Despite the amount of industry growth, margin erosion, and talent shortage, the DREAM of doing more of what you love is alive, and it's doing well. It simply takes time and patience to learn how to get it.



After spending over a year personally interviewing top performing CEOs, I found that leaders running energized growth companies ruthlessly ask three questions throughout the life of their busines:

* What are we PASSIONATE about?

* What can we be EXCELLENT at doing?

* How well does it fuel our ECONOMIC ENGINE—can we be paid well for it?

Jim Collins' "Good to Great" is a timeless guidebook that helps us focus on these questions. Peter Drucker inspired Jim. And Napoleon Hill probably inspired Peter with the results of his interviews of over 200 turn-of-the-century tycoons.

Let's fast forward to today. How often do you HONESTLY answer these questions? And how swiftly do you make needed changes to your company's growth strategy?

If you answered "seldom" or "never," you're not alone.

That's because it's easy for any entrepreneur to plan for growth. But few plan for energized growth. That is because services professionals and consultants share several common obstacles:

1. Saying "yes" to too many things. How many times have you been stuck in your office at midnight, working on some volunteer project, and missing another moment to enjoy their children? If this has happened to you, it is possible that obligation, guilt, and "should do" lists rule your life.

2. Discovering that former best selling products don't make money like they used to—yet they stay on the product list. Every month becomes a contest to see whether they will be profitable. This often leads to employees not knowing the behaviors and measures that drive profitable business. Therefore, non-selling employees cannot explain how their job ties to the financial success of the company!

3. Not knowing what ideas should be pursued. Every idea seems valid, and you may be equally excited by each one. Should you do them all at once or one at a time? Which ideas will pay off? Most over-committed entrepreneurs lack any feedback system to separate 'good ideas' from viable business models.

4. Having more tasks to do than hours in the day. They let themselves get distracted with every "ring" on their computer telling them another e-mail has come in. Other people's priorities rule their day, and many of them are not customers. These leaders typically say they are overwhelmed and exhausted.

5. Trading hours for dollars. Few founders have discovered the passive income route in their companies. Often, they think 'hours for dollars' is the only method to generate revenue.

Sometimes they stay in the 'hours for dollars' trap because they don't know how to command higher rates in their field and be viewed as an industry expert. Or, they are missing out entirely on a brand new opportunity to grow their business because they are heavily focused on product delivery. They do not have the mindset of an expert who surrounds herself with technicians and specialists. Four steps can help you avoid these strategic planning maladies...

Eliminate hidden roadblocks getting in the way of your growth. Develop a set of ruthlessly honest questions and share with your team. If they are well developed, they will reveal an area of your business that is DRAINING YOU of profits and opportunity. My five focused questions took me months to develop—and they work every time.

* Know your style, natural gifts, and blind spots as an entrepreneurial leader. Invest a few thousand dollars in personality assessments (such as PDP, MBTI and Predictive Index) for new hires and potential top performers. Have you ever measured the impact of one bad hire? Applying this strategy will cost a fraction of that hit to your bottom line.

* Develop a feedback system to ensure your company's "hedgehog" honors your financial and personal goals. If you are a private or family owned business, you answer to yourself and your family—not Wall Street. Hire an objective outsider to gather the feedback. Our 'built in' human filters block important information if you try doing this alone! Just look at the recent accusations directed at Vice President Dick Cheney by former high-ranking military officials for perpetuating "groupthink."

* Create a custom dashboard to communicate, guide and measure growth in your company—and focus more on what is of highest value to your employees and customers. If you are currently using only trailing indicators to lead your business, chances are you have made costly strategic choices in the past. Author and seasoned CEO Gary Sutton shares profitable growth wisdom in his newest book, "Corporate Canaries". A man of few (but powerful) words, he says "One of the three ways to kill your company is to have fuzzy direction. Even while Fortune and Business Week and all the others were naming Enron 'Company of the Year,' nobody could describe what they were doing. If you don't have two or three forward indicators, your controls are incomplete."

You can Energize Growth today in your company. Don't even wait to complete these four steps. Begin now by asking: "What habits do we need to succeed, and what questions will help us reinforce them?"

Clarity and focus can really be exciting. Build some new habits, and your life is guaranteed to look different.

copyright 2006, Lisa Nirell