Last night (Tuesday 29th July) the regional news programme “The West Tonight “started a mini series featuring local companies and the impact the credit crunch is having on them.
Over the next few evenings they will be looking at retail, housing, tourism and other industry sectors – assessing the impact and exploring what businesses can do about it. How are you responding?
You will see me popping up with shorts comments on strategies these firms could consider.
Last night I suggested that every company could usefully look at 3 areas
Cash – effective management of cash flow, checking that every penny spent is helping to grow sales
Customer – adapt to changing customer needs, keep up marketing activity
Creativity – be innovative, involve employees in generating ideas
Also I gave my personal definition of the causes of the credit crunch – what would you say?
It is going to be tough now for at least a couple of years – every business will need to adapt to changing consumer demands to survive. A few will use this as an opportunity to show both customers and employees what they can really do!
Wednesday, 30 July 2008
Thursday, 26 June 2008
The Secret to Success During a Credit Crunch
THE SECRET TO SUCCESS DURING A “CREDIT CRUNCH”
Customer centric business development is the secret to being a highly successful company during a credit crunch, according to eleven companies from the South West. You also need to make exceptionally efficient use of resources, inspire your team and create a positive environment. These were the conclusions from a creative problem solving seminar looking at the issue of leading a company through these difficult times, hosted by Paul Maisey of Buffin Leadership International.
Top Tips include
Customer Centric Business Development
- Focus on providing great service to customers and adapt to their current needs
- Consider offering something different to the competition ( complementary products and services )
- Let your customers do your marketing for you ( word of mouth ) so don’t be shy about coming forward
- Look for new ideas each day ( what would make you more competitive ? what ideas could you glean from other industries ? what marketing would be free ?)
Exceptionally Efficient use of resources
- Be on top of your company numbers especially cash flow!
- Scrutinise the benefit of every penny spent and haggle for everything
- Look at cash raising ideas ( capital locked-up in assets , government funding )
- Be realistic about what’s possible in both short and long term
Inspire Your Team
- Increase the two way communication with your team. Be clear on what you want to achieve and listen to their suggestions.
- Re visit your initial vision and values, could you achieve them in a new way?
- Involve your team in “thinking outside the box” and in implementing changes to meet customer needs
- Be highly visible and look after your team ( recruitment is still an issue and is expensive )
Create a positive environment
- Be passionate about what you do and make activities fun
- Do yourself what you want others to follow ( visualise successful behaviours )
- Keep focus and energy levels high , celebrate each “ small “ success
- Be positive and motivated ( read inspirational books to keep you going ! )
From each of the sixteen top tips above each leader and each company will use them in the way most appropriate to their circumstances and industries. The overall themes though are generic to all (and true at any point in the economic cycle). Whether you are the conductor of an orchestra , captain of a ship, or chief executive of a footsie 100 focus on your customers , use your resources well, work with your team and create a positive environment !!
Paul Maisey is the Regional Director in the South West for Buffin Leadership International. Further information is available at www.Buffin.com
Customer centric business development is the secret to being a highly successful company during a credit crunch, according to eleven companies from the South West. You also need to make exceptionally efficient use of resources, inspire your team and create a positive environment. These were the conclusions from a creative problem solving seminar looking at the issue of leading a company through these difficult times, hosted by Paul Maisey of Buffin Leadership International.
Top Tips include
Customer Centric Business Development
- Focus on providing great service to customers and adapt to their current needs
- Consider offering something different to the competition ( complementary products and services )
- Let your customers do your marketing for you ( word of mouth ) so don’t be shy about coming forward
- Look for new ideas each day ( what would make you more competitive ? what ideas could you glean from other industries ? what marketing would be free ?)
Exceptionally Efficient use of resources
- Be on top of your company numbers especially cash flow!
- Scrutinise the benefit of every penny spent and haggle for everything
- Look at cash raising ideas ( capital locked-up in assets , government funding )
- Be realistic about what’s possible in both short and long term
Inspire Your Team
- Increase the two way communication with your team. Be clear on what you want to achieve and listen to their suggestions.
- Re visit your initial vision and values, could you achieve them in a new way?
