There are many small business owners reading this, and they have probably read my earlier posts on business improvement and said "that's not for me, I'm just a grinder, grinding away day to day in my small business".
I'm thinking of Dave the floor sander who did the new floorboards at my house. I'm also thinking of Adam the housepainter who did such a good job on my house and Brad the electrician who comes over anytime I call him. These are all hard working small business owners who employ anything from none to 5 people, organising their work procedures, their finances and their people as best as they can, where every day is a busy day just "doing the stuff".
If you are one of them you are probably thinking that all this "strategy advice stuff" is not for you. And yet, every time I talk to Dave, and Adam and Brad, they are always willing to talk about their latest ideas, about how they improved sales by getting a telephone answering service, about how once a year they take their staff inter-state to watch a football game as a reward and to build team spirit, about how they sit down together to...
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You must know detail about your business
I have worked with clients on their businesses and when asked about some detail like " what profit margin do you make on that product" or "how many hours do your people work on average", they don't know.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not talking about micromanagement here - I am a firm believer in systems and procedures and a living vision that explain to team members what they do, how they should do it, and why they should do it, leaving you to concentrate on strategic matters that have impact.
However, you do need to know, nay, must know, the detail of your business model and your business functions.
When I was in my thirties, my mother developed terminal cancer and I looked after her palliative care at home because she wanted to die at home. I was assisted by an effective tertiary care medical system - home nurses, oncology visits, medical equipment supplied and so on. Her GP was also mine and once he asked me what medication she was getting and I replied "I don't know, some large white pills that the oncologist prescribed" thinking that was the affair of professionals whom I had delegated professional care to. My...
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How NOT to run a community consultation!
I went to my Town Council sponsored "Community Consultation" workshop this week, advertised as "Your chance to set the Vision for the new Town Planning Scheme".
Being a professional facilitator of workshops and community consultations, who uses words and the syntax of words as tools of trade, I was reminded at the workshop of the ability to use careful language in a manufactured syntax to obtain a predetermined result.
The workshop was formatted as a scenario exercise or game. The first part of the game was set by a video presentation that showed a vibrant town centre and an explanation that in order to achieve such a vibrant town centre whilst in competition with other, nearby "attractive" shopping and cappuccino strip town centres, we needed to increase the population. We were then led to an exercise which asked us to prioritise four ways to increase population:-
1. Using the Town's history and stories;
2. Encouraging "adventurous" out of the ordinary shops to open there;
3. Creating interesting public squares and spaces; and
4. Organising street events like markets and festivals.
This was an interesting exercise and everyone played the game by discussing and ranking the options into priorities. However it occurred to me that the language had...
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A Branding Opportunity – Hit or Miss?
Here's something that just happened to me, which I think is a branding opportunity gone amiss, and only somewhat recovered. I am doing home renovations and have to have 2 sensors of the home alarm disconnected, and booked a technician for today (the last day before work starts). I'm waiting and no technician arrives, so I phone the alarm company. I explain the situation.Alarm: I rang and left a message saying the tech couldn't come today....
Me: Where did you call?
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