Here’s a short video from Tom Peters, if ever you wondered what comes first passion or skills, here’s Tom’s answer…
Archive for May, 2008
The reason burning business bridges are so fatal is because when you burn a bridge … it releases no odor. That means, you can be burning business bridges all over town and never even know it — until it smacks you in the face later.
Here’s an example:
There is a woman with whom I’ve been attempting to establish a business relationship. We spoke over the course of a couple months at a monthly business expo. She expressed interest in my products and services and sent me her e-mail for some “ideas”
I followed up asking for a face to face or a phone conversation so I could get a better handle on her advertising and promotional needs, wants and desires. I called, left a message and e-mailed her. No response.
After seeing her again at the business expo, I wrote her a lengthy memo detailing some great, usable ideas. I hand delivered the memo to her in an envelope at the next business expo. Again, I followed up by e-mail and phone several times. No response.
Today, here name is in my e-mail in box. “Wow”, I thought as I opened the e-mail. “Wow” quickly became “ow”. I shook my head in disbelief. This woman, who can’t or won’t return my phone calls and e-mails, has the audacity to send me an impersonal, e-mail blast solicitation for a donation to her golf outing.
It’s not gonna happen.
I simply can’t get across that bridge she burned by not taking the time to, at the very least, tell me she’s not interested. Yes, by ignoring me she “told” me that. Bottom line is: Now she wants something from me and she’s not getting it.
Are you burning bridges by not responding to vendors? Are you burning bridges by being rude to people you deem as “unimportant”. If you want it to matter to me when it matters to you … treat me like I matter — even when I don’t.
This is the basis of effective networking — making people feel as though they matter … even if they don’t. Sometimes it’s as simple and easy as acknowledging them with a return phone call, a smile or a nod.
Burned business bridges emit no smell. On the other hand, those who burn bridges do.
A friend and I were chatting, he is to be made redundant, and after many years in his role with a big multinational he stands to get a good pay out. He’s still got plenty of time as an able bodied worker and wants to work… But.
There have been a number of larger businesses fold up their operations locally and he’s not about to move out of the area. He could invest the money and watch it grow, his wife is still working a fair bit so that could be useful, but he would probably get bored (in fact I know he would…)
Doesn’t take long before his mind turns to business. “Hey Steve what do you recommend? One of those franchises or???” Well it’s like this it depends on what you want to do I thought.
It turns out someone had given him the hint that a franchise could be useful, I set him thinking by asking… “What do you currently earn per hour, and do you think you could earn that in a franchise, especially if there are people being put off work in the area…” It got him thinking.
But the temptation is there, to the untrained eye it could look okay, you get the system, you milk it and the planning side is partially done, the brand image is there? What more could you want? In all honesty a LOT more.
And here is where most people seem to go astray, they get emotionally wound up in the idea “Be my own boss? YEAH!” and the rest they say is history… It’s all very well for me to say “Go do your homework…” But what if you don’t know what to REALLY research?
So the short answer is to ask lots of questions, check out lots of options, and get savvy on the language, biz speak can be daunting for those not in the know.
In any business there are risks, so before you commit your funds find as many people as you can in that field then ask them lots of questions. In fact I suggest you get to more than 10 in any one group, and then more in other groups as well.
So do the due diligence, and make sure the full on emotional satisfaction you feel in the beginning is something that will last well into the future, just in case things go “belly up”.
You set your own standards…
May 26
Current news 26th may 08 Victoria Australia. It was announced today that an aged care facility is in the hands of administrators today, 100+ residents are unsure if they will have a place to live. lets leave the emotions to one side for a moment and look at it from a business viewpoint.
Here is a facility one would imagine the operators have figured out what the costs should be, the income, the profit etc. At the end of the day one would imagine it would not be too difficult to figure out if the whole idea was viable or not… So how is it that the are now in strife?
Well I can only guess at that, however as a duty of care one would think they would have covered all bases to ensure this vulnerable sector of society is well catered for.
I don’t want the Government to mandate how these facilities are run, however there should be an equitable model these sorts of facilities should run by to ensure they are viable for the long term, not some device that collapses due to factors beyond the residents control.
It’s monday, what now?
May 26
The weekend has been and gone, and here you are back at Monday, ready to face another week… Firstly are you excited about the prospect of another week? Or is it something you wish would end quickly? Whatever your state of being right now, take a moment to focus.
Grab a sheet of paper, then quickly write down the company goal, or mantra (if you have one) and then look at it. Now ask yourself, “Am I achieving the goal, is my team achieving it too?” or “Do the team even know what the goal is?”
Okay so the goal is sorted, and before you “beat yourself up” for not working towards the goal as well as you would like, then I suggest you jot down things you can put in place today, right now… to help to make the goal a reality.
Perhaps you can take each area of the business and focus on that.
- Marketing – Is this focussed towards the goal?
- Operations – How are things being done that help to achieve the goal?
- Management – Of all the things under this heading, what things are focusing me towards the goal?
Now you have your week off to a flying start. make all your plans, to do lists etc work from that.
Have a great week, make it a great week, but make it fit to the plan!
Whether you recruit new members to your team by yourself, or use an external recruitment firm, the same requirements apply. If you aren’t clear on their role, accountabilities, what you’re looking for and what your priorities are, then don’t expect anyone else to be able to find the right person for you.
The following ‘test’ is simply based on ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers. See how well you go:
- Do you write a Position Description before you employ each new person into your company?
- Are you clear on what you are going to offer and the benefits for the employee?
- Do you consider your offer from the interviewee’s perspective?
- Do you know what questions to ask in the interview to uncover certain capabilities and attitudes?
- Do you take time to build rapport and employ people you like?
