Picture this: It's 7 PM on a Thursday night. You're still at your desk, buried under a mountain of emails, invoices, and customer inquiries. The rest of the office is empty, but you're stuck there, feeling like you're barely keeping your head above water. Sound familiar? If you're nodding your head, you're not alone. This scenario is all too common for entrepreneurs and small business owners who find themselves caught in the never-ending cycle of working in their business rather than on it.

How to Overcome Indecisiveness

In my last article, I shared numerous examples of indecisiveness and where it affects us. While overcoming indecisiveness can be challenging, with consistent effort and the right strategies, you can learn to make decisions more confidently.

Clarify Your Values and Priorities: When you're clear about what matters most to you, it becomes easier to make decisions that align with your values. Take some time to reflect on your goals, values, and long-term priorities.

Indecisiveness Is Everywhere

Sarah had always been passionate about two things: writing and healthcare. She had a talent for crafting compelling stories, but she also had a deep interest in helping others through healthcare. After high school, she found herself torn between pursuing a degree in journalism or nursing. She spent years going back and forth, unable to decide.

In the end, she tried to combine her interests by becoming a health journalist. However, her indecisiveness had caused her to miss out on valuable learning opportunities, and she always wondered what might have happened if she had fully committed to either path. She struggled to establish herself as a writer in the competitive world of journalism and couldn't shake the feeling that she had squandered her potential.

How to Manage Your Business' Biggest Asset

Businesses have many assets. These could be physical (buildings, inventory, computers), intellectual (trademarks and patents) or financial (cash and equivalents, marketable securities).

But the greatest asset that every company has, hands down, is its people, also known as human capital.

The better a company does at managing its human capital and keeping its people happy and productive, the more successful the company will be.

Managing human capital effectively involves creating an environment where employees can thrive, reach their full potential, and feel motivated and satisfied.

7 steps toward a successful presentation

We have all attended great presentations that left us wanting more. And then there were the ones that gave us the itch to get up or log out. Oftentimes, the difference between the two talks has nothing to do with the presenter’s experience or content knowledge. Rather, it came down to knowing their audiences and finding ways to connect with them early and often.

When NOT to Delegate

As valuable as delegation can be, there are times where it’s simply not advisable. The following list presents when it’s better to not delegate but rather keep the project for yourself:

The task has not been fully thought through – If you aren’t able to explain the task and its goals in concrete terms, then you have more work to do before handing it off to someone else to accomplish.
The project must be done in a specific way – In some situations, such as an intricate project that you developed and possess intimate knowledge of, delegation may create more problems than benefits.
It takes more time for explain what to do than to just do it yourself – This assumes that this is a one-off project that just needs to be done and taken off the list. A recurring project or one that will provide opportunity for meaningful subordinate development should not be included in this list.
When you really enjoy doing it – There’s nothing wrong with doing some things that can be taken over by others but still provide you with a positive burst of motivation or excitement, such as greeting students and parents in carpool. But learn to limit these so that you can ensure that you’re still doing the work that you really need to be doing.

How to Decide What to Delegate

In our last post on delegation, we focused on situational leadership and how it impacts the role a leader plays in transferring work and responsibility to others. In this post the focus will shift to when one should delegate, and when one shouldn’t.

Choosing tasks to delegate can be trickier than it seems. There are some tasks, such as high-risk or crisis-related activities, that leaders should never delegate. Other responsibilities, including those that will be performed once or rarely and require much guidance and direction, should also not be included.

To determine when delegation is most appropriate, consider these key questions:

Is this a task that someone else can do, or is it critical that you do it yourself?
Is there someone else who has (or can be given) the necessary information or expertise to complete the task?
Does the task provide an opportunity to grow and develop another person's skills?
Is this a task that will recur with some frequency, in a similar form, in the future?
Do you have enough time to delegate the job effectively and stay on top of things? Time must be available for adequate training, for questions and answers, to check in on progress, and to re-imagine/rework when necessary.

business, coachingNaphtali HoffSeptember 26, 2018Impactful Coaching & Consultingdelegation, business, management, leadership, empowerment, strategiesComment

Educational Insights from the Business World

Without question, there are several significant differences between the roles and goals of educators and those the ply their trade in the business world. Perhaps most significant is how the two groups measure success.

Educators are focused primarily on student learning and development. To them, a healthy fiscal bottom line is a means through which they can achieve their goals, not an end to itself. Businesspeople, in contrast, are mainly interested in developing successful, profitable enterprises. Learning and development are viewed as necessary to help businesses and their people grow, but do not constitute a primary objective for most businesses.

The fundamental difference of purpose that separates schools from businesses often lends members of each camp to think that there is little to be learned from the other. This, in my view, is particularly true for educators. As a former teacher and principal, I felt a fundamental disconnect from what was occurring in the for-profit world. Many of my peers and colleagues expressed similar sentiment. Any time that I heard of some lay leader or governmental initiative to make schools more like businesses, I became suspicious. “What do they know about education anyway?”, I would ask.

business, education, leadershipNaphtali HoffSeptember 12, 2018Impactful Coaching & Consultingeducation, business, insights, leadershipComment

Learn to measure, measure, measure 📏

My eyes can deceive me quite a bit.

Over the past two months, I have embarked in some house-related projects. One was to redo our front walk. The other was to level the area underneath an over-ground pool.

Because my home 🏡 is on a hill, an optical illusion is created that makes flat surfaces appear sloped.

When I saw our completed walk, something just didn’t look right.

And after adding substantial top soil to one end of the pool 🤽 site to even things out and prevent water for building on one end, it still seemed uneven.

However, when I used a level 📐 (a tool that indicates how flat a surface is), I saw that the surface is in fact flat.

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