What do these stories tell you? Successful businesses live or die by cross-industry “borrowing” of ideas and that inspiration more often comes from outside the box than from within a company. Ordinary businesses remain ordinary and their owners earn only ordinary incomes-and work too hard for them-when those owners, foolishly and stubbornly, mentally stay in their tiny backyards. Breakthroughs come from bringing fresh ideas found the outside to the inside of a business, and applying them in new ways. You choose to limit or expand your income by the way you reject or embrace ideas found far afield from your present modus operandi and industry norms.

The vast majority of ordinary businesspeople, with ordinary incomes and never-ending ordinary complaints about how hard they work, but how little they gain, and being unable to compete with the bigger and cheaper…have this in common: they obtain powerful information from this publication and waste their time and energy in the non-creative activity of finding all the ways it can’t and doesn’t apply to them.

Some people have such teeny, tiny, calcified, crippled imaginations that they can only appreciate an example precisely matched to them-”Oh, that won’t work for me because her restaurant sells pizza and I sell Chinese food; hers is in a medium-sized city and I’m in a small town; and it often rains where she is located, but it’s sunny here. I need an example from a Chinese restaurant in a small town where it’s hot and dry. Fools remain stuck in the very limiting, “my-business-is-different” box, thereby, negating the value of 99% of every successful strategy, example, model they see or are presented to them.

My client list is, fortunately, chock full of people who think in very opposite ways. They become rich by finding the non-obvious opportunities, living creatively, and adapting tried-and-true, winning strategies from outside their boxes. They attack each issue of my newsletter and book I suggest they read with yellow hi-liter and bias for action, not closed mind. They are willing, even eager to “re-imagine” their businesses, while others have the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins’ attitude: I’m not interested in adventures-they make you late for dinner.

One of the most successful marketing strategies of all time is called “gift with appointment.” Today, it brings new patients into dentists’ offices, affluent investors to financial advisors’ seminars, and new homebuyers to developments and resort communities; and it’s in play in hundreds of fields, helping to create millions of sales appointments every week. To the best of my knowledge, it came from a woman named Estee Lauder, the cosmetic entrepreneur. I wonder how many people from how many different fields ignored it for how long, because: “Anything having to do with selling lipsticks and perfumes could not possibly apply to MY business. MY business is different.”

In a National Football League “shocker” earlier this season, the Dallas Cowboys lost a game to the improving, but still seriously inferior, Washington Redskins. Close study revealed that an amazing one-third of all offensive plays were called to go to Terrell Owens (T.O.), the Cowboys star pass receiver. The Dallas play-callers abandoned a solid running game, with a tandem of good running backs, as well as the balanced offense schemes that had previously served the team so well.

What happened? The coaches gave in to T.O.’s petulant complaints about a lack of touches of the ball, particularly, during the prior week’s game, when he was involved only six times-and the Cowboys won. The coaches let the wrong guy take charge.

In another “shocker,” the week I wrote this column, our elected representatives handed more than $700 billion or so of our money to the guys and the cohorts of the guys who made the mess on Wall Street and let it expand into a dire crisis. Many of their cronies absconded with hundreds of millions of dollars, including one who, from two weeks’ work as a bank CEO, left with $20 million. Paulson & Friends are the wrong people to put in charge, similar to the fox guarding the henhouse or the pickpocket holding you wallet.

These incidents made me think about the oh-so-ordinary mistake of putting the wrong people in charge of the wrong tasks and responsibilities; and this includes you and your employees.

We err with others in any number of ways. There’s the infamous “Peter Principle,” named for management guru Dr. Laurence Peter, who recognized the negative phenomenon of so many people being promoted past their level of competence. As an example, the top salesman made sales manager, so you lose your best sales pro who is replaced by a poor manager; a two-fer. Another example is foolish multi-tasking: asking a good bookkeeper with a barracuda’s personality also to take incoming phone calls from new customers. The list is long. It’s one of a myriad of topics in my new book, No B.S. Guide to Ruthless Management of People And Profits, which I un-humbly recommend. It’s available at all online booksellers and bookstores.

We err worse with ourselves. I constantly see people claiming to want major money, but only majoring in minor matters. Playing Trivial Pursuit^TM, instead of Monopoly^TM.  Letting their intellect, time, energy and personal motivation be drained by the mundane, tasks and chores in which they have no interest or competence, while neglecting those tasks central and critical to make money.

Maybe worst, is expending all their time on tasks and technology, so they have no time to think.  If I could determine how much time you devote daily to read relevant newsletters and books, listen to relevant CDs, review competitive intelligence, study your school statistics, and think, deeply thinking about how you can be of greater interest, attraction and service to your clientele, then I can tell you the direction of your income, without seeing bank balances or tax returns.

If I knew how much time you invest per month away from your business, associating, networking and opportunity-searching with other like-minded, success-oriented businesspeople in your industry and a broad spectrum of others, and working with experience-based expert coaches, consultants, teachers and advisors, then I can predict your future, without the help of a crystal ball. If you have no time for such chief responsibilities, then you’ve put yourself in charge of the wrong priorities.

[Editor’s note: Lee Milteer, NAPMA success coach for its Inner Circle and Peak Performers groups, recently interviewed Dan Kennedy. They discussed a number of concepts in one of Mr. Kennedy’s book, The No BS Ruthless Management of People and Profits, the Ultimate No-holds Barred, Kick Butt, Take No Prisoners Guide to Getting Really Rich. This excerpt explains the three roles of an employer.]

