A business owner drives business value by understanding self and understanding others, exercising self-control and influencing others to do the same, focusing on talents and strengths, planning the work and working the plan, making errors and learning from those errors, achieving small successes and converting them into larger successes, communicating in magnetic ways, and by continuously driving to deliver value to other people.

Understanding self and understanding others is important because it is the ‘grounding’ that helps the business owner gain other people’s respect and allows the owner to have self-motivated followers. We cannot motivate other people. However, we can demotivate other people. People who do not understand self and understand others inevitably, through ignorance, do things that demotivate other people. There is much more to be gained, however, reducing the likelihood of demotivating other people is, alone, a sufficient reason to understanding self and others.

Exercising self-control and influencing others to do the same is important because people react poorly to people who illustrate a lack of self-control. Sometimes, people are frustrated and demotivated by others’ lack of self-control. Other times, they are annoyed and angered. Either way, flight or fight, people do not do what bosses want them to do when bosses show them a lack of self-control. A business owner will not be able to influence behaviour in a constructive way if he or she lacks self-control.

Focusing on talents and strengths is important because everyone has talents and strengths and everyone has lack of talent and weakness in other areas. The greater the talents and strengths in one area the greater the lack of talent and weakness in other areas. Business owners succeed when they obtain the help of talented, strong performers. They have greater success when they put energy to best use by allowing people to unleash performance with their strengths. They have even greater success when they don’t waste energy forcing people to perform against their weaknesses.

Planning the work and working the plan is important because it allows the business owner to illustrate cause and effect. Repeated cycles of cause-and-effect confirm the repeatability of the work done at the business. The greater the repeatability the greater the value in the business. Also, the greater the repeatability the greater the scalability…the simpler the training…etc. One Hit Wonders do not have much resale value. Businesses that can illustrate a successful, sustained track record do.

Making errors and learning from those errors is important because (1) making errors proves you are innovative and (2) learning from your errors proves you are open-minded and change-tolerant. School of Hard Knocks education is of great value. Innovation is fundamental to surviving and thriving. Adaptation is the route to sustainability.

Achieving small successes and converting them into larger successes is important because it proves an understanding of leverage and the ability to take advantage of leverage. At Spirited Leaders, we have a philosophy – task-multiing is better than multi-tasking. Task-multiing is all about leverage, scalability, institutionalizing, efficiency and effectiveness…all excellent value-injection processes.

Communicating in magnetic ways is important because poor communication wastes and negates energy by distracting people from the business’s goals while magnetic communication injects a booster shot of energy and solidifies self-motivation. Magnetic communication engages and empowers. Magnetic communication is simple, clear, and laced with energy and enthusiasm…forward-driving enthusiasm. Magnetic communication is the key to the right business culture.

Continuously driving to deliver value to other people is important because it energizes people by providing quality shareholder experiences, quality employment experiences, quality purchasing and payment experiences, quality sales and collection experiences and all of these quality experiences are taken home to families at the end of the workday. Quality experiences spread. Quality experiences are contagious.

All of these things build value into business. The value exists in the people who perform the work and in the processes that help people perform the work.

First posted December 2, 2013