Kevin W. McCarthy

The Professor of On-Purpose

Career & Work

Are You Engaged In A Business Innovation and Re-Invention?

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Note: The On-Purpose Business Experience is now called ONPURPOSE@WORK. We don’t have any scheduled yet for 2017.

Business innovation and re-invention have sex appeal. Shoring up your market niche, refining your business processes, honing your marketing, improving your understanding of your customers’ needs, and becoming a world class expert demand hard work, attention to detail, and faith—in other words, not so sexy!

Business innovation is a great concept, yet in execution, I’ve generally seen that most businesses innovate and reorganize out of weakness and innovationboredom instead of strength and passion. That means they’re fixing what’s broken and calling it innovation when in fact the fundamentals weren’t in place as is. Hopping from idea to idea is symptomatic of an unsettled and non-strategic business owner prone to chasing squirrels or shiny new objects.

Have you gotten caught up in the frenzied strategy and talk of business innovation and re-invention? Innovation and re-invention make for sound bites, but they just don’t replace a good old-fashioned ethic of working hard, caring for the customer, rewarding the employees, and creating a better value at a better price that focuses on serving people extraordinarily well. Yet, capitalism works!

Small business owners—in particular—are susceptible to the allure of innovation and re-invention. I’ve advised far too many business owners over the years whose “grass is always greener” mentality prevents them from benefiting from years, sometimes decades, of investment and effort to build a business. I have yet to find a small business that couldn’t be improved by at least 10% if it just stopped talking about itself and actually marketed itself in its customers’ self-interest.

I believe everyone is a leader of something. It starts with their own life and radiates outward from there. I also believe that everyone has genius designed into them where they are amazing experts.  

I’m an Apple Mac fan. When you walk into an Apple retail store you’ll discover the Genius Bar where you can get help with your Apple purchases. Apple gets that people have a genius about them so why not get help from fellow geniuses?

Here’s an example from our local community. A few years ago Judith, my wife, and I walked Hamlet (our dog) to the Winter Park Farmers Market to browse and get some fresh vegetables. There was a gentleman, Mike Mannix, selling homemade organic vanilla bean extract. I asked Mike how he got involved with starting his business. Mike unraveled an amazing and romantic notion of vanilla beans in history, how they are cultivated and harvested in a few places in the world, and why vanilla beans were so expensive and special. Wow! Talk about a passion for his product. Mike may be one of the top 100 experts in the world in vanilla beans. Does it matter? To me, he was the #1 expert in the world. I trusted his expertise within 5 minutes of meeting him. Order from Mike at Mannix Vanilla.

You can be that same specialist in your business or industry—the person who is highly regarded by peers and customers alike for your expertise. Follow your passion, be odd, look crazy, see the world differently, be yourself, trust your instincts, make a difference!

Hey, look at me! I am the #1 expert in the world in helping people be on-purpose. That isn’t boasting; that’s quiet confidence because I’ve been at this since the late 1980s. I’m shoring up my business to go deep in order to help this message go more places.

How much more innovation and re-invention do you need? If you love what you do, then double down your efforts, pay attention to the details, and become a better marketer. Learn how to sell. The rest will take care of itself.

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Great tool: How do you go deep? In The On-Purpose Business Person, you’ll find The Service Model. Here is a method and model that will help you to look below the obvious front line of your business to get to the depth of building a sustainable and profitable business. For less than a couple of bucks, you can gain access to this tool and built-in instructions all on one page. Imagine having your entire business strategy and plan laid out on one page!

Use this tool to rapidly think through, structure, and show the relationship of the different hats you wear as the head of a business or a career. By the way, every job is actually a solo owner business!



Are You An Explorer?

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Age doesn’t matter when it comes to developing the attitude of being an explorer. Adventure is most often associated with youth. Let’s not, however, confuse inexperience with adventure. To be an explorer of life is to see life as an adventure versus a chore or time served on the planet. I know adventurers who are 9 and those who are in their 90s. The choice is yours.

My friend Mel Kaufman is 93 and he’s a remarkable explorer with the wit to match. Mel writes short stories that are long on wisdom and insight. Many of you downloaded The Kaufman Christmas Collection for free … and it’s still for free. (Hint!)

After my On-Purpose Minute, How Do You Manage Disappointment, Mel wrote me the following: “Disappointments are like failure; they are of no value unless we learn from them. Henny Youngman said, ‘I went to a psychiatrist and finally found my self. I was very disappointed.’” Now there’s a lesson and a laugh. It doesn’t get much better!

