In the last article of Tips In Ten I started talking about how to make faster decisions and I gave you 2 tools to help: I introduced you to a mindset that will empower you to make faster decisions and I showed you how you can restate decisions (or problems) in order to crystallize your thinking and explore the decision more fully before you move forward.

In this article of Tips In Ten, I’m giving you one more tool that is really useful to take the things that you thought about in the last tool and to help you sort them down into what is likely going to be the best decision.

Again, I offer up the same disclaimer that I gave you in the last issue: Make sure that the time you spend on decisions is relative to the importance of the decision. These tools can make decision-making faster (and it often can be sped up) but that doesn’t mean that every decision should take ten minutes. Some will take ten seconds, some will take ten minutes, and some need to take ten days… or more. Ideally, these tools will help you speed up the time it takes to reach a good decision, but they will never accelerate all decision-making to ten minutes.
Here is the third tool to help you make better decisions:

Tool #3: Table of Elements

When you are faced with a decision and you’re trying to weigh between 2 or more choices (especially after you’ve restated them and come up with even more choices!) this tool will help.

Start by creating several columns. The number of columns you create will depend on the type of decision you have to make and I’ve used as many as 10 or 12 columns and you might end up needing more.

In the left-most column, write down each of your choices (which you created in tool #2). I’ll work through an example to demonstrate. Let’s say that I’m trying to decide between 3 products that I’d like to develop to sell. So I write down my 3 product ideas in the left column.

Then, in the columns to the right, write down different elements that make up or influence the action if you were to act on that choice. You’re just trying to come up with factors that might sway your decision one way or the other. Sometimes it will include the amount of effort involved or the convenience it offers or the potential return.

For example, if you were exploring the creation of a few different products to sell, you might have columns for:

• Up-front development cost
• Time to completion
• Size of market

… just to name a few. (I’ll just use these 3 factors as an example, but you’ll probably want to think of more. Price of product, profitability of product, and relevance to current clientele come to mind as additional factors to include).

To give you another example, if you were thinking about buying a house but couldn’t decide between 10 different houses, you’d write down each house in the left column and then write down elements that would influence the decision in the right columns. For example, you might include:

• Proximity to schools for the kids
• •Ease of access to route to work
• Amount of work required to fix house
• Price of house

… and so on.

Makes sense so far? You’ve got a chart with your choices in one column and influencing factors along the top row.

Now, here’s where the tool becomes really useful: For each influencing factor, reverse rank all of your choices in that column. If you have 10 choices, rank them 10 (the best) to 1 (the worst). If you have 19 choices, rank them 19 (the best) to 1 (the worst).

Back to our example: We reverse rank each product idea based on the up-front development time. Since there are 3 products, our ranking is 3-1, with 3 being the best and 1 being worst. We decide that product one will be really affordable to development, product three will be average, and product two will be expensive to develop. So we reverse rank our choices like this:

Now do the same for each column.

In our example, we reverse rank the time to completion. Product two will be really slow. Product one and three are going to be fairly quick but we decide that product three would be the quickest. So we rank them like this:

See how easy this is? Last, we rank the size of the market. It turns out, product two has the biggest market, product one has a medium-sized market, and product three has a tiny market. So we reverse rank them like this…

Now that we’ve done all the ranking, we simply add up the columns. The highest numbered choice will be the most likely choice while the lowest-numbered column will be the least likely choice.

In our chart, we add up the three columns in the product one row to get 7, we add up the three columns in the product two row to get 5, and we add up the three columns in the product three row to get six.

So, we’ll likely go ahead with product one since it has the highest score.

“But Heather…”

Now, there are a few “buts” that some of you might have, so let me address them below:

“But Heather, one influencing factor might be far more important than another influencing factor.”

That is true but my purpose here isn’t to give you a tool that gives you THE answer. That’s your job. The purpose of these tools is to help you think through your decisions quickly and easily so that you’ll feel fully informed (or, as informed as possible) so you can act. You’re still the one making the decision and maybe (using the example above) you might decide that product two’s market size is the most compelling and important factor and therefore you choose product two based on that decision. The tool didn’t fail; it still worked to help you sort through what you feel are the most important and least important factors and it forced you to consider at the very end what was the most critical factor in your mind.

