When executives coach, they commonly make the mistake of downplaying their role as the boss. Confusion occurs with the associate and coaching fails.

To be clear, a boss is the one who holds people accountable for results. A coach helps people increase their skills to achieve the results. 

When executives coach, they usually downplay their team’s accountability for results because as a coach, they want to develop their skills. They use coaching to get them to do what they want. That’s wrong.

Coaching is not a substitute for performance management. You have to do both and develop clarity with each endeavor. Ensure each team member understands their performance expectations AND coach them to accomplish those performance expectations. It’s a dual role — don’t mix them up.

Communicate your expectations and ensure you get full commitment.

1. Make sure they understand their goals. Get them to break down each goal and to identify the Who, What, Where, When and Why. This process will allow the How to appear. Steer them when they go off-course and ensure they will deliver EXACTLY what you expect. 

2. Get them to mentally commit to their goals. Ownership is key — if they see these goals as yours and not theirs, all will fail. Impart clear accountability — if goals fail, it’s their head, If the goals succeed, they get the accolades. It’s that simple. If they are stuck or don’t know how to do this, I show them how I do it.

3. Give them space to take initiative to reach their goals. Now be a good boss, step back, and give them space. This is a critical time where bosses tend to crowd their team members — give them adequate real estate to reach their goal.

Coach to keep them focused, on track, and to increase their performance.

1. Put yourself in their place and understand their challenges. Each team member has their own strengths and weaknesses. It’s your job to understand what they are and where the possible road hazards might occur along the process. Once this is done, you will know approximately where each tipping point will occur and be available to coach them through it.

2. Work with the associate so they can plan all their steps. Get each associate to come up with a process comfortable to them to easily track their progress. The process of planning together allows you to step out of your ‘boss’ role and to help guide their progress as a coach. Remember it’s their plan, not yours.

3. Actively coach them through the process. Develop regular meetings to discuss issues, concerns and opportunities along the way. If they are getting frustrated, help them solve each obstacle by asking questions. Do not attempt to help — this will only move the responsibility from the associate to you. Provide regular tracking to measure where they are and how much farther they have to go. Finally, help break bad behavior patterns along the way — this will help them accelerate and grow during the process.

How do you coach your team?

FACT: The marketplace is changing at a constantly accelerating rate. The challenge to learn the art and science of individual change is now paramount to every executive and business-owner’s success (American Management Association).

FACT: 43% of CEOs and 71% of the senior executive team reported that they had worked with a coach. Over 48% of companies now use coaching to develop the leadership capabilities of high-potential performers. The typical coaching assignment runs from 7 to 12 months (Fast Company).

Okay — I’m promoting a little. But it’s true. 

Every client I work with has seen a dramatic change in their career. They’ve made more money, moved up in the organization, amassed a larger client base . . .

And they’re happier. Challenged. Having fun.

The ironic fact is most people are afraid of working with a coach. Why?

They’re afraid of “opening up” about their true feelings and dreams.

I know it’s hard — but it’s just like jumping into a pool for the first time — the first few seconds the water is cold, but you acclimate very quickly. Every one of my coaching sessions start out slow initially, but by the end, the client has so much energy, they are bursting at the seams to execute. 

They’re afraid of spending a lot of time and money on another pipe-dream.

There are so many options out there — some are good and most are bad. I can’t tell you how many business books just plain stink. Conferences and seminars which rehash the same tired and hackneyed syllogisms. Speakers who give a small iota of what they really know and suck you into a quagmire of fees, charges and upsells.

I totally understand your ambivalence. But coaching is an incremental process — small changes, small steps, and big gains happen all the time. You’ll know within the first or second session if coaching is for you.

They’re afraid of actually being successful and their entire life changes.

This is the big one. See my recent post on ‘fear of success’ — most people are afraid of actually reaching their goals and dreams because it will radically change their life. And this is scary.

The best part about coaching: The first session is FREE. Most coaches offer a complimentary session to introduce coaching. Coaching is a fit — it has to ‘fit’ for you AND the coach has to see a good ‘fit’ for their business.

Try it — you might like it.

