How you can maximize and retain the best and the brightest
Did you know that up to 38% of your managers, supervisors, and team leaders are about to leave? Monster (the premiere online job search company) has seen a 44% increase in new resume postings in the first quarter of 2004. In particular, "confidential" postings from job-seekers hiding the search from their bosses are up 13%.
Do you know who they are?
The Problem
Exit interviews by JWT Specialized Communication show that manager - employee relationships and weak communications are the top reasons for voluntary departure. When there is a gap in alignment between employees, supervisors, and the corporation, you will experience a rise in costs, lowered shareholder value, and increased turnover.
CEOs tell us:
o I'm concerned about losing good people.
o I don't have the time to mentor.
o My key talent is getting burned out.
o How can I help my key talent prepare for an uncertain future?
o What is the benefit of ensuring the personal success of my employees?
Through McNerney's leadership, 3M has certainly become a company that grows. Just imagine what you and your company could accomplish if your key talent knew what their unique strengths, core values, and lifetime goals were!
Are your employees' goals and strengths aligned with the corporation? Do you know what their goals and strengths are?
Consequences of Inaction
James McNerney and 3M are on to something here. By not addressing the personal growth of your employees, the consequences could be:
o People may "resign" but not quit
o If you do not recruit your employees continuously, someone else will
o You will lose the excitement of your employees' first days on the job
o Potential loss of market reputation
o Loss of shareholder value!
So how can you eliminate unwanted turnover and engage your key talent?
The Roadmap to Domination
True success relies on a clear path, consistency, and innovation. And the roadmap to success can come from unusual-and sometimes forgotten-sources. Take the field manual below, for example.
So what does an army field manual have to do with anything, you ask? Plenty. Business is war. It is a battle to reach your objectives. It is a battle to keep your key talent from leaving and "upgrading" your competitors. Above all, it is a battle to dominate your competition.
We have taken this old field manual and put it in a fresh perspective for the modern business leader.
The Nine Principles of Business War
Principle One: Objective
Direct all actions towards a clearly defined, decisive, and attainable objective.
Real leadership begins at the beginning. To engage your employees, you must communicate precisely what the objectives are. This is a war you cannot win alone.
Principle Two: Take the Offensive
Seize, retain, and exploit the initiative.
Once you have determined your objectives (and you have clearly communicated them to your employees), you will have a ready team to seize the opportunities that arise in your market.
Principle Three: Be Effective
Identify your priorities and concentrate minimum essential resources to lower priorities.
For this you must identify your priorities and establish the details of your objectives. By minimum essential resources we mean that the focus of time and money must be on the primary objectives without neglecting the small details and lower priorities.
Principle Four: Be Efficient
Determine the most efficient use of your employees.
This is where personal growth comes into play. To know precisely who to assign to what, you need a system to determine the unique strengths and goals of your employees.. Determine your innovators, brainstormers, organizers, communicators-find the employees with the strengths to match each objective.
Principle Five: Adapt, Improvise, and Overcome
Place your competitors in a position of disadvantage through a flexible application of your resources.
With the right person in the right place, your company will be able to maximize each and every opportunity. Take the time to communicate the company's objectives and to discover the strengths and goals of your employees. By doing this, you will have shown them that you believe in them, and they will be engaged when and where you need them.
Principle Six: Unity of Leadership
For every challenge and objective, ensure synergy among all leadership.
In essence, this means two things: (1) You now know exactly who should be in a position of leadership for each objective and (2) you communicate your collective goals throughout the company. In one word, alignment. By engaging your employees through invested and unified leadership, you can align your employees with the objectives and goals of the company.
Principle Seven: Retain the Best and Maximize the Rest
Never permit the competition to acquire an unexpected advantage.
If you do not actively recruit your key talent, somebody else will. By addressing the personal growth of your employees, the greenest grass will be in your company. Knowing the unique strengths and goals of your employees has another benefit-you will have a clearer picture of those employees who are actively disengaged (or whose strengths are not matched to their job). The real benefit from this will be reduced unwanted turnover, where the costs can add up to more than 150% of the former employee's salary.
Principle Eight: Innovate
Strike at a time or place, or in a manner, for which the competition is unprepared.
This principle cannot be properly done if you do not know the unique strengths of your key talent. With the alignment of strength to action, you can maximize the hidden opportunities that arise in your market.
Principle Nine: Simplicity
Prepare clear, uncomplicated plans and clear, concise orders to ensure thorough understanding.
By aligning your employees' goals to the company's goals, they will be engaged and ready to act. You must communicate clearly and constantly the mission, values, and objectives of your company.
How can you put all of this into action?