Cultivating a spirit of curiosity about the world is a noble endeavor, but don’t forget yourself. The better you know who you are the richer that journey beyond you will be and become. The ultimate exploration is to know oneself because in the process of that journey you’ll face some very challenging ordeals (Hey, it’s an adventure!) that will clarify your thinking and provoke your beliefs. To understand your design, you’ll look into the mind and heart of the Designer. Wow!

Some Quotes on Exploring

“We must develop a compelling vision of later life: one that does not assume a trajectory of decline after fifty, but one that recognizes it as a time of change, growth, and new learning, a time when our courage gives us hope.”

            Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot
            Author: The Third Chapter: Passion, Risk, and Adventure

 
“We are here to be excited from youth to old age, to have an insatiable curiosity about the world. Aldous Huxley once said that to carry the spirit of the child into old age is the secret of genius. And I buy that. 

“We are also here to genuinely, humbly, and sincerely help others by practicing a friendly attitude. And every person is born for a purpose. Everyone has a God-given potential, in essence, built into them. And if we are to realize life to its fullest, we must realize that potential.”

                Norman Vincent Peale
                Protestant pastor
                Author, The Power of Positive Thinking

Crazy_grandpa

The photo to the right is not Norman Vincent Peale. It is Mr. Six of Six Flags. I want to meet him! Dig the shoes! Watch him in action! (He’s actually an actor not a real old guy but you get the point about the attitude.)

The aging process is inevitable. How we age, however, is significantly within our control. Just because you might be part of an “aging population,” such as the Baby Boomers, it doesn’t mean that you are over the hill, washed up, and done for. Heck, you’re finally better equipped than ever.

Keith Lawrence is the co-author of Your Retirement Quest. Keith has been researching and advising those approaching and in retirement. Here is a fascinating chart Keith and his co-author Alan Spector developed about various types of Retirement Quests. Why wait to get started until you are retired or in assisted living to begin your Retirement Quest? Discover your Retirement Quest today regardless of what decade of life you are in.

I regularly visit my Mom who is 87. This affords me the honor to meet her friends, many of whom are well into their 90s, even a couple in their 100s. One learns a lot from being with this Greatest Generation in this independent living facility. They’re an interested lot who read, discuss, debate, and embrace life. One observation I’ve had about this vital group—they aren’t the grumpy old people so often portrayed. They’re vibrant, interested, and interesting. As Peale recommends, they’ve carried a youthful curiosity into their advanced years.

Another observation I’ve had about the 80+ crowd is that they’re generally thin and at a healthy weight. The general U.S. population has 2 out of 3 of us being obese or overweight. My guesstimate of this group is they’re just the opposite — only 1 in 3 are overweight or obese. Chances are the consequences of the excess weight in their peers brought about an early demise.

Begin by discovering who you really are. Retirement age is not mandated by an employer or the government; it comes when we decide to stop discovering who we really are and what we are capable of achieving even to our death bed. Those who never tire of learning, never retire.

Employee Engagement: How Are Your Three E’s?

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Peter Drucker, the famous management guru, spoke of doing business with effectiveness and efficiency. Let’s add another “E” to the equation: Engagement, as in “employee” engagement. Learn to assess your career and business using these 3 E’s and you’ll be amazed what might be revealed about your career, team, or business. 

Engagement has more recently come to the forefront of employee discussions by The Gallup Organization. I admit to being a huge fan of their work on Employee Engagement. Twenty years ago, I had the pleasure of partnering with a Gallup leader on a client assignment, and I was roundly impressed. Several years back, I reconnected with their work again through a client’s company. Their books and StrengthsFinder survey are first rate as well.

Jim Harter, Ph.D., author of New York Times bestseller 12: The Elements of Great Managing, talks about the power of Gallup’s 12 questions at this Gallup site.

Team Engagement is one of the primary measures for a Chief Leadership Officer™. If you’re leading a business, then you need to get your head into this topic. Leadership of people is the future — engage with it! Be a CLO

Efficiency. Effectiveness. Engagement

Chapter 7 of Chief Leadership Officer will positively rock your take on employee engagement. Basically, the very use of the term “employee” dooms the engagement effort to failure. An employer-employee relationship is transactional. Whereas, engagement is relational.

Chief Leadership Officer – order your book today!

The Job of Your Life … Finding A Job You Love?