Good To Great. An incredible book by Jim Collins — relates how certain companies overcame their obstacles and pushed themselves from being just good companies to the stars of their industry. It chronicles how they made the leap, what they did, and what they didn’t do.

How can you make the leadership leap with your team and go from just being a good leader (and that isn’t bad) to a great leader? Here are some basic qualities most leaders use and how to kick each one up a notch to great:

Integrity

When was the last time you really assessed YOUR performance? Do you stand by what you say? I’d like you to think back to three major or difficult decisions you had to make over the past year and review how did you make them? What was the result? Do you feel that you stayed true to your ethics and that your decision grew you as a leader in your organization?

Vision & Planning

How much of your time is focused on looking forward? Not just a few days or weeks, but months and years? How much of your time do you actually design personalized visions for your team — where you see them going?

Communication

Persuasion, Motivation, & Coaching

Adaptability

Decision-making

I’m a coach. I’ve been working with executives and business owners for over 10 years. Prior to that, I managed large teams in Fortune 500 companies throughout the nation.

I found early in my career that it was easier to motivate my staff with carrots rather than the stick. Get them to see the big picture, how they are contributing to it, and how together, we can best leverage their strengths and talents.

Today, when I coach clients, I use something I call the “Three P’s”. They are:

1. Push — I push you. I am there to get you to step out of your comfort zone. To get you to take action. To get you to stop procrastinating on those things you know you need to accomplish. Not a hard shove, but a gentle push.
2. Partner — I partner with you. I am here to brainstorm, help with obstacles, think clearly about opportunities, handle rejection, and help you think factually without all the emotion. I also help people with their blind spots that they might not see.
3. Plan — I help you plan. When you go on a trip, you have a destination and a route. You should have the same process for your career. What do you want to accomplish (what are your goals?) and what steps/activities/tasks do you need to do to get there? Not 20 pages, just one page. Keep it simple and actionable.

That’s it.

What kind of techniques do you use that are especially effective to coach your team to do their best?

Salman Khan is the founder and faculty of the Khan Academy. He started the Khan Academy as a way to tutor his cousins remotely — while he was a hedge fund analyst in Boston, and they were students in New Orleans.

He started posting videos on YouTube, and more and more people kept watching. It was clear there was a huge unmet need, so Sal left his hedge fund job and started Khan Academy with the mission of providing a free world-class education to anyone, anywhere.

Here’s his impact:

Sal holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was the president of his class. He also attended MIT, where he received 3 degrees: a Masters in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, a B.S. in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, and a B.S. in Mathematics.

The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit with the mission of providing a world-class education to anyone, anywhere. Here’s someone you might recognize touting his achievements:

He did this by himself. In a closet office. Using a computer.

Now let’s turn that lens inward. How can you change the world? How can you change your life? How can you change your career? Like Salman, it just takes one Idea and Action.

What can you plan today, to then take action tomorrow, and change your situation?

It’s tough today. It’s hard when everything is coming at you. Hard to think. Hard to act. Hard to react. As they always say — the first step is always the hardest.

You’re constantly focused on getting the work done — satisfying your boss, your clients . . . just keeping your job!

It’s now time for you to step back and look at the long view:

Where you’ve been
Where you are
Where you want to go

This isn’t time consuming, but it isn’t easy. The only thing I ask is that you don’t give into the “Executive ADD” that creeps in when we try something that is new and difficult.

“Oh, this won’t work” or “Let me just put this down for a second and I’ll get back to it tomorrow.”

Stop doing that. Now.

Take the first step and let the tide take you. But don’t stop.

I have something to help you — I’ve used it with thousands of executives. And guess what? IT WORKS.

The BEST part? It’s FREE. Click Here to download this life-changing solution.

A great WSJ article by Sarah Needleman, who has interviewed me a number of times — Enjoy!

Executive coaches report steady demand for their services despite the recession. Individual and corporate clients say the one-on-one counseling is critical for career success, especially during tough economic times.

Coaches typically are hired by companies, at $300 an hour or more, to hone the management or communication skills of senior leaders and rising stars. Even with the recession, many coaches say some companies are retaining their services to help them get lean and efficient. Coaches also said they are seeing an increase in individuals hiring coaches on their own.

