07 May Evaluating Your Organizational Needs
Leader Versus Business Owner Versus Business Leader, Which One Are You?
Christopher Hart here with Transforming Lives Coaching and Consulting, coming to you with our next Lead Strong post where we focus on how to develop stronger leaders in any environment so that we can increase our influence and impact on ourselves, others and the world.
And so today’s video’s topic is about how to evaluate your organizational needs. Now when we talk about evaluating your organizational needs, there’s a couple of things that we want to keep in mind. First and foremost we understand that as leaders we must always be evaluating our organizational needs. What does our organization need? What is critical, vital and valuable to our mission accomplishment?
So when we talk about mission accomplishment we’re looking at a couple things.
Every organization, whether you’re a business, you’re a family, you’re a church, you’re a charitable organization, you must have at least two things, a vision, which is where you’re going, and a mission, how you’re going to do it. And within that mission I believe that you need goals, you need outcomes, you need to be result-focused, outcome-focused. And so when we’re evaluating our organization and the needs of where we’re trying to go and what we’re trying to accomplish first and foremost we need to keep those elements in mind like what do I need in order to achieve the outcomes that I’m looking for in my business this month, this quarter, this year, this half of the year, as well as long term? So organizational needs should always be evaluated in conjunction with your outcomes and results and goals, whatever you’re calling them, as well as your mission, your established mission for your business all pointing towards your vision of where you’re trying to go ultimately, and what you’re trying to accomplish.
So when we talk about organizational needs, what tends to happen is organizational leaders will look at it and say “Oh it’s people focused,” or “It’s technology focused,” or “It’s systems focused.” Well guess what? I believe all three of those are in play, you need to look at all three of those elements. You need to look at your organizational needs and evaluate organizational needs from the people perspective, from the systems perspective, as well as from a technology perspective, because quite frankly all the top businesses that are succeeding at a high level have all three of those elements in play. I mean all three of those elements quite frankly are leverage, they create the ability for us to do more, accomplish more, give more, produce more, et cetera. So we’re going to look at them from… or what I’m going to encourage you to do is to look at your organization and evaluate your needs. Listen to the content that you’re going to receive on this video from a people, systems, or technology standpoint. You may need all three, you may need elements thereof; but whichever ones you’re going to evaluate within your organization there’s three components that we must break it down to.
And here’s the first one: The very first one is vital. What is vital to your outcomes, goals and mission. The next is critical. What is critical to your outcomes, goals and mission.
And then the third one is valuable.
So let’s look at the definitions of two of the three words, critical and vital, and here’s why, because I believe if you don’t fully understand the definition of elements of words that you’re going to use you don’t really know what you’re doing, and as a leader when you don’t know what you’re doing that tends to lead to failures. And when I say failures I’m talking about the ones where they don’t really provide opportunities to grow because you’re not really understanding what you’re dealing with.
So definitions.
First one we’ll look at is vital, because when you look at vital think of it in the way of like your vital signs. You go to the doctor, you’re not feeling good, or maybe go to the emergency room they’re going to take your vital signs because the vital signs are going to tell you something. They’re going to tell you the vitality of your health. Is there a concern or are you in good shape just from vital signs and we can deal with the injury or disease. And so when you evaluate your organization from a vital component these elements will tell you the vitality of your business, the health, like which direction are you going in.
And so when we look at vital and the definition, vital is defined as ‘something that is absolutely necessary or essential.’ So when we look at vital needs of our organization we have to look at it from a perspective of what is absolutely necessary or essential to our goals, outcomes, mission, and vision of our organization, meaning if this is in place it’s absolutely necessary …or it’s absolutely necessary or essential that we have it, and if it’s in place great, the health of our organization moving forward in the direction of our goals, outcomes and mission and vision it’s going to significantly improve, we’re healthy. If it’s missing there’s a chance that we’re going in the wrong direction. So vital is something that’s absolutely necessary or essential.
The next one is critical. Now critical is defined as ‘of or relating to or being a turning point or specially important juncture.’ Let’s break it down real simple: A turning point, something relating to a turning point, something in your business whether it’s people, it’s systems, or it’s technology and tools that’s critical to your business because that’s going to… that’s going to cause a turning point. And if we have it, if we’re able to implement it in the manner in which we want to implement it it’s going to create a positive turning point that’s going to thrust us towards our goals. And if we miss it and we don’t incorporate it into our business it’s going to be a turning point in the wrong direction, our organization could potentially go in the wrong direction.
So we have vital that is something that’s absolutely necessary and essential; and then we have critical which is something relating to or being a turning point in our organization.
And then the third one is valuable needs. So we have vital needs, we have critical needs, and then we have valuable needs. What’s valuable to our organization? Like hey you know what, like if we had this person, if we had this system, if we had this technology or tool that would be really valuable to our organization, and oh by the way, like if we didn’t have it like it’s not going to make that big of a difference, it’s not going to cause a turning point and it’s not going to determine the vitality of our organization or the health of our organization.
So when we look at it, like look at your business and say “What is absolutely vital to the health of my organization?” Some of the sales businesses out there what’s happening, especially in the real estate business, what I’m seeing is we create these new models for businesses and then we promote them from a stage or a Facebook group or a coaching program, and then everybody runs out there …not everybody but a majority of people are “I’m going to implement an ISA to my organization.” Well you may not even have systems in place like vital systems in place to support someone who’s going to go bring in a whole bunch of appointments to your real estate business. Like your ISA to your business might be valuable right now but what’s actually vital is systematic processes like proven systematic processes that you’ve defined works for your business that done repeatedly and duplicated and repeated over time will tell you if you do this you get that result.
