Author: bzsuper

Does passion make you work harder and smarter? I don’t think so. I think passion makes you want to work harder and smarter. But there is way more to working harder and smarter than passion. The real problem with this cliché is that it gets tossed around so casually as an answer to all business problems and yet, it has so little to do with how a business needs to operate.

Many people believe work balance is really the goal and so they changed the phrase to “work smarter, not harder.” What’s the difference?

Luckily someone took the challenge of finding a clear answer… UC Berkeley professor Morten Hansen looked at 200 academic papers, interviewed 120 experts, ran a pilot study on 300 subjects and built a framework which he then tested on 5,000 participants from various industries and backgrounds.

He found seven behaviors that made up 66% of the difference in how people performed. (By comparison, standard metrics like education, age and hours worked were only responsible for 10% combined.) His new book, “Great at Work: How Top Performers Do Less, Work Better, and Achieve More” outlines these seven.

We’re going to look at three of my favorites so that we can get hard, smart work done — and maybe even achieve that mythical “work-life balance” unicorn everyone is always talking about.

Do Less — then Obsess
Everyone agrees we need to quit trying to accomplish 9,000 things at once. But when Hansen looked at the data, he found that this was only half the solution. Top performers focus on fewer goals — but they also obsess like crazy over them. This is a really hard one for me. I am very good at obsessing but if I am honest, I obsess over all of the hundreds of opportunities I think BioZyme has. I am going to take this advice to heart and pick three for 2022.

Use “The Learning Loop”
Deliberate practice seems straightforward in sports, music or chess. But how do you do it in the workplace? Hansen offers some clear steps:

• Pick one and only one skill at a time to develop. It’s “do less and obsess” all over again. Trying to get better at everything at once gets you nowhere. Right now, you want to be better at social media. So, learning QuickBooks will have to wait.

• Pick one and only one skill at a time to develop. It’s “do less and obsess” all over again. Trying to get better at everything at once gets you nowhere. Right now, you want to be better at social media. So, learning QuickBooks will have to wait.

• Just like a baseball player might try to improve a specific element of their game (batting, fielding or running), you want to break down what goes into good social media and set a goal. “I’m going to learn Promoboxx to help with my social media
  marketing.”

• Get feedback. After the Facebook post is made, ask people how you did and what you can do to improve it

Follow Passion & Purpose
Top performers didn’t merely “follow their passion.” They also had a sense of purpose in what they did. This combo produced huge results. It boosted energy levels and increased the amount of effort they were able to exert. Hansen found that at least 10% of people in every arena and role examined had passion and purpose.

Purpose is about creating value for others in a way that is personally meaningful to you. Like passion, this is less about the actual tasks you perform and more about how you frame them. Shoveling elephant poop does not seem terribly meaningful. And when looked at in that limited frame, it isn’t. But when you love animals, it can be deeply meaningful — as a study of zookeepers revealed. In a 2009 study of zookeepers, researchers found that some saw cleaning cages and feeding animals as a filthy, meritless job, while others saw it as a moral duty to protect and provide proper care for the animals. Same job, different feelings of purpose.

Summing It Up
If we choose to implement these three behaviors, I think we will all be able to work smarter which will naturally convert to working harder and we will do it all with passion and purpose without even knowing it. Isn’t doing something so naturally you don’t even know you are doing it the real secret to work and life? One last thought. If doing all three of these behaviors is too much for you right now; 23% of the difference Hansen found in how people performed came from one behavior – Do Less then Obsess. Here’s permission to passionately obsess!

In business it is easy to get bogged down and to try to work on tons of things. But complexity is potentially the enemy in all that we do.

Now often at the start of a year, we resolve to “fix” things. Luckily a literal and figurative clear-out like that can often help us focus on fewer things more effectively rather than trying to focus on too much at once.

According to Merriam-Webster, keeping it simple means making something easy to understand or do, not going into too much detail, and sticking to the point.

Humans tend to like complexity more than simplicity, especially at work. We often find it hard to believe that simple solutions will actually work. We mistakenly think ‘simple’ is the same as ‘easy’ when they’re actually very different. As we start this new year, let’s work together to keep growing business by trying to keep things simple.

In fact, let’s commit to focus on three things all year:

Know Your Customer

Know Your Checkbook

Tell Everyone

Know Your Customer

Understanding what your customers want collectively and individually is key to growth. Having an in-depth of knowledge – or knowing more than their name, gender and herd size is paramount. As a business, knowing your customers’ kids, hobbies, tastes and interests along with what they watch, listen to and read can be a profitable advantage.

Understanding your customers’ buying behavior is also very important. As a business, you need to comprehend what type of person is most likely to need or want the product or service you provide. These are some of the key questions that you need to ask yourself daily:

• What is their reason for purchasing your product or service?
• How often are they going to need to buy that product or utilize the service? If you can be proactive with your outreach efforts around the time you know they will purchase, chances are the customer won’t look elsewhere.
• Where are they most likely to purchase? If you are a brick-and- mortar business and hear from your customers that they would prefer to order online, then it makes sense to change your business model to include an ecommerce or online ordering component.

Companies that know what their clients want and what they expect can also work on customizing the customer experience to create loyalty and repeat business. Listen to your customers’ feedback and provide sound advice if that’s what they want.

It is crucial to take every advantage to outsmart your competitor. Understanding and building upon your customer knowledge and relationship will put you ahead of the game.

Know Your Checkbook

Keeping accurate records helps keep the doors open. Knowing your records and simply using what they tell you to drive growth makes a business thrive. A business checkbook is often the primary source of record-keeping for many small businesses, according to the Internal Revenue Service. However, for a larger business know your checkbook translates into know your financials. Or in our new simple terms for all of us – know how much money you have and can/should invest in helping the business thrive.

It is ok to ask for help here. It is not ok to never look at your numbers and the money they are generating and also know what they are telling you.

Tell Everyone

The U.S. Small Business Administration recommends, “As a general rule, small businesses with revenues less than $5 million should allocate 7-8% of their revenues to marketing.” This percentage is based on companies that have profits in the 10-12% range.

Whether you run a small business
or a multi-million-dollar corporation, marketing is essential to your profitability and growth. Products and services don’t sell themselves. By ignoring marketing until it’s too late, many small businesses risk hitting a brick wall and quite possibly, failing (just putting it simply).

So, what does tell everyone mean? Simple, tell everyone so everyone tells everyone (Tidbit: you must tell them 7 times before they even hear you). I like to think of the Christian song Pass it On for this concept. If you don’t know the words, it goes like this . . .

“It only takes a spark. To get a fire going. And soon all those around can warm up in its glowing.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if the glowing was your business?

The paper clip. The post-it note. The BioZyme product center. Some of the best ideas in the world are also the simplest. Take some time to give these three simple, focused tactics a try. You might find yourself discovering a fresh lease on life at work. Happy 2022!!