Tips to Not Getting Sucked In....

I consider myself to be a nice person.
Too nice.
I am always getting myself involved in something that usually ends up being a time killer for me, taking me away from what I really should be doing.

Actually, I used to be that way. Over the past few years I have been cautious in where I commit my time. So I made huge improvements in not letting myself get involved in time killers.

I make an effort to not get sucked in.

Sure there are times when you need to help a friend, business associate, family member or another important person in your life and that should always take precedence.

Are there things that you can do to make sure that when those types of things come up, you can help without feeling like you got sucked into something that you never should have gotten involved in to begin with? I have a found a few things that work to help from getting sucked in.

When reviewing a project, program, or organization to get involved in consider the following:

Does it fit with your personal mission and vision for where you are and the direction you are heading with your business, life, family?

Do you need to take time to develop some new talent or skill or does it naturally fit with a talent and skill you already posses?

Are you passionate about this?

Will this help you grow in the right relationships with the people that you want to be in relationship with. (it never hurts to meet new people, but sometimes new people can steal more time for the wrong reasons)

Do you fully understand what is required of you?
Is there a time commitment?
Are you fully aware of what the time commitment will mean to other commitments already existing in the life you live?

Is this something that fulfills a purpose or passion in your life that you have always wanted to explore?

Is your involvement based on the involvement of other friends, family, co-workers? Do they understand the commitment???

Asking the above questions will help you determine if signing on to a new program or project can lead you to success and help avoid you just being sucked in.

Targets or Employees

How do you view your staff?

You know, the people that you pay to live out the mission and vision that you have for your organization. The people you hired because of their skills, talents, experience.....yeah, those people.

Do you view your staff as a mechanism to add value to your company? Have you thought about how well you treat, train, pay and communicate with them?

Staff, employees, work teams, sales force - whatever you choose to call them can really make or break any organization. I think that we can agree that employees are important players in any business. So why do we sometimes think of them in a way that appears that we have them walking around with a bulls eye painted squarely on their backs?

I ask this because in conversations over the past month about how bad the economy is and is going to get - I have heard people making recommendations and plans to cut staff.

They are overhead.

An expense.

But these are the same people that you have, hopefully, trained and invested your time and your money in. They have been with you through the tough times, but now as tougher times approach, they are the first to be sacrificed.

Business decisions are hard and business decisions in murky economic times are harder - but let's not enter into these tough times by first strapping targets on the backs of those that have the power, training, skill and experience to lead you to the light.

If you need to cut back on things look at the overhead expenses and things that can be taken away with out effecting your human capital. If you take away or cut back your human capital, service, sales, and your bottom line could potentially suffer a great deal more.

By putting targets on the backs of your staff you could be costing your business a lot more than you will save.

Is that the direction you want to take your business in?