How do you think your employer would you rate the value for money you’ve provided today? 1. Excellent, would definitely buy again, 2. Not bad, but someone else is offering me something more for the same money. 3. Poor. Can get the same service for less. Interesting thought isn’t it?. If employment law didn’t exist and we just asked people to turn up for work everyday and be rewarded for the effort they put in, judged on that day’s output, I wonder what difference it might make to attitudes in the workplace? No holiday pay, no sick pay, just renumeration based upon turning up and output achieved. I bet we might see a sudden decrease in days off sick and an upturn in productivity. Now that day isn’t going to happen of course, it’s hypothetical. However, if you could increase motivation across your whole organisation, you might get this value every day with people driven to prove their worth through reward and recognition. So, here’s some for you. Well done for today, you were awesome!
In order for a train to get from A to B, it needs it’s tracks to be parallel. If the tracks aren’t, the train is at risk of de-railing, a bit like your Corporate strategy (unless you get everything lined up). If you can imagine even a tiny deviation at the start of a 100 km journey, it would be huge by the end of the journey. If small corrections are made as you go, you’ve a good chance of staying on the rails, you’re almost knocking them back together. However, if you let your organisation be unaligned, then you’re heading for trouble. Create your objectives, share them, dissemniate them and check progress regularly if you want to end up at your final destination.
You remember the advert? Of course you do. Maureen Lipman playing the over protective Jewish mother on the BT ads. Quality ad. I was reminded of it tonight following an informal dinner with an important customer. In a relaxed environment, we were able to talk over a number of things and learn more about each other. Often, in highly structured formal business meetings, you don’t get to see what makes a leader truly tick, what is their passion, what problems are on their desk and what their frustrations are. By getting away from the traditional environment and taking time to properly talk, you can learn so much and it is the things that you learn which lead to a greater depth of long term relationship. Social networking can’t do this, it’s too superficial. Consider it only the first step to a human interaction.
Seth Godin makes a great point in his
blog today about saying “no”. Some people don’t do enough of it. I’ve experienced it myself. You show a talent for something and all of a sudden people are looking to draw from you (I’ve found the best way to sort it out is to ask them to pay for your advice). You need to pick and choose the stuff you get involved with so that you spend your time doing the stuff that matters to you.
By all means, share. I’ve spoken about this a lot on this blog and I’m an advocate of it. But know where to draw the line. Your time is precious. Your intellectual capital is valuable. Say no when you need to to and prioritise your time above all others.
Spring is here and it’s time to put ourselves back on the front foot. Thankfully, stories of doom and gloom are slowing and more positive stories are appearing to inspire us all to greatness. Following a challenging eight months or so, most of the difficult major decisions businesses have had to make have been made and actioned. So what now? How do we now all set our sails for the journey to recovery, with untold riches ahead of us? Here’s a few tips to stir your imagination: -
Innovation. What have you done recently to challenge, change or dump elements from your business model? Anything? Do you step away from your business to be creative and generate ideas? I bet you could pull 100 ideas from a staff of 10 people in 10 mins if you just asked. The trick is then prioritising these ideas into the easy to do, high impact things and getting on with it. No creativity = no innovation. No action plan = waste of time.
Meet Someone New. Are you meeting new people and increasing your personal learning? It’s amazing how many great ideas exist in non-competing sectors, you can learn these by getting out and networking, either on-line or in person, or just simply reading books or blogs. I use
Twitter and
Linkedin to sustain relationships and trigger new ones; however you can’t beat a personal introduction. Don’t be tricked into thinking social media is the absolute answer though, go retro, meet someone in person and add value! Chamber
networking events are an excellent way of doing this.
No customers, no business. Get out more. It’s invigorating and inspiring. Question and listen to your customers, understand their problems and how they are reacting to the economic climate. You’ll quickly be stimulated to see if there are any new products or services that you could provide or develop for them. Remember, the ratio of talking to listening should be at least 2:1 in their favour.