Eric Chaffin, a 38-year-old partner at law firm Bernstein Liebhard LLP in New York, has paid coach Dee Soder out of his own pocket on a retainer since 2003, and has no plans to stop. “In a down economy, it’s particularly important to have someone on your side,” he said. “Instead of 10 client opportunities this year, there might be five. You have to make each one count.”

Mr. Chaffin said Dr. Soder, founder of the CEO Perspective Group, an assessment and advisory firm in New York, helps him with tough career and practice decisions. For example, in 2003, she helped him weigh job offers from private firms after his four-year stint as a federal prosecutor. He chose a law firm that represents plaintiffs in consumer and shareholder cases because he and Dr. Soder thought it fit well with his blue-collar family background. Last year, he shifted to another plaintiffs’ firm, Bernstein Liebhard. Recently Dr. Soder advised him on how to work with clients who are hurting because of the recession. Mr. Chaffin said Dr. Soder gives him a different perspective than business associates. “Most lawyers think alike,” he said. “She’s helped me understand some of the characteristics of my clients and their motivations.”

Executive coaches say they’re being hired by more individuals like Mr. Chaffin, a trend that has helped offset tighter budgets at some corporate clients. Dr. Soder says the number of her clients who are individuals paying on their own has nearly doubled since November. Wendy Alfus-Rothman, founder of Wenroth Consulting Inc., a New York executive-coaching firm, said more individuals are scheduling monthly, rather than quarterly, sessions.

A 2007 study commissioned by the International Coach Federation pegged annual revenue world-wide for the industry, which includes life, career and executive coaches, at $1.5 billion, with about half the study’s 5,415 respondents in the U.S. Of the respondents, 58% reported executive coaching as their specialty.

Coaches say many companies still use their services to retain top talent and support senior leaders while coping with smaller staffs and recession-starved budgets. Amber Romine, director in global human capital at consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC’s Washington, D.C., office, said she fields a steady stream of requests from clients looking for referrals to executive coaches. Gene Morrissy, a management psychologist at RHR International, said demand in the executive-coaching practice of the Wood Dale, Ill., organizational-development firm is up 10% from a year ago.

Denver telecommunications provider Wide Open West Inc. in January canceled merit raises for this year and suspended company matching contributions to employee 401(k) plans. But this year the company will spend $25,000, about what it spends every year, on coaching for three managers. “Our fundamental belief is you have to develop your greatest assets, which are your people,” said Colleen Abdoulah, chief executive.

Humana Inc., a Louisville, Ky., health insurer, also is protecting its coaching program. Humana this year will spend between $17,000 and $30,000 for six months of sessions for each of about 50 senior employees, said Jeff Nally, who heads the firm’s executive-coaching initiative. The meetings cover areas such as how to build an executive presence, communicate ideas and influence others. “Even in a recession, developing talent in key roles is still important,” said Mr. Nally.

Still, Humana is trying to trim coaching costs, which totaled about $25,000 to $50,000 in past years. The company now encourages participants to conduct more counseling sessions by phone, which saves money on coaches’ travel fees. And rather than hire outsiders to assess coaching needs, senior executives and human-resources leaders conduct assessments of more junior employees, which cuts the length of engagements by an average of three months.

Some small-business owners use coaches as sounding boards. Nancy A. May, president and chief executive of BoardBench Cos. LLC, a four-employee advisory firm in Norwalk, Conn., pays her own way to meet periodically with Dr. Soder. Ms. May says she relies on Dr. Soder for honest advice.”You wouldn’t go to somebody junior and say, ‘I’ve screwed up, what do I do?’ she says.

Ms. May, 50, began working with Dr. Soder about a year ago on ways to improve her interactions with clients, among other issues. Sessions are held over the phone, and occasionally in person, twice a month for up to an hour. “At times I have a big personality and the enthusiasm can sometimes be off-putting to somebody who’s more of an introvert,” says Ms. May. “My coach is working with me to manage that based on the personalities of other CEOs or board people I might be working with.”

Ms. May says she has noticed changes, particularly “how people are stopping and listening, and being drawn into a conversation with me a little differently.”

