You’re barreling toward the next year, bent on doing it better, faster, smarter than … what?

If you look back over the last several months, certain behavioral issues have already surfaced as leading contenders for top problems. What impact are they currently having on your business and what can you do to course correct before year-end?

Visionaries are given a mandate to create a concept that moves the company ahead of the competition. Impulsive visionaries, exploding with new ideas, are having a whale of  a problem motivating their troops to follow along.

What’s the problem? Either the troops don’t have a clue what these folks are talking about,  or they understand the message; it  just keeps changing before they have time to implement  it.

What’s the outcome? All beginnings and no endings result in wasted time, energy, and money. The implementers appear more concerned about this than the visionaries seem to be.

The Solution: Maximize vision and manage impulse. Emphasize discipline and demonstrate follow though. Simplify the complex. Be available to ask and answer questions, patiently, pragmatically, and considerately.

With changes occurring as rapidly as they have, companies are hard pressed to maintain their competitive edge. To amp potential, many are going outside their current talent pool to hire the most creative minds they can find.  These innovative sorts are authorized  to drive change projects to completion as quickly as possible.

What’s the problem? Assuming that driving change and leading change are the same.

What’s the outcome? The disparity between innovative wizards and their ever frustrated direct reports appears to be widening. Mixed messages and culture clashes are resulting  in an us vs. them attitude.

The Solution: Leading a change process always takes longer than you want or expect. Slow it down, intentionally. Give people time to let go of the past. Describe the goal, identify the objectives, and go for the buy-in. Take time up front and you’ll pick up time down the line.

Service and loyalty are slipping. Employees appear more flip and fickle than ever before. Their “what have you done for me lately” attitude mirrors their consumer behavior: nothing seems to be good enough, long enough.Impersonal merchandising machines have replaced personal retail shopping. Who needs courtesy if there’s no one to say “please” and “thank you” to when you shop on the net.

Bottom line: Employees are asked to do more, work harder and stay longer to get last year’s paycheck.

Problem: It’s hard to dance on a dime, carry more than your load, and work overtime all the time without recognition, affirmation, and life balance.

Outcome: Employees and customers will take their work effort and purchase power somewhere else.

The Solution: Address the issue now. There has to be “something in it for me” to stay in the game. Focus on the employee as you would your customer, and focus on your customer the way your parents say it used to be. Take stock of what needs improvement and what needs repair and plan accordingly, or you may be repeating what you never fixed, in 2010.

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Joyce Richman (www.joycerichman.com) has been specializing in executive and career coaching since 1982. She works in a variety of environments including: higher education, manufacturing, sales, marketing, media, technology, pharmaceuticals, medicine, banking and finance, service, IT, and non-profit sectors. A member of the adjunct faculty at the Center for Creative Leadership, Joyce is certified to administer a number of feedback and psychological instruments. Joyce is a weekly guest on WFMY-TV and the career columnist for The Greensboro News & Record. She is the author of Roads, Routes and Ruts: A Guidebook to Career Success and co-author of Getting Your Kid Out of the House and Into a Job. A popular speaker, Richman conducts conducted seminars and workshops throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. Her coaching profile can be found at TheCoachingAssociation.com.