“But Heather, I have a hundred different choices and I’ll be at this all day.”

That does happen. I’ve found it easier to handle up to about 20 to 25 choices maximum. To solve an over-abundance of choice, you might want to consider grouping a few of them. Or, you might consider performing this chart tool in a two stage format with some really simple influencing factors to quickly sort down from 100 to 25 and then once you have a more manageable number, you can apply a more complex version with a full set of influencing factors.

“But Heather, I have several choices and when I added up the rows, a few of them were tied.”

This happens sometimes. I don’t mind it when it does because it means that I’m not making a decision for nothing: I have to really think through something if several choices seem equal to me. When that happens, I introduce more influencing factors and/or, I put it aside for the day and come back to it tomorrow. Both of those help me to think a little deeper about the decisions.

What comes next?

I’ve shown you how to adopt a decisive mindset that realizes you can’t be perfect but you still need to take action. And, I’ve shown you how to crystallize your thinking when it comes to stating your decisions and understanding what they are really about. And then, I gave you a tool so you can rank your choices based on important factors.

These are going to be useless if they don’t compel you to action. Using the things you’ve learned here, adopt a “get it done” policy where you make a decision in as short a time as possible, trust yourself to have made a good decision, and then move forward in confidence.

At this point, you can use any number of great project management and time management tools to act on the decision you’ve made.

Decisions can be easier, faster, and more enjoyable to make when we trust ourselves and have the right tools at our disposal.

Related posts:

1. Ten Minutes to Faster Decisions – Part 1
2. Make Bookkeeping Faster & Easier in Less Than 10 Minutes a Day!
3. Become A Fortune Teller in Just 10 Minutes – Part 2

But it’s easier said than done! Choices aren’t always clear, which fogs up our ability to decide intelligently, and then that delays our ability to act (at all, let alone act in the right way).

In this article of Tips In Ten and in the next one, I want to talk about how to make faster decisions and I’ll give you some tools to do that better. One “tool” is a series of mindsets that you need to adopt if you’re going to make faster decisions and then I’m going to give you 2 tools to transform decision making into a fast, accurate path to success. I’ll give you two tools (plus examples) in this issue and one more tool (plus examples) in the next article.

And I should also say this as a type of disclaimer before we get too far into the issue: The length of time you take to make decisions should correlate to the importance of the decision. So if you take ten minutes to sell all of your belongings and move to Antarctica, I don’t want you emailing me later to complain. Let’s say that, in general, many of your business decisions can be made in less time than you’re normally taking, and that you can probably make a lot of them in ten minutes or less.

Tool #1: A mindset for better decision-making skills

The first “mindset” tool isn’t a “do-this-in-10-minutes” thing. It’s something you need to embed as a way of thinking and when you do that, the use of the 2 other tools will take ten minutes (or so).

I would define decisions as our personal commitment to act after weighing a choice. Because of that decisions don’t always get made because we either can’t easily weigh a choice or because we are reluctant to act. So, the first “tool” I want to introduce you to is a mindset of decisiveness. Commit to make decisions with the following qualities:

• Quickly: It is possible to make decisions quickly. To do so means that you trust yourself and you are willing to act on the best information you have available to you at the moment. Make it a time-limited to-do on your schedule when it comes time to decide on something. Don’t just add into your schedule “think about topic for my Chamber of Commerce speech”; instead, make your to-do something like: “Decide on a topic for my Chamber of Commerce speech” and limit it to ten minutes. That’s a huge difference and you will notice the difference.

• Fairly Accurate: We live in an age where accuracy seems important. But it really isn’t as important as we think it is. The decisions you make don’t need to be 100% perfect and they don’t need to be based on the full picture. This is where the sayings “analysis paralysis” and “a good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.” Instead, the decisions you make need to be based on sound information and should be generally in the right direction but don’t have to be perfect. You won’t be far off course if you are off course at all, and most things we do can be easily adjusted. Adopt this quality and you’ll find it freeing to make far more decisions quickly.

