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Good connections

Jun 15

Posted by Steve Gray in Innovation and Creativity, People!, Planning, The Marketing Dept | 1 Comment

One of our guru lads over here is Ross Hill, on his Blog is a great piece of intriguing information I think all businesspeople and educators can learn a lot from.

He starts off talking about games and what makes them addictive… Then he goes on to show the comparison to social media (“aint” that the buzz at the moment) then I figure if you know what makes social media addictive, you could create a business that is addictive for your customers.

Imagine that people addicted to what you have, and they keep coming back to buy more… Yep the old loyal customer routine. Only now (thanks to Ross and others…) we can start to build an understanding of how that happens, so lets do it for business. Oh I mentioned educators as well, in a stale classroom, sit down, shut up, take down these notes… a fresh perspective on what engages people has got to be useful!

I’m going to cut to the chase here… The five central elements of Game Mechanics are: 

  • Collecting things.
  • Earning Points.
  • Getting/giving feedback.
  • Exchanges/Gifting.
  • User Customization.
In looking at the game mechanics and the social media link up to it there are plenty of things that make these points work, If you ever played pinball, getting the high score was way cool, in the latter day digital gamers world collecting things to give you more power, gifts, tokens etc was way cool too. then in a connected world being able to give feedback via facebook, twitter etc became a big buzz. then they allowed “games” of giving flowers, plants (virtual etc…)
Lets go across to:
Business…
  • Collecting things – Tokens in adverts.
  • Earning points – Buy five things get the sixth one free or at a discount (loyalty card ticked off.)
  • Getting/giving feedback – Hello – how are you – query form.
  • Exchanges/gifting – For every $10 you spend we give $1 to charity…
  • Customisation – if you have an online store they can personalise in some way then that’s useful.
Education…
  • Collect and bring things for show and tell.
  • Get points for good behaviour.
  • Discussing progress – giving feedback on what they liked in class.
  • Exchanges of information in group sessions
  • Customising by selecting which type of final assessment device they want to choose.
These are a few examples of possibilities, I’m sure there are plenty more, the thing is making sure you can provide enough to ensure your service is the one they are addicted to.
If you are still not sure about any of this check out Mc Donald’s and think about their happy meals for kids… you get a toy to collect, while the parent is there they probably buy something too, so even just having a single part of the formula in place can be highly valuable. Now put on your thinking caps and come up with a few ways you can use this information to your advantage.
I’m almost excited about the prospect of saying AND… lets add in our target market personality types, motivators and Drivers it would really assist us to be able truly effectively hit them between the eye’s solid targeted information they want to act on… but perhaps I better leave that for another day…

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Workplace Bullying Policy

Jun 14

Posted by Steve Gray in Health and Safety Dept, Human Resource Management, Leadership, People!, Planning, Risk Management | No Comments

Don’t turn off and stop reading because you are a small business, Don’t stop reading because you believe you have all the bases covered on this one, and just because your people in the HR department say there is no need for such a thing due to no cases of it at this point be wary of that.

Imagine you employ a bright eyed graduate or fresh faced school leaver brimming with interest and potential, then after a few weeks you see them with less of a smile, less of a pep in their step. For most people watching this person they might say, yep the realities of being in a job have kicked in, he he!

That can be the case, but what if they have found their supervisor or a co-worker has given then some grief, a few terse words, a few statements which have impacted on their esteem. This might seem like petty stuff but the impact of this sort of situation can get out of hand very quickly, the worker may feel powerless, in a bind, awkward, berated, useless and so on.

Your business has a duty of care,  you have a duty of care and this needs to be stated up front that everyone in the organisation also has a duty of care. Therefore that being the case guidelines need to be in place to clearly out line what actions are taken in situations like this and to spell out some basics as to what might constitute bullying, harassment and other situations which might impact a persons esteem.

