Bad leadership can never produce happy employees. Unhappy employees can never produce satisfied customers. And unsatisfied customers will never produce sales and referrals. Everything starts at the top.

When your business isn’t doing well or you aren’t getting the results you expected it’s normal to look in all directions hoping to find a cause, preferably one that you can control or change.

I can’t explain why this is true, but I think too often we assume that it must be something outside of our business that is keeping us from success, and so it’s there that we look first. It’s tempting to shift the blame outward in many directions, such as:

  • the slow economy
  • the competition
  • lack of consumer education (if they only knew how great our product was, they would buy it)
  • lack of engagement and buy in from employees
  • our own customers, resenting them for not being loyal to our business as a result of all we’ve “done for them” or (worse) how awesome we are.

I have news for you and it’s something that you might not want to hear: If you are not getting the results that you want or your business isn’t doing particularly well, you’re probably NOT awesome.

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. ” Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

The truth is, the first place you should look when things aren’t going right and the first problems you need to solve to change things are much, much closer to home. Closer even than your own employees, because the first problems you need to solve are those that you can only discover when looking directly into the mirror.

Every problem in your organization, in one way or another, can be traced back to ground zero, and that is leadership.  Because as the leader of your organization, everything about your organization begins with you.

Slow economy? It’s an excuse; because you can point to other businesses just like yours who are doing better.

The competition? If you’re being outwitted, outrun and outmaneuvered by direct and indirect competitors then you may be approaching things from the wrong angle. Either way, it’s not their awesomeness, it’s your lack of awesomeness that is holding you back.

Do you believe that what your company provides and the way in which you provide it is superior to the competition, and should therefore be helping you win that battle? If not, why should your customers?  Presuming you do believe that, why don’t your customers and prospects believe it to be true?

Lack of consumer education?  At what point will you be forced to acknowledge that your prospects and customers have been educated, and still don’t want what you have?  And if they aren’t buying what you have, or are choosing other products or businesses over yours, we’re back to an internal problem. You’ve failed to identify the real need of the prospect or customer.  You’ve failed to provide the right product or you are doing it poorly.

Lack of employee engagement?  Now we’re getting closer.  If you ascribe to the little white marketing lie that your employees are paid to care — that employee engagement is something exchanged for paychecks — you’re sorely mistaken.

There are a whole lot of reasons that your employees might not identify themselves with the brand of your business, why they might not be engaged and inspired enough to help you solve problems or provide exceptional, extraordinary service to your customers, or why they might not even want to refer their own friends and family to your business. And all trails lead straight back to you as the leader of your business and the culture that you’ve created (or failed to create) within your business.

Lack of customer loyalty?  Bingo, the end of the food chain.  Your customers aren’t loyal, they aren’t appreciative enough to come back.  They aren’t excited enough to tell other people about you. They don’t want more of what you have to offer.  You can try to blame them for being greedy, price driven or ignorant, you can condescendingly shake your head, tsk tsking at their lack of wisdom.

Or you can take a look squarely in the mirror and admit that bad leadership can never produce happy employees.  Unhappy employees can never produce satisfied customers.  And unsatisfied customers will never produce sales and referrals.  Everything starts at the top.

No matter what external forces you try to overcome, without a sound center – an authentically good culture at the core of your business, led by people who share these values in theory and in practice – without that solid foundation you simply can’t build the kind of business that you say you want to have. You can’t attract the right kind of people to your staff and you won’t be able to inspire and engage your employees to feats of awesomeness. And without awesomeness, you can’t hope to retain, engage and motivate your customers to take the actions you want them to take.

If you’ve been ignoring the facts when it comes to the culture and values of your business, there is no time like the present acknowledge them and begin to take the steps you need to take to rebuild your business the right way. The only thing worse than ignoring the facts, is to ignore the facts for one more day. It’s going to be a great year!