Welcome to the last month of 2010. Hard to believe 2010 is almost history. How did you do with your 2010 New Year’s resolutions? More importantly, how did your business do this year?

Unfortunately many business owners open the checkbook and look to see how much money they have left. It seems the financial end of the business is one of the toughest for most business owners, especially those in business without an accountant.

The most successful business owners look at several Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to see how they are doing. Some of these may include:

1. Pofit and loss (P&L) statements;

2. Year-over-year sales comparisons (increase or decrease of market share);

3. Staffing – did you keep the good ones and free up the future of those who didn’t contribute?;

4. How this year’s advertising is working (ROI of each type of advertising);

5. Productivity of each one of your staff members;

6. Training Needs for everyone on your staff – including you; and

7. Fill-in-the-blank for your particular need.

December is the IDEAL time to come up with the 2011 plan. It also is a good time to evaluate your personnel and make a comparison of how they see themselves versus how you see their performance. We just did a similar project at the office and it was interesting to see how people graded themselves versus how their bosses graded them.

Evaluating and communicating the differences might be eye opening for you … and them!

The book “Whale Done” by Ken Blanchard revolves around how killer whales are trained at Sea World. (It is a great book and I highly recommend it.) The main premise in the book is that if you acknowledge good behavior and ignore bad, typically everyone will move toward the good. Interesting, isn’t it?

Think about how a baby learns to walk. The parents don’t remind the child how often the infant falls down. Parents simply keep encouraging the child to take the steps necessary until they walk, then run, safely. Parents do this with constant positive motivation. This mirrors how killer whales are trained at Sea World.

Now compare this to how you manage your staff. Do you focus on the positives and ignore many of the negatives? If you had a tech cut a 12-inch gash in a customer’s dash, I am not sure how you ignore it. (In fact, I don’t even recommend ignoring it!) Conversely, though, the main thought of the book is right on. We always are quick to jump on a person for what he/she is doing wrong, but rarely do we say even a simple thank you for a job well done.

During the year leaders should recognize the good and focus on positive motivation daily. When we want people on our staff to learn other parts of the business to make them even more valuable to our operations, we need to challenge them and then positively reward them.

Next year should be our best one in business if we get a good jump on it by putting our plan together, and if we focus on how we make our employees better at what they do. By doing this, you will find that your employees will feel better about what YOU do!

Only you can change your outcome this next year. It isn’t just a dream or a goal. Make it happen and have a whale of a 2011.