If you don’t ask, who will?  What’s the price of remaining silent?  Will you miss out on the opportunity of a lifetime?

The world is a busy place and its not going to slow down to figure out what you want.  It’s up to you to use your voice and to ask about the things that matter most to you.  For example:

• Do you remember the days when you had to ask your parents for permission?
• As you grew up, did you learn how to ask teachers to explain a subject one more time or in a different way?  Or did you ever ask an expanded question?
• Have you asked someone on a date, or for a lifelong commitment?
• Do you know how to ask a team member to find a way to produce more?
• Are you willing to ask the “hard questions”?  Or do you avoid them?
• Have you asked what success looks like to those you work with?
• Are you willing to dig deep and ask more of yourself?
• Do you make sure to always ask “Why”?  (This was a special gift of my youngest son, who perfected the “Many Why” approach!)
• If you ask a question, but the answer isn’t what you expected (or wanted), what happens next?
• When you ask “How are you doing?”, do you really want to know?  (If not, why ask?)
• Are you willing to ask yourself to step up, to do more?  What inspires you to push yourself to accomplish more?
• Have you ever asked a customer what’s most important to them?  How about a family member?
• When you ask someone to do something, do they know why?  Shouldn’t they?

If you’re not willing to ask the questions, then how will you know what others care most about?  More importantly, how will you know what direction to take with your own life and career?  The answer may be yes, no, or maybe; but it’s most certainly the equivalent of “NO” if you never ask the question in the first place!

Success and happiness begin with asking great questions, but depend upon listening to the answers – and then actually doing something with them!  What have you asked about today?

From far away, you can't hear anything at all. Move a bit closer and you might pick up some slight sounds, but there's so much background noise that you're not quite sure.  If you focus on the source of the sound and move toward it, you will begin to hear more.  By tuning in and listening intently, then calling out in response, suddenly it becomes clear. That's a voice you hear. It's the Voice of the Customer!

The voice of the customer was there all along, but often it is silent unless spoken to. Other times it may be pointed in another direction. Occasionally it is angry.  Sometimes it is exuberant!  But when it is engaged directly and encouraged to speak, the words flow and priceless insights are learned. It simply requires a willingness to ask, then listen and understand what's being said.  The most valuable listening always takes place one on one and, I believe, always will. That's what makes us human.

When customers are distributed far and wide, however, and you can't listen to them all at once, companies can employ listening tools to capture and amplify the voices. It can come in the form of consultants or focus groups, but most often it comes in the form of a survey. All too often, surveys are launched without investing the thought and effort in the process to filter out what should be heard from the cacophony of voices and then actually do something with the information that is gathered.

To truly hear the Voice of the Customer and have it willing to speak again and in a bright, cheerful way requires doing more than just listening and understanding. It requires adapting and then delivering based upon what has been learned; responding to what is said, echoing understanding and then adapting the product or service approach is what creates value.  When that happens, the Voice becomes one that will happily tell others about you. Pretty soon, you can enjoy a Chorus!

Businesses have a choice. They can guess at what matters. Or they can listen intently to the Voice of the Customer for the keys to long-term success. Can you hear it?

A company can't afford to stand still.  To survive in this world of rapid change, it must adapt to achieve growth. While growth isn't a complete goal in and of itself, realizing growth is a sure sign of business health. You're either growing, or you're withering away.

There was a time when growth was realized through traditional Marketing activities and adherence to the "Four P's". That will surely ring a bell with some of the "old school" folks reading this article. For those of you who aren't familiar with the Four P's, we're talking about Product, Place, Price and Promotion. There have been variations on this theme through the years, but this was the traditional standard for planning and evaluating the effectiveness of marketing efforts. 

Business is much too dynamic today for marketing to be assessed through separate, static components.  Instead, it makes much more sense to view marketing as a more dynamic discipline, one charged with Energizing Growth!  This active standard also relies upon "Four P's".  This modern-day standard is based upon a commitment to:

>  Perform.  First and foremost, a business must keep the promises it makes.  Our body of work becomes our résumé and future success depends on it.  In this day of the internet and instant communications, it doesn't take long for positive recommendations or criticism to spread.  It's a matter of listening to the Voice of the Customer and taking great care of the customers that we're already fortunate to serve.  This lies at the heart of what it means to Plan for Success, something that must be wired into the DNA of an organization (Plan for Success - January 2013). When customers are engaged, there is no more powerful fuel for Energizing Growth than that.