Dominating the market does not come easily. You need a system to determine the unique strengths of your employees and address their personal growth. This insight will let you match ability with action. Are your innovators organizing? Are your organizers innovating? "The right tool for the right job" isn't just for carpenters and mechanics.
Engage your workforce. Help them achieve personal success. This will transform your company into a highly profitable and aligned organization.
Langston began his career in the international business arena almost 30 years ago, he had two objectives:
1) Become a successful global leader and
2) Maximize the potential of all those he came into contact with.
While running operations in excess of $1.2 Billion and 8,000 employees, he learned that without a process and technology, these two goals often worked against each other. He created 100daystosuccess to provide Life, Personal and Business coaches and Executives with a proven Roadmap which will help their clients Discover, Determine and Direct their futures while driving an excellent return on investment (ROI).
The Nine Principles of Business War
The Marketing Principles of a Business
If you are truly serious about making a success out of your business in the long run then there are several factors that if applied correctly and efficiently will make your sales explode to stardom in your market area.
Value for money
The reader feels and thinks he or she is getting their moneys worth. This is a vital marketing principle to boosting your sales. If this objective is achieved then you have essentially done all the hard work, convince your prospects that the product you are offering them is worth substantially more than the price your selling it at.
It is also important that you market products within your means (financially); ideally you should have purchased a copy of the product, this is a key marketing principle that will help you when it is time to market the product as you should have familiarised yourself with it. Also, consider offering free gifts with your products (See Marketing Principle 3); make the customer really feel they are really getting their moneys worth.
Unique
Some of the most effective advertisements are those that are original, captivating and distinctive. The more unique and captivating you are able to convey your products, the better the customer response. Creating mailing lists and newsletters is also another key marketing principle of effectively establishing yourself while building up your rapport with customers; it is definitely something you should look to explore.
Relevance
Make sure when you market a product, that you supplement it with a tightly focussed offer. Having an offer that relates specifically to your product is a very effective marketing principle of establishing credibility. Relevance is important; never venture beyond your given niche.
Desirability
Something can be great value for money, but it doesn't necessarily mean I want to buy it nor does it mean a customer would want to buy it. As a result alleviating the desirability of your product is a crucial marketing principle.
As a method you can try enlisting part of your product as a premium which should not be to hard to accomplish with information products. As a marketing principle, concise wording is very important and if used effectively should put your products in a more favourable position.
9 Key Business Startup Success Principles
If you are in the early stages of starting up a business then you may be experiencing the internal 'fear and doubt' dialogue that can often take place in one's mind. The following 9 Principles will help to release some of this tension...
1. Do What You Love
Ensure that you are in a business that interests you. This doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be in love with the product or service that you sell; however, you must enjoy aspects of the business otherwise you won't be motivated to give it 100% of your focus. And it will need a lot of your focus and energy, especially in the early stages!
To help determine this point, you could ask yourself the following types of questions:
* What do you really like to do (in a business sense)?
* Are you an ideas or action type of person? Or a bit of both?
* In which 20% of your talents do 80% of your results come from?
* In other words, where do your key skills lie?
It really all boils down to one question though - what are you really passionate about?
2. Niche
Another critical point which goes a long way to determining business success is your Niche. Without exception, the majority of successful business owners I know can tell you in a couple of sentences exactly what it is they love to do and why it has made them wealthy.
Without a precise understanding of your Niche your chances for success are greatly diminished. After all, it’s very difficult to hit a target which doesn’t exist or to win a game when you don’t know what it (winning) is.
Ask yourself what you are trying to achieve in this business venture:
* Do you want to make quick cash?
* Do you want to develop and grow a sustainable business?
* Are you interested in high cash-flow or developing assets? Or both?
* Do you have BIG aspirations or are you just looking to develop a hobby for some part-time cash?
Keep in mind that your Niche can always be adapted down the track if your situation or the market changes.
3. Leverage
You need to become a master of Leverage. It is one of the most powerful principles in business. Everyone who is successful in business and life uses Leverage in some way.
To use the concept of Leverage you need to continually examine how you can access other people’s skill, resources and money more effectively. Furthermore, consider less obvious assets in business such as systems, marketing and time.
Leverage is about duplicating a high-value item or skill at a lower cost.
I will explore this topic in depth in future articles; however, at this point it is important to remember the following points:
* Focus on Money-Making activities
* Delegate to others as much as possible
By doing this you will see an immediate increase in your ability to work ‘on’ your business, rather than getting stuck ‘in’ the day to day running of it.
Lateral Thinking shares an implicit relationship with Leverage...
4. Lateral Thinking
This is the concept of looking at things from a different point of view. You can increase profits significantly by doing simple things to “Add Value” in ways that others are not.