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Finding a job you love is challenging, but it can be easy as 1, 2, 3. It takes a plan and a process along with patience. How do you go about creating or finding the job that is fulfilling and on-purpose? That’s the job of your life.

This video was originally aired on November 17, 2011, when the unemployment rate was over 10%. In the years since, the published unemployment rate is lower. In many circles today the underemployment rate and out-of-the-job-market rate remains very high. 

Every day I run into people who are underemployed or unemployed. This breaks my heart on many levels. Aside from their loss of income and financial struggles, what I often observe in their situation is a point of view that is detrimental to their current and long-term state of well-being. They’ll never get the job of their life. It is like the movie Dead Poets Society, where the one young man decides that a life of just pleasing others is worse than death.Kissing Cobras

Many people think a job equals security and identity. This erroneous, yet prevalent, worldview on work creates a cycle of being in and out of dissatisfying jobs or workplaces. Or, if the pay is sufficient, staying in a job one really doesn’t like all that much. The pain of change appears worse than the suffering on the job.

For a few dollars more, we’ll trade our precious life. What a waste! Yet, I fully understand and deeply appreciate the dilemma. Money is important to function in society, to eat, to be housed, etc. 

Don’t blame your job for your state of well-being. Instead, take responsibility for bringing meaning to the job! That sounds easier to do than it really is. But how?

First, don’t quit your day job just yet because I struck a nerve with you!

Second, let my 1-2-3 approach (see this On-Purpose Minute) settle in your spirit. Even if you think it is impractical, do you find yourself wishing you could actually do this? Do you imagine what’s really possible if you pursued your passion? 

Third, do your heart work! On-Purpose Peace and My On-Purpose Folder are remarkable workbooks for personal or small group study.

Fourth, if you’re thinking of starting your own business then connect with me. We have coaching and programs that can help you accelerate your planning process and success ratio. We even have healthy lifestyle coaching with On-Purpose Partners for a select few people.

The job of your life is to live your life on-purpose. To be as fully you as God intended and designed you to be.

How Do You Manage Disappointment?

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Disappointment is inevitable but it need not be debilitating. How you manage it, however, is a choice with profound implications to your well-being, relationships, and opportunities. The easy route is to react negatively and stay there, but what good is that? You have a better choice. What words of advice have you heard for getting unstuck when you find yourself disappointed with something important?

I got to thinking about the word: disappointment. It led me to this chain of words: disappointment > disappoint > point > appoint > appointment. The common word is “point” as in a mark or dot or direction. When we’re disappointed, the mark has been missed. It does, however, provide an opportunity for redirection. What if disappointment is really intended to direct us to a greater appointment? So when we stay in a negative place, aren’t we the ones who increase the price of the initial disappointment and risk missing where we’ve been appointed to shine?

What works for you in managing disappointment? What you have to say may be the very words that help transform another person’s perspective. Be courageous and share your ideas when opportunity arises. Now don’t disappoint me!  : )

Check out this 10-minute excerpt from a keynote address I did where I was talking about changing the punctuation point in your life from a question mark to a statement to an exclamation point.

Need help going from a question mark to a period to an exclamation mark? Read The On-Purpose Person and get one of the companion workbooks.* Better yet, engage an On-Purpose Professional to coach you through the process of becoming an on-purpose person in creation.

*On-Purpose Peace is a workbook for Christians.

 

Ambition. At What Price?

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Click on text for more information about the On-Purpose Small Business Package

The desire to make a positive difference is the sweet, soulful heart of ambition. In contrast is blind ambition that tramples all in its path to accomplish an end, perhaps even a noble end at that, which is fraught with unhealthy costs. Much of this rests on your view of people.  

Which will mark your life, career, and legacy?

Herein lies the rub for many a business person. To what lengths are you willing to go to realize your ambitions?

Results, especially in the form of company sales and profits, are outward and tangible measures of success. Measurable signs, however, tell just a portion of the story. If you want to know the full story, ask the people along the way who helped to produce the results.

Here’s a painful example. For 12 months spanning 2008 to 2009, I worked nearly full time with a CEO client to author a book that codified his corporate culture, leadership development moves, and business strategy for internal use. Intending for the company to go public via IPO, the book also targeted Wall Street analysts and investors so they could readily grasp what truly made this company great.

The IPO market at that time dried up with the challenges in the economy. Instead, the company was purchased by a national competitor for $130 million. By the CEO’s own admission, the book helped them get more than $15 million in greater value for shareholders over the IPO price, plus they kept their name, and the CEO was offered the position of President over the merged companies.