Okay so now a bunch of  you are saying “Hey the hell do I have to care about a persons esteem? Heck I pay them to do a job, they should do it and put up with the situation, they should harden up, the world is a tough place…”

My view on that is how can you not care about a person you employ… If you are not into caring, avoid being in business. If you don’t care, your customers won’t either and then your staff will soon disappear. Yes it’s that basic, and you need to ensure you have the situation covered or you could be caught out VERY QUICKLY.

So do the right thing and have one ready to implement now, I suggest at the very least you do a search on google and see what comes up, grab one that suits and use it. for a rock solid start try the public service in your country and see what they have you can edit to make it your own. one I looked at recently had a 44 page doc you could download easily enough and it had various examples as well. http://www.apsc.gov.au/ethics/respect.pdf

To finish, imagine this, you are interviewing people for a job, on telling them about the organisation you are able to show them a copy of your bullying policy. It shows you care, it shows you will not tolerate people who don’t care, it shows you want to have happy people enjoying being part of the team, together everyone feels safe and in a organisation which values people, enough said…

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Basics are basics…

Jun 1

Posted by Steve Gray in Finance, Growth, Leadership, Risk Management, Starting out in business | No Comments

It’s June 2009 the global financial crisis is still happening. Watched a documentary on Chinese businesses going under, huge factories closed down, lots of out of region migrant workers now displaced. Sure this was one province (Guangdong) and particularly one city Dong Guan, so probably not a big cross section to measure by. The show was on SBS Australia’s Dateline (May 31) and showed a range of businesses closed and gutted out.

Here’s a quote from the show “In Guangdong province alone, 60,000 factories have now closed down and millions of migrant workers are searching for work.”

My first thought was what were they making? well it’s interesting the businesses included a printing plant, toy factories, and jewelry manufacturing… My second thought was do they make for the local market or export, export… third question, is the product a need or a want, mainly want.

So it comes down to the basics if the majority of what is produced is not for needs when a downturn comes the wants are dropped first. When an external order from overseas is pulled then the whole thing can collapse quickly. as the local economy is hanging on wants, the failure of one is felt across all.

Learn from this huge scale disaster and make sure you have a balance of income from needs based sources as well as wants based sources. If you have shares in a grocery company Co for example it seems logical that they supply the needs of people, then take your own business think about how you can supply to the needs based customers. Think carefully about this as a form of insurance to ensure you can balance your wants and needs to ensure sustainability.

Getting Marketing to Critical Mass

May 30

Posted by Steve Gray in Planning, Starting out in business, The Marketing Dept | 3 Comments

For businesses starting out, and those who may have just swapped their “marketing person” to someone new, you need to be aware there is a marketing critical mass.

I figure it as the point where the marketing being done has reached a level where a balance has been reached between the income level in the business covers the costs and leaves a profit. It’s the sort of point of satisfaction, knowing your business is getting enough of what it deserves.

To reach this critical mass can be tricky though, at first it’s devices which will probably be around for a long while, like signage on a store, then through to consumables like adverts and business cards. So perhaps you have to look at marketing non consumables (or low consumables) as start up costs, then measure marketing from the consumable start up point.

For the business which has been going a while a swap in marketing people can spell a huge challenge, especially if they are wanting to try new things… what may have been a sensible campaign going along well can be scrapped by the newbie out to impress, oops! For the new business operator sometimes just having enough cash to get to critical mass is a challenge.

Examples, you may have 5000 business cards and y have paid for them, however they are not doing much stuck in your desk drawer, even when you get them out in circulation it does not mean instant cash for your business. The same with adverts, unless there is something to cause the reader to act, then the result can take a while to kick in, in fact many advertisers find it takes 6 or more repeats of an advert to have an effect.

Another factor to marketing effectiveness is a simple one, know that when you advertise a specific product (like car tyres for instance) it requires someone to take note of the advert and then take action, when they require that product, or can see it may be useful to have at some later stage. Therefore if you want people to buy what you have, your advertising needs to be there when they want what you have. In the tyre example people may see an advert for tyres from five different organisations, but none registers until they need or want them.