Lee: Dan, in the book, you use a triangle to represent an employer’s three roles in his or her relationship with employees. One side is leadership, another is management and the third, or bottom side of the triangle, is supervision. An employer must play all those roles, but the supervisor role is the cop role, which is difficult.

Dan: The leadership role is the fun role, and it is the role that much is made of in management books, with the three-day executive retreat to write the mission statement for the year. The management role is not that ugly. That’s just the translation of where a business is trying to go with a plan; but the supervision/enforcement role has the most effect on profitability. It’s the role no business owner likes, and it’s the role that makes the worst of your employees quit, which, ironically, business owners don’t like because of the pain and trouble of replacing the worst employees.

Truth be told, too many employers would rather keep someone who they know is screwing up than face the trouble of replacing him or her. It’s the cop role where everything happens because, otherwise, what you have is a giant illusion. For example, you have a particular way that you want customers greeted, when they call on the phone or walk in the door.

You’ve taken time to develop that greeting process, so it’s exactly the way you want it to be. For example, in the retail environment, it has been proven that you significantly increase sales when you greet a customer with, “Hi, what brought you to the store today?” instead of, “Hi, may I help you?” You force a different kind of answer because the customer’s response to “How may I help you?” is “Not right now, I’m just looking.”

The incorrect question doesn’t lead to a sales dialogue, but the correct greeting question does. It’s great that you, as a business owner, know the correct question and instruct your employees to use it, but if you aren’t constantly policing them, then it is a giant illusion. I can assure you that your employees will not do it, unless they are compelled to do it. If they are on commission, then you might think they would do it because you have empirically proven to them that it makes them more money.

It doesn’t make any difference. As soon as your back is turned, they will revert to old habits. Some will not have bought into the psychology of what you want done. Some resist purely because they resent your instructions, for whatever reason. There is no compliance without enforcement. Now, you will with a small percentage of people, but trying to staff only with that small percentage of people is a hopeless endeavor.

Any attempts to do that never works because as soon as you create a population of employees, it divides itself into one percent, fifty percent and eighty percent. Trying to staff your business with one-percenters is futile because, once ten one-percenters are together for thirty days, they divide themselves again, and only one remains, if that.

When you devise processes or procedures that are beneficial to the profitability of your business, but will be implemented by a human, an employee, if there’s no monitoring, surveillance, supervision, enforcement or consequence for compliance or non-compliance, then you will not be able to keep that procedure or practice in place.

Now, your employees may comply when you’re looking, maybe, but I can guarantee you they won’t do it when you’re not looking, and you can prove it with mystery shopping.

Several years ago, when I still had my mixed-breed of dog coaching groups, everyone in the group insisted that this non-compliance of procedures was not occurring in their offices on the phones. I had everyone call each other’s offices and conduct mystery shops of each other’s businesses. We couldn’t find a winner.

If you don’t give the supervision side of this triangle equal priority with the other two, and, in truth, greater priority because it really controls the value of the other two, then you’re dreaming. Whatever you think is happening, isn’t, and whatever you hope isn’t happening may very well be happening to a great degree, but it is certainly not your vision of your business implemented on the ground by your employees.

Entrepreneurs and sales professionals need resiliency. We face opposition; we experience rejection and disappointment; and we resolve problems in greater quantity and intensity than people in jobs from only 9 to 5. Our need to rebound quickly and frequently is far greater than for most people.

Consequently, we need to engineer a sufficient amount of recovery time into our daily schedules.

Most businesspeople have given it all away and have none.

What is ‘recovery time’? It is quiet time. It’s time to think, to re-gain perspective and for casual, stress-relieving conversation about other things than business. Such recovery time used to exist naturally and automatically in everyday life. That recovery time could be found while walking from the office to a restaurant for lunch, driving your car, or waiting in an airport; but all that is gone, given to a cell phone glued to your ear or checking e-mail ten times a day. The result of all this is NOT improved productivity. Not at all. Oh, there’s a greater QUANTITY of communication taking place, that’s obvious; but as the QUANTITY has multiplied, the QUALITY has suffered. Today’s entrepreneur or sales pro is immersed in all this communication, under greater stress and tension, which diminishes attention span, listening skill, comprehension, clear thought and breeds rushed, ill-considered response and short(er) tempers.

Peter Drucker, the godfather of industrial productivity and quality, makes a huge point about the distinction between efficiency and effectiveness. Too many people are sacrificing effectiveness.

Being instantly or constantly accessible to your clients or employees does not necessarily mean you are more effective in those sales, service or managerial roles. In fact, it’s a very good bet that you are less effective. Returning phone calls and engaging in conversation while also speed walking through an airport, dodging passer-by, in a din of noise (vs. waiting and returning calls in a hotel room with quiet and privacy) does not make you more effective. No, again, less effective.

No one can perform at optimum effectiveness - thinking, appraising, formulating ideas, communicating, persuading, negotiating or managing - if under unrelenting pressure. Few people can communicate with optimum effectiveness under extremely adverse environmental conditions.

In my book, No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs, I present a compelling case for taking new, stronger control over both technology and time, and re-organizing your management of both, to heighten your effectiveness and enhance your resiliency.

If you want to be more effective this year than last, then you’ll focus on quality, not just quantity, and you’ll exert new control over your time, relationships and communication.