• Actionable: Decisions get cloudy when we forget to assign an action. We think about things. Then we think about them some more. But we don’t always act and that makes the decision unclear and it feels like it’s never complete. Solve this by assigning an action to every decision you make.

• Mitigation: Even though we don’t have to be perfect doesn’t mean that we can ignore the consequences. Instead of trying to come up with a perfect plan, you’ll make faster decisions if you develop a good plan and recognize and mitigate potential consequences.

• Trust intuition/Don’t fear failure: Your intuition is an underappreciated muscle that needs to be developed and trusted. It won’t always be right but if you accept that some failures will happen and you follow your intuition anyway, you’ll discover that it is right more often than it is wrong.

• No regrets: Regret will slow you down and the fear of regret will keep you from making and acting on decisions. Once you’ve made your decision, blaze ahead, accept the consequences, and work hard.

That is the fast decision-making mindset you need to adopt. Once you’ve adopted it, you’ll find that your decisions will be made much faster. But to make them even faster, I’ll show you 2 more tools to use:

Tool #2: Restate the problem or decision

This seems overly simple but you will be surprised at how powerful it is. When you have a decision to make, sit down and restate it in 3 or 4 ways. It might feel redundant and when you’re done you’ll wonder why you made a list of what amounts to synonyms, but your decision-making muscle will appreciate it.

By restating your problem or decision in different ways, you are unlocking yourself from one way of thinking. You are forcing yourself to reframe the problem from a different perspective and one or more of those restated phrases might be enough to inspire a solution.

I’m going to give you 2 examples: One in which the decision is already clear and one in which you have a problem and you know you have some thinking to do but the decisions themselves aren’t clear yet.

Example 1 (a clear decision): Let’s say that you find yourself with some spare time in your work schedule and you have a choice to make between two options: You might write your initial decision like this: “Should I take on more clients or spend my extra time writing a book to be published?”

From here, you would restate your problem in a few ways. For example, you might restate your problem like this:

“Should I increase my client base or should I write an ebook?”
“Should I hire out more of my coaching time to existing clients or should I focus instead on passive income?”
“Should I work indepth with a segment of my clients or should I develop another product or service to sell?”

Do you see the value of doing this? You are breaking your thinking, which was either more new clients or a book, and instead considering other possibilities. In cases like this, where I know the distinct choices in a decision, I will not even bother writing them out in a sentence as I’ve done here. Instead, I’ll write each choice into a column (so I’d have 2 columns here, but I have done this with more complex choices and had 5 or 6 columns because there were 5 or 6 choices in the decision). Then, I write down synonyms and related ideas for every choice. At the end, I’ve got a whole bunch of potential ideas and can start making my choice having fully explored the options.

You can do that if you want, and it’s a useful way to organize your thoughts, but you don’t have to. It works just as well to use sentences as I’ve done in the initial example.

Example 2 (unclear decision): Sometimes a decision isn’t as clear as two (or 3 or 4 or 5 or 6) choices. Sometimes you have some decisions to make but it’s in the form of a problem or single issue to be resolved. This method still works.
For example, let’s say that you want to meet more leads and you’ve been thinking about offering a seminar. But how do you get people to your seminar? What should your seminar be on? So you would start by writing: “I want to get more leads by offering a seminar at a local community center”. But then you can restate it in a few ways, generalizing or switching out some of the words for others:

“I want to meet more people by offering a hands-on workshop at a local gathering place.”
“I want to network with potential customers by being at a meeting in a nearby business event.”
“I want to connect with people who might eventually buy from me by delivering a speech at a trade show.”

Suddenly, one problem, which contained a few decisions, becomes clearer while new opportunities surface. You might consider different locations (like a trade show or a business networking event) and you might consider different methods of communicating rather than a seminar.

This method will help to crystallize a decision and make it even clearer. And often, you might end up with more decisions than you first realized. That’s not a problem because doing this will help you to mitigate any problems and erase any regret that you might feel in the future. And, in the next article of Tips In Ten, I’ll give you an additional tool to make decisions even faster.

