If someone likes a web page or a blog post, they can “Digg” it. This simply means a notification goes up on the Digg web site that one person likes that web page (blog post). If enough people “digg” that page, then it becomes more popular on Digg’s site and this could send people to your site. And those people may decide to “digg” your site and in turn this can produce an ever-increasing number of folks coming your way.

Digg has completely revamped its site. It has a very new look and it’s a long time coming. It also offers a multitude of new features. Some said it should’ve stayed pat, but I like the new look and the new ways of using it.

If you like this blog and you’d like to “digg” it, look on the right side of your screen and at the bottom of that sidebar there is a “Share/Save” button. Click on that button and you’ll see “Digg.” Give that a click and you’re on your way to learning how to use Digg.

Fans express themselves in two very basic ways.

One is to support a winner and the other is to CREATE a winner.

Many fans will come out and support a winner. They’ll cheer madly, they’ll proudly wear the team merchandise, and they’ll boast to out-of-town friends how great their team is.

This article is about how you can play a part in creating a winner. You can support the home team when it wins or you can help create the home team into a winner. As a fan, you make a big difference.

What happens if the team performs poorly? What if the team performs poorly over a long stretch of time? Some of these supportive fans now become not so supportive. You start to hear boos. They call in to talk shows complaining about the players, the coaches, the strategies, the playing styles. Some complain with incredible vehemence.

Now let’s turn to the fan who is intent on CREATING a winner. This fan does not boo the home team. Interview any professional player and they will tell you there is nothing gained when their own fans boo them. Many will tell you that it actually undermines them, as they often count on the “home team fan” to be the extra player. Home team advantage is not a mere theory … it is a statistical fact. But the home team advantage erodes when more and more “fans” boo their own players.

Each and every fan has a part in creating a winning team. That may sound farfetched, but just as each member of a family or each member of a group contributes to the survival of that family or group, so it is with fans and their local team.

Creating a winner.

What does that mean?

Let’s take an example from everyday life. Let’s say you’re a salesperson and you’ve just put a tremendous amount of effort into closing an important deal for the company. Closing it means that you’ll get a excellent commission and your company will have a ton of business to deliver over the next 6 months. But something goes wrong and the sale doesn’t close. You come back to the office and your boss meets you at the door and says: “I can’t believe you didn’t close that sale!” You walk down the corridor and an associate sees you and yells: “Thanks for nothing!” The rest of the day goes pretty much like that.

Now, I’m sure there are a handful of people on this planet who just love to be criticized and they do their best work when people spit on them, but my observation is that people perform best in a different type of environment. The more positive and the more encouraging people are around you, the better you do. People just accomplish more when that’s what others around them are intending them to do!

That last line is very important. When people around you are intending for you to succeed, your likelihood of success increases. When people shift from supporting you to criticizing you, you are less likely to succeed.

Does a fan have the right to boo? Of course. And I guess your associates have a right to make your life miserable if you don’t get something done well at the office. But you certainly appreciate it an awful lot more if your associates show you some understanding and then keep right on intending that you’re going to get the job done right.

Should a fan keep completely silent and never voice his displeasure with a team that is under-performing? No and yes. There are different ways and different forums for that. But when your team is in the heat of battle and they don’t complete a first down or get a key basket or goal, that is the last place to voice it.

When the players sense, really sense, that the fans are really, really behind them, the majority of players will up their intensity level and play like crazy to win.

Yes, we have other factors permeating professional sports these days: money, free agency, unions, strikes—all of these contribute to a scene that can make the “old days” seem a long, long time ago.

And if the home team has very little talent or if the team owner doesn’t really care if his team wins or loses as long as he makes a profit, then the prospects for success are dramatically affected.

But this article is simply about how you can play a part in creating a winner. You can support the home team when it wins or you can help create the home team into a winner.

As a fan, you make a big difference.”

Let me know your thoughts on this: does the above sound like a good approach to increasing productivity or should the boss be unrelenting and possibly even on the harsh side? Or somewhere in-between? I’m very interested in your views on this.

“What’s in it for me?”

“How will I be benefited by this?”

“Will I make more money as a result of this?”

While it’s perfectly reasonable to want to know how we will personally benefit, it’s also important to consider the effects on the overall group that we are a part of (company, association, school, family, etc.).

How many times have we seen a professional athlete leave one team because another team offered more money? When we (too often) hear this athlete quoted as saying their decision was based on their family’s best interests, some of us are curious how the family is not doing well on 4 million dollars a year and the increase to 6 million a year is crucial to their continued survival. This may sound a bit cynical, but sometimes I wonder if these families really want to be uprooted and start whole new lives in another city or if they would prefer to stay where they are…and that more money is NOT really an issue to them.

Now if the athlete just came out and said, “You know, I love having a ton of money and I just want a ton more and that’s why I’m leaving my current team and moving on” … that would be a refreshing statement.

Don’t get me wrong. I do not begrudge anyone wanting to make more money. What concerns me is that the concept of “team” seems to have eroded some over the years. And a team is an essential element in the success of a business, especially a small business.

I believe if you make it a point to surround yourself with “team players,” your chances of success are ENORMOUSLY improved. And your stress level will go down in proportion to the amount of team “play” you’ve got happening.

This is not to say that you should overlook having skilled people working with and for you. If I had to distill this down to a one-liner, it would be: a “skilled team player” working for you is a far greater asset than simply a “skilled player.”

These seminars can get good results, but if they are mainly “motivational”, we often see the effects wear off in days or weeks.

Some companies put their staff through training programs to help them handle the details of their post and to relate better to their customers. These can also be quite beneficial.

