Low cost marketing at it’s best
8 September 2011 1 Comment
Here’s a poignant reminder that the best marketing doesn’t require money as much as thought. 2 minute video.
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How to collaborate in 18 minutes
6 September 2011 Leave a comment
18 minute TED video with excellent insights about planning methods, incentives and facilitation skills.
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Is your business in its prime?
5 September 2011 Leave a comment
All living creatures progress through stages of growth and decline, beginning with birth and ending in death. However, organisations do not have to decline and age. Indeed, they can remain at the high point of their vitality for a very long time. They can even return to those peaks from stages of decline. This article is not about achieving eternal youth, but about practical methods to pursue and maintain perpetual vitality for your business.
As organisations change and transform themselves, moving from one stage of the lifecycle to the next, they develop problems. Some are passed over quickly, but others can stymie an organisation, causing serious or terminal illnesses. ‘Prime’ organisations passionately nurture both their expansive, creative energy and their need for structure and discipline. That is the dynamic of truly successful organisations.
So says Ichak Adizes in his book ‘The Pursuit of Prime: Maximise Your Company’s Success with the Adizes Program’ . Within this text, Dr Adizes gives company leaders a ‘how to’ guide to reach and keep their companies at maximum vitality, creativity, profitability, performance and commitment, which he calls “prime”.
In a series of posts over the coming months I will summarise how Adizes describes the steps in seeking, and staying in, this phase of business development.
Will you be able to recognise the stage of your business? Will you agree? What steps will you take so your business can reach or stay at optimum level?
What follows is the first topic of eleven, introducing the nature of different problems encountered during business growth, and how to tackle them appropriately. Read more of this post
You are not in business if you are self employed
31 August 2011 Leave a comment
This is a tough pill for many start-up entrepreneurs to swallow. But if the business still relies on your input of time and expertise, then it’s not yet a ‘system of work’ that can be sold without you, and therefore it’s not yet a ‘business’. Until you make yourself redundant, the market value of your enterprise will be severely impaired.
Do you really think that no-one else could actually be a better leader and manager than you? Maybe if you formed a Board, you and they could focus ON your business while another more qualified to ‘manage’ takes care of operational matters?
From the first day you started your business you’ve grown it by successively replacing yourself with people who took over aspects of your responsibilities up to then. From an executive assistant to a bookkeeper to a sales person, and so on. And it’s very likely that each now does a better job in that role than you ever would have. It’s the same with the ‘top job’.
Issues surrounding the reluctance of founders to ‘hand over the reins’ are well described in an article entitled ‘Time to let baby go‘ which appeared in BRW, 10-16 March 2011 edition, pp 40-41. But you’re not really ‘letting go’. You’re taking your business forward.
If you have any concerns about how to recruit and select a suitable person to be your new General Manager or CEO, consider the services of CEOselect.
The secret powers of time
20 April 2011 Leave a comment
In this 10 minute animation, Philip Zimbardo, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, conveys how our individual perspectives of time affect our work, health and well-being. He maintains that our attitudes to ‘time’ influence who we are as a person, how we view relationships and how we act in the world. It also has profound cumulative effects on nations and cultures; so what affect are attitudes toward ‘time’ having on the practices and culture within your own place of work?
Richard Branson on Hiring the Best
24 March 2011 Leave a comment
Someone once told me that ‘employing one good person is equivalent to hiring 3 average people‘. I’ve worked on that principle ever since, and it’s proven itself over and over again.
So it’s encouraging to read that Richard Branson shares this among other sentiments expressed in the article entitled Hiring the Best which appeared in BRW magazine, page 16 of the 25 Nov – 1 Dec 2010 edition.
Now, if people really are your most important asset, and the best are worth so much more than the average, are you prepared to pay them what they’re worth?
Leadership lessons from great conductors
10 November 2010 Leave a comment
How to get others to make beautiful music together when you can’t play all the instruments yourself? It’s a challenge that faces every business owner, director and manager; which many claim to be impossible. Yet orchestra conductors have been doing it successfully for centuries. Maybe it’s worth examining how?
Great feedback from Enterprise Connect workshops
3 November 2010 Leave a comment
My government funded workshops delivered now to people from over 100 businesses in the Perth metro area have been getting some very favourable responses from participants. The two workshops entitled:
- Leverage – Business Simulation, and
- Productivity Breakthrough – Time is Money
are targeted at owners, directors and managers of small to medium enterprises with at least 5 staff and preferably with over $1m annual turnover; but these guidelines are flexible, with participants to date coming from businesses ranging from very small to others with hundreds of staff. Because of the interactive nature of these workshops, the diversity only adds to the experience for all participants.
It’s highly likely you could attend this training, worth $990, fully funded by Enterprise Connect, without any obligation to the presenters or the government to engage them for other services. No strings at all.
Each workshop is a half-day in duration; but they are typically run back-to-back so attendees can decide to participate in either or both on the same day.
Read what past participants have said at our online event registration site and consider if you or a colleague may like to attend in future.
Time is running out as funding ends 31 Dec 2010, so don’t delay. Register at www.MultiCOACH.biz/events today.
Seven elements of a sound strategy
20 October 2010 Leave a comment
Strategy is the primary focus of CEO’s worldwide, according to worldwide research of over 3,000 respondents conducted by Verne Harnish, as reported in WA Business News on 16 Sep 2010 p20.
But how to form a comprehensive strategy that is also coherent and simple enough to use? Harnish suggests 7 elements that must be included in any strategy. Are they in your strategy? Read SevenStrategyStrata to find out. Then post your own comments here.
Practical wisdom from Aristotle
15 August 2010 Leave a comment
“Practical wisdom is about doing the right thing, at the right time, in the right way, for the right reasons. It’s not something you learn by studying or thinking, but by doing.” So says US Psychologist Barry Schwartz as reported in HR Monthly magazine, February 2010, pp 10-13.
Barry’s views are based on the teachings of the famous philosopher Aristotle, who was “very interested in how craftsmen – woodworkers for example – solved unique everyday problems by developing rules of thumb, making mistakes, and correcting their approaches to problems based on previous mistakes. He thought this example showed how to lead other people and how to be good marital partners, be good parents, teachers and so on.”
This article explains a lot of why I chose the name ‘bizdom‘ for this blog. And how I go about improving business performance.
Read on to discover how practical wisdom can be readily and beneficially applied in business and in other spheres.
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