The best business skill

[Richard Lockyer]

If you could be a master at just one thing that you believe would make your business a great success what would that be?

[Richard Lockyer]

Hi Abledragon, i agree, great leaders are always excellent communicators and when the going grts tough
they escalate their levels of communication.

[Mick Hill]

I would like to add to Abledragon's comments. Effective Communication in the way of persuasion. Carnegie describes this in one of the greatest books ever written! Lincoln possessed it but it took him a while to realize the power.

Mick

[Richard Lockyer]

Hi Mick, yes communication is incredibly and i think all great leaders are excellent communicators

[Richard Lockyer]

Hi David, thanks for your comment i think you are right.
Have you ever read Michael Gerbers book The Emyth Revisited?

[Richard Lockyer]

its all about putting processes in your business so that you don't end up IN your business, great book.

[Zita Gustin]

If I could learn to master the art of delegation, I believe that would give me more time to focus on the things I truly love to do which are teaching networking skills and speaking to groups about how to grow their businesses through increasing their networking abilities. I have an assistant and I already off load a good deal of daily work to her. So I guess what I need to learn to do is outsource other tasks.

[Mick Hill]

Hi Zita,

You are on the write track here. Years ago I attended a Time Management course and the most effective things I took away from this course were the 4D's and the 80 20 rule.

The 4D's are.
When something presents it's self to you, straight away decide which one on the D's to put it under.
Don't do it - This applies to anything that is not beneficial for your to invest your time in (now or in the future).
Delegate it - Our job as a manager is to manage people, products and clients. To do this we need tools. Tools include staff (I am not saying staff are tools in a derogatory manner), your staff are the most valuable tool you have. Invest in them and they work better. Get the best staff you can and make sure they are better at what they do than you or they can learn to be better. Don't be threatened by your staff be impressed (if you are impressed with your staff you don't have to pretend to gratify them you do it naturally!)
Dump it - This is similar to the Don't do it but applies to something that you have been doing and is going no where. It is always important to monitor what you do every day. Somethings we do out of habit (Q. Why do you do that? A. I don't know I always do it.)
Do it - You have to do somethings yourself (The management things!) Make sure you do the managing and do it well.
The things that land on my Do it list go onto my To Do List. And this is where I apply the 80 20 Rule. There are many interpretations of the 80 20 rule, but for motivational purposes I use the rule on my to do list in this way. I go through the list and put two X's next to the things I don't like doing and then I place an X next to the things that need doing urgently or at least before the end of the day. I then tackle the XX items first (Just do them) Once these items are done I go on to the single X items but because I have the Horrible jobs out of the way my motivation will kick in to do all the X items. If you don't get onto the other items it is not that important. Sometimes when you re assess your todo list tomorrow you may end up dumping, delegating them.

Hope you can get something out of this as it changed my life. This process of elimination has allowed me to run several businesses at once where I used to be flat out running one!

Cheers,

Mick

[Michael Lofton]

Openness!?
Also, RE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openness
m.