Team Effectiveness: Thinking Inside the Box
July 24, 2007
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I wrote this article following a training I developed for a client and their team. I hope you enjoy this as much as they did.
Before we begin ‘Thinking Inside the Box’ lets first review what ‘Thinking Outside the Box’ means.
Thinking Outside the Box
What does it mean to ‘think outside the box’?
Typically ‘thinking outside the box’ meant that we were expected to change our thinking, paradigm, and expectations. This was often the result of attending a seminar, speech, or an employer who was trying to encourage innovation.
As a result, we think we need to create something totally new and in the process we forget, discount, or ignore what we already know and get caught up in the endless loop of what I call the Grass is Greener Syndrome and change for change sake. Which can prevent us from seeing the need to learn from our failures.
When we do not learn from our past failures we can easily miss seeing the obvious or worse, misidentify the problem, which creates a bigger mess.
Outside the box thinking can distract us from paying attention to the options and opportunities that are blatantly visible ‘inside the box’ that could dramatically improve our work, performance, and success.
Thinking Inside the Box: First Grasp the Context & Situation
Resist re-inventing the wheel because we can easily miss the obvious. Read more
Aging Workforce: Asset, Liability or Succession Opportunity?
July 12, 2007
Manpower suggests that using specialized retention and recruiting strategies will allow you to target the single largest available workforce segment – those over age 50. If you are looking for people to staff our business and you are ignoring the 50+ worker you could be in for a tough ride.
Training programs – Mature workers are lifelong learners, and programs that build skills and increase employment opportunities will positively impact employee engagement.
Flexible scheduling options – Studies confirm that non-traditional schedules are one of the top priorities for older workers. Policies that offer part-time, flextime, job sharing, project work or generous time-off plans allow those in their retirement years to have ample time for work and personal pursuits.
Job redesigns – While mature employees want to work, many would elect to bring value to an organization in a different capacity. Whether it’s less travel, fewer responsibilities or a decrease in physical demands, consider job accommodations in order to retain the institutional knowledge and skills of the most experienced employees.
Targeted recruiting strategies – As with any hiring plan, employers should consider how to reach people in the demographics that meet their needs, and older workers are no exception. Look to professional organizations, company-sponsored alumni groups and online communities for possible candidates. Via Aging Workforce
I would want to see what I could do to take advantage of this large labor pool before their Business Dreams and Retirement Collide.
What do you think? Are you now or will you use any of these strategies?
Planning, Startups, Stories: The Essential ‘Why They Buy’
July 10, 2007
Tim Berry asks some great questions and my favorite is the last line about strategy:
Whether you’re planning for a start-up or to grow an existing business, start with buyer motivation. Why do they buy from you? What do you do better, or at least different, from your competition? How can you build that difference into strategy? Via Planning, Startups, Stories: The Essential ‘Why They Buy’
Answering these questions will be a journey and could take you awhile to answer, keep at it.
I have been working at it for 9 years and I feel like I am just starting to sort it out for myself. It is much easier doing it for my clients than myself.
The Remote Control CEO Sustained Coaching Program
July 7, 2007
This is the only professional coaching program I know of that will help you to make the transition from working daily in your business to operate your business by Remote Control.
Making the transition to operate your business ‘Hands Free’ can vary greatly depending on your current business situation, number of years you have been in business, and Read more
It’s not the driver it’s the vehicle…
July 5, 2007
The time to reinvent your business is now. I wrote about it today:
If your business is sick, sales and profits are down, marketing and advertising not working like it once did, and you find yourself wondering how to turn things around, it might just be that you need to reinvent the business model.
Anything goes, be unorthodox, as long as you understand the customer and your business model works. Via Biz Plan Hacks
Design Your Business to Captivate Customers Attention
July 5, 2007
Attracting and holding the interest and attention of your ideal customer requires an entrepreneur to design a customer experience that is captivating, compelling, and practical.
The Customer Experience is a Social Interaction
In the same way that intangibles cannot be stockpiled prior to delivery, they cannot be sold afterward. Also, intangibles are performed in addition to being produced. They are essentially social interactions conducted between the deliverer and customer.
Because the customer has a hand in the creation of the quality of the service, the deliverable has an intrinsically experiential quality to it. It looks for:
- Quality rather than quantity.
- Experience rather than things.
- Experiencing the service is part of the service itself. Whatever the deliverer produces, positive or negative, the service itself is either positive or negative.
We need to take our cue for the quality of service from an external source, the customer. More importantly what is the consumer’s ‘experience’ of this service? We must identify the desired ends an experience creates and then use that to determine what business we are really in.
Find Balance Between the Intangible and Tangible
To find that balance we must understand the relationship between tangible and intangible aspects of your products/services. The intangible mortgage adds value to the tangible house so your value added increasingly comes from intangibles, or ‘things’ where importance does not lie in its material existence.
Remember, intangibles have to be experienced directly. They cannot be stockpiled or inventoried. Which is not possible until delivery and consumption because the service has to be delivered and experienced by the customer.
When selling tangible goods, often increasing the ratio of the ‘intangible’ to tangible will increase the value of the customer’s experience.
Whether you own a product or service related business, knowing whether the intangibles are at the periphery or core of your business is central to developing a strategy to captivate your customers imagination.
Seven Tips for Designing an Outstanding Customer Experience
- Be creative by generating original ideas, using your imagination, and building a customer service blueprint.
- Know the path you want your customers to follow as they do business and progress through your business.
- Understand customer needs and problems because when a customer thinks about purchasing a product or service, they have specific needs and wants they are looking to fulfill.
- Take a unique position.
- Create elegant solutions to customers problems while keeping it simple, functional, and practical.
- Align your marketing plan with your customers needs.
- Approach packaging your products and goods by ensuring that all your marketing collateral reflects the customers needs.
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