Improve My Business

McDonald Consulting Group recently hosted students from Texas State University’s Job Shadowing program.  Here is a guest post from one of our interns, Osvaldo Hernandez - and the reason he was late this morning!
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Unfortunately this morning, I and surely countless other first timers traveling through Austin, have now experienced the dreadful amount of traffic that can accumulate on these major highways during the morning traffic hours. If most of your life you have stayed pretty locally to your small hometown and have never ventured too far off then traffic might not be something you would have to cope with on a daily basis. However, when indeed having to explore new terrain and neighboring vicinities, it is not until then that you run into these horrible time absorbing, stress producing things that they call traffic. However as unlucky as I was feeling this morning for being in such a situation, in which every car was touching bumper to bumper and time had also seemed to have come to a complete stop, I began to ponder on how I could have better prepared myself in order to prevent being stuck in this dreadful situation in the first place. Here are just a few thoughts that I had wished I thought of much earlier.

- A great way to help yourself wake up in the morning is to turn on some television. I am not entirely sure if it is just the human voices themselves that begin to wake up your mind or the little music combination with people trying to crack some cheesy jokes that eventually starts waking you up. However It would have made the biggest difference in the world if I had not only payed attention to that, but actually stopped for a second to find out what time the traffic news was going to come on and then see whether there were any traffic delays. I would have then seen that were a few car accidents on the highway which were making traffic back up all the way to San Marcos!

- Also while I was there stuck in the endless amount of traffic I got this vision of what my mother would probably tell me once I had talked to her about how this morning went. I could just imagine her scolding me and reminding me of the countless times she has already told me that in order to arrive anywhere on time you have to leave super early! Even when you are traveling most of the distance on highway because it never fails that something always holds you up when you are in a hurry. Next time I will do as she advised.

- Now with the great advancements in technology these days, smart phones are becoming almost a necessity for a human to own. Smart phones are literally a tiny mobile computer with wireless internet access that will fit in the palm of your hand. You can do everything from quickly sending and receiving important business emails, to chatting with a friend on your facebook online. One of the apps that come in handy is the GPS program that is common for every smart phone to be equipped with. With this application I would have simply pushed a few buttons and in no time would have been following a different route to the same original destination. However to my luck my smart phone at the time had decided to not function anymore which is also an emerging problem with these new smart phones, but that’s an entirely different topic.

So these are some great tips to hopefully combat the Austin morning traffic problem. What do you suggest?

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Thanks, Os!  And, if anyone knows of a good internship for a soph EE, contact me and we’ll put you in touch!  (If you know of a good internship for an IE, let me know that too…)

From Ron Edmonson, here are 5 reasons that delegation fails - enjoy!

5 reasons delegation often fails:

There was no accountability provided in the delegation process. When someone receives a project, they need to be given a timeline for completion. They need a system of follow up, measures of accomplishment or benchmarks towards completion. A predetermined win is clear and understood in healthy delegation.

The leader dumped instead of delegated. [He has] written about this previously, but if the leader had the responsibility to delegate the task, then he or she retains a level of responsibility to check in periodically with the delegate’s progress. There’s an element of partnership in a healthy delegation process, where the leader remains close enough to assure completion.

The delegate was not properly trained. Assuming someone knows how to do a task and can figure out their way on their own isn’t only naive it’s unfair. Questions need to be asked and information given on the front end to make sure the person has the ability to complete the task or the ability to learn along the way. This may involve the leader spending more time in the beginning phases of a task to ensure completion is attainable by the delegate.

Adequate resources were not in place. It’s difficult to expect someone to complete a task when the leader hasn’t given the proper tools for the job. Sometimes anxious leaders delegate a project too soon, before the team is ready, either in structure or in resources.

The wrong person was chosen for the task. Let’s face it. Not everyone is up to every task. Many times when delegation fails because the leader picked the wrong person for the job. Selecting the best person on the front end or reassigning when an improper fit is discovered is critical to assure completion of a task.

Technorati Tags: delegation, leadership, teamwork

as we approach the shortest day of the year (Dec 21), we notice that it’s dark so much longer - maybe going to work, or coming home, or both - and therefore it may be hard to be active.  Here are some quick tips to get you over the hump:

- Get enough sunlight.  Try and get outside during daylight hours - even for 5-10 minutes - to help you realize that there ARE daylight hours in the day!

