The success of your business hinges on the prevailing company culture, especially one that is results-driven. Every business inherently possesses a culture, whether by design or happenstance. From my own experience, I've come to understand that establishing a results-driven company culture for entrepreneurs necessitates more than mere instruction or discussion; it requires a fundamental shift in the mindset and behaviors of individuals within the organization. Creating a culture requires systemic organizational changes transforming how people think and behave. In this article, I will share my discovery on developing and cultivating a culture of results to improve performance in your organization. The work environment greatly influences people. Company culture can make weak people highly productive, and the stronger lose their edge. It is the primary concern and responsibility of every business owner, manager, or executive to create a culture of results inside their company. Every employee makes and maintains this through disciplined adherence to ensure profitability and continuance of the company's operation. Getting the right people that can come together with unique business systems to create a culture of results through discipline, enthusiasm, and high productivity is not easy. The magic begins once you find the right team, and performance shoots up the roof.   ((Efficient People + Motivation) * Accountability) = Effective Team Results HIRE THE RIGHT BEST PEOPLE The only proven way of getting good results is to ensure you have the right people to drive your dream. No matter how good your ideas are, you'll have difficulty getting the expected deliverables if you don't have the right people to actualize them. "Those who build great companies understand that the ultimate throttle on growth for any great company is not markets, technology, competition, or products. It is one thing above all others: getting and keeping enough of the right people. GET THE RIGHT PEOPLE ON THE BUS FIRST, AND THE WRONG PEOPLE OFF THE BUS, THEN FIGURE OUT WHAT DIRECTION TO DRIVE THE COMPANY" – Jim Collins, Good to Great. Results depend on employee performance, which is why every business owner or manager should only hire Top performers. Top performers have a history of getting results and are unafraid of accountability and scorekeeping. They are self-confident, can apply past successes to new assignments, and are teachable and eager to learn. Top performers make good things happen, especially when their personal goals align with your company goals. Note that you always pay less cost for the Top performer as compared to what you pay for the Poor performer. The Poor performer comes with a hidden cost of lower performance, poor decisions, and costly mistakes, which in the long run, eclipse the cost of keeping the Top performer. It would be best if you always went for the Top performer for effective performance and results. Take Away:  Hire and empower goal-oriented people. To achieve better results, you must ensure the team understands why you created the system, how it works, and how it will benefit them. Enlist their knowledge, talents, energy,…

What if we invest in building a sustainable business that drives unemployment down? Imagine a society where only 1 out of 100 children survives past the age of 15. Such a scenario would spell the end of humanity's long-term survival. Similarly, the current trend of short-lived businesses threatens economic growth. Startling statistics reveal that only 1% of companies endure beyond 15 years, with a mere 20% reaching the 5-year milestone. This blog post explores the significance of sustaining businesses, addresses unemployment, and proposes a novel solution: recycling human capital through sustainable entrepreneurship. The number of businesses that started and existed over some time determines economic growth. If the companies do not exist over a long period, there is no chance of economic prosperity. Why is our society not doing enough to ensure that more than 1% of businesses survive for over 15 Years? Then, what happens to the people who have been working in these businesses? Where do they go? You are right. They become unemployed, and their skills become dormant, a significant loss to the labor market. My next concern was what we could do to end this menace and promote economic growth and prosperity. Then the thought of recycling human capital came into my mind. Today we recycle nearly everything: papers, computers, water, fabric, steel, glass, wood, food; you name it. Yet, we fail to help businesses survive over a more extended period. Isn’t that strange? What if we use the same idea to create sustainable businesses to run for more extended periods so that the employee's skills are not wasted but used over and over? Isn’t this the same as recycling? Sustaining a business over a more extended period is not easy; however, with the right mentorship and training, we can have real entrepreneurs to make this dream a reality. To achieve this dream, we have to fix the reasons causing these businesses to fail. How do we end unemployment in society? Unemployment is one of the biggest problems in society today. The journey to end unemployment starts with ensuring we have companies that can last for over 15 years. Achieving that will automatically take care of the population that loses jobs once a business collapses. Let’s have a look at the below assumption to be able to digest this better: Assuming 20% of startups fail because the business ideas were not viable in the first place, we still have 80% of businesses going past the 15 years mark. Let’s now imagine that these businesses can exist and prosper past the end of the careers of their creators. In other words, 80% achieve longevity and are self-running beyond their creators. Can you see the number of jobs each company will create over this period? Can you agree with me there are at least tens of jobs? If you multiply these by the number of small businesses in your area, you will notice that most of the population will be employed. These people stay employed as long as…