> Promote.  It's essential to be able to tell our story clearly and in a compelling manner. "Why" does our business exist? "How" do we serve our customers?  "What" makes us different?  To Promote has always been an essential element of the Four P's, but this aspect must now be fine-tuned in order to be heard in the loud static of information that customers are bombarded with every day.  We must transmit crystal clear, static free content on a channel to which our customers will happily tune in and listen.

> Propel.  To build momentum requires more than just to Perform and Promote. It depends upon the focused energy of everyone in our business. We must pay attention to the smallest details, ask better questions, listen more intently, adapt more creatively and deliver more consistently than the competition.  We must use the resources we have available to push the limits of what's possible.

> Produce!  Unless all of that energy is harnessed, it quickly dissipates and is wasted.   When connected together, however, these fuel sources combine for Energizing Growth!  A healthy business will be propelled forward and grow profitably when the fuel sources are in balance.  That's great for customers and employees alike; talented employees may join a company for a job, but they will stay for opportunity.  Growth creates opportunity and, in turn, more valuable options for customers.

2014 holds great promise for organizations that Perform, Promote, Propel and Produce the results required for Energizing Growth. Enjoy the Journey!

Accounting is the language of business. Without at least a conversational knowledge of the language, it's like visiting a foreign country and being unable to communicate.

If your job is in the Accounting Group, you obviously need more than a conversational knowledge.  Becoming fully fluent enables a person to progress and handle more complicated analysis and "conversations".  Conversation ranges from Financial Accounting, which documents important facts, to its most evolved form where the language becomes Managerial Accounting.  At this level, the basic facts are analyzed, interpreted and used in deep discussion with others in the business.

Are terms like Income Statement, Revenue, Direct Expenses / Margin, Indirect Expenses / Margin, Gross Profit / Margin, SG&A and Operating a Profit familiar to you?  Can you think of words that fit into each category?  Do you understand Debits and Credits, or do more arcane words like EBIT or EBITDA ring a bell?

How about Balance Sheet, Current Assets, Fixed Assets, Short and Long-term Liabilities, or Owners' Equity?  Does a Statement of Cash Flows suggest to you how the inputs and outputs of a business work together?

Regardless of your role in a business, conversation around these and other important terms has a huge effect on your understanding of and influence on the financial factors that are essential to business success.  Each and every employee impacts multiple accounts; do you know where you show up in this conversation?

The mechanics of Accounting are well-established and work much like grammar does to properly connect words.  There are also many "dialects" spoken; in our business it happens to be a dialect from the "Costpoint" region.  There are some unique words and turns of phrase, but the basic grammar is consistent with other dialects.  When we share this common language across the business, our level of understanding of what's happening and of one another go way up.  And that builds a stronger culture and more energized business.  Each locale may have a slightly different accent, but suddenly the understanding is clear.

It's much more fun to visit a country if you can at least hold a simple conversation.  A "pocket guide" will get your around, but if you decide to live there, it's time to study the language!  The language of Accounting chronicles the past, frames the present and enables meaningful conversations that shape the future.  Join the conversation!

Happy New Year!  This article is my 87th cultivation(s) post since I began sharing thoughts and ideas with you on growing a bountiful culture.  The Winter Season and commencement of a New Year are the ideal time to plan and prepare for the "Growing Season" ahead.

Growing a business is a lot like farming, something that I spent quite a few years doing earlier in my career. In order to produce a bountiful crop, careful attention must be paid to the land, crop selection and cultivation practices. In business, culture is like the land upon which the business grows; it can be fallow or made fertile through the proper cultivation practices.  Some of a grower's most important work occurs in the winter months.

As I was in the midst of planning for 2014, I happened to read a current post by Anthony Iannarino on his sales blog and I heartily recommend it to you:

http://thesalesblog.com/blog/2014/01/03/on-leaders-and-culture/

As he focuses on "leaders" in his remarks, I encourage you to think more broadly than the idea of leaders equating to managers. While all leaders must "manage" people and processes as part of their duties, not all managers are leaders. Neither is it necessary to be a manager in order to lead your own efforts and act as a thought leader in your work group.  When a culture is healthy, leadership translates into "ownership" at all levels.

Anthony points out that "When a leader doesn’t create, nurture, and protect a healthy culture, an unhealthy culture can take root and grow on its own. A leader has to pull out by its roots any threat to the culture."  I will add my own belief that if a person is willing to walk past a noticeable weed in the garden, they are willing to overlook much bigger problems.

The culture that we share requires our diligent cultivation in order to produce its maximum yield.  Each of us are stewards of the culture, just as a grower is a steward of the land.  This is because, as Anthony states: "Culture is what takes over when leadership and management isn’t around."  It is the soil that sustains the crop!