Make relationships your priority for 2009
What is your focus for 2009? What do you want to accomplish? How much money do you want to make? What are the best goals to set for 2009?
Here is a thought, it is my experience that one of the most important goals you can set for yourself is to improve the quality of relationships you have with those close with you.
In my work in organizations I can tell you that in almost 100% of the cases, when the company was struggling or stagnant it was because of struggling relationships at the top of the organization. In one case the relationship with the GM and owner was so strained that it threatened to put the company out of business. It was one of my first clients and in the beginning I tried to ignore some of the relationship issues and focused on strategy and operational issues. I quickly learned that until the two improved their relationship with each other the company was going to continue to struggle. Over the next year we worked on improving how the two worked together. I am happy to say that years later the company is not only surviving but has tripled in size and the owner and GM are clearly responsible for the company’s growth. The company, which is in the construction industry, had it’s best year ever in 2008 and is poised to surpass this in 2009. Yes, this is happening in a down economy where most of his competitors are struggling. If you ask the owner what was the key to the company growing he will tell you it was the work that was done to improve how he and his GM worked together.
I will cover how we got there in future blog posts but for now I want to make it clear that in all the companies I have worked with the strength of relationships at the top was the number one reason for the company’s success or struggles.