Change your habits. As human beings, we can easily fall into routines. Break them. Take a look at all the meetings you might hold regularly, have a review, do you still really need them? How can you release your diary to spend more time with customers? Ask yourself, why have we always done it that way?
Talk to your people. Be available, answer questions, ask questions! Some of the best ideas ever implemented came from internal staff in organisations. Fire them up, get some ideas flowing and get some rubber on the road. Finally.
Be positive. Your subconscious is programmed by your thoughts. The more good stuff you put in, the more positive you will be. You can still be positive and realistic. Life is far more interesting on the upside.
Ready, set, go. Tomorrow, Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce will be publishing a short blog I’ve knocked up for them. (I’ll re-publish it on my own blog tomorrow, so you can see what I’ve said). Anyhow, one of the points was around ideas. It’s incredibly important to think of new things, it’s how you continue to push your organisation to implement new initiatives or solve problems. However, idea generation sessions (brainstorms) can sometimes be counter-productive because they are run badly. My top tips are: -1) Keep it simple (one topic at a time). 2) Keep it short (20-30 mins per session only). 3) Use post it notes so that everyone develops their own thoughts (otherwise people can get pulled along with the current of someone elses idea). 4) Make it safe (don’t criticise any idea or people won’t be encouraged to participate). 5) Prioritise (get all the ideas out first, then prioritise). 6) Create actions against the priorities (or it’s all been a worthwhile exercise). If you follow these six simple rules, you won’t find yourself lacking in numbers of ideas and you might well generate a killer thought which gives you market advantage.
Technology. Love it or hate it, it continues to ramraid its way into our lives. Today I participated in a tele/web conference with 14 people in four different countries. All dialled in, all seeing the same things on the screen at the same time, in real time. It’s really cool, very simple to use and saved a stack of airmiles and cost. Yes, it’s not the same as a face to face meeting, that’s obvious, however for simpler stuff that doesn’t necessarily need a F2F, it’s a godsend. As software becomes even more intuitive, the usual excuses for not using this kind of technology are slowly dying down. In addition, with greater pressure on carbon emmissions, it makes sense to only make the essential journeys. So, dive in and have a go, it might take a few attempts to get used to it, but when you do, you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it. Perhaps the MP’s could have it instead of London flats?
It only takes a moment. A split second. A glance. A mischosen word. A long wait. A missed expectation. And what? Your best customer could say goodbye. Here’s an example for you. Around fifteen years ago I was working for a major multi-national in the IT sector, one day every person received a memo from HR, we were to have training on taking commitment for calls. Why? A CEO had taken it upon himself to telephone the business directly to negotiate the final details on a multi-million pound Epos system. What happened? He was passed from pillar to post around the organisation. In the end, he gave up. Outcome = They lost the deal. Lessons to learn. Either treat everyone the same or make sure your most important customers have a direct route through to their desired destination. Once you lose them, it’s so much harder to win them back. Lesson learned.
Heartfelt thanks. No, I really mean it, thank you so much for reading this, I really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy day to read my thoughts. You could be doing so many other things, yet you’re here and I want to recognise what that means to me. Do you feel appreciated? Now, what did that cost me? Nothing. A few well chosen words of thanks or praise can be bigger than any performance bonus you can give. When did you last give some? It’s easy to forget, no one would blame you, we’re all busy, focused on the business, bringing home the money, reinventing ourselves. However, the smallest gestures can go a very long way and a few words of praise or thanks can give increased motivation, a sense of achievement and loyalty. So, what are you waiting for??
Getting time to read. It’s becoming harder and harder. So many things competing for our attention, that our attention spans are becoming shorter and shrtr (spot the deliberate spelling mistake). However, we should make time for it. I’m taking home a huge bag of industry magazines, reports and things of interest this weekend for a good catch up. It always stimulates me to see other peoples perspectives, competitor products and see what perspective the journalists are taking on the world. Personal growth comes from learning and experiences. We’re all busy doing the “experience” stuff, don’t forget to put some time aside for a bit of reading to top up your “learning”.
