BusinessLawGuy's Blog

Every day is a good day to think about and set goals. these can be short term or long term goals. Many people look to New Year’s Resolutions as the time you set goals or challenges for yourself. A lot of those same people are the ones who let those resolutions fall by the wayside before February 1. The fact is there is no date or time frame that matters for goal setting. What matters is taking the time to think about your goals and then go about identifying the steps and related time frames on the way to reaching your goals.

Once you set a goal, think through the action steps necessary for you to achieve the goal. I suggest you put it in writing and keep it somewhere you see it often. This will allow you to see where you are on the road to the goal, as well as to adjust the steps. That’s right, you can change the action plan to reach a goal midstream. If something isn’t working or a step in your process ends up taking longer or shorter than expected, acknowledge it by revisiting and revising your plan.

If you don’t have a roadmap to reach a goal, how can you expect to ever reach that goal. The roadmap I have found to be most useful and work is turning goals into SMART goals:

• Specific – target a specific  goal or area for improvement.
• Measurable – quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress.
• Assignable – specify what you will do.
• Realistic – state what results can realistically be achieved.
• Time-related – specify when the result(s) can be achieved.

This works for any type of goal, whether personal and professional. What if you want to learn to play an instrument? Find an instructor good with beginners through your network or online research and take weekly lessons. And then practice, a lot. Even if it is fifteen or twenty minutes a day, scheduling time in your day should be part of your plan because then you’re more likely to practice.

What if you want to write a blog like this one? I schedule time into my calendar to write and edit, as well as to post and distribute. Sometimes I block out time to write one post and sometimes I write more than one at a time because I know my upcoming schedule is extra busy. Of course it helps that I enjoy doing this, but if I didn’t take the steps I do, I likely would miss weeks at a time because life is busy.

The first step you need to do is to come up with a goal. The second step is to determine the steps you think will allow you to reach your goal. If you are not sure, talk with a mentor, a peer, or someone else in your life you trust. This can be about your actual goal, the steps to reach it, or both. If you come up with the steps yourself, run them by someone you trust because it helps to receive feedback from others on goals and action plans.

If you don’t set goals everything will stay the same. If you think that’s okay you should be asking yourself why. It equates to being a lifetime learner and continually trying to improve personally and professionally. Try it and see what happens.

Fulton J. Sheen said, “Jealousy is the tribute mediocrity pays to genius.” While harsh, this observation rings particularly true in competitive workplace environments, where success often breeds resentment among colleagues. From subtle undermining to overt hostility, jealousy can poison team dynamics and hinder the progress of your business.

Jealousy is a complex emotion that, in a professional setting, undermines collaboration and productivity. Sometimes you can see or feel it in a palpable way. Other times it’s much more subtle but still harmful.

Businesses such as law firms present a particularly stark example of how professional jealousy can manifest. In these environments, some young attorneys eye other attorneys as their competition and may respond negatively to successes experienced by others. In doing so, those who feel inadequate or threatened often direct their frustration toward those who seem to be more successful rather than focusing on their own growth and contributions. This results in damage the firm’s culture and potentially its bottom line.

Addressing jealousy requires open communication and a culture that values collaboration over competition. All businesses can benefit from implementing mentorship programs that promote knowledge sharing and foster a sense of community among colleagues. These types of programs can help mitigate feelings of jealousy. When individuals see their peers as allies rather than adversaries, the overall morale and productivity of the business can improve significantly.

Instead of viewing colleagues’ achievements as a threat, successful professionals learn to channel their competitive energy into personal growth. I find the most resilient employees understand that another person’s success doesn’t diminish their own potential for success or advancement.

Addressing workplace jealousy is difficult but possible. Leaders can help by fostering a culture of collaboration over competition. However, the ultimate responsibility lies with each person to acknowledge their jealous feelings and transform them into motivation, thereby turning their envy into inspiration to achieve their best.

You business has a culture whether it is conscious or not. My firm has a defined culture we call the JW Way (https://www.jaburgwilk.com/jw-way-fundamentals). It is a mission statement consisting of twenty seven fundamentals that the owners and employees strive to live in operating and working in the firm. Since making these fundamentals a conscious part of our firm it we found that it improved what we already saw as a good place to work. Overall, it has had a positive impact on our firm and the bottom line.

If you’re surprised, you shouldn’t be. Focusing on company culture forces you to focus on your employees and clients. Doing so always is in the best interest of your business. The point is without great employees and customers, you don’t have a business.

If you ask most business owners about the culture of their company it can be hard to put into words. The effort to do so helps bring positives and negatives of your business into focus. It also results in the realization that changes are needed all the time, which reminds me of the maxim that change is constant. It’s not lost on me that change is hard and you have to know the possibility exists that the investment in doing so may or may not have the desired results despite the time and effort you have put in.

