– LOOKING FOR CASE STUDIES CANDIDATES NOW –

In ultimate celebration of Align You w/Your Business! Day - Thursday, February 10th, 2011
(…and the second Thursday in February every year)

– WE ARE SELECTING A FEW LUCKY CANDIDATES TO START NOW AND BE REAL LIFE EXAMPLES FOR THE PARTICIPANTS IN OUR 2011 HOLIDAY. SELECTION BEGINS SOON –
More information will be posted by September 15, 2010 so that you have plenty of time to prepare your applications for un-matched performance improvement that will help hundreds, even thousands of other leaders follow that success.  Or send me an email at lori (at) collaborative-action.com and you’ll receive information and materials instantly.

THEN JOIN US FOR THE “ALIGN YOU w/ YOUR BUSINESS DAY” CELEBRATION in February 2011

What happens then?

Get tips, tools & connections that lead to phenomenal acceleration and fulfillment … from experts and including people like you recounting their real-life business success case study using the same on-track strategies, methods, tools and technology you’ll learn about.

About the holiday:
To all leaders, now and future:
As an entrepreneur and business leader myself, I know how hard it can be to step back, step up and align you w/your business. You are successful, but perhaps you aren’t finding your business to be where you have dreamed it would be, at least not today.

That’s why I created Align You w/Your Business! Day on the second Thursday in February, to help leaders and their support teams discover the gaps, get or learn the right tools, and connect internally and externally in ways that can lead to phenomenal business improvement and personal fulfillment.

I’ve gathered some awesome experts - people who I respect for their practical advice and business savvy - to help me help you on this special holiday. Together, we are each giving you a free special gift in honor of Align You w/ Your Business! Day - gifts to help you achieve business- and personal success.

Are you ready? WE OPEN THE 2011 THIS CELEBRATION ON MONDAY FEBRUARY 7th AND CONCLUDE ON ALIGN YOU w/ YOUR BUSINESS DAY, THURSDAY FEBRUARY 10th.

Register now by simply signing up at the right hand side of this blog.  Name and email is all we need right now.  Or email lori (at) collaborative-action.com or lori (at) lorileavittevans.com to share your ideas or receive more info right now.

We respect your email privacy
Privacy Policy: We will NEVER share, rent, or sell your information to any other organization. Submitting your information constitutes your express written permission for Lori Leavitt Evans to contact you via the email. You can easily opt-out at any time. Enjoy the great information you’re about to receive!

Align You w/Your Business Day Description:
Many business leaders and entrepreneurs are quite successful, and certainly able to get out of the trees and be strategic, but still can find things going not quite as they’d hoped in their businesses or lives. Sometimes it just takes a little tweak, and sometimes it takes more. But usually this change does not come without reaching inside and outside. Lori Leavitt Evans knows that with the right tips, tools and connections – especially those that reach each leader in a personal and passion-triggering way - can help propel any business past whatever is keeping it from greater success.

With Align You w/ Your Business Day, this February 10, 2011, leaders and their teams can celebrate their breakthrough ideas and action plans for even phenomenal business transformations.

Align You w/ Your Business Day calls attention to millions of leaders across the United States, including the 145+ million people who either own a small business or are independent professionals supporting business leaders. Global participants are encouraged to join in on this celebration. The day urges these leaders to reach outside their business to better lead their business. The Day inspires an alignment mentality that weaves its way from the top and throughout the organization to create amazing breakthroughs and results.

Great tips, tools and connections help fuel innovation through leaders, and this can lead to major improvements and even business transformations. Having this invaluable environment for innovations and breakthroughs…that get results…doesn’t need to break the bank. Really there is no reason to not drop everything and focus on this Align You w/ Your Business Day!

Align You w/ Your Business Day celebrates breakthrough mindsets and helps leaders and their organizations thrive.

© 2010 www.collaborative-action.com, a part of Lori Leavitt Evans (LLE) Consulting.

