Donald Cooper is a Toronto-based management speaker and business coach. Using his vast experience as a manufacturer (Cooper Canada sports equipment) and an award-winning retailer, Cooper has helped thousands of companies in over 40 industries around the world to create compelling customer value, clarity of purpose, and long-term profitability.
Failure to get things done and failure to deal with non-performance are two of the biggest challenges in many businesses today. Effective management starts with clarity. In fact, as business owners, leaders, and managers, our first job is clarity about the compelling value we commit to deliver, the bottom line we commit to generate, what we commit to become in three to five years, how we’re going to get there, and how we commit to behave along the way.
Many great ideas can come from the bottom up in an organization, but clarity can only come from the top down. From clarity comes a culture of commitment, urgency, accountability, and profitability.
Stop talking about “goals, targets, aims, and objectives” in your business and your life. These are weak and wishy-washy words that leave way too much wiggle room to not perform. Nobody cares what we aim to do. They want to know what we commit to do.
Quick tip that changes everything. Every time you give someone a task or project, ask them the simple 10-word question that changes everything: “By when can we agree that this will be completed?” Negotiate a reasonable commitment, document it, and follow up. The world is run by those who follow up!
Reward success and deal quickly but fairly with non-performance. The problem is that non-performers often fly under the radar because there are no clear standards of performance, appearance, and behaviour—or performance is not being measured. Then, many businesses fail to deal with non-performance because managers don’t like having difficult conversations, or they choose to tolerate non-performers rather than do the work to find a replacement. They adopt the “better the devil we know” position.
Neither of these options will end well!