- Involve your team in “thinking outside the box” and in implementing changes to meet customer needs
- Be highly visible and look after your team ( recruitment is still an issue and is expensive )
Create a positive environment
- Be passionate about what you do and make activities fun
- Do yourself what you want others to follow ( visualise successful behaviours )
- Keep focus and energy levels high , celebrate each “ small “ success
- Be positive and motivated ( read inspirational books to keep you going ! )
From each of the sixteen top tips above each leader and each company will use them in the way most appropriate to their circumstances and industries. The overall themes though are generic to all (and true at any point in the economic cycle). Whether you are the conductor of an orchestra , captain of a ship, or chief executive of a footsie 100 focus on your customers , use your resources well, work with your team and create a positive environment !!
Paul Maisey is the Regional Director in the South West for Buffin Leadership International. Further information is available at www.Buffin.com
Tuesday, 3 June 2008
Effective Leadership During A Credit Crunch
EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP DURING A CREDIT CRUNCH
It is clear that the UK has entered a period of difficult economic times for both consumers and companies. Cash is less accessible, house prices are falling, 57 % of consumers have trimmed their spending (Mintel) and there has been a sharp drop in retail sales. How then do Leaders guide their companies and employees through these times?
In difficult trading conditions companies traditionally look to cut costs as a way of compensating for a projected/real fall in income. Leaders must be aware that there are, at least, three competing areas where needs must be satisfied to ensure a long team future – investors, customers and employees. When times are tough it is Leaders who must keep manage the uncertainty, keep people engaged and drive performance. How you treat your investors, customers and employees now will be remembered well into the future!
Effective Leadership during a credit crunch must involve
- Having a clear and compelling vision ( be focussed on results )
- Being pro-active ( generate energy and enthusiasm )
- Being open and honest ( communicate incessantly )
- Teamwork and trust ( pull together not in different directions )
- Creativity and Innovation ( if customers are focussed on value how do you change your product/strategy )
- Staying true to your values ( or you will permanently lose investors, customers and employees )
- Adopting an AND mindset ( not solely either/or options )
- Communication Mastery ( listen to your people and respond to their concerns in an impactful way )
Leadership is hard work. It is arguably even tougher during difficult times AND it is needed even more!
It is clear that the UK has entered a period of difficult economic times for both consumers and companies. Cash is less accessible, house prices are falling, 57 % of consumers have trimmed their spending (Mintel) and there has been a sharp drop in retail sales. How then do Leaders guide their companies and employees through these times?
In difficult trading conditions companies traditionally look to cut costs as a way of compensating for a projected/real fall in income. Leaders must be aware that there are, at least, three competing areas where needs must be satisfied to ensure a long team future – investors, customers and employees. When times are tough it is Leaders who must keep manage the uncertainty, keep people engaged and drive performance. How you treat your investors, customers and employees now will be remembered well into the future!
Effective Leadership during a credit crunch must involve
- Having a clear and compelling vision ( be focussed on results )
- Being pro-active ( generate energy and enthusiasm )
- Being open and honest ( communicate incessantly )
- Teamwork and trust ( pull together not in different directions )
- Creativity and Innovation ( if customers are focussed on value how do you change your product/strategy )
- Staying true to your values ( or you will permanently lose investors, customers and employees )
- Adopting an AND mindset ( not solely either/or options )
- Communication Mastery ( listen to your people and respond to their concerns in an impactful way )
Leadership is hard work. It is arguably even tougher during difficult times AND it is needed even more!
Thursday, 1 May 2008
The Apprentice - exemplary leadership or tragic soap opera ?
The Apprentice – exemplary leadership or tragic soap opera?
I suspect that many of you will join me in watching the BBC series The Apprentice in a mixture of astonishment, awe and horror. The basic premise of a group of would-be leaders competing each week on different task to demonstrate their skills seems a sound one. The fact that they have given up jobs to be there and that Alan Sugar makes the decision could be seen to be a combination of confidence and risk taking. What though does the programme say about effective leadership?