“We” care so much what others think. Why is that? Is it ok for a CEO to work from home when in their hometown, treating “the office” as another place for meeting & greeting? When an employee works at home can they be productive? Can one think really well even if not wearing a suit? Is it an embarrassment or a luxury to hold business meetings from a home office?

Break free. Be authentic. If you know you can lead from whereever you are - do it. If you know you can be productive for yourself or others from wherever you are - suggest it.

The way of working changed a long time ago for some of us. As is the way of things, now it is becoming more accepted and even relished. Are you open to this?

Feel great & do even better! Who doesn’t want that for themselves? Who wouldn’t want that for others? So of course we foster feeling great at work. whoops! screech. halt. back up. We don’t? Why not? Mostly because what we think we need to do is hard. But they really are NOT what is needed, or wanted. I call these Better Business Management Myths and I’ve listed three for you below: (more…)

Risk & Benefit

This post is about failure and success. It will likely resonate greatest with those who think big, create strategic plans and take risks to see those strategies executed. (more…)

In this series we are talking about connecting – connecting to people, connecting people to the business results you want, and getting those results.

Recap:
In Step 1 you selected up to three of the most critical strategic themes or objectives. In Step 2 you mapped these themes to your Strategy so that key objectives can be prioritized and contrasted (it is not uncommon to have conflicting objectives that need to be sorted out). And in Step 3 you prioritized so that you’d be sure that what is most important gets done.

Now before we move on, it is critical to have a plan for identifying and removing roadblocks. You will face at least one. I’m going to list a few of the most common ones here, along with answers that have worked for others. I’d love to have comments and additions from readers.

Here are three common roadblocks to getting what you expect: (more…)

Question: How do you get employees motivated and passionate about the mission of the organization so that they strive for self improvement and improved work performance without micromanaging from management or finger pointing at their colleagues?

Lori’s answer:

You’ve put a lot of great keywords into your question: motivated, passionate, mission…
This tells me what a great leader you are – congrats!

But guess what? -No one in your company will care about the practice in the way that you do. That is because the WIIFM (what’s in it for me) for you IS your company; that’s not the case for your employees.

I also love that you brought up finger-pointing. It is a sign of unclear roles and expectations (read: measures).

(more…)

Lori Leavitt Evans is a creator, builder and analyst. Her passion is to create environments that create the appropriate energy for the purpose.  This translates into business environments that are collaborative, innovative, nimble and value-focused.

For a professional/personal mix of sound-bites … follow via Twitter: @LoriLeavitEvans.

A musician and artist in her pre-career years, she started in interior design and architecture in college and ended up with two degrees with honors in economics and accounting. This was followed by two accounting certifications, CMA and CFM, then followed by an executive MBA from the Foster School of Business at University of Washington.

Lori rose within the business world, mostly in manufacturing, oil and healthcare, and including Tree Top, Pacific Coast Feather, Tosco and Aon. In December 2000, Lori launched Abrige Corp., to “connect people to business performance,” and focused first on helping organizations move more adeptly through complexities such as acquisitions, partner due diligence and privacy compliance.  In 2006 the C-Secure Systems division was created to “connect machines to business performance.”

Success for Lori is when her work helps people to “do the right things right.”  She brings her passion, and action-oriented methods, to life through speaking, consulting, coaching and technology.  She specializes in performance and risk management, and has worked with hundreds of leaders and their organizations.

The time for people doing the right things right is now.  Now more than ever people at all levels are distracted. Leaders are not getting the information they need to make sound decisions. People are not clear how they can add value, or if they even have a voice.

The Collaborative-Action blog was born to help drive this message, and actions that can be taken right now, to HR and Executive leaders.

What message would you communicate to your employees if you are (or were to be) a leader of a company suffering from lost profits, lost customers and/or lost value during these still uncertain times? How would you communicate it? What would you expect the employees to do next? What might you tell employees about changes you/leadership will make? How would you handle your own emotions caused by uncertainty? How might you refocus yourself, your mastermind (those around you that help with decisions) and your employees on solutions? How might you keep the communication… and the positive sparks it should create…alive?