Dec 04 2009
With 2010 In Mind….
By this time of the year, most switched on organizations will have completed their planning for next year and will be working on the tactics to ensure the strategy is achievable.
The role of strategy is fundamental if the people within an organisation are to be enabled to make the level of contribution of which they are capable. Strategy, based on a good grasp of the core competencies of a business, is an essential precursor to achieving optimal shareholder value.
The world’s leading organisations continuously seek to improve their performance. There may be unlimited potential for achieving accelerated improvement but if this potential is not being realised, good change agents must line up and mobilise all the forces (or drivers) for improvement.
There are five main drivers for improvement in organisations:
• Strategy
• Lean operations
• Balanced culture
• Customer responsiveness
• Leadership
Strategy sets direction and give focus to improvement. It must however be deployed throughout the organisation to be effective.
Processes need to be mapped and analysed in a methodical way; projects must be managed; problem symptoms traced to root causes; data must be collected before decisions are taken; trends in customer preferences detached and fed back; improvement activity of any kind reported on and coordinated; improvement action measured. Just about everything should be done to a discipline.
A balanced culture means effective, creative management of people. Customers are served by people; processes are managed by people. Only people can deliver quality improvement. For them to work well they must be empowered, given direction, measured, reviewed and success recognised.
Customer responsiveness keeps the organisation focused on customer needs, reactions and changing requirements.
Finally, leadership ensures that everyone is enthused and supported to work on the strategy, improve processes, serve customers and be active team players.
It is also the case that those same switched on organizations will be conducting a “commercial health check” – if you would like to measure your company against the best, you too can conduct your own check for free, here
Today’s News: I will be posting over the w/e, so do please try and join me? JF
(After due consideration and advice from respected friends, I have removed an earlier comment regarding last night’s TSE Masterclass – it was somewhat tongue in cheek, but I can understand if it was perceived as rude)
Jonathan, I thought long and hard about posting this comment. I will post, but possibly regret it.
I am disturbed by your response to Donald Crews and think that a 40 second discrepancy — according to what you are measuring has caused you to miss the point and under appreciated Donald’s thoughtfulness in providing TSE his feedback. Then exposing this in your blog further compounds it.
Whether Donald was precisely accurate or not is not the point. (I would also venture there is a measurement problem where both of you are right). Donald had the courtesy to provide the feedback about being disappointed in the lateness of the call. Think of those who didn’t take the time to provide that feedback and who we may have “lost.”
People like Donald are being generous with the time, and helping us by providing feedback. We should be appreciative of it, whether we agree or not.
Furthermore, your letter takes it beyond a disagreement in perception of facts and starts to make the attack personal which is never appropriate.
Personally, as a TSE member, I am embarassed that we have treat our customers in this way.
Separately, even a 7 minute delay–in a 60 minute program is a problem, and we should let the discrepancy in the facts serve as an excuse for bad performance on TSE’s part.
I’m sorry to take this public, but I think the fact that you have demands that someone take a customer point of view.
I hope we find a way to apologize to Donald and to treat any input from our customers as valuable, regardless of whether we agree or not.
Thank you for giving me a chance to air my deep concern. Regards, Dave
You cannot have power in the present unless you have hope in the future. Clear goals with a plan of action will keep you alive and vibrant about the future .Too many sales people have lost hope and companies are using fear motivation instead of faith motivation.
It’s proven that salespeople slow their activities in recessionary times when they should be accelerating their activities. Plus their attitude gets bad and that creates less efforts.
The only thing any salesperson can control is their ATTITUDE and EFFORT! In challenging times it’s hard to see better days ahead. That’s why companies must work on the mental aspects of the game.
After every down time comes an up time. If salespeople will keep their faith and set some new goals and work with enthusiasm and positive expectancy they will position themselves and their company to emerge stronger and better
We’ve all experienced setbacks but now’s the time to prepare for a bigger comeback. Life’s greatest difficulties always happen right before lifes greatest breakthroughs. Remember it’s always darkest before the dawn. Life’s biggest challenges are there to refine you and mold you and prepare you for your greatest victories which lie ahead
Thanks Billy…Spot on!!!
Thanks Dave,
We have discussed this privately and concluded this issue
JF