If you review the behaviours demonstrated each week you may conclude that a leader
- Is the dominant member of a team and uses directive behaviours to get their way
- Is astute at team “ politics “ and ensuring others get they blame
- Is talkative (beyond belief) and unaware of what ears are for!
Alan Sugars Boardroom behaviours – being positive - could be said to be decisive, clear and emotional. Or simply idiosyncratic.
Let’s compare this to other views of Leadership. According to Bolden and Gosling (2003) some of the key qualities of Leadership are
- Integrity and moral courage
- Self-awareness and humility
- Empathy and emotional engagement
- Transparency and openness
- Clarity of vision
I believe (based on over twenty years of experience) that leadership comes from within us and is concerned with releasing the energy of the team. High performance leadership involves engaging mentally, emotionally and spiritually with your team. Focussed high energy leads to action and results.
So does The Apprentice showcase exemplary leadership behaviour or is it a soap opera?
In my view
- let’s remember the context – it is a TV show ( involving entertainment and editing )
- it is highly competitive – in the end there will be only one !
And to quote Kellerman (2004) “Leaders are like the rest of us: trustworthy and deceitful, cowardly and brave, greedy and generous “
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
I suspect that many of you will join me in watching the BBC series The Apprentice in a mixture of astonishment, awe and horror. The basic premise of a group of would-be leaders competing each week on different task to demonstrate their skills seems a sound one. The fact that they have given up jobs to be there and that Alan Sugar makes the decision could be seen to be a combination of confidence and risk taking. What though does the programme say about effective leadership?
If you review the behaviours demonstrated each week you may conclude that a leader
- Is the dominant member of a team and uses directive behaviours to get their way
- Is astute at team “ politics “ and ensuring others get they blame
- Is talkative (beyond belief) and unaware of what ears are for!
Alan Sugars Boardroom behaviours – being positive - could be said to be decisive, clear and emotional. Or simply idiosyncratic.
Let’s compare this to other views of Leadership. According to Bolden and Gosling (2003) some of the key qualities of Leadership are
- Integrity and moral courage
- Self-awareness and humility
- Empathy and emotional engagement
- Transparency and openness
- Clarity of vision
I believe (based on over twenty years of experience) that leadership comes from within us and is concerned with releasing the energy of the team. High performance leadership involves engaging mentally, emotionally and spiritually with your team. Focussed high energy leads to action and results.
So does The Apprentice showcase exemplary leadership behaviour or is it a soap opera?
In my view
- let’s remember the context – it is a TV show ( involving entertainment and editing )
- it is highly competitive – in the end there will be only one !
And to quote Kellerman (2004) “Leaders are like the rest of us: trustworthy and deceitful, cowardly and brave, greedy and generous “
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Monday, 14 April 2008
Increasing Results with Creative Problem Solving
Increasing Results with Creative Problem Solving
In today’s competitive environment, and the gloomy predictions for a reduced growth rate in the UK, it is critical that companies continue to improve their absolute and relative performance. It would therefore seem to be common sense that organisations make the most of the creative talent within their workforce. How do you do this in a way that ensures both focus on business success and aligns the efforts and energy of the team?
Defining Success
There are 3 areas that companies could chose to focus on
- Financials (Top 100 FTSE investment)
- Customer (Which? Consumer survey)
- People (Top 100 company to work for).
with 2 common approaches. Big Hairy Audacious Goals (Collins) or Continuous Improvement (Deeming et al). There is of course a third way – aligning and leveraging small improvements in a series of areas to achieve a big result. Try this on your own profit and loss account. Increase sales by 1%, reduce cost of sales by 1% and reduce overheads by 1% ...... which can lead to around 20% improvement in profit!
Results Focussed Creative Problem Solving
Ideally in a cross functional team of between six to twelve people
- Clearly Define the Issue. Ensure you are tackling the appropriate topic through asking is this a symptom or a cause? Generate the “ Trigger Question “ that will provide the focus for the following
- Engage Divergent Thinking. Come up with as many possible ideas, thoughts, challenges, issues as you can. When you think you are done ask yourself what if you could come up with two or three more ideas?