Related posts:

1. Ten Minutes to Faster Decisions – Part 2
2. Make Bookkeeping Faster & Easier in Less Than 10 Minutes a Day!
3. An Innovation Mindset – “Should you listen to your customers?” Continued

Once again, I’m taking one of the branches of the Social Media mindmap from MindMeister and sharing some of my thoughts and best practices on it.

This week’s topic is Location Sharing and the mindmap shares the 4 big location sharing sites: BrightKite, Foursquare, Gowalla, and Loopt.

We shouldn’t be surprised that this is where the web is now. The world just spent a decade with the “Gee-whiz, we can talk to people in Uzbekistan” mindset. We stretched our business wings and reached out to a worldwide market. That’s fine, but then we started to wake up to the fact that when we need a plumber or electrician, we don’t want one from Uzbekistan – we want one near us. The local web trend was born and 2010 (and beyond) is going to see a boom in local web marketing.

Preceding the local trend is the trend toward the social web: Sharing and building a community. So when you combine those two concepts together – social plus local – we shouldn’t be surprised that we get location sharing.

Now, before I jump into some tips, let me mention some of the things that I don’t like about location sharing:

1. First, I have some concerns about security and privacy. I’m not thrilled by the fact that people know when I’m not at home.
2. Second, I’m not sure that every business will benefit from location sharing to the same degree. I think it’s a really fun personal connection point but a business that deals with international clients won’t benefit by telling its clients that they are at Randall’s Bakery on 24th Street.

But, if you have a local clientele, and if your concerns about home security are abated (because you have a big dog or an alarm system or whatever) then share your location!

Here’s what I recommend for great location sharing:

• Personally, I like and use Foursquare and I think it’s the best one of the four location sharing sites. (Disclaimer: I’ve reviewed all four but chose Foursquare because I liked its simplicity and its familiar Twitter-like interface. I also think businesses are really buying into Foursquare more than the others.)

• Tie your check-ins into your Twitter stream to broaden the benefit.

• Use the location sharing device for what it’s meant for: It’s not just to tell people where you are but to share with your community what you like (i.e. “Get the triple-glazed doughnut at Randall’s Bakery”).

• If you have a community of active, local clients, use your location sharing as a way to invite people to stop by and say hello. But recognize that your clients (depending on what they do) may not be as location independent as you are.

• Don’t broadcast your location if you don’t want other people to stop by. For example, if you’re meeting a coaching client at Starbucks, keep the meeting private or else your client might become embarrassed by the parade of people who stop in and say hello to you.

Location sharing is fun, but it’s also new. I think there are some bugs to work out and it needs to be more broadly adopted before it becomes more useful.

Good luck trying this new technique out!

Related posts:

1. Is Foursquare the Next Twitter?
2. “What Should I Do?” – Content Sharing
3. “What Should I Do?” – Promotion

Confessions of a Twitter Virgin – I tweet, you tweet and we all tweet. Or do we? Ali has many great points on how twitter can expand your business potential. However, the best practice is humanness first, business second. As Ali found out, Twitter can not only help with business it can also help on the personal side.

Tips on Persuading Effectively – Persuasion vs. Manipulation do they both mean the same? Many may think they are closely related. The two differ in many ways. This is a great read with some pertinent tips on how to better your persuasive skills.

What I Learned From My Broadband Blackout – Christine has the right mindset here. In today’s high tech world more often than not we forget to unplug. Even if it’s only for a few minutes each day it’s a must for everyone. What a great story!

Is That Client Legit or Just a Tire Kicker? – Don’t waste your time with clients who are not serious. When anyone starts a new business they welcome all potential clients. Why not? You need the work right? Don’t fall into the shopper trap. You will find some really good points on how to keep the tire kickers at bay.

Remembering How to Relax – Leaving work behind can be tough at times. . How effective can you truly be if you’re tired, stressed and your family is not speaking to you? Just one of the many great points in this read. I recommend this to everyone, not just business owners.

010 Virtual Assistant Podcast – Tech Tools For Collaboration Part 4 – If you’ve read most of my blog posts then you know I’m all about outsourcing and using virtual assistants.  If you’re looking to hire a VA or have ever just thought about it, I highly recommend these podcasts. Cliff continues to provide some great insight in the client side of this growing industry.

