Making Success Contagious

Question: When I launched my business, I hoped it would either succeed or fail quickly. My greatest fear was a "partial success,"where the carrot keeps dangling, but we can't quite reach it. Part of the problem is that we don't think and act like a successful business. So maybe the fault lies within. Any ideas?

Answer: Sounds like you need to exercise a little entrepreneurial leadership and spread the message of success to everyone involved with your business. When business owners go looking for ways to boost profits and perk up performance they sometimes forget to look in the mirror first.

Your own workplace environment - and how people feel about it - are often a good starting point for making changes. This is one area where small businesses can look to successful big companies for guidance. When Susan Lucia Annunzio, CEO of the Hudson Highland Center for High Performance, studied the factors that drive high performance businesses, she found several common characteristics. All such businesses allow people to take risks, generate new ideas, make mistakes and learn from them.

In order to achieve success in your small business, you need to find ways to instill a success mindset throughout your group - even if it's just you and a handful of others. In short, you need to make success contagious. Here are a few ways you can do that:

1. Eliminate short-term thinking. It stifles performance. Living for today at the expense of tomorrow means never quite being able to grab the carrot dangling in the distance. It also leads to overworked and frustrated employees.
   
   
2. Shun the status quo. You need to innovate, not hesitate. Any business owner who simply tries to maintain what he or she has is doomed to fall behind. Observe the daily routines at your business and look for ways to spark new interest and enthusiasm.
   
   
3. Foster an atmosphere of innovation, creativity and passion for what your business does, no matter how seemingly mundane. Working productively isn't enough. But these don't need to be grandiose concepts. Simply going out of your way to help a customer in an unusual fashion qualifies.
   
   
4. Emphasize the collective success of your business as a whole, not of any individual person, project or product. Not only will talented individuals thrive in your high performance environment, but "B"players may also become "A"players.
   
   
5. Step on the gas. You can accelerate success by identifying a few profitable activities and making them happen ever more flawlessly and quickly. Success in these areas can then spread elsewhere.
   
   
6. Open up. Those around you - employees, vendors, independent contractors -need more information, not less, in order to catch the success bug. Let people know where you think the business needs to go, the problems it faces and what keeps you up at night.
   
   
7. When you face a challenge, involve others at your business in finding a solution. Ask their advice about what you are doing right, what hurts and what needs fixing. That way, everyone has a bigger stake in your success.
   
   
8. Value the "dumb" idea. New ideas that represent a shift in thinking often sound goofy at first. But one such idea just might be your "next big thing."
   
   
9. Offer rewards. Non-cash incentives - like time off or a company lunch - have gained popularity as a means of rewarding employees. But cash bonuses are still king.
   
   
10. Deliver what you promise. That includes keeping promises to employees and suppliers as well as customers. Integrity fuels the success engine, and it's tough to recover if you blow it.

These resources can help in your quest for contagious success:

• Service Quality Institute is a helpful source of tips and inspiration for building better customer service. Sign up for the free e-newsletter called Customer Service Strategy. Visit www.servicequality.com.
  
  
• Two new books of interest are Lead or Get Off the Pot! by Pat Croce (Fireside Books, $13) and Contagious Success: Spreading High Performance Throughout Your Organization by Susan Lucia Annunzio (Portfolio Books, $24.95). Both are geared to bigger business, but advice can apply to smaller firms too.
  
  
• A Carrot A Day by Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton (Gibbs Smith, $12.95) delivers big ideas on how to encourage employees.