- Connect The Thinking. Step back and look for commonality amongst the ideas. Cluster them together and see what common themes emerge
- Gain Insight. Identify the relationship between the clusters. How do they inter relate and effect each other?
- Focus On Actions. List the actions that would give you maximum impact to answer the original question. Be SMART
- Commit To Actions. Allocate resource and take the first step.
Is it this simple?
Yes and No. This approach has evolved and been tested over the last 12 years. For a simple question a group of twelve people could go through the whole process in two to three hours. For a strategic issue it could take two to three days.
The results speak for themselves “That was one of the most amazing meetings I have been to in a long time, especially for the way everyone came together and the output achieved in such a short space of time”
“This was a major example of teams working effectively and collaboratively on a large scale problem. If this problem had not been resolved, the effect on monthly sales and potential lost customers would have seen the business lose £millions.”
“We are delighted at the way the ideas and actions generated encouraged all our managers to contribute and own the outcome. Contributions have given incredible sales results – 110% successful”.
In today’s competitive environment, and the gloomy predictions for a reduced growth rate in the UK, it is critical that companies continue to improve their absolute and relative performance. It would therefore seem to be common sense that organisations make the most of the creative talent within their workforce. How do you do this in a way that ensures both focus on business success and aligns the efforts and energy of the team?
Defining Success
There are 3 areas that companies could chose to focus on
- Financials (Top 100 FTSE investment)
- Customer (Which? Consumer survey)
- People (Top 100 company to work for).
with 2 common approaches. Big Hairy Audacious Goals (Collins) or Continuous Improvement (Deeming et al). There is of course a third way – aligning and leveraging small improvements in a series of areas to achieve a big result. Try this on your own profit and loss account. Increase sales by 1%, reduce cost of sales by 1% and reduce overheads by 1% ...... which can lead to around 20% improvement in profit!
Results Focussed Creative Problem Solving
Ideally in a cross functional team of between six to twelve people
- Clearly Define the Issue. Ensure you are tackling the appropriate topic through asking is this a symptom or a cause? Generate the “ Trigger Question “ that will provide the focus for the following
- Engage Divergent Thinking. Come up with as many possible ideas, thoughts, challenges, issues as you can. When you think you are done ask yourself what if you could come up with two or three more ideas?
- Connect The Thinking. Step back and look for commonality amongst the ideas. Cluster them together and see what common themes emerge
- Gain Insight. Identify the relationship between the clusters. How do they inter relate and effect each other?
- Focus On Actions. List the actions that would give you maximum impact to answer the original question. Be SMART
- Commit To Actions. Allocate resource and take the first step.
Is it this simple?
Yes and No. This approach has evolved and been tested over the last 12 years. For a simple question a group of twelve people could go through the whole process in two to three hours. For a strategic issue it could take two to three days.
The results speak for themselves “That was one of the most amazing meetings I have been to in a long time, especially for the way everyone came together and the output achieved in such a short space of time”
“This was a major example of teams working effectively and collaboratively on a large scale problem. If this problem had not been resolved, the effect on monthly sales and potential lost customers would have seen the business lose £millions.”
“We are delighted at the way the ideas and actions generated encouraged all our managers to contribute and own the outcome. Contributions have given incredible sales results – 110% successful”.
Monday, 17 March 2008
How to Be a Successful Company - ride out the " credit crunch "
With the current economic climate ( almost daily warnings from the banking sector ) it is even more important to think about how to be successful and how to judge success. Short term may be about Cash flow, costs, and efficiency though any decisions taken here must be balanced against longer term impact on Customers and Employees
According to the annual “Sunday Times 100 Best companies to work for “survey the companies they are voted best by their employees are also those that outperform others in the FTSE100. In the past five years the companies listed in this survey have performed TWICE as well as their FTSE100 rivals. “Looking after your staff means you are looking after your shareholders too “
Back in 1998 Collins and Porras studied 18 “Visionary “ American companies to discover what made them “ Built to Last “, what fundamental principles endure. One of their earliest conclusion was that “profitability is a necessary condition for existence but is not the end in itself ... it is not the point of life but without it there is no life “
In 2006 Ken Blanchard published “ Leading at a Higher Level “ concluding that successful High Performing Organisations focussed on what he calls the “ triple bottom line “ of becoming provider of choice, employer of choice and investment of choice.