Catching Lightning Bugs – Laurie puts a fun twist on how to look at marketing. We all differ on our view that’s human nature. Her main point here is simplifying the way you interpret things. I have my jar ready, how about you?

There was a lot of good reads this week. Be sure the check out HeatherVilla StumbleUpon for a full list of my favorites.

Have a great weekend and don’t get sunburned at the beach!

Related posts:

1. Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 11/13/09
2. Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 5/21/10
3. Weekend Reading: My fav’s from this week: 7/16/10

In a recent blog, The Three Natural Phases of Successful Small Business Growth, Jantsch talks about the 3 phases that he sees small businesses progress through.

The first phase is foundation, the second phase is growth, the third stage is momentum. Jantsch describes each phase and encourages readers to identify where they are.

To recap (and to add on to what Jantsch has said):

• Foundation is the early start-up phase where entrepreneurs start their business and work through all of the initial stage work, like creating systems and developing the business plan. In this stage, the business owner is often working solo and the work, although thrilling, might not be extremely profitable.

• Growth is the next phase where the business moves from a solopreneur who runs it all into a revenue-producing machine that probably includes additional staff and refined products or services. Jantsch wisely says that businesses feel the pull to add new markets and products but the better choice here is to narrow your markets and focus.

• Momentum is the third stage and businesses owners who achieve this stage hit a “zen” stage in which they just keep doing the smart, profitable things again and again to consistently build a strong business. But this stage is so easy to fall out of that mindset and it needs to be carefully cultivated and nurtured to be successful. Jantsch also says that this is a stage when other businesses want to partner and align with you.

Jantsch’s blog is so relevant to the work I’ve done and it mirrors closely the clients I’ve worked with over the years as well as the businesses I’ve been involved with.

As a consultant, I’ve helped businesses jump into that Foundation stage. As the owner of IAC Professionals, my staff helps businesses (often those in the growth stage, run by entrepreneurs who need to delegate in order to grow).

If you’re a small business owner looking for the next step in your business, you should consider where you are in this spectrum and how you can advance your business to the next level.

Until next time!

Related posts:

1. When Business Growth is Bad – Part 3
2. When Business Growth is Bad – Part 1
3. These People Will Destroy Your Business

So, how does a business get from “survive” to “thrive”? I suggest that the clue is in the title: Are you managing? Or managing? Yes, it sounds strange so let me explain:

Are you managing your business like the captain of a ship, directing this, automating that, delegating the other? Or, are you barely managing to get your work done each day, hoping that tomorrow will be different but not really sure how? That is the ultimate difference between thriving (the former type of managing) and merely surviving (the latter type of managing).

There is a huge difference, not just in activity but in mindset. All too often, the mindset is (unconsciously) one of survival: Business owners take on all the tasks, working a bit here and a bit there on everything, and hoping that they can keep it all together. They are pulled from one situation to the next. I think it’s a lot like juggling knives: Once the knives are in the air you don’t want to stop juggling for fear that the sudden change in rhythm will cut! Unfortunately, this is a very reactive mindset because business owners will spend too much of their time putting out fires and answering to issues. Yes, they will have some glimmering moments when the job is humming along nicely, but most of the time it feels like a frantic pace.

The “thriving” mindset is one that business owners should strive for. It’s a challenge and not all entrepreneurs will reach this “Nirvana” of business-thinking. It starts with the idea that you need to let go of quite a bit of the effort that you’re hanging on to. Rather than trying to do it all at once, the thriving mindset does this:

1. Identify the most important actions. (Hint, they’re not ALL important)
2. Identify the rest of your activities.
3. Create ways to automate as much as possible.
4. Focus your efforts on the actions you listed in step 1.
5. Delegate, revise, or stop doing the activities in step 2.

In presenting this idea to business owners, they usually come up with a few objections. I’ve listed those objections below with my counterpoints:

• Objection: “Everything I do IS important!” My response: No, it’s not. Everything you do feels important but it really isn’t important. What is truly important is: First, dreaming great things for your company; and second, bringing in new prospects, turning them into customers, and repeating that process over and over. The dreaming/visioning effort is something that is solely yours and cannot be delegated. The sales funnel effort is yours to think about and modify but the actual activities can be automated and delegated.

