Core Purpose is your innermost drive and sense of yourself.

It shapes your decisions and behaviour and is a fundamental source of motivation and commitment.

To maximize your effectiveness and satisfaction in life and career, you must understand your Core Purpose and make it a conscious part of your behaviour and decision making. 

It’s common knowledge that having a clear vision and mission provide you with a sense of the future of your business and help you avoid straying off in unproductive directions.

The problem with vision and mission statements is, while they point you in the right direction, they don’t help you take the first step.

Strategic Intent is the first step toward business success.

Strategic Intent establishes the goal, sets the path, and gets you started on the path.

The problem of organisation is mainly a matter of systems and management. 

How do you arrange your systems, so they’ll operate as a single coordinated organism? 

What management people and processes do you need, and how should they be arranged to make sure the systems all work successfully, so they’ll achieve your Strategic Intent?

A job description is a list of facts about a job.

A job agreement is an understanding between an employee and the business s/he works for.

Job agreements establish cooperative, respectful, and results-oriented relationships between managers and employees.

Every business is a network of systems. 

Systems are the way work gets done in a business, and work produces the results
– products and services –
that satisfy customer needs.

The surest path to business success is to systemise your business.

That means creating the systems you need, improving ineffective systems, and having the right mix of systems for your business, in your market, and for your customers.

Anything can be quantified, but not everything should.

Too much quantification is just as bad as too little – it confuses and obscures.

What you want and need is clarification.

The process of quantification and tracking is like looking at the jobs and systems of your business through a microscope, a telescope, and a radar all at the same time.

You see and understand it better, which means you make better decisions and do a better job of management.

How do you know when something is wrong in your business?

What do you do when problems and frustrations crop up?

Is your first response to a problem constructive or destructive …and do you know the difference?

All too often the first reaction to a problem is frustration and blaming... you look for the person who “screwed up” or you blame yourself for it.

Those are ineffective, often destructive responses.

The essence of effective problem solving is to…think systematically about problems, focus on the system and “partner up” with the people involved to find the most constructive solution.

we focus on effective ways of detecting problems (often before they become troublesome) and constructive ways of dealing with them.

No company is stronger than its people.

But how do you find the right people... the ones with the skills and commitment to make your Strategic Intent a reality?

Who are they?
How do you attract them?
How do you evaluate them?
What does it take to sign them up?

The search for the right people can be expensive, time-consuming, frustrating and full of pitfalls.

It’s also one of the most important decisions you’ll make as a business leader.

Supervision is the part of management that deals with people.

If you’re a manager with authority over people, you’re a supervisor.

There are many philosophies of management, the most common of which includes the boss-subordinate model of supervision.

It has military origins, which were okay in their time, but in today’s business world, the boss-subordinate model is obsolete and increasingly ineffective.

Today’s businesses, especially small businesses, call for making the most of limited resources, including people.

The business leader can’t do it all.

S/he has to make the most of every resource, and that means making the best possible use of the people of the business, and in return, providing them with rewarding, satisfying jobs and careers, which in turn goes a long way to making their lives better.

The Full Spectrum Supervision model is a partnership model, built on a foundation of respect and cooperation between supervisors and the people who report to them.

A simple but rich process

This RESPECT meeting process will crop up again and again as you progress through Full Spectrum.

It’ll come up as the vehicle for conducting performance appraisals for your Direct Reports (DRs).

It’ll come up as the central channel for building the “character” of the business.

And it’ll be part of management team building, monitoring and upgrading business systems, budgeting, and more.

It’s a pretty simple process you have to learn the elements of RESPECT and then set up your RESPECT meetings.

That’s about it.

But that simple structure is loaded with substance and value.

It’ll become the very core of your management process, and you’ll find that it doesn’t get “stale” or routine.

The content of each meeting will respond to opportunities and pressures in the business as well as the concerns and successes of both supervisors and DRs.

In a very real way, your business will “flow” through these meetings, and if you do it right, will be shaped by the principles of RESPECT.

One of the best tools in a business leader’s toolbox is the company meeting.

Whether it’s a regular company meeting or a Breakthrough meeting, getting everybody in the business into the same place at the same time is an opportunity unlike any other way of dealing with them.

There’s a group energy that happens when everyone in your business gathers together for a common purpose.

Everyone gets the same information, hears the same promises, and commits to the same purpose.

Company meetings are one of the best tools available to help you convert business management from a process similar to herding cats into a process of building a unified team, in which everyone is headed in the same direction with the same sense of purpose and commitment.