Paula M. Zwiren, president of Allied Title LLC, a small title-insurance firm in Flanders, N.J., said she was inspired to seek coaching after attending a seminar led by a group of women business leaders. Ms. Zwiren, 33, meets quarterly with Dr. Alfus-Rothman for about two hours. “An executive coach helps you identify things that help you be in control of your destiny,” she said.

Ms. Zwiren said Dr. Alfus-Rothman, whom she pays about $3,000 a year, has improved her communications skills. “You have to be very direct at the executive level, very concrete,” she says. “She helps me with my power of persuasion.”

Executives and senior professionals interested in executive coaching should research prospective coaches carefully because the industry isn’t regulated, said Kay Cannon, a past president of the coaching federation and an executive coach in Lexington, Ky. “You want to make sure the individual has some kind of coach-specific training,” she says. For example, many ICF members are certified as master, professional or associate coaches, which means they’ve undergone between 60 and 200 hours of training.

Ms. Cannon also recommends asking for referrals to past clients and getting a sense of whether you have chemistry with a coach before agreeing to a long-term commitment.

Great leaders translate vision into decisive action — a skill that’s especially vital in tough times. But what are those skills? Do you have a blind spot? Should you be doing more?

First off — great leaders do three things — no more, no less:

1. They motivate their people.
2. They deliver information when required.
3. They help their people with obstacles.

That’s it. As a leader, if you find yourself doing anything else, you’re doing too much. Now let’s look at each one:

They motivate their people.
The most successful leaders are those with the best people skills, especially during the most difficult circumstances. Poor communication and interpersonal relationships routinely thwart leaders who are otherwise technically competent. In order to succeed, leaders must be fully engaged with the individuals who make up their organization. This means an array of capabilities like coaching, mentoring and how to give constructive feedback which reinforces the behavior and motivation of your peak performers. The best tool to learn how to motivate is Dale Carnegie’s: How to Win Friends and Influence People.

They deliver information when required.
What does this really mean? Incredibly efficient two-way communication. And the cruel joke is that most leaders had the chops to make their way up the ladder and succeed — now the skills that got them there (getting things done) have no place in leadership. You now have to communicate to your team to get things done. This is where most C- and VP level executives fail – you need to lead with greater impact by applying emotional intelligence to manage your team. The best tool to effectively communicate is Daniel Goleman’s: Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ.

They help their people with obstacles.
Here’s the mistake all leaders make. When their people come to them with a problem — they spend time helping them brainstorm, choose and sometimes execute a solution. I’ve seen this happen time and time again. Great leaders ask their people to come to them when they have a problem, but they also require their people to come with a solution too. 80-90% of the time, that solution is usually the best one and the team member is further empowered to make those tough decisions. On the off chance (that 10-20%) that your people might be wrong, you’re there to help them investigate other options. For optimal delegation, seek out Michael Abrashoff’s: It’s Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy.

At the end of the day, you need to build a leadership style that creates trust, sets a clear vision and guides your entire team toward greater performance and profit. Give me a call (203.500.2421) — talk to me for 30 minutes — I can help.

The hallmark of a great leader is effective delegation. Effective delegation develops people who are ultimately more fulfilled and productive. Managers become more fulfilled and productive themselves as they learn to count on their staffs and are freed up to attend to more strategic issues.

However, there are basic approaches to delegation that, with practice, become the backbone of effective supervision and development. Thomas R. Horton, in Delegation and Team Building: No Solo Acts Please (Management Review, September 1992, pp. 58-61) suggests the following 9 general steps to accomplish delegation:

1. Delegate the whole task to one person.
This gives the person the responsibility and increases their motivation.

2. Select the right person.
Assess the skills and capabilities of subordinates and assign the task to the most appropriate one.

3. Clearly specify your preferred results.
Give information on what, why, when, who, where and how. Write this information down.

4. Delegate responsibility and authority.
Assign the task, not the method to accomplish it. Let the subordinate complete the task in the manner they choose, as long as the results are what the supervisor specifies. Let the employee have strong input as to the completion date of the project. Note that you may not even know how to complete the task yourself — this is often the case with higher levels of management.