And some businesses use rewards programs to increase staff productivity. These have varied workability, some work splendidly, others are not so effective.

In this post, you will be given a very simple way to increase the performance of the people who work for and with you. And as the title of the post indicates, it may possibly be the most powerful way to accomplish increases in staff output and effectiveness.

And here it is:

Acknowledge them when they’ve done something right!

People work for all kinds of reasons. We know the obvious ones. A not-so-obvious reason is to be recognized in some way for what they do. Especially when they do something right.

When somebody in your business does something right, LET THEM KNOW IT. Acknowledge them in some way.

Tell your secretary, “Thank you, Mary, for getting that report to me on time.”

Alice would love to hear that she’s been handling the switchboard exceptionally well the last few days.

Even the most seasoned salesperson will appreciate it when you shake his hand after a sale and say, “Bob, you handled that customer very professionally. Great job.”

Before you decide that this is too simple or that it just wouldn’t apply to your business, let’s look at an underlying principle at work here. People just simply appreciate acknowledgement or recognition. Don’t you? Do you not appreciate it when somebody sincerely acknowledges you for something you’ve done well?

Every group (whether it is a family or an organization) is built upon the willingness of the individuals composing it. You significantly increase that willingness when you acknowledge and recognize people for what they do.

This does not mean that you run around all day telling everyone you see how great and wonderful they are. We’re not talking about an airy-fairy or touchy-feely thing here. We are talking about a basic principle that is capable of increasing your staff’s willingness to produce and that willingness is actually your greatest capital.

Should you present year-ending or quarter-ending awards to your staff at a lavish dinner engagement? Sure.

Should you implement an incentive program that your staff agree with and will produce more to achieve? As long as it is viable for the business itself, absolutely.

Wouldn’t these types of programs recognize your staff in an appropriate way? Most certainly.

Those types of programs, however, are not the point of this article. The type of acknowledgement being discussed here is for the day-to-day running of things. When someone in your outfit does something well, say or do something that shows you appreciate that. Even if it’s a fast gesture or nod, it will communicate. Every effort you make on this will pay off.

I realize that some of you may have a hard time acknowledging your staff or expressing appreciation. I understand that. That is the province of another article. If you’re not comfortable acknowledging when others do things well, my suggestion is to implement this principle in small steps. A little here, a little there. I’m not patronizing here - a gradual approach to this will help you accomplish something that could be very valuable to your business.

Businesses perform much better when the people who make up the business are recognized on a day-to-day basis. They are more willing, more eager to do even the small things that are sometimes crucial to success.

You can and should get your staff applying this principle with each other. It will have a ripple effect.

“Alan, you handled that irate customer superbly. Thank you for rolling up your sleeves on that one.” Alan smiles and is more willing to roll up his sleeves the next time.

Does this principle have application outside of a business setting? Could it be used with friends and family? The answer is a resounding yes … but you already knew that.

I’m here to tell you one area you must not cut back on:

Promotion!

The key to doing well when the economy goes sour is to promote like crazy. I’m not telling you to spend every dime on promotion, but you must promote with an even greater intensity than before.

Go back and look at all of the promotional actions you took that were successful. Put back in every one that’s feasible.

Cutting back on promotion is never a good solution. When the economy weakens, it is even more vital that you ignore the impulse to reduce your promotional output.

I’ve written a number of posts that give easily affordable and very effective promotional ideas. Here are two of them:

Reciprocal marketing

Customer Evangelism

An article I wrote some time ago - Blame It On the Economy and Watch Your Profits Sink - has been featured on many sites around the net. I strongly recommend you giving that a read.

I decided not to re-invent the wheel and instead provide you with a few of these videos here. If you’d like to see everything Common Craft has, head on over to their site and check it out.

This video gives a great explanation of blogging. If you’re new to blogging or if you’d just like to see how a video slide show can explain what blogging is, here you go…

But I also enjoy other key aspects of the game. I like to pay attention to the fine points of winning, the small details. What is very intriguing is watching how two or more players will work together to make something happen (score a basket, a goal, etc.).  For example, in sports like hockey, basketball and soccer, a great deal of importance is placed on the ability to PASS the ball (or puck). There are players who derive greater satisfaction from a precisely-delivered pass than from actually scoring. Seasoned basketball fans are awed by the combination of a fantastic pass culminating in a score. I certainly am.

A game is played to win. In order to win, individual players blend their skills and their actions with other players. Teams made up of JUST individuals, even those highly talented, often fail against teams composed of people who work hard on working together.

The next time you watch a well-played game, observe the degree of teamwork on both teams. Look for the subtle details and you’ll see some really exciting give-and-take that you might not ordinarily see.

The more a group of people works together as a team, the more that group gets done and the easier it is to get things done. This is true in sports and of course is true in the business world.

You can tell exactly what happened. There is really not much left to opinion.

In a business, one certain way to weaken your chances for expansion and success is to rely solely on opinion. When an employee comes up to the boss and tells her that “Bob isn’t really getting his job done” and the boss operates on that information, that is a recipe for disaster. Check out Bob’s area very carefully. He may be getting an awful lot done, but perhaps he stepped on a couple of people’s toes while doing so. If you manage a business on opinion alone, you can end up getting rid of productive staff and rewarding other staff who are not very productive.

What’s the best way to manage WITHOUT relying on opinion? Statistics. Figure out what each position should be producing and then measure that production with a statistic. At the end of every week (or whatever period of time is significant for your business) collect up these statistics. Post them so everyone can see them. And then manage the business on what people are ACTUALLY producing.

Give this a try.

If you’d like some help on managing your business on statistics, email me.