As we approach the midpoint of 2011, how is your business doing so far? - SmartBrief

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As we approach the midpoint of 2011, how is your business doing so far?

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Leadership

SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 150,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each Tuesday in our e-newsletter.

Last week, we asked: As we approach the midpoint of 2011, how is your business doing so far?

  • About as expected: 41%
  • Better than expected: 25%
  • Worse than expected: 22%
  • Significantly better than expected: 8%
  • Much worse than expected: 3%

Things are looking up — kind of. More of you have been surprised by the upside than the downside this year. The economy is still tenuous, but many data points indicate an uptick, although the prospect of collapse seems to be around every corner. As leaders, your task is to continue driving the positive momentum so hopefully at year-end, you can pay some bonuses and start the virtuous circle of the economy rolling forward again. If you’re doing worse than expected, your task is to stabilize the ship, understand the reason you’re missing expectations and quickly make changes to try to recover the year.

Mike Figliuolo is managing director of ThoughtLeaders.