5. Ask the employee to summarize back to you.
Ask to hear their impressions of the project and the results that you prefer.

6. Get ongoing non-intrusive feedback about progress on the project.
This is a good reason to continue to get weekly, written status reports from all direct reports. Reports should cover what they did last week, plan to do next week and any potential issues. Regular staff meetings provide this ongoing feedback, as well.

7. Maintain open lines of communication.
Don’t hover over the subordinate, but sense what they’re doing and support their checking in with you along the way.

8. If you’re not satisfied with the progress, don’t immediately take the project back.
Continue to work with the employee and ensure they perceive the project as their responsibility.

9. Evaluate and reward performance.
Evaluate results, not methods. Address insufficient performance and reward successes (including the manager’s).

A recent report listed the happiest nations in the world. Guess what? The US didn’t even make it into the top ten. So much for the American dream.

Why are we so unhappy? Let’s start by looking at the origin of the word. Happy is derived from the Icelandic word happ, meaning luck or chance. Is happiness then, by its very definition, elusive due its randomness? With that in mind, here are a number of suggestions that I hope can turn our collective frowns upside-down:

1. Smile. Turns out, smiling is directly linked to happiness. It may have started as a correlation but, over time, the brain linked the two. Don’t believe me? Try this: smile (a nice big smile) and attempt to think of something negative. Either you will stop smiling or you won’t be able to hold the negative thought.

2. Stop worrying. Worrying happens to be one of humanity’s best traits. It is the underlying emotion behind foresight, planning, and forecasting. We worry because some future event is uncertain and that feeling is a cue for us to start thinking about how to address it. The problem is, we worry too much about things that are out of our control (like the economy, stupid). The US has one of the highest rates for mental disease and yes, worry is among the leading indicators. While it’s true that there are plenty of things to worry about these days, take a deep breath, America, and stop sweating the small stuff.

3. Take a break. The US is one of the most overworked industrialized nations. But this is counterproductive for a nation of “knowledge workers.” Overworking people to exhaustion is a horrible way to extract knowledge from people. Taking a break provides an opportunity to reflect and often it is during such times when the best ideas, our deepest insights, emerge. I insist on taking lunches out of the office; I insist that my colleagues do the same. Call it a siesta, naptime, or a mini-vacation. It works for many of the happier nations too.

4. Do things differently. Part of the problem at work for many people is boredom. We are stuck in a rut where we come in and do the same thing over and over and over again. Get your enthusiasm back by doing things differently. Make every effort to learn, to grow, and to challenge yourself. Take on more responsibility or attempt something you never thought you were capable of doing. Even if your responsibilities don’t allow for much flexibility, try a different approach to your existing responsibilities.

5. Stop managing and start leading. If you’re in management, you need to find ways to motivate and stimulate your employees. How? Stretch their minds. Empower your team by giving them more responsibility, more decision-making power, more autonomy. Equally important: be inclusive. Explain what is happening in the company as a whole and give your employees a broader perspective on how their jobs influence the overall business.

6. Delegate. One of the most destructive and counterproductive byproducts of the downsizing era is fear — many managers are scared to let go of control for fear that doing so will make them obsolete. I have news for you: if you feel that way, you already are obsolete. Being controlling is bad for business, not to mention bad for your physical and mental health. The best leaders always look for people better, smarter, and more capable than themselves.

7. Have fun. Here is some tough advice: If you don’t like what you are doing, stop doing it. Life is too short to not have fun. I love what I do and when I stop loving it, I do something else. Even in this economy, you will be in high demand if you are good at what you do — and can do it with a smile on your face.

What are your tips for being happier at work?

In an unpredictable world, trying to be right can lead managers terribly astray. So what do we do during uncertain times of business?

by Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian C. MacMillan at MIT Sloan.

Many leaders of mature organizations don’t have the right mind-set or practices to help their organizations survive. Their management practices are suited to an age with higher entry barriers, greater transaction costs, fewer capable competitors, growing and increasingly affluent markets and far less information. Today’s environment is less predictable, more complicated and more volatile.