“Wow!” you may be thinking, “That CEO had to be a happy man.” You would think so. Eight months after delivery of the manuscript, a client satisfaction clause I wrote into the contract was used to deny issuing me an “earned” six-figure stock bonus despite personal assurances from the CEO to the contrary. My concern for my client’s satisfaction and best interests was used against me. Ouch! That hurts on so many levels.

Just because one can take advantage of another person, does that mean one should? Best-selling books on the art of war and being a prince would say go for it. But I say there’s nothing noble in selfishness and greed. True nobility is knowing one has the upper hand and using it to raise up the other person instead of jamming them down further.

The deeper value is seeing people as being above things. Translation: relationships are greater than transactions. Results with responsibilities and citizenship can coexist and produce true greatness.

For a couple of decades I’ve worked with my CEO clients to get them to stop saying things like, “Our people are our greatest asset.” Assets are bought and sold as in slavery. Relating people to assets dehumanizes them and places them on par with the photocopier. By the way, the investment in the photocopier maintenance agreement often far exceeds the equivalent “maintenance agreement” for the people in training, development, and benefits. How sad is that!

Along this same line, the term Human Resources certainly isn’t endearing and doesn’t advance the cause of people as human beings. Resources is just another name for commodities or assets that are traded, discarded, and otherwise moved about indiscriminately. The Human Resources Department is a blind co-conspirator in the loss of human identity and dignity. Instead, rename the department to something like, “People Development” or “Talent Management” but not “human resources.” It is degrading.

I hold no delusions of grandeur that either the perfect person or company graces the face of the planet. Self-serving serpents slither the planet preying on others. We are all capable of being this way, yet deep within our spirit we yearn to a higher self, call, and standard. We’re better to aspire and fail than to have no aspiration at all.

Gazing with admiration upon the shells of “successful” men and women may provide inspiration, but it tends to deliver little instruction. You know better. Get the true back story from the secretaries, bookkeepers, janitors, clerks, delivery persons, and cafeteria workers in corporate headquarters. Look at their personal life. Are their personal lives as captivating as their business headlines? You’ll soon discern whether the person capturing the headlines and your attention is gold-plated or 24 karat solid gold.

Do this: Whether you’re leading your life, a team, or a business, you need to decide: Ambition, at what price? Knowing your purpose and defining your values is a great start to building a life and a career where you can put your head to your pillow at night and sleep soundly.

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Here are some famous quotes about money for your consideration and amusement.

“Money makes the world go around.” $100 bill stack

From the song Money (Watch the performance!) in the Broadway play Cabaret sung by Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey.

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”

 1 Timothy 6

“A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.”

Jonathan Swift

“Get all you can [money], without hurting your soul, your body, or your neighbor. Save all you can, cutting off every needless expense. Give all you can.”

John Wesley

“With money in your pocket, you are wise and you are handsome and you sing well, too.”

Yiddish Proverb

Are You Doing Business By Design?

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Chief Leadership Officer book cover
Today is the last day you can pre-order Chief Leadership Officer. Click here or on the book cover above to be one of the first to read it.

 

Chief Leadership Officer presents an On-Purpose® based advanced alternative to the traditional CEO–run management system and method. It takes a choice to lead a business in this manner.  

Most start-up businesses begin with great intentions, but too often wind up being haphazardly led with little to no regard for the founder’s spirit or original intent—even if the founder is still running the business! It is a costly loss of strategic advantage, employee and customer engagement, and business profits!

Most susceptible to this drifting from the founder’s intent are large organizations and institutions where work is highly fragmented across divisions or countries. Specialization must be paired with a sustainable corporate culture that honors and innovates upon the strengths of its past and informs the future.

For example, did you know that universities and colleges such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and other Ivy League colleges were started as seminaries to train and equip ministers in the Christian faith? Today, these academics bastions of intellectualization and secularization are so far from their founders’ intent that their roots are obscured, if not outright ridiculed. So much for the founders’ idea of a truly “higher” education.

Large businesses are very susceptible to losing a measure of their soul. The pressures to produce profits can create expedient behaviors that diminish sustainable brand value and equity. When ethical issues arise the tendency is to resort to conveying and communicating corporate values as a “fix.” In truth, authenticity was lost long before and expediency started rotting the roots of the tree long before the “harvest” went bad. When values need to be more codified and communicated than caught, then real business problems are predictably on the horizon.