Just like the goal of growing a fruit tree is to harvest the fruits, the purpose of starting a business is to make profits and create a positive impact. A business needs to navigate through challenges and grow to its full potential to maximize profits. The growth phase is not a walk in the park. It plays a significant role in the business's existence and often negatively affects the entrepreneur's personal life. This phase contains many challenges that are referred to as navigating business growing pains. The term "growing pains" refers to temporary difficulties and problems a growing company experiences during a particular stage in its development. This expression derives from the pains in the legs a growing child feels have no demonstrable relation to growth. In business literature, the term growing pains has always been perceived to have a negative and dramatic connotation. I have also perceived it with the same attitude for a long time, but after working with entrepreneurs for over 20 years, I changed my viewpoint on growing pains. In this article, I will share my perspective on the importance of growing pains to an entrepreneur, how to successfully sail through them, and how to get back in the driver’s seat during this phase when you may feel like losing control of your business. Why is navigating business growing pains crucial? If we observe keenly, growing pains are inevitable. For every goal we set, there come challenges and problems. These challenges are not pleasant, and some give a painful sensation. Isn’t that normal? When was the last time you accomplished something worthwhile without having to overcome a problem or challenge? The answer is never, correct? When we look at the growing pains from the above perspective, there is a clear indication that growing pains are an indication of progress. They can form a basis for reevaluating your decisions to avoid deviation from your original path. Overcoming the growing pains is the salt and pepper of any entrepreneur's success, joy, and happiness. Here are some simple examples: If you run short of time to deliver an important project, you put in more hours, and the project succeeds. You enjoy the fruits of putting in extra time. When you realize you need an extra employee, you hire one, and the problem is solved. It gives you the joy of solving the problem. If you detect a misunderstanding and disagreements in your team, you take time to sort them out, and the team starts operating with good understanding. You feel the progress. As we can see, the growing pains are intimately part of the company's growth. To handle them well, the entrepreneur has to consider them as their allies and use them to grow bigger and achieve their goals. The key concept here is to be able to handle the problem or challenge. If an entrepreneur can quickly control all the growing pains, they will have an evergreen and sustainable company, as the illustration below represents. From the above illustration, we can see a…

Is embracing the Great Resignation possible for business leaders? Lately, my focus has been on the remarkable phenomenon known as the Great Resignation, where many employees within the Western labor market voluntarily embrace change by resigning from their current positions or transitioning to new roles. Coined in 2021 by Anthony Klotz, an Associate Professor of Management in the Organizations and Innovation Group at UCL School of Management, this term encapsulates our transformative shift. HR professionals highlighted the common reasons people were leaving their jobs: wage stagnation, looking for greener pastures or a toxic work environment leading to burnout, etc. My thoughts on this new trend gave me a unique perspective I want to share with you in this article. The underlying hidden reason When I looked closely at the reasons for this critical movement of people towards other jobs and career alternatives, I realized that they all lead to a common denominator: an imbalance between what people invested in their jobs and what they get out of it. The input is far more significant than the return. The returns we are considering here are not only the financial compensation but things like fulfillment which varies for different individuals. Stated differently, people are leaving their current jobs and investing their energy in jobs that provide them satisfaction and not necessarily financial gain. I would say they have an “individual fulfillment bankruptcy." I don’t think people would leave jobs that are the source of fulfillment or meaningful jobs that bring them happiness. The surge in the number of people discovering the misalignment between their well-being and professional development is just an outbreak of a long-existing situation.  Three types of jobs Continuing in that line of thought, I concluded that jobs could be classified into three types: The assignments that energize you provide you pleasure and fulfillment: Green Jobs The jobs that suck your energy, drain you out, and frustrate you: Red Jobs The jobs that neutral. They lie in the middle where they neither suck your energy nor energize you: Yellow Jobs. You should avoid Red Jobs every time it is possible. External unplanned events can turn a Green Job into a Yellow or even Red Job. The danger connected with the Yellow Jobs A vast majority of the workforce is satisfied with a Yellow Job. One could say there is nothing wrong with having a neutral job that doesn’t give any fulfillment and doesn’t take a lot of your resources. This mindset is very dangerous in the long run, as they slowly decline towards the Red Job. There is a boiling frog syndrome associated with Yellow Jobs.  According to the boiling frog legend, putting a frog in boiling water will immediately jump out because it notices the sudden temperature change. When the frog is in lukewarm water, it will not jump out but adapt to the surrounding temperature as it does not detect the danger yet. If the water is continuously heated slightly, the frog does not jump and keeps adapting…

As John made his way to the driveway into the garage, he glanced at his watch and noticed it was past 11 pm. He parked the car and sat there thinking about the day's events. John felt dissatisfaction take over as he remembered he had promised to have dinner with his family that evening but failed again. He had not seen his son for the past three days. The frustration was even much higher when he thought about his parents who are in a period of their life where it was his duty to take care of and be there for them. As he got lost in thoughts about the reality of his current life, his attention turned to the big project for an important client to start tomorrow. He needed to be there by 7 am to coordinate and supervise the kickoff meeting. This meant he would wake up early and leave the house before his wife and son woke up. This was John’s schedule every day. His mind and every cell in his body was occupied with the business. It had been years of planning for a holiday and time off from the company, but something always came up at work that needed his attention. This was taking its toll on him, but he saw no way out, and the idea that he was doing something he loved kept him going. Nine years ago, when he started the industrial water purification venture, John was inspired and had fun daily making his idea a reality. Everything went as planned, and he succeeded in the business! Today he is one of the best experts in the industry worldwide. He works with about 30 people locally and has developed an important network of freelancers whom he collaborates with globally. His success in the business has made him travel from time to time for conferences and workshops around the world. The company is financially viable, and the more he is on stage, the more business opportunities keep opening up. John has become overwhelmed to an extent he cannot take on all projects that keep making their way to his table. This is one of his biggest frustrations. All he wants to do is help; the demand is there, but his hands are already full. When he got into the house, everyone was already asleep. As usual, he prepared for the next day by going through his calendar. He noticed he had allocated his evening the next day to an alumni cocktail event planned for months, and he had no intention of missing it. He wanted to take some time to cool his mind, and his best friend and roommate from campus, Eric, had confirmed attendance, and since they had not met for a long time, it was enough of a reason to take a few hours from work to attend the event. He rushed into the community hall; everyone was already there. The event had already started, and people were socializing when…