- Do you have a process to assess all the candidates from a consistent perspective? Are you always decisive when it comes to choosing the right person to employ?
- Do you have a way to keep all your people accountable?
- Are you completely clear on your own role and accountabilities?
- Do you have a system that enables you to spend less hands-on time recruiting and managing your people?
Rating:
Count the number of ‘yes’ answers you have and refer to the ratings below:
8 or more You are a legend!! Well done. Way above the norm on this particular test. . .
By the way, Question 5 is a trick question!
5-8 Not bad. You’re doing a reasonable job in a difficult management area. If you were to use the People Management Blueprint, you’d make life a lot easier!
<5 Get help!! By not having a system in place you’re making things way too difficult for yourself. Get the 12-Step People Management Blueprint!! (But hurry! The price will increase significantly after May 30th, 2008, and if you purchase before then you’ll make a big saving!)
When it comes to recruiting new people into your business, or expanding someone’s role, or identifying where to add more resource into the business, it needn’t be that difficult.
Follow these 4 steps to start creating and defining roles within your business, and writing the necessary Position Description:
1. Ask yourself these questions first:
- What functions are being done poorly or not done at all?
- Where do I/other team members need help?
- Where do we need resources the most?
- Where do we have resource gaps?
- Where do we have bottlenecks?
- Do we have any internal people who could do the job/perform this function?
- What exactly do we need done?
- What is the purpose of the role?
- How does it fit in the organization overall?
- Who would the role report to?
2. Decide on your budget, and the timing
This is critical. When developing growth strategies and their required structure with my clients, the addition of more ‘heads’ is always accompanied by the related financial and sales planning.
You can ‘play with’ costs (eg: if we reduce general expenses by 5% we can employ a junior admin assistant), or you can ‘play with’ revenue (eg: if we can increase our sales by 5% a month within 3 months, we can employ a really experienced admin support person).
3. Decide on the level of experience you want/need
- Match the role to the budget (pay less, get less)
- Recruit experience (pay more, get more)
- Trade-off against time required to coach vs higher cost, but self-starter
4. Write the Position Description
This should be easy now you know:
- the purpose of the role
- who the role would report to
- what functions form part/all of that particular role
- the experience level required
Defining the role is just one step in our latest 12-Step People Management System, a new product which I’ll be telling you more about in our next e-news. It will give you all the detail you need for each of the 12 steps, including templates, examples and checklists.
Leaders seek out top talent
May 15
Leaders are an interesting lot, often found wandering, “dazed”, plodding, planning, scheming and making sure everything is in it’s right place for the team to do what the team does best. So in the plodding and wandering the astute leader searches and hunts down exceptional people to be part of the team. They also work hard at developing the talent they already have.
Leaders find great ways to recruit or “poach” people to cause them to “come over” to their team.
The reason great leaders go for top talent is really simple, they want the best in their field to be part of what the leader has, and make it the best it can be. Over time the leader might have a few top people and then lose them to another leader, but then all they do is soul search, tweak a few skills and attitudes (their own) and move on to find even better people.
Training people to be better at what they do means being a good evaluator, negotiator, assessor, mentor, coach, trainer… the top leader then influences their teams skill uptake to ensure they are at the top of their game.
Remember Great leaders love people and therefore it’s simple that they would seek out the best, finding and keeping them becomes another thing entirely.
The reason people select the wrong person is because they don’t ask the right questions in the interview, they don’t probe to uncover real competencies and capabilities, they don’t explore the person’s true personality and attitude, and they get swayed by enjoyable ‘chats’ that should in fact be probing interviews.
We all like to work with people we like, but we also need to make sure those people we employ are going to deliver and produce results for us. The process of selecting the right person is both subjective and objective, but it does need to be a process.
Focus on doing these 7 things:
- Know what you want done – write the Position Description first.
- List the attributes of the sort of person you want (not physical attributes..!)
- Understand your culture – be honest – and know what sort of person would or wouldn’t fit that.
- Then, after you’ve done that, meet and interview.
- Don’t be swayed by anything other than your original set of criteria, because that is what you want.
- After the interview, give the person a rating against your set of criteria, and use that objective method of assessment to recruit the right person into your team.
- You could also go to this website http://www.bossgroup.com.au/products/28 and download the 12-Step People Management Blueprint and simply follow the 12 steps! It really is that easy! (But hurry! The price will increase significantly after May 30th, 2008, so if you purchase before then you’ll make a big saving !)
Recently over a very serious business lunch, the matter of grading came up in regards to karate, I suggested in one of those “A-ha” moments, that the same principle could be applied to staff training.
You see the person I was lunching with is a karate ‘nut’ and mentioned his new staff member was like a while belt and he, is like a green belt (a much higher grade), she knows little about his business, he knows lots.
So the idea came that he could use that to build a foundation for the staff training and make a series of clear distinctions at each level of training as the staff member’s competency grew with what they learnt and practiced the basic skills to build proficiency.
In simple terms the idea would be to use a system that followed the colours of Karate ranking. now to save confusion (as there are lots of Karate ranking systems and styles) lets go for white as the beginner and as we move through the spectrum the aim is to get to black, highly competent and very proficient at the business.
so.
white
yellow
green
blue
purple
red
brown
black
That gives you 8 levels, if you want more you can add a coloured strip to each “belt” or “colour” so a white belt with a red or yellow tip would mean the basics have been taught, the person operates within the basic constraints and is ready to be “graded” or tested on the skills taught at this level.
A plain coloured belt means the person is in the process of learning the tasks and skills at that level and are competent in the level below.
So all that remains is to figure out what the tasks are at each level and set in place the training and then assessing of each task at each level!