When your business has it’s marketing sorted out to create a critical mass, you can then “tweak” things to make it perform better. Effective measurement of what’s working is then vital to ensure you know what’s marketing you might want to alter.

Clearly marketing is critical to your businesses success, how you go about getting it to a suitable level should now be easier and not get into a mess.

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Business is…

May 23

Posted by Steve Gray in Excellence!, Growth, Planning, Risk Management, Starting out in business, The Board Room | No Comments

There are many types of business primary, secondary etc… but I have just had a thought about other “types” of business and felt it useful to share.

In the most part a business is about creating a device to provide a product or service and make a profit from it, however it goes a bit further than that. I feel it’s important to make a few distinctions.

  • Job – not a Biz – Turn up – do work – go home – repeat.
  • Low level Biz Operator – as above – not much scope to get ahead – Some franchises can feel like this.
  • Low level Biz Owner – Some growth as the biz operator gets some leverage by having staff do the work, with input from the owner.
  • Mid level Biz Owner – Better growth limited input to the biz as the staff do it all with a manager in place or similar – perhaps develops other businesses or franchises of one business.
  • Upper level Biz Owner – As previous but developing assets to utilise the growth’s potential.
  • Top level Biz Owner – Utilises others to do the work, from developing more assets to creating more businesses.
Which level do you want to be at and what will it take to get you there? Notice it’s all about growth and profit leading to leverage, with leverage you can do more. When you learn the skills and mindset required to do this you get to play at a new level each time learning more skills and mindset tweaks to assist you. Note at each level and with more leverage you can assist more people, develop greater security and achieve more.

Happiness – workplace style…

May 19

Posted by Steve Gray in Excellence!, Human Resource Management, Leadership, People! | No Comments

Just for a moment think about your life, do you do things better when you are happy or grumpy/sad? Now think about business, do  you prefer to deal with people who are grumpy/sad or happy?

It’s a no brainer really, however there are many people looking to change jobs, move on, move up, move out! Why generally because they are unhappy. As an employer it’s part of your unwritten “duty of care” to provide an environment where staff are happy.

A small family business might seem like a great thing and how you treat family can be quite different from general staff. You might be happy to work at an old desk loaded with irrelevant papers and bits and pieces, but an employee probably will be put off by that.

I guess the moral of this is think about it. Take time to evaluate, if a new employee is due to start next week, make it a major priority to make their starting off in your business fantastic.

Here’s a few reasons why:

  • Change can be difficult for people, new surrounds new names, new everything! It can take a while to get used to.
  • Moving jobs means altering routines, wake up times, transport changes, family routines alter.
  • A new job with different systems can take quite a while to adapt to.
  • A new role may mean there are changes to who is leading who, this can cause challenges.
So imagine starting them off in the ideal situation…
  • Start them with half a day’s work, late in a week, so there is little monday rush and weekend panic.
  • Be their “work buddy” show them where everything is and how things are done.
  • Check in with them regularly to see what stands out as issue, then aim to resolve them fast.
  • Make sure all the “paperwork” is sorted for their superannuation and so on, early…
  • Advise all other staff to wear their name tags more often in that start up phase so the new person does not stress about things like names.
We could make a really long list here (please do!) and I hope you get the idea. Happiness even in a recession is vital to ensure your staff perform to their best ability, perhaps not in the short term but later on when they are up to speed.
Make time to be there for the new recruit and ensure as many things as possible go right for them so they feel at ease.

Are you Yammering?

Apr 22

Posted by Steve Gray in Human Resource Management, IT Dept, Innovation and Creativity, People!, Planning, The Operations Dept | 2 Comments

https://www.yammer.com/

This is like Twitter, but just for your organistation. If you have a bunch of people with intra company email addresses, they can connect and chat, just like twitter does on a global scale. It works on the premise of “what are you doing now?” as the main question. Then as people use it they find others working on things similar to them, or they may have an answer or a resource for someone else where working on something.