In other words, continually look at your business and ask yourself questions such as:
* How can we do, what we do, better?
* What do our clients want that they are not getting currently?
* Could we use affiliate marketing to grow our business?
* Do we currently use the internet to effectively market our business?
* Could we join forces with another business to cross-promote our products?
* Could we use our knowledge to create another product?
What I am suggesting here is to take some time out to brainstorm ideas around your business. This is a difficult for most small business owners to achieve because they see this as wasted and unproductive time - nothing could be further from the truth...
Some of the most successful companies in the world allow themselves and their employees lateral thinking time - Google and 3M immediately come to mind. Many of Google's most successful products have originated from this process.
Now, I’m not suggesting that you have to take 1 day a week (as Google does) to undertake this process - they have high operating margins and therefore significant leverage. However, I would encourage you to consider ‘opening you mind’ for at least couple of hours each week to explore further opportunities.
I am sure that you will find it a valuable and profitable experience if you stick to it!
5. Testing
If you can start your business with a clear idea of how you are going to monitor your systems, resources and assets then you will be well ahead of the pack. When most business owners are confronted with questions about their average transaction value, sales conversion ratios, enquiry and lead generation rates - they come up with varying excuses or reasons as to why they don’t know or have this vital information.
DON’T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE!!
You need to be able to calculate your ROI (Return on Investment) for everything that you do on a regular basis.
To do this develop a set of KPI (Key Performance Indicators) that are appropriate for your business - don’t go overboard - just focus on the information that you need. Remember that 80% of your results come from 20% of your activities! The key is to discover the 20% and keep improving them...
The other benefit of testing is that it encourages us to recognise mistakes and move on - this is a vital part of the growth process. Without action, mistakes and growth we stagnate and/or wither at the vine!
6. Efficiency
Hard work doesn’t guarantee success or profits - look at how wealth is apportioned in the world and this soon becomes apparent - 80% of the wealth is controlled by less than 10% of the population.
Personally, it took a long time for this penny to drop! The first business I owned was really just a job in disguise. I was caught in a trap that confronts many small business owners - working IN the business, rather than ON the business.
This is a critical distinction...
If significant profits and growth are what you desire, then it is critical that you become efficient and develop systems that will allow your business to work for you and not the other way around.
There is one key concept to remember when implementing anything...
7. Lag
Lag is the concept that you ‘reap what you sew’. In other words, if you follow the principles suggested here and persist - you will succeed!
However, your business life is going to provide you with numerous challenges and obstacles to overcome. The biggest difference between successful people and the rest is that successful people look at upsets as a chance to grow and learn rather than as failure.
When confronted by a setback, rather than giving into fear and quitting you must continue to persist. Why? Because if your principles are sound, all you have to do is keep adjusting your methodology until you have a formula for success.
You will have a much greater chance of success in business if you keep the principle of Lag in the back of your mind, stay focused and never give up!
8. Timing
Timing is an essential aspect of business ownership. It also shares a close bond with decision-making and action-taking. If you continually use Lateral Thinking and Testing then you will certainly discover further opportunities. The key to successfully implementing and taking advantage of these opportunities is Timing.
As the old sayings go:
If you wait too long, you may miss the boat... (e.g. someone else capitalizes)
If you jump right in you may get your fingers burnt... (e.g. misjudged market enthusiasm)
You need to find a middle ground when it comes to Timing, because it is very difficult to time things perfectly. Combine focused analysis, gut feeling, enthusiasm and decision making together and you will be well on the way to mastering Timing and the next Principle...
9. Action
Successful business owners are Masters of Action. They know that Action always beats inaction. They understand that it is better to try, make a mistake, refine and re-implement than to do nothing at all. That’s because in business:
INACTION = A SLOW DEATH
Unsuccessful business owners are Masters of Excuses. Fear provides them with an endless stream of seemingly logical reasons why they shouldn’t act.
You need to make a decision right now - will you accept as doctrine your negative internal dialogue and the nay-sayers - or will you take chances and trust your experience?
I would suggest the latter...
To take Action, it is critical that you take responsibility for your situation. If you are not where you want to be, then justifying or laying blame on others will not solve the situation - it will just add fuel to your negative mindset.
A better way to respond is to focus on ‘the gap’ - the 20% of activities in your business (or life) that will take you from where you are to where you want to be. Goal setting is one of the best ways to define the ‘gap’ and taking Action is the best way to reduce it.
CONCLUSION: The most important Principle is that you should love what you do - passion and attitude will play a large part in defining your success in business. Therefore, ensure that you find a Niche that you are comfortable with. Apply the Principles outlined here, define your own rules and goals, and you will be well on the way to creating a successful and profitable business.