It was one of the great pleasures of my life to be invited by Fran Tarkenton to talk about leadership and to create several episodes he uses for his business mentoring series, GoSmallBiz.  Fran is such a great interviewer that he make you sound like you rehearsed this with him but we just started talking and dove right into the subject and kept on going.  The short intro clips are linked below and full episodes are provided their own pages with a summary of what we covered.

The first topic is “An Engineers Approach to Business”.   In this episode we review the processes of breaking down very complex business challenges into solvable problems and how this engineering fundamental can be useful in any area of business from sales to finance.  From the first seeds of an idea for your business to evolving that idea into a solution that that customers will pay for is a journey over many small hurdles.  Solving each of these problems takes discipline and tenacity, but it is also something that can be taught and trained.  We will explore those methods and approaches starting with the first video in the series.

Our second topic is, “Connecting Your Personal Mission to Your Business”.  This discussion is focused on helping your employees understand what makes them happy and finding ways to connect those passions to their daily experiences at work.
This starts with refining your own passions and making sure the company’s mission connects with employees.

Next we will review, “In Pursuit of Relevance”.  In today’s fast paced world with constantly changing tastes and priorities staying relevant to your customers, your industry, and to your employees is a constant challenge.  Most importantly we must recognize that what made us relevant yesterday may have little value tomorrow.  This why I view this as a “pursuit” that never ends no matter how much success you are having today.

Finally in this initial series of topics we’ll talk about listening.  One of my biggest personal challenges at times and certainly the key to good leadership the importance of listening hard cannot be over emphasized.  We all know that hearing everyone out from suppliers to customers and certainly coworkers and employees, but sometimes we need reminding that it is listening to those that disagree.  In this episode we’ll talk about, “Listening to Diverse Opinions” and why that opposing view may be the most important to consider.