Far too much of our time is spent “thinking” about what we wish would happen.

Wasted thinking is called a lot of things: daydreaming, playing rich uncle or building castles in the air. Regardless, this kind of thinking is not productive and it sucks the life out of us. We get lost in our own heads. We do this as individuals, but organizations are just as guilty. Executive shelves are lined with dusty strategy binders. Very little fails in the realm of brainstorming, but far too often a brainstorming session dissipates into a fine mist when it comes time to implement. The real heavy lifting comes when it is time to make things happen (great title for a blog!). So whether individual or group thought is considered, here are 5 tips to stop daydreaming.

1. If you’re not willing to make it happen yourself, stop thinking about it.
2. Realize hope is not a strategy and that you’re the only one that can create a new reality.
3. Make plans: if you want your daydream to come true, then create a plan to make it happen.
4. Get outside input. Talk to someone who has done something similar for a sanity check.
5. Hold yourself accountable, create milestone and deadlines, and tell someone about them.

If you are leading an organization, here is a “bonus tip.” Spend as much time on how you will implement as you have on creating your strategy. This time will pay off in dramatic dividends.

No one is going to come by Saturday and clean the garage for you. Your biggest competitor is unlikely to just quit. If you want it to happen then go do it. Stop building castles in the sky.

We’ve all seen it happen. The more people in the room the less gets done. It’s one reason why we hate meetings.  The Ringelmann Effect or Social Loafing is the dynamic whereby the more people pulling on a rope the less each person pulls. Combined they create a greater pull than individually but no one person pulls as hard as if they were by themselves. We habitually count on others to take the load. While I don’t really care why this happens I think it’s worthwhile to know how to minimize the effect. Here’s a list of best practices for killing Social Loafing.

1. Hold people accountable. If you know they can do something, expect them to.
2. Give homework, confirm people know what is expected of them prior to a meeting.
3. Ask for status updates, don’t surprise people but require them to state their progress.
4. Force people to use straight talk, don’t tolerate mubo-jumbo.
5. Focus on outputs, outcomes and results. Inputs (hours, calls, visits) don’t matter.
6. Set clear expectations, employees can’t read your mind. Test them with good questions.
7. Reward employees based on team outcomes not only individual or company success.

Leadership will have to do a little more thinking to utilize these concepts but the effort will be rewarded with dramatically improved team performance. Kill the loafers!

• Organization
• Cleanliness
• Safety
• Compensation
• Communication
• Courtesy
• Timeliness

Some of these might look like more than hygiene factors but thats probably because  they are not being done well in your organization. Don’t get me wrong. You have to have these and be good at them but they are not what moves you forward. Don’t think that being really organized makes you a better business. Hygiene factors are merely the cost of admission. They are the bottom rung on the performance ladder. Similar to the 10 commandments. You’re nothing special if you don’t lie, steal or cheat. But if you are breaking the 10 commandments you’re pond scum (just look around). The real threat for most of us is not that we might smell bad it’s that we think we  are doing a great job when really all we are doing is the bare minimum.

1. Acquiring and Retaining Talent
2. Focused Action
3. Increasing Performance
4. Continual Improvement

You’ll notice that all four of these areas can be improved with out big capital investments but ignoring or going astray in any one of them can be costly. You might say, “well we don’t have an issue there” and that might be very true but the point is that all four of these areas should be on your radar. You don’t currently have a fire raging throughout your facility yet you have spent a lot of time and money preventing a fire. My point? Preventing a problem can be just as or more important than solving a problem. For example, it’s hard to create the reputation of a great company to work for/buy from/ partner with but once you’ve lost credibility it’s much harder to get it back. Just ask Toyota/Tiger/Obama etc..

The lay offs, pay cuts and changing job market last year will have a big effect on this year and the years that follow. There is likely to be a migration of the workforce that will rival the migrations of the blue wildebeest in East Africa. The wildebeest are seeking some thing new and so are employees. For many, the idea of loyalty has been revealed as a one way street.

More and more workers will look for better situations. Some will go to other companies. Some will start their own businesses and some will become contract employees that float from project oo project with little to no attachment to any one company. Finding and keeping good people will be like hunting for needles in a hay stack. Not only will the very act of finding the right people be difficult the hunt will cost precious resources that could have been spent on pushing the company forward.

How do you find and keep good employees?

Here is a list that will help:

1. Get rid of dead wood (good performers don’t like to be around losers).
2. Pay people for performance (whether it’s through commissions or another form people need to feel that their effort directly relates to their rewards).
3. Realize and act like people are more than tires. You shouldn’t use them until they are worn down and then get new ones!
4. Make sure that people are in the right jobs, as much as possible (the more they can utilize their talents the more fulfilled they will be).
5. Communicate about what is going on. Treating people like mushroom won’t work. You should test your perception of how well you have communicated. If they don’t “get it” you haven’t done your job.
6. Stick with your plan. Don’t give your team whiplash by changing your approach every 90 days. It’s good to make mid course corrections but swapping horses midstream get s old in a hurry.

Far too many reductions in workforce or other cut backs are a result of executive mistakes not employee failings.

Anyone can blame it one the economy but too many companies have done well in the last 12 months for workers to just accept the cut back and not go looking for greener grass some where else. Taking the steps to keep and develop your people will pay off in more ways than you can imagine.

Do you over swing? Do you spend a ton of time at work? Do you spend too much energy adapting? Do you spend more time than is helpful? I know it’s easy pickings to say “work smarter not harder” but as easy as that is to say sometimes it’s easier to just do the work. To just stay late. To just carry someone else’s slack. To blow off having that tough talk and continue to put up with their attitude. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not going to be easy to change my golf swing. It’s not going to be easy to do the smart things in your business or organization but if we don’t we’ll only continue to adapt to problems, striving to get back to acceptable instead of pushing through to excellent.

Whether you like the IPad or not the real question you should be asking your self is, “Am I this excited about what I do?”

Here’s more from the authors: In SWITCH, the Heaths show how everyday people — employees and managers, parents and nurses — have united both minds and, as a result, achieved dramatic results:

• The manager who transformed an ineffective support team into customer-service fanatics
• The college student who, with limited funding and no official authority, rallied a Caribbean island to save its national bird after scientists had written it off as doomed to extinction
• The Save the Children worker who improved the diets of malnourished Vietnamese children by first studying the “Bright Spot” children– those who were healthy against the odds

An inspiring and entertaining read, Switch shows that successful changes follow a pattern, a pattern you can use to make the changes that matter to you, whether your interest is in changing the world or changing your own waistline. What will you SWITCH?

• Take initiative
• Decide for themselves
• Resolve conflict
• Innovate
• Help a customer
• Solve a problem

Being the “Answer-man” is great for the ego but it will burn you out and nobody around you will grow. Your organization will never broaden beyond the reach of your own arms. It’s scary to depend on other people. That’s why it is so important to get really good at selecting the right people in the first place. Get the right people around you and your life and business will get a whole lot better. Unless of course you want to be stuck as a self licking ice cream cone.