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Strategy is a word that's used so much without a real agreement on its definition. We want to think more strategically, but we don't really know what that means. How do you define strategy?

Stop blaming your employees. Maybe he's not following through on his commitments. She's not communicating enough. He's always so negative. She's not meeting her sales targets. You can complain all you want about them, but what are you doing about you?

In a previous blog post, I talked about how to gauge the success of functions within your organizations - functions like HR, sales, marketing, and IT. In this post, I want to talk about something a little different. How do you gauge the success of a priority?

The biggest obstacle to our goals, our dreams, is not outside circumstances - it's what's in your head. Our outside world is really just a reflection of our inside world. What I want to share with you is a very simple four-step process called “flipping the switch” that will help you shift your focus in a really easy way.

Finding the right people for your team is one of the most important, if not the most important, job of a leader. Yet, it's typically the most frustrating one and the one we're most likely to delegate to someone else, like HR or recruiting. Or, just put a job posting on Indeed or LinkedIn and hope for the best. How's that working out for you?

One of my favorite exercises to do around accountability is called the Peer Accountability Exercise. This exercise develops the muscles that you need to not only be vulnerable yourself, but hold your other team members accountable.

With so much going on in your business, when is the right time to improve the structure of your team? When is the right time to build the right culture or implement a new planning and communication rhythm? When is the right time to dramatically upgrade your company's growth framework? Stop making excuses, the time is now.

We're in a war for talent. But let's face it, we've always been in a war for talent, and we will always be in a war for talent if we care enough to find the very best people for our team. What are you doing to become a magnet for your ideal team member?

Your company will never scale faster than your leadership team. As you grow, your business gets more complex. That complexity slows growth, and that's a tough cycle. How do you scale your leadership team in a way that accelerates growth?

One of the most important things you can do for your business and your life is to get your day started off right. If you don't take that control of your day from the beginning, things can spin out of control quickly.

You probably hear all the time that you learn your best lessons when you fail. I agree you learn great lessons when you fail, but I actually think you learn your best lessons when you succeed.

Would you enthusiastically rehire everyone on your team? An honest answer to that question will have a revolutionary impact on your business. Here's a great way to assess your team's talent and develop the most powerful action plans based on that assessment.

How many times have you put off a difficult conversation with someone at work, only to see the problem get worse and worse until it finally explodes and you wish you had that conversation three months or six months ago?

I know I'm not telling you anything new when I say that one of your most important jobs as a leader is to work with your team to set goals. Although most of us know that's important, most leaders, do it wrong.

Who's accountable for increasing sales? The sales department, right? Well, partially. The better answer is to build a sales culture throughout the organization. Growing revenue should be everybody's job.

How do you gauge your own success? For most of us, we do it by comparing ourselves to other people. I do that all the time - but there's a real problem with that.

The best predictor of the quality of your life is the quality of the people you surround yourself with. If you're surrounded by people that are negative most of the time, you'll be negative most of the time. If you're surrounded by people that complain a lot, you'll look at the world as a very frustrating place.

Being vulnerable makes you stronger. Here's the definition I found for the word vulnerability: the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally. That doesn't sound like a lot of fun, but vulnerability is critical on a team.

Done right, your weekly team meeting is your most important meeting. Done right, the weekly meeting is the seed that real accountability grows from. Done wrong, accountability dies.

When it comes to making decisions on the makeup of your team, most leaders have the wrong philosophy. They hire fast and fire slow when they should be doing the exact opposite. What are you doing to ensure you fire fast and hire slow?