Solo owners or one person entrepreneurs are susceptible too; but they face a different challenge, however. Founders of these SOHO (small office, home office) businesses are typically wearing far too many hats and are preoccupied with production, sales, or customer care. They’re easily caught in a vicious swirl of learning, working, and selling or overwhelmingly stuck in procrastination. Fortunately, their passion to perform typically enables them to muscle through and deliver on a small scale basis.

Solo owners are alone and that’s a disadvantage when it comes to doing business by design and being ethical. The perspective of oneself is limiting. If the solo owner is willing to be transparent, here’s where a business coach or advisor can lend perspective and accountability. 

Years ago, a client was starting an IT business. He got so lost in his software development, he soon forgot why he started a business. His intent was to help clients, employees, and his family, but he lost sight of the larger picture as he was buried in the details.

It sounds so basic, but the fundamentals of business really don’t change because ultimately business is about people serving people. In my client’s case, lines of code were the means for creating value and making a contribution. He, however, got caught up in the making of money versus creating an “everyone profits” culture. The true value of his business wasn’t code or cash, but grounded in how his software improved the lives and productivity of his client companies. By refocusing his attention on his original “why” and design for starting the business, he was able to turn around the business.

Any kind of plan or business plan for small businesses tends to be scarce. Who has the time to plan? or so the thinking goes. Understandably so because they’re really not all that appropriate or useful in many businesses (See: What is the Purpose of a Business Plan?). Nonetheless that doesn’t mean strategy and planning are useless and meaningless. They have a specific and powerful place in a company of any size.

(Special plug: A couple of years ago I met Jim Horan, creator of The One Page Business Plan. Here’s a great planning device for businesses of all sizes. It is, however, especially apropos for solo owners. Also take a look at The Service Model, a one-page organizing tool for businesses.

Regardless of whether you are an entrepreneur of a one-person show or the CEO of a billion dollar business, as your business advisor and designer, you don’t call me until there’s a problem in the business that your team or you can’t fix yourselves. Your SWOT Analysis only takes you so far.

Let’s assume that you are competent at delivering your product or service, but the business isn’t growing. That means the problems lie in the design of the business or the leadership or both! Conversations and conventional wisdom swirl around business infrastructure, business planning, and the business model, but it is like a fish swimming in water trying to see water—you won’t see it because you’re too close to the matter.

Times like this demand depth, not shallow manipulations of the status quo under the guise of change management. In the strategic depths of an organization, a slight adjustment in understanding, a tiny shift in strategy, or an orientation toward greater alignment ripple powerfully into positive results. The simple articulation of a 2-word purpose statement is the tiniest of acts, but the most potent of all strategic initiatives.

Tweaking the fundamental design of the business is not for the faint of heart. Eventually, failure to do so will be manifest in every facet of the business … and that’s costly at every line item on the budget. Strategic business design can TOPBPerson coverelevate the business to the next level of performance, profits, and expression of its purpose. 

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The On-Purpose Business Person provides a solid framework for any person at work to learn how to treat their work as a business. Click here or on the image to the right to purchase it for $16. It is also available on Kindle for $9.97.


How Solid is Your Core?

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Be sure to watch the bonus footage in today’s On-Purpose Minute for a visual analogy about the cost of having a hollow core versus a solid core.

Core Strength is at the Heart of Leadership

Inner strength lies at the core of our being. Your 2-word purpose provides the strongest defense you have when you come under attack. Like any strength, however, it must be nourished and developed or it will dwindle and decay.

CLO hard book cover open
Pre-orders close this Thursday, June 30, 2016. Click here or on the book cover to be one of the first to get it when it is released.

Your core is also the source for going boldly into the world. If you’re frustrated, disheartened, or disappointed, then chances are your core is suffering. Pain is inevitable. The difference between this hurt crushing us in defeat or stirring us to rise to the challenge is our core.

In my upcoming book, Chief Leadership Officer, one of the key messages is personal leadership precedes leadership of others. Who wants to follow a jerk? Leading one’s life requires us to resist the natural gravity of decay. Leadership requires thoughtful upkeep and exercise to avoid becoming weak and rotting. You are the only true caretaker of your core. Others may feed it and some may deplete it, but only you control it.

A solid core is the source of inner strength that enables us to withstand the harsh forces that would come against us. This isn’t to say that fears, doubts, and concerns don’t creep into our lives. They do. The difference is when they do creep in, do they find an unguarded home to invade? Or do you have the presence of your purpose in the heart of your heart to resist the assault of your soul?

Be On-Purpose!

Kevin