- Keep energy levels up.  Exercise (yes, even if you have to ‘force’ yourself to do so) and also get enough sleep and eat right (don’t I sound like your mom now?)

- Plan activities during the evening.  If you sit in front of the TV or computer monitor all evening, every evening - do something different.  Instead of fast-forwarding through commercials, or mindlessly playing a Facebook game, get up for 2-3 mins and get something accomplished - throw in a load of laundry, unload the dishwasher, sort through mail, pay a few bills - whatever!  The point is to DO something.

- Socialize.  Spend time with friends (exercising, visiting, etc.) and connect to the world at large (and yes, this means outside of your facebook friends….)

- Relax and enjoy.  If you’ve had a particularly frantic year, perhaps this is the time you need to rejuvenate interest, relax and read a book, or simply take a walk or drive and enjoy the Christmas lights… and in turn, this time to ‘unplug’ may spark you to do something else!

What suggestions do YOU have to stay energized?

Focus on your customers and what they need.
That’s it.
You’re welcome.

Technorati Tags: Business, customers

If you follow McDonald Consulting Group on Facebook, you know that I’ve been on the road a TON lately – both around the country and around the world. I’ve been keeping a list of things I’ve learned that may help you in your business – even if you don’t plan on doing any traveling:

1) Research. Research where you are going, how you are going to get there, if the hotel has free shuttle service from the airport, how you find that shuttle – you get the idea.

In your business, this step is also key – know what you want to do, how you want to do it, what your alternatives are, what’s been tried (and worked, or failed) already, and why… the more you research, the better you’ll be prepared. This research can be external (what competitors are doing, how they are doing it, etc.) or internal (what is coming down the pipeline; what impact that will have in your area; what training is being requested by your organization; how this training will positively impact your group, what changes may need to be made as a result, etc.)

2) Hope for the best, but plan for the worst. In my travels, I carry one complete outfit in my carry-on bag if I’m checking luggage (and yes, when going to Asia for 3 weeks, I actually pack more than one bag so I have checked baggage…) so, in case I’m stranded, or my luggage goes on a better/different trip than I do, I have clean clothes for the next day (especially useful when doing business the next day…)

In your business, planning for the worst may be in the form of a disaster recovery plan – something that looks at contingencies for a variety of scenarios – from fire, to employee strike, to acts of God, to transportation strike.

It may also be how you determine your budget for next year (conservative estimate for sales, or raw materials costs, etc.) which may allow you to have a buffer or cushion in case your “rosy, optimistic” estimate is off-base.

3) Sometimes, even the best-laid plans go awry. Deal with it. I select my airline seats as soon as I book the flight – and check them a few times before day of departure to see if anything better has opened up. Yet, if the airline chooses to change planes to a different configuration, that extra-room or aisle seat that I thought I had may not be so. I used to fuss and fume about it mentally all during the flight [look at how little leg room I have! I can’t believe I have to sit in THIS seat!]; now I just realize that the flight, even if trans-pacific, is only 15 hrs max – and I can put up with anything for 15 hours…

Same thing goes for business. Business resilience is a learned skill – how an organization can bounce back quickly from a tough break (even if the break was of their own making, like defective product). If your organization seems to get side-tracked by the least little thing, let’s talk about how to develop resilience in your organization.

4) Entertainment makes the time go by quickly. I carry a personal entertainment device that has music, movies, and podcasts loaded on it. I have playlists that range from ‘sleep music’ to ‘mary’s mix’ to ‘upbeat’; and movies that range from chick flicks to murder mysteries to TV series. I can easily entertain myself if I have already seen all the movies that the airline is offering; and I typically have a book or two packed as well.

In business, I can tell the groups that spend a lot of time preparing information vs. the groups that don’t. As an example, I recently attended an all day session, where we had two ends of the spectrum presenting – from the “opening act”, who had jokes and jabs at audience members sprinkled through the presentation, to the dry presenter who was determined to do “manslaughter via PowerPoint” – hours of droning on, and on, and on… The ‘opening act’ had put some thought and effort into his slides to make them more interesting to the audience, while the other presenter simply made sure we had the info we needed.

How often do you simply ensure that folks have been told what they need to hear, instead of ensuring that they have also received the message? If you spend a little more time on the presentation to zing it up a bit, your audience will appreciate it!

What preparation tips do you have? Post a comment to share!