Imagine my surprise when reading the Evening Standard on the way home yesterday to read a headline on the front page ‘John Lewis feels the pinch as sales fall be a third.’ Goodness there must be one hell of a sale coming up I thought. I know the credit crunch is bad but surely not that bad. Then on turning to the article I find the headline ‘John Lewis is feeling the pinch as profits fall be a third.’ The economic climate might change but the good old British media is as inaccurate and ignorant as ever.

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As a business coach I am more about motivating action than generating ideas. I find my clients have ideas aplenty and although I certainly add more, it is getting them to do what they say they will which is the real challenge. It is not as if we don’t know what we need to. It is simply finding time in between everything else to get these tasks completed.

I have now evolved a simple weekly planning process where we agree at the start of the week the business priorities which must be achieved and then review them at the end of the week to make sure they have been completed. ‘Nothing revolutionary about that’ I hear you say and you are right. I suppose the difference is that instead of having these actions wandering around in their heads we write them down. That simple process of having something in black and white makes all the difference.

There are many people who do this naturally, but if you are not one of them why not try this today. It is not hard and the pleasure of ticking off what you have achieved on Friday night makes it all worthwhile.

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I have a very good friend who is a recognised artist. We communicate virtually every day on email and this week he is to have a one man show. As it is quite a way out of London we have decided to make a little holiday of the trip. I rang the gallery, explained who I was and that I would be attending the private viewing and asked if they would recommend a hotel near them. Of course the usual ‘Muppet’ who answered the phone could not possibly say and had to ask the boss who was presumably hovering in the background. She then gave me the name of a nearby hotel and put the phone down. Now those with disposable cash to spend on art in this slump, crunch or squeeze must be getting thinner on the ground. So maybe 5 magic words could have made a little difference and started a positive relationship. What are they? Well what about ‘looking forward to seeing you?’ Now you might well think that this is a ravings of an old man but believe me when times are hard everything you can do to establish relationship counts. How welcoming and warm are you when prospects contact you from cold?

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Our next door neighbour used to own a pub in the local village. It was a legend in the area and apparently even people from Spain came to our rural Somerset to sample her paella. She was reminiscing over a cup of tea last week and wondered if she should throw some of her pub memorabilia away. After all it was many years ago and all that stuff was cluttering up the loft. The menus, the visitors book, the awards for her great cooking, she had them all. ‘But this is a part of you’ I argued and you know you will regret it as soon as you have done it.

I then remembered that I still had stuff from my first sales career in my early 20s. Those letters we received from the top management announcing on their colourful notepaper that I was top of the league for period 2 or had won this or that completion. There were the names from those days too, all now long gone, thanking me for my hard work. No email then. These were on nice crunchy paper especially used for the purpose all sent in an envelope which I could open and show the wife.

Now we have email and it is so easy to acknowledge performance. Just a few words hit the enter key and there you are. But how often do we do thank or praise the people who work for us or those we work with? Not just for the big things but for something small that really made a difference or for keeping going at a difficult job. Lack of acknowledgement is probably the most cited reason employees give for leaving a company. The person just does not feel valued. Who could you acknowledge, praise or thank for their contribution to your working life today? Just name them and do it.

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