• Objection: “I don’t have the money to invest in automation.” My response: Automation is a convenient word but doesn’t necessarily mean that it all runs without any input from you. A checklist for a series of common tasks is a good example of “automation” that doesn’t require a lot of investment. Templates for emails and letters is another great example of “automation”. One professional I know uses an assistant to select 10 qualified leads from the hundreds of semi-qualified ones and he contacts those leads and closes 4 – 5 of them. Because he’s not spending his time qualifying and then closing, he can focus on closing and his close rate has increased dramatically.

• Objection: “You’re suggesting that I STOP doing my non-essential activities?” My response: Try it. You might be surprised. This was a sticking point for me early in my career but someone advised me to test it and see if my ignoring certain activities had any impact. In most cases, it did not and I eliminated them entirely, freeing up so much of my time.

The captain of a large ship nicely illustrates the “thriving” mindset. The captain is able to maneuver his or her ship through water (sometimes wide open oceans, sometimes shallow and rocky narrows) but rarely does the captain actually do the work. The captain oversees the effort, directing, advising, and relying on his or her expertise to make changes, but trusts staff and automated effort to act in order to bring the vision to reality.

That is the thriving mindset – the mindset of someone who is expertly managing his or her business.

So, are you managing? Or are you just managing?

Good Luck!

Related posts:

1. Creating and Managing a Marketing Plan

We laughed, of course, because no one really loves to do that kind of stuff. But it needs to get done and we know that putting away the leftovers and loading the dishwasher will take just a few minutes and will give us the entire evening to visit. And we can envision the annoyance if we didn’t do it now… later in the evening when we’re relaxed, NOBODY is going to want to load the dishwasher.

There’s some truth to that in project management. Actually, in all aspects of business. If you need to do a project (or sell some product or prepare for a conference or build a website or generate leads) then do the hardest thing first.

Do the hardest thing first. That’s it. It’s not a pleasant way to start the project. But it gets that part out of the way and gets the ball rolling. It also generates a certain amount of critical mass which is an important element in project management.

There’s a similar concept in sales. If your conversion rate is 10%, then you have to hear nine “no’s” before you hear that tenth reply “yes”. Salespeople who adopt that mindset don’t find “no” so troubling anymore because they count it as one of their nine and move on, expecting to get through eight more “no’s” before they are statistically likely to hear “yes”. In a sense, that “no” becomes a goal. It’s similar to the concept of doing the hardest thing first because it sets up the rest of the project for enjoyable success.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I would warn you: Choosing to do the easy and fun part of the project first and leaving the more difficult parts to the end is one type of problem that this advice is meant to overcome. But it can cause procrastination. After all, if we’re already reluctant to start a project, we may be even more reluctant to start by doing the worst part!

So it might seem like you’re trading one challenge for another. And in some projects, it’s simply not practical to do the hardest thing first (because, for example, there might be other steps that are required prior to that hardest part). But if you can fight procrastination, do the hardest thing first and the rest of the project will feel like a dream.

Related posts:

1. The P Word
2. Project management skills to make the holiday season better

Ford states it well and if I were to restate what he said I would put it a little more bluntly: the customer doesn’t really know what they need. I mean that customers know they need a solution to their problem or a fulfillment to their desire but they will solve that need with the best available solution. Thus, if Henry Ford had listened to the market, he would have given them a faster horse because horses were the available solution for getting around.

But Ford knew that the real need the market was experiencing was the need for easier, faster, (and less smelly?) transportation.

The same goes for Edison, too. He could have stuck with candles because the marketplace thought they needed candles. But he knew that what they really needed was light.

So, when you are thinking about innovating new products or services, stop thinking about augmenting existing solutions because that is what your customer is asking for. Instead, think about what their REAL need is and then create a solution that meets that true need.

Innovation is the key to all products and thought processes alike,

Heather Villa

Related posts:

1. Should You Listen to Your Customers?
2. What’s stopping you?
3. A Great Innovation Strategy