The Sunday Times survey highlights 8 factors that employees vote on to become “ Best Company to Work For “
- Leadership of head of the company and senior managers
- Wellbeing including work life balance
- My managers day to day activities
- My team and colleagues
- Fair Deal with pay and benefits
- Giving Something Back to the community
- My Company
- Personal Growth
( Details are available at timesonline.co.uk/best100companies )
So as you make the necessary decisions to ride-out the economic conditions, take a deep breath , a step back and assess both your short term and long term needs !
According to the annual “Sunday Times 100 Best companies to work for “survey the companies they are voted best by their employees are also those that outperform others in the FTSE100. In the past five years the companies listed in this survey have performed TWICE as well as their FTSE100 rivals. “Looking after your staff means you are looking after your shareholders too “
Back in 1998 Collins and Porras studied 18 “Visionary “ American companies to discover what made them “ Built to Last “, what fundamental principles endure. One of their earliest conclusion was that “profitability is a necessary condition for existence but is not the end in itself ... it is not the point of life but without it there is no life “
In 2006 Ken Blanchard published “ Leading at a Higher Level “ concluding that successful High Performing Organisations focussed on what he calls the “ triple bottom line “ of becoming provider of choice, employer of choice and investment of choice.
The Sunday Times survey highlights 8 factors that employees vote on to become “ Best Company to Work For “
- Leadership of head of the company and senior managers
- Wellbeing including work life balance
- My managers day to day activities
- My team and colleagues
- Fair Deal with pay and benefits
- Giving Something Back to the community
- My Company
- Personal Growth
( Details are available at timesonline.co.uk/best100companies )
So as you make the necessary decisions to ride-out the economic conditions, take a deep breath , a step back and assess both your short term and long term needs !
Monday, 10 March 2008
Is this the best book on LEADERSHIP ever ??
Is this the best book on Leadership EVER ??!!
Hi Folks
I have just finished reading “ Leading at a higher level “ by Ken Blanchard and published by FT Prentice Hall and it has jumped straight to the top of my list of books on Leadership.
If you’ve read it – what did you think?
If you haven’t read it – what is top of your list?
After 25 years of working with and advising businesses and leaders ( remember the one minute manager? ) Ken argues that high performing companies
- Set their sights on the right target and vision
- Treat their customers right
- Treat their people right
- Develop the right kind of leadership
Easy then you say – except of course what is right!!????
Ken shares his experience of working with High Performing Companies across 300 pages and 13 chapters with the majority of the book concerned with treating your people right ( covering for example empowerment is the key , self leadership , partnering for performance )
Full of simple models and concepts, littered with illustrations, it provides an excellent framework for thinking about your companies triple bottom line “ provider of choice, employer of choice ,investment of choice “
Whether you agree with the ideas or not! this will give you plenty to mull over AND should stimulate some action.
What do you think ?
Paul Maisey
www.advancebp.co.uk
Hi Folks
I have just finished reading “ Leading at a higher level “ by Ken Blanchard and published by FT Prentice Hall and it has jumped straight to the top of my list of books on Leadership.
If you’ve read it – what did you think?
If you haven’t read it – what is top of your list?
After 25 years of working with and advising businesses and leaders ( remember the one minute manager? ) Ken argues that high performing companies
- Set their sights on the right target and vision
- Treat their customers right
- Treat their people right
- Develop the right kind of leadership
Easy then you say – except of course what is right!!????
Ken shares his experience of working with High Performing Companies across 300 pages and 13 chapters with the majority of the book concerned with treating your people right ( covering for example empowerment is the key , self leadership , partnering for performance )
Full of simple models and concepts, littered with illustrations, it provides an excellent framework for thinking about your companies triple bottom line “ provider of choice, employer of choice ,investment of choice “
Whether you agree with the ideas or not! this will give you plenty to mull over AND should stimulate some action.
What do you think ?
Paul Maisey
www.advancebp.co.uk
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