company for five, seven, or 10 years (for example), consider providing them with sabbaticals. That way, they can take quality time off work to pursue their passion and return to work refreshed and ready to re-engage with your company. 10. Use the Power of a Post-It Note I left this for last because it's something you can start doing today! Who doesn't like a personal touch to show appreciation? A simple post-it note with a meaningful message that you place on an employee's desk is a simple act that can go a long way to show appreciation. These are just a few things you can do to recognize and reward your employees. Doing so can help keep employees happy and can also help build a foundation of increased loyalty to your company. And what business leader wouldn't want that? # # # I have an announcement! I am now providing a new service to prospective and current clients. I'm still determining my messaging, so here's the bare-bones description: If you or anyone you know are stuck in the middle of a project and don't know how to get it moving forward... Or, you want to start projects, but don't have the internal bandwidth to undertake them, talk with me! I have over 30 years of project management expertise, so I can help accelerate projects over the finish line. Interested in learning more? Click the button below to schedule a chat! By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  Image by Fauxels I don't know about you, but it's been ages since "business as usual" was a part of our everyday work lives. With so much uncertainty these days, sometimes it isn't easy to know what the best next steps should be. Not only that, how do we, as business leaders, increase employee satisfaction to help stop The Great Resignation bleed in our organizations? Here are four things you can do to improve employee satisfaction and, at the same time, optimize your organization. 1. Create Clear Connections Most people crave a sense of belonging and want to make a difference. Employees that see a direct linkage between what they do and how it impacts the organization, and society in general, are going to be more inspired and productive. Companies that can step back from their everyday way of doing business to assess how they can make clear connections between individuals, their jobs and the organizational purpose/mission will most often come out ahead. 2. Expand Workforce Development Efforts A lot of organizations have been guilty of just placing workers in roles based on what they’ve always done in the past, because it’s a tried-and-true approach. Many of these employees feel pigeon-holed and frustrated by this. Countless employees are capable of so much more! Organizations now have an opportunity to re-evaluate how they encourage and offer more opportunities for employees to fulfill their potential. This is not the time to pull back on workforce development efforts! Companies that encourage employees to fulfill their potential have a greater chance of building a more resilient workforce that can more effectively weather difficult times like we’ve been experiencing. 3. Maximize the Relationship between Employees and Technology The pandemic has challenged the idea that machines can completely replace humans. Just look at the evidence of non-essential, robotic-based factories being shuttered for weeks on end at the height of it! Interactions between workers and machines are so much more powerful together than on their own. Organizations that embrace the idea of finding ways to integrate teams of employees and technologies will be the most successful in the long run. They’ll not only be able to streamline costs, but provide greater meaning for the workforce. 4. Leverage the Power of Knowledge Management During crises like the pandemic, people’s hunger for information reached epic proportions. Could there be a way to carry over a thirst for knowledge and translate it to running a business more effectively? The answer is “yes”. Companies can encourage a culture where knowledge sharing and creation becomes an everyday occurrence. That way, when a valuable employee walks out the door, all the knowledge he has accumulated in his or her brain doesn’t walk out with them. If you want to grow in any of these areas, I would love to help! The areas I’m really focusing on right now are People/Technology Integration. I'm fascinated with ensuring a more seamless experience between the two, with an emphasis on IT systems and Artificial Intelligence. Michael Cantu and I talk in-depth about these topics and the digital transformation possibilities for organizations in our best-selling book on Amazon, No-Nonsense Digital Transformation. If you liked to learn more, click on the button below! |
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