And so what tends to happen with organizational leaders is we’ll put the cart before the horse per se, we’ll put …we’ll look to implement a valuable need in our business before we put vital needs, or maybe even critical needs before vital needs. And so what you may find right, let’s stay on the same theme of real estate businesses, you may find that you start out as a real estate agent and you progress and what starts to become absolutely vital to your business which is essential, absolutely essential, is that first administrative individual that can handle all the administrative tasks, take those tasks that are the non-dollar producing tasks off your plate so you can buy yourself some more time to focus on more dollar-producing tasks so you can increase your business’s production.
So that’s vital, and what tends to happen you see what a lot of real estate agents is they want to increase their production, what do they do? They go and hire a buyer agent, “Oh yeah that’s more production… Well I don’t want to do more production so I’m going to go hire a buyer agent,” and we don’t have any admin staff in place to even handle the burden of the increase of this production. So what tends to happen is we put the cart before the horse, we think we’re doing good and we’re actually doing bad. It actually becomes a turning point for their business that actually slows their business down because their customer service suffers because they don’t have someone that can focus one hundred percent and specialize in handling all the administrative tasks that are critical to how that client and that business is serviced.
Now if you h look at your organization and you have your vital elements in place and you have your …and you’re working on bringing on the elements of critical, then and only then can you go after the elements that are valuable. Here’s the thing, there’s no formulaic way of doing this, there’s no like this plus this equals that. There are times in your organization that you’re going to be presented with opportunities to bring valuable needs into your business and you may not have the critical needs in place but you can handle the burden of the added value. That’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with that. When I’m speaking to you as leaders is when you evaluate your organization if you’re looking to bring the valuable elements in and you’re not focused wholeheartedly on meeting the vital organizational needs of your business and/or the critical needs of your business, you’re going to do more harm for your organization than you are good.
You may see it like “This is valuable Chris!” It’s valuable after your vital needs are met. It’s valuable after your vital and critical needs are satisfied. And so what that looks like is you must understand the vital and the critical of the here and now and in the future. And what I’ll tell you is if you’re meeting the vital and critical needs of your organization in the here and now go play in the valuable. Don’t let the valuable hold you back because you have future critical and valuable or vital needs. It’s not the message, the message is we must always know what our vital, critical, and valuable needs of our organization are both in the here and now, the mid-term, and the long term, and we focus on meeting those vital and critical needs so that we can go after the valuable needs. We must meet what we need first so that we can go after that which we want. It’s kind of like spirituality, God gives us what we need and our free will allows us to do what? Go out and get what we want. Some people play in the “Oh God will just give me everything,” and they don’t do anything for themselves. It’s not how that works. Same thing in business, you go out and get what you need in your business so that you can then go play and make the decisions of what else is valuable in your organization and then together it all starts to conjunct and cohesively allow your business and organization to rise. You’re not relying on the market, you’re not relying on the tide, you’re relying on your own ability as a leader to lead your organization through its vital needs, it’s critical needs, as well as its valuable needs.
Now here’s the thing, we’ll wrap this up with this, one of the things that I’m always encouraging my listeners to do is to hear this content from a parallel perspective, from life and business, personal and professional. What does that look like? Personal is how do I lead myself? How do I leave my family? How do I lead those that are in my sphere of influence within my life? Not just listening to this content from a business perspective. If there’s elements, there’s goals, there’s missions, you have in your own personal life what are the vital needs of that happening? If you’re on a weight correction journey what’s absolutely vital? What must happen? What’s vital to your ability to correct your weight?
The shiny objects you know a lot of times we put a meaning toward shiny objects to be bad, they’re not bad, what happens is those shiny objects are valuable needs misplaced in our organization. Actually I’ll do it like this right, we take the valuable needs and we put it before the vital and critical. Take care of those vital and critical and I promise you those shiny objects are really valuable to your organization. So once again it’s prioritization but remember this, listen to this content, how it allows you to lead yourself because without leading yourself as a leader you cannot lead other people. Look at it from how this content allows you to lead yourself so that you can lead other people. How this content allows you to lead in your personal life so that you can lead effectively in your business life. Why? Because it’s one of the dualities of the world, life and business, they equally affect one another. If your life is not where it needs to be it’s going to affect your business. And if your business is not where it needs to be I promise you it’s going to affect your life, your relationships, your parenting, your marriage, et cetera.
So if you have any questions on this feel free to hit me up. You can hit me up on Facebook Messenger. You can check us out on our web site at http://Transforminglivescoaching.com, it’s our new website, we just recently launched it, we’re really excited, we’d love to hear your contents or your comments about not only this video in the comments section but our website as well. Please do me a favor and go check it out, I’d love to hear your perspective of what we put together and we’re going to be constantly adding free valuable content to that site so we can continue the journey together without having to try to sell you something. We’re not here sell you anything, we’re here to change the world, one mind at a time.
Thank you for joining me today. Remember one thing, God loves you, so do I. Lead strong and have a powerful day. Thank you for joining me and let’s hear your comments and ahas in the section… comment section below. Take care.
About the author:
Over the course of 8 years, Christopher Hart went from an enlisted Private First Class to a Commissioned Officer-Captain. In 2005, Christopher chose to move on from his military career to focus on starting a family and embarking in the world of entrepreneurship. Christopher’s passion is now working to help others be the BEST version of themselves and helping them Lead others to the same!
To learn more about Christopher Hart or to get in touch with him regarding a coaching program you can email him at Ch***@Tr***********************.com
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