Ivy Hartman: What shape your business, one-author and wellness expert advices to look for a triangle and joining us today on sbtv.com to talk about the triangle of relating as a small business owner, wellness consultant, license therapist and author Patricia E. Adams. Welcome Patricia, what is a in a triangle business setting?
Patricia E. Adams: Well the triangle relating is the concept that I'm constantly developing about the layers that exist within businesses. And which piece of that triangle is the most important at any given moment. And often times a small business owners or I should say in my own case, I found that in the very beginning I didn’t understand the layers of the triangle and now we capture that concept that were trying to pass it on to other small business owners.
Ivy Hartman: So it’s more than just a three sides of a triangle.
Patricia E. Adams: Exactly.
Ivy Hartman: Were looking at three layers or they're multi layers of beyond the three.
Patricia E. Adams: Right, there is multi layers in the triangle and most small business like to operate top down. And I think top down really will captures the idea of the scenes, always at the top of the owner and then the supervisors and then the manager and then all the office assistance or the worker with inside the company. At some point I'm about to get good triangle of relating. But as you're business continues to grow you need to invert that triangle because the most powerful piece or the most powerful layer of your triangle is not the CEO, the most powerful piece are the workers. Who are actually inside of your costumers, helping you to accomplish the things that you as a CEO want for your company to accomplish.
And I find that at some point in time we are more reluctant, we are often time reluctant to invert that triangle and I just found right for businesses is healthier just to do that.
Ivy Hartman: It sounds simple enough that you should be able to invert that triangle but for some small business owners who are used to working with that top down effect how hard is it for a small business owner to invert that triangle and make those changes. And maybe in your own small business you know how that lines.
Patricia E. Adams: Well in the very beginning you are the small business, I mean I could probably asked for show of hands how many folks out there listening today started the company since whether at home or behind their desk working for someone else. All the information about the company in its direction and its passion and desire to move it forward was within you.
And so when you grown and pass that and you got to team around you then its important to allow that team to rise up and do the things that you wanted to do. And essentially, they're the first person that your costumer sees many times. Often it will go out to this leadership development training sessions that just got back from one from San Francisco and they joke around the office it used to be not anymore, well where she’s going to get us to implement this time.
So I come back now more of it taken a deep breath to start the reflection about who I am, the shrink that the company already possesses before I start going to do this or I'm going to do this or what were going to do. And what you really want to do is use the base of the triangle which is now the top of your triangle they're usually the larger section of your company and asked them what is my costumers saying, what is my costumer doing, what is my costumer needing from, what you think I need to be doing next. Let’s put all of our audience on the table, so then, what you have is again that layer of here is the majority of your workers and then here are your managers and here are your supervisors and then the CEO what isn’t—who used to be the top of the triangle is basically now the inverted triangle.
And what he or she is doing is receiving information from all those brains on top of them to make the company what they want and that triangle just gets larger and larger and larger and larger. And the way that it happens proficiently is for the triangle to have three types of boundaries and I want to make sure we cover those as we talk today and those are very simple. You can have boundaries that are so open that information just flows all over the place, which you don’t, not really capture in it and then focus in it.
You can have closed boundaries where no one knows what anybody is doing or how they're doing it, what to do next. Because its just shut in a particular layers of the triangle or you're going to defused boundaries, and defused boundaries and such as the information flows back and forth all the time that every layer of the triangle. It’s never closed and it’s never so open that ultimately someone can’t make a decision.
Ivy Hartman: Do you have any tips for how that, you know that communication can be effective in anyone of those different.
Patricia E. Adams: Yes, I think again it’s so diffused that everybody kind of knows what going on, everybody has some direction about where there company is going, everybody’s idea is validated not maybe not used every time. But I’ve heard what you had to say I would take that into consideration and by the way would you write that down so we can use it for the next meeting. You train your staff member and your assistance and your manager to lead meetings, to bring different ideas to the table. And if it’s not working right this moment you table and say pick that up later and we might be able to implement it.
Its never all about what I want, it would become a systems that’s all about what I want the company would have already derailed up to date. But when you start using your team members and listening to their ideas and I don’t want here anybody call sbtv and say that stuff the way she does and we dump it right there before I left but—
Ivy Hartman: With your employees thinking, he doesn’t do that.
Patricia E. Adams: It’s comprehensive.
Ivy Hartman: You know she is.
Patricia E. Adams: But it’s a really neat triangle effect everybody loves and you know again as a marriage and family their opposite works in families were not going to talk about that today, you have to read the book because that’s the next book that were going to write and its called The Triangle I'm relating, very simple.
Ivy Hartman: Speaking of books Patricia has authored the book the ABC’s of Change and will give you more information on how you can access that book. One last question for you, if you're doing the triangle right whether at CEO at the top or your working, you’ve inverted that triangle and you're now placing your employees towards the top, how effectively will it increase your bottom-line?
Patricia E. Adams: Everyday, because people are empowered to share that information, people are empowered in that triangle I love this when it happens. When someone answer the phone, because we tell want and done. If you give me the needs of that costumer, you meet that needs of the costumer. And then you can—you passed on to someone else, so your costumer is happy because it got an answer right then.
The triangle knows what's going on everybody has the information that they need. If you're not you pass it on the one thing about me want and done. Everybody knows how to read late within the triangle to information. To our costumer to our product and ultimately who are costumers supposed to be. So everybody knows any worth and then eliminates some of the stress that we talked about in other segments on sbtv.com about stress.
Because not one person has to know everything, this neatly worst than saying, “Well will get back to you tomorrow” two days later and you forgot to pass it on. In this triangle everybody—and were talking about small businesses too. If your closer to the information then you maybe in a larger company. And you could also make those decisions faster in a small business then you can have your in large convent. And I think that’s why so many people enjoy our environments more because they do feel more empowered in small businesses than they do in large companies.
And the bottom line is you are my greatest asset, the folks who work with me and not for me, notice there is a shift in language. You work with me and not for me. I also have to tell you too joker man they're a lot closer to the bottom-line in a small business than they are in a large company. I mean if you keep that type of communication open and to your body have to buy in and to make sure that the company stays at the bottom.
Ivy Hartman: And I would imagine in that kind of environment the report is strong and the people are going to be moving around in different areas in that triangle.
Patricia E. Adams: Exactly, exactly and they love that and it just empowers them again to learn more, to want to do more and the skills that they learn in a small business they're so transferable to whereas they want to go but we don’t anticipate that they’ll leave.
Ivy Hartman: No, keep them happy, keep them well they’ll stay with you and thank you Patricia for being with us.
Patricia E. Adams: Thank you.
Ivy Hartman: So Patricia at Adams Books is the ABC’s of Change and our firm site guys wellness group provide services to residence at 18 states you can look for wellness segments from Patria E. Adams on sbtv.com where small is the only business.
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