The result is that many core businesses – involved with mainstream, mature products we all take for granted – are themselves becoming more uncertain. The good news is that there are other more suitable approaches – those that successful fast-growth companies, entrepreneurs and corporate new business development groups use to navigate unpredictable, resource-constrained environments.

One of the great ironies of business is that good performance tends to dampen the desire to invest in new opportunities and businesses right at the time a company can most easily afford to do so. When a business is healthy and generating profits, it’s easy to overlook the weak signals of performance decline. But when a company realizes it needs to invest, it’s often when resources are in short supply. The time to invest in reinvigorating your business is before you’re forced to.

Why are managers so often in denial about the health of their core businesses? Because no one has the incentive to step back and question the fundamental assumption that their business is healthy. To address this, people must realistically frame where they believe their business will be in, say, three years. Successful entrepreneurs do that. They don’t ask how big the market is. Instead, they want to know if the market is big enough for their aspirations. You need an idea of the concrete results that would constitute success before beginning to assess whether your core business can get you there.

Consider E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. For decades, the chemical company had delivered steady, reliable earnings growth with few surprises. But in 1999, then-CEO Charles Holliday and his team realized that while the company had been making significant productivity gains, its revenue increases were lagging. In fact, throughout the 1990s, DuPont’s revenue growth averaged only 0.6%.

Without growth in commoditizing and highly competitive markets, the company’s long-term sustainability was in doubt. Management believed that the core business couldn’t realize the company’s growth ambitions. And recognizing that, DuPont executives set a revenue growth target of at least 6% annually. Then the technical parts of the company were charged with generating 33% of sales from products less than five years old.

Once management acknowledges that the core business is in trouble, the next challenge is to determine which projects, initiatives and other activities can drive the company’s growth ambitions. The more specific a company can be about which kinds of initiatives will support its future strategy, the more momentum it will create.

DuPont addressed that challenge by creating five “growth platforms” – each charged with delivering specific growth targets. The company aimed to steer away from commoditized product-based businesses and into growing, knowledge-intensive new businesses.

As the effort began, DuPont spun off its still-profitable textile business and entered more uncertain businesses with better growth prospects, such as bio-based materials and organic light-emitting diodes. The company also began a major expansion into emerging markets, where now it’s enjoying a compounded growth rate of 16%.

Most complex organizations are designed to protect and preserve the status quo. Consequently, serious efforts to renew core businesses almost always require organizational change. Being forward looking and honest about your company’s prospects, and being prepared to reconsider fundamental business assumptions, will help you weather the currently unpredictable business climate.

This article is adapted from “How to Rethink Your Business During Uncertainty,” by Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian C. MacMillan, which appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of MIT Sloan Management Review.

Malcolm Gladwell is one of today’s most innovative ‘connectors’ of knowledge. His most recent New Yorker article again proves he is the master.

Gladwell again uses history to reinforce his argument that with the proper planning and doing something different — something that your opposing team (i.e., competition) isn’t expecting — even though you are the underdog — You Will Succeed.

Enough of my blather — go read this great article!

A reader recently asked me, “How do you deal with an incredibly full inbox that makes you feel like a jerk?”

By David Silverman at HBR

I’m happy the question asks, “how do you deal.” An inbox is as personal a space as an underwear drawer — we all have one and are all embarrassed by both its organization and contents. Thus to tell someone how to manage their inbox could be perceived as an intrusion into their undergarments.

And that would be inappropriate.

What is appropriate to share is my own principles of inbox management:

1. No scrolling. The inbox is my task list. I can fit about 20 emails in the message viewer in Apple Mail, which means 20 tasks. Any more than that and I feel like I’m losing control. Nothing spurs me to action like the need to get rid of the scroll bars.

2. Read, take action, and delete or save. Small task or big one, if it’s in the inbox, I do it. If not, it doesn’t exist (as my wife can tell you about any time we make vacation plans).

3. If it’s a task for someone else, file it. I find it hard enough to keep track of my own to-dos. Keeping tabs on other people’s through emails in my inbox would triple the number of messages and lead me down the road of micromanagement via the dreaded forwarded email that begins with, “Hey, have you had a chance to look at this yet?”

4. One email per topic. If there’s a chain of email on a topic, only the most recent gets to sit in my inbox. Everything else is filed.