It reminds me of a story I read some years ago about Incheon Airport in Seoul, Korea. For years it was ranked No. 1 by passengers. When one employee was asked “What is it? What’s so magical?”, he responded as follows: “It’s because everyone – airport and airline personnel, security, concessionaires – we all share the same vision and we all deliver the same level of customer service.” That describes a culture at that airport that allowed passengers to see and feel that they mattered. All of the airport’s employees striving to live that culture allowed the passengers to live and feel that difference during their travels instead of the usual stress of feeling like you’re being herded from line to line to line.

When a business has that type of culture it’s no surprise that success follows. That type of culture tends to weed out those who don’t or refuse to follow the culture. That is what you want because it allows you to bring on people who appear better suited to be part of the culture and therefore the team that is your business. These types of incremental changes are what improves your business over time.

If you simply ignore the importance of culture and allow it just to happen the odds are you won’t like where you end up. By thinking about and discussing company culture you can create the type of environment you want to work in, attract like-minded employees, and give you and your business a better chance for success.

This past weekend I was reading something and saw the phrase “be the change you want to see.” I’ve heard it before and have written about the benefits of change. That day it struck me as I believe change and trying new things is the road to success in business, as well as in life and happiness.

When days are like being on a treadmill, life is monotonous. Maybe it struck me because I’m in the middle of a two-week long arbitration hearing and in many ways the days are like being on a treadmill. On this occasion it read to me as a manifesto saying to take action and therefore control of your own narrative.

In looking into and thinking about the benefits of change, I found and remembered that this saying is part of a quote from Ghandi, which says, “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world also change.” His point is obvious: if you change what you’re doing the options and potential results change as opposed as waiting for others to change or, in most people’s thinking, for the others to magically help us.

An example is waiting and thinking you will happen to meet people who are beneficial to your business instead of having a plan to meet people and asking those who know you well to connect you with others. In that case the change is taking action instead of waiting for things to “happen” to or for you. The point is to change and take action now instead of waiting to see what others do (or don’t do). Be clear, this is a personal call to action that you alone are in control of.

We all have heard the stories of entrepreneurs who had many failures before hitting it big. When you implement change, you will fail many times. Think of it like a mailing campaign where success may be having a 5% response rate. For me that means that a high percentage of the people I connect or am connected with will not lead to new or increased business. If this sounds bad to you note that it’s reality because not every change or new action you take will be a homerun. Plus, the person you meet for lunch may end up referring you a great customer a year later based on that one meeting. You really never know.

None of this happens if you don’t change and try new things. You need to take the first step to create change, whether in relation to your work, to self improvement, or improving your community, such as volunteering or joining non-profit board. Once you start, others will take note and have the opportunity to join in, thereby providing a better opportunity for the change you’ve implemented to succeed. Even if you fail, you will learn, which improves your chances for success in the future.

Think of the change you want to see in your world and the world at large. Then set goals and analyze the steps to get there, which will lead you to the actions necessary to bring the change you seek. Don’t let the challenge to change hold you back. As the saying goes, the first step is the hardest. Challenges you have no control over always will come up as part of life, but by effecting change in yourself and through your actions you’re doing more than sitting by and waiting for things to happen or work out. You control the change you want to see and you should start now.

You grow or stay stagnant. My point is that you either are taking action to improve yourself and your business or you are not. This is similar to being all talk and no action or not. Action matters and there is no time like the present to put yourself out there, meet people, and try to expand your network.

Another part of this is continually assessing whether whatever you’re doing is achieving your desired results. This informs what actions you continue to do, abandon, or change. By doing this, it has helped me utilize my time better and with much better results.

If all I can do is write about what to do, but not do it, that is to my detriment. I like writing about networking and similar topics, which is why you are reading this today, but my goal is not to be a writer. I want to be known as an attorney who is constantly trying to expand his network and develop meaningful relationships with the people I deal with. By doing so I have better control over my professional path and create opportunities for me and those with whom I’m connected.

One of the things I like best about what I do is meeting and working with all different types of people including other attorneys (really), accountants and other professionals, business owners, and many others. The diversity in the people I deal with keeps me engaged, interested, and energized to keep networking. It keeps me trying new things in my effort to expand my network and develop interesting work for me and my colleagues. I always say if we were all the same the world would be a boring place, which I truly believe. Those differences are the fabric of the world.

So are you working meet people and expand your possibilities or staying stagnant? You either are improving yourself or not. If you do not do so you are destined to stay in place and the life of the worker bee, which is not necessarily a bad place to be. But if you want be climbing higher with larger goals, no matter if it is in your profession, your company, or your industry, start by expanding your network and see where it can take you.