Uranus

Give your meeting rooms names. Our offices at Ubarter.com had boardrooms named after the planets.

The boardroom furthest from the CEO’s office was called Pluto (the planet furthest from the sun).  Guests would always chuckle when they were told the meeting would be held in a room called “Neptune.”

If possible, engage all your employees in the naming process. Don’t just slap a name on a boardroom without any employee input. Culture should flow from the inside out, not the other way around. And yes, it always got a huge laugh when someone asked where the CEO Dwayne was, and the reply was ‘he’s in Uranus’.

And put up huge positive sayings in vinyl letters or on canvasses you design. Pick words or sayings that add value and mean something to your staff, not lame, obscure quotes that don’t have any relevance to your team. This might not be possible right away, but as you cultivate real work culture, it’ll be a lot easier to speak the language of your employees.

One example is have a ‘Can You Imagine?’ wall – where employees, customers and suppliers can put up great ideas.  Big, crazy, audacious ideas that provoke thinking. Make sure they align with company values, but be open to Also include goals and core values on the wall, that way no one will ever forget their purpose.

For more information on this topic, check out: Building a World Class Culture.

I’ve just wrapped up a 7 city speaking tour with EO & YPO in India.  Crazy schedule to hit this 7 cities between Jan 8-19th – but we pulled it off.

Too many business lessons to cover in just one post, however, one that jumped out at me in every city was that Indian entrepreneurs focus differently.  They almost never own or run just one company, they all seemed to run between 4-7 companies each.

They see running multiple companies as diversifying, and hedging their risk.  They don’t build companies for the purpose of selling them, they build them to give themselves cash flow for better lives, and to re-invest in other business ventures.

Prior to coming to India, I’d have pushed entrepreneurs hard to only run one company at a time.  Now, I truly see the value in running multiple companies at once.  However, to do it right, Indian entrepreneurs put solid CEOs or Presidents in place to run each of their companies.  They don’t micro manage them.  And they don’t stay overly involved in each of them.  They build them up, one at a time, then like children they set them free a little bit at a time, allowing each company to grow up and spin off it’s own rewards.

Focus on growing your leadership teams, and you could own multiple companies at once too…

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about all the CEOs I interact with in my speaking, coaching and mentoring roles.  Most of them are awesome.  In fact, all of them are awesome at times, but like me, they miss on occasion too and have areas to improve on.  There are a few areas I’d like each of them to work on during 2012.

However, instead of worrying about where I’d like them to improve, I thought I’d focus on my areas to work on instead.

Here are the TOP 5 areas I’ll work on in 2012:

1) I will not get as defensive when I hear things about me or my business.

2) I will focus more intently during my coaching and mentoring calls.

3) I will take better notes during coaching calls, so I can follow up tighter and hold the CEOs more accountable to do what they said they’d do.

4) I’m going to tell my coaching clients exactly what I think they should do.  And I’m going to keep pushing them to make the hard decisions they need to make.

5) I’m going to laugh more and have more fun.  And I’m going to take more time off too.

Hope about you ?  Where are you going to improve business wise during 2012 ?