5. Save everything that isn’t pure junk. Which email is important and which is not? It can be hard to tell. The email with a dancing banana? Probably safe to toss. But will I need an email with the details of my cat’s last tooth cleaning? Possibly. And with gigabytes of storage on my hard drive, as easy to save as not.

6. Have very few file folders. Almost everything saved goes into a folder called “saved.” With too many folders, the time it takes me to sort and organize emails is prohibitive — and it often requires just as much time on the other end to locate the message I want. Instead, I rely on my email’s search feature. (Just now, it was easy to uncover from my “sent mail” folder the information that veterinary dental work costs a terrifying $450 per feline.)

7. Daily scrubbing. I brush my teeth twice a day. And every day, I run through every email in my inbox to see if I can get rid of it.

8. Nothing older than a month. I’ll let something molder in the inbox for a up to a month if I’m not sure what to do with it — or if it’s something I’d like to do but never seem to get to. But after a month, it’s clear I’ve got to do it or delete it.

What are your tips for email management? Do you disagree vehemently with any of mine?

David Silverman is the author of Typo: The Last American Typesetter or How I Made and Lost 4 Million Dollars (Soft Skull Press, 2007). He has worked at brand-new start-ups, Fortune 500 companies, and a few places in between. A business writing teacher, he grapples with the way we use words at work—to make it easier for the rest of us. If you have questions about how to manage a problem at work related to communication, please contact David at dsilverman@harvardbusiness.org.

Most businesses today have a fatal flaw that will take down their entire client base.

It’s the fear of doing something . . . anything . . . NEW. They know it ‘might’ fail — so they do nothing.

I’m here to tell you that doing nothing (most of the time) is worse than failing. Why?

Let me give you an example:
Let’s say you’re quite sick. Now many people will disregard the symptoms, say they are not sick — because they feel that the diagnosis or the treatment will be worse or possibly hurt them more than the illness. So they do nothing. What they don’t understand is that the initial reason why they are sick is not being addressed — and it will slowly grow to infect other parts of their body.

Now if they just tried one type of treatment or just went to the doctor and asked for a complete work-up, they would at least make a positive move forward in treating their sickness. Let’s say it failed – they should try something else. And something else — ad infinitum — until they felt better.

I did this with a recurring allergy. I first went to my general practitioner who gave me LOTS of pills. Nothing happened. So I went to a specialist. They took tests (63 pokes of a needle) and also gave me LOTS of pills. I got a little better, but then it came back. I then finally tried an old, but simple cure (a Neti Pot). Guess what? It worked. And I feel GREAT.

It’s like business. People will just act like nothing is wrong and “stay the course” while they see their clients and profits drain away. The problem is that they are afraid of taking any action — it might be wrong — it might worsen the situation — they might lose the business.

But at the end of the day, they need to understand that what is making their business sick can be cured. Here’s the simple process:

1. Realize that you’re sick. You might get better, but you’re probably going to get sicker. And sicker. And then die.
2. Understand why you’re sick. Get a good diagnosis. Find out what the causal elements are — Get the facts.
3. Take action. Make a list of possible treatments — list them by how much effort (time, money, resources) they will take and what impact they will make.
4. Pick one and take action . . . NOW.

It’s that simple. As Nike says: “Just Do It.”

It boggles the mind. I can’t tell you how many times in my career as an adviser and coach to executives that I’ve heard phrases like:

• “You’re a lifesaver Rich — I don’t know how I could have done this without you.”
• “You’re there when I need you.”
• “You helped me reach farther than I’ve ever reached before.”

But I’m not here to extol my accolades . . .
I just wanted to let you in on a little secret many executives use to climb up the corporate ladder and stay at the top for a very long time:

They all have a Personal Coach.

You would be quite surprised how many of us are out there working in the background, helping our clients jump from one great opportunity to another, celebrate success after success, and have fun doing it. Oh — and along the way making gobs of money.

If you just asked them if they have a coach, you would be surprised by their answer.

So I have a little bit of homework for you to do next week:

Sit down and think of the most successful person that you know.
Call them up.
Ask if they have a coach.

They probably do.