You are an entrepreneur running a small to midsize business with lets say 5 to 200 employees. Lets assume that your outlook might be fairly well and you do have a healthy growth rateor maybe not. Whatever the case is do you know the signs that something is not right in your business?

Do you know what it is you have to look for? Do you walk around in your business observing even the tiny details? And if you do, do have a structure behind it? Do you know what questions to ask?

How much time do you think the average employee is wasting every day? Would one hour be accurate and if, how much will this cost you? And being honest about that two to three hours wasted during the day are more close to the truth

But maybe you dont have the time to do that

Watch out, you could be in deeper trouble than you would think. Of course you have your processes in place and your managers to control their areas of responsibility. But is your team, all of them, truly performing as they should?

Here are a couple of hints you should look for:

How is the impact of you building on visitors? Is it clean?
Do you customers feel comfortable in your building?
Do you customers feel that your employees are passionate about your business?
Is your customer parking lot easily accessible and are the parking spots in the pole position?
Are there signs guiding your customers?
Does your customer lounge appeal to customers?
Are all your customers greeted friendly?
How long does it take until a visitor is seen and greeted?
Do you employees have often small talks in the hallways?
How do their working spaces look like?
What happens when you suddenly appear? How do your employees react?
What are your managers doing? How do they communicate with their employees?
How many internal emails are written?

Those are just a small number of randomly selected points you should observe. In reality it adds up to the hundreds of points and each and every point are telling you a story, the story of leadership or its lack of it.

If your employees and managers do not have the burning desire for excellence and if there is no passion for your product, then you are in trouble, maybe not today, but certainly tomorrow.

The signs you have to look for you cannot find in the book. You and your leaders need proper training by an experienced coach, who knows what he/she is talking about and lived once through it.

Walter H. Groth
Institute for Life and Career Transition

Walter H Groth

In July 2004 Walter Groth founded the Institute for Life and Career Transition with offices in Laguna Beach and Munich, following his extensive experience in large international corporations of 26 years as a manager and leader in different countries such as Germany, Mexico and the United States.

He specializes in Teaching and Coaching Business Owners and their Leadership Teams in the Power of true Caring Leadership and Personal Development, and how to leverage this with down to earth steps and actions to take to become an expert in business and leadership situations. He believes in Leadership being the ability to get the individuals of your team aligned and act “like one” towards a common vision. When a team of dedicated individuals makes the commitment to act “like one”, only the sky is the limit.

Walter Groth has a proven experience in industries such as Banking, Thermo Technology, and Automotive where he held a number of leadership positions during his 26-year long career in large international corporations, mainly working for Volkswagen HQ in different countries such as Mexico, Germany, and United States.

During his years as a leader at Volkswagen HQ in different assignments and different countries he became aware that people, culture and leadership are the issues of utmost importance, being the decisive factors of success. Walter Groth decided to dedicate his life, his skills and all his abilities to those people, those leaders who believe that now the time has come to truly change our way of doing business, and changing the outlook to a bright and promising future. He believes in the right people at the right place and that these superior “ingredients” are the diamonds just waiting to be polished and converted into beautiful and precious gem stones. This is what Leadership is all about.

Walter Groth speaks fluently German, English and Spanish, and has an unmatched insight into the Power of Leadership and how to leverage it for Growth.