Productivity tools just got a kick in the backside folks!

Arts based recovery?

Apr 19

Posted by Steve Gray in Growth, Planning, Starting out in business, The Board Room | No Comments

Years ago when the “recession we had to have” was on (late 80’s) there was a push at one stage for an Arts Led Recovery. Perhaps it’s time to look at it again and try a fresh tack in the “G.F.Crisis”.

Locally there is a small Arts following with a few commercial galleries and a regional one with some contemporary artists hiding in the bushes somewhere.

However on the Weekend I was in Melbourne for “Art 09″ a giant expo of art from a range of Commercial Art Galleries and a lot of “art” was bought, thousands flock in, thrashed their credit cards and went off with smiles and art in hand.

A lot of discussion took place (and will for a few weeks to come) about the merits of the event and the possibilities for those wanting to have display spaces next time, as well as other ways to “make art pay”. It’s a topic dear to my heart (being an Artist might do that…)

To get on with the process it’s probably important to say, it’s about income (when people buy stuff that’s what happens folks…) then about the art (the product), then the artist (the producer…) The flow on is therefore about sustainability to be able to then have a profit and see the spread of the income to the wider community. Note with no margin there is no spread so the profit is important (both monetary and other).

I’m thinking that not everyone wants a contemporary piece in their home, (well not a big 1 X 3 metre piece anyway). However there is sure to be ways to encourage people to consider the works (at the moment much is hidden under the bed of Artists wanting to become the next big thing…) to enlighten them etc…

One initiative I saw a while back, was art in vending machines, (clearly very small pieces). however it is not until people start to explore ideas that ways to “make Art pay.” will we see the flow on. Also the flow on of interest in creative endeavours and not just the cash transaction.

There is scope for exploration for ways to make it pay, for now lets consider the fact that we have a solid core of artists, galleries and punters willing to purchase. So lets find ways to get the ball rolling.

Free Training YAY! ??

Apr 19

Posted by Steve Gray in People!, Personal Development, Planning, Starting out in business, The Board Room | No Comments

Local paper, classified training section, courses on offer with local accredited training org’s there are free courses in pre apprenticeship training, and various others to assist to up skill people… seems good, fairly non eventful stuff. It looks like the government and trying to boost things along with the freebies (have done for some time now…

However I looked down to see a small business start up course to explore new biz ideas, read through, looked okay but you have to pay… hmm at first I ranted and raved to the wife about “THIS SHOULD BE FREE!! dammit!” then got the raised eyebrow and a chat about “yeah, yeah… bla blahhhh… get over it..” and I stopped, then thought…

Hmm they should pay but then at the successful completion of the course get their money back… a money back redemption, perhaps a discount or a carry over to another course to take the idea further, or better still a chance to thrash the idea out that bit deeper with a mentor.

A nine week program, Perhaps I should go along and play devils advocate… thoughts?

Companies shirk responsibilities

Apr 18

Posted by Steve Gray in Excellence!, People!, Planning, Risk Management | 1 Comment

Ok so this is my view… but how dare a company employ people and not cover their entitlements when the whole thing goes belly up…

Here’s an example from our local newspaper, on Melba Industries.

The company does not have the funds to cover their staff entitlements now they are being liquidated. As business go along they find the money (put it away earlier) to cover tax requirements, and allegedly the same with Superannuation payments etc… so why not put away an amount to cover entitlements.

Or at worst I guess it could come out of a DRF (Debt Reserve Fund) of some kind. How about some form of insurance they have to pay into, or a compulsory savings plan for employee entitlements, that way the real profits could show through and the issue could not be so big.

Hey folks don’t hold your breath waiting for the government to do something about it, do the right thing from the start, take the whole duty of care situation more seriously and cover those entitlements.

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