- Bring people together who aren't connected.
- Design new business models by combining players and resources in new ways.
- Persevere with an idea until you see success.
- Don't rely on credentials, but on the power of your ideas.
- Persuade others to see the possibility of your ideas and join you in the pursuit.
- Empower others to also make change.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Management Tip of the Day: How to Be a Changemaker
The leadership skills that worked in the past are quickly becoming irrelevant in today's fast-paced, change-is-the-name-of-the-game world. To be effective, you need to know how to adapt to and drive change. Here are the six core skills that can turn you into a changemaker:
Management Tip of the Day: A Cheap and Instantly Effective Social Media Idea
Many companies cite lack of time, budget, and experience as reasons for not venturing into the social media arena. However, there are options for building a low-cost and relatively low-maintenance online presence. For example, invite customers to submit ideas and suggestions about your products and services through an online suggestion box. Allow users to rate the ideas so that the best ideas rise to the top. It's cheap — there are pre-fab solutions out there that you can easily adapt. It's effective — while you're building an online presence, you're simultaneously doing customer research and building your innovation pipeline. To maintain credibility and customer enthusiasm, be sure you implement the top ideas.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Management Tip of the Day: 3 Tips for Assessing a Job Offer
Getting a job offer in this environment can feel like a victory. But all job offers are not equal, and especially in the recession, it pays to do your homework before accepting. Here are three tips for doing the right research before you say yes:
- Know the company's financial situation. Don't assume that just because the company is making an offer, there isn't trouble ahead. Find out as much as you can about the company's financial stability and market position.
- Assess your cultural fit. Yes, the hiring manager should be doing this, but you are the one who will suffer most if there is a mismatch between the company culture and your working style.
- Don't rely on the job description. Ask specific questions about what you will be doing, who you will be working with, and what the expectations are for your role.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Alibaba launches wholesale website at 1688.com
hktdc.com - Alibaba launches wholesale website at 1688.com
Alibaba.com Ltd<1688>, a leading e-commerce provider in China and the operator of China's most well-known B2B e-commerce portal, on Mar. 9 launched 1688.com, a new website for wholesale business, and saw traffic exceed 6.39 million visitors on the first day alone.
On 1688.com, more than 500,000 quality suppliers and 150 million pieces of product information are available. The site will function alongside Taobao.com and Alipay.com, two subsidiaries that also belong to Alibaba Group.
Wu Huating, a senior director of Alibaba.com, said that 1688.com is hoped to be the largest online purchase and wholesale market in the world.
Alibaba.com considered using numbers instead of English letters as a domain name before 2007 because numbers are easily remembered and do not need to be spelled out for Chinese users, said CEO Wei Zhe.
Wei added that a new internet credit and security system will be built by 1688.com and authoritative Chinese organizations, which will be helpful to problem solving.
Alibaba.com Ltd<1688>, a leading e-commerce provider in China and the operator of China's most well-known B2B e-commerce portal, on Mar. 9 launched 1688.com, a new website for wholesale business, and saw traffic exceed 6.39 million visitors on the first day alone.
On 1688.com, more than 500,000 quality suppliers and 150 million pieces of product information are available. The site will function alongside Taobao.com and Alipay.com, two subsidiaries that also belong to Alibaba Group.
Wu Huating, a senior director of Alibaba.com, said that 1688.com is hoped to be the largest online purchase and wholesale market in the world.
Alibaba.com considered using numbers instead of English letters as a domain name before 2007 because numbers are easily remembered and do not need to be spelled out for Chinese users, said CEO Wei Zhe.
Wei added that a new internet credit and security system will be built by 1688.com and authoritative Chinese organizations, which will be helpful to problem solving.
How Companies Can Mine the Hidden Gold - BusinessWeek
How Companies Can Mine the Hidden Gold - BusinessWeek
The time is ripe for companies to focus on revenue growth, and a huge opportunity is surprisingly close at hand
By Neil Smith
When the new CEO of a very well-run Midwest auto insurer wanted to focus on increasing revenue, he started in an unusual way: He focused internally. "What opportunities am I missing in selling my current products to my current customers?" he asked himself.
The answer was astounding. He discovered that when a policy was coming up for renewal, the company sent out a renewal notice to customers a month in advance. But if a customer had an auto accident in the month between a renewal notice going out and the new policy going into effect, a simple computer glitch meant no increased premium was collected.
Company employees knew this was happening—they had known about it for 10 years, in fact—but they had no idea of the scale of the uncollected premium—or the cost to fix it. It turned out the cost of the computer fix was just $5,000, while the previously uncollected revenue amounted to more than $400,000 annually. The CEO was excited. The project I led with the CEO and his company found more than 300 opportunities, including this one, to increase revenue for the company by more than 15%.
GOLD IN EVERY COMPANY
As companies begin to focus on expanding revenues rather than cutting costs, it will become a far more competitive environment than when the recession began. Economic growth will be slow, and in addition, some economic activity has been permanently displaced to more competitive industrial nations, such as China and Brazil. The age of "Super Competition" is about to begin. Companies will have more chance of winning in this supercompetitive environment if they start planning for it immediately. Now is the time to get a head start on the competition and to focus on expanding revenues. And, as the CEO of the auto insurer found, there is already hidden gold in every company.
The key to unlocking this chest of gold is in the hands of the employees. Employees typically know hundreds (if not thousands) of ways to generate more revenue, but because of the way companies traditionally work, they cannot focus on these ways, as there are internal "barriers" that prevent them from collecting the additional revenue. In the case of the auto insurer, no one realized how much revenue the company was giving up, nor how little it would cost to collect it.
Just think of your own environment. How quickly can you come up with creative ideas for increasing revenue?
Based on the work I have done with more than 30 companies in more than 10 different industries across four continents since the late 1980s, I've come to realize there are typically three types of opportunity that a company has: preventing "leakage," charging for hidden value, and collecting for hidden assets.
WHEN CLIENTS GET BIGGER
Price leakage, such as that at the auto insurer, is common in every company. Another example happened at an outsourced payroll company I worked with. One source of revenue was an annual sum from each customer to cover administrative costs, based on the size of the customer. If a customer had 350 employees, it would pay less than a customer with 1,000 employees. Over time, almost all the customers grew in size. Even though the payroll company had perfect information about this growth (it did the payroll for the growing companies), it never moved its customers up to the next revenue band their size would have warranted. And over the years, many customers had more than doubled in size. Implementing this simple idea produced more than $2 million in annual revenue, and this was one of more than 200 changes implemented.
Companies frequently do not charge for the true value they provide. This often involves providing products or services in a timely fashion. One bank found that 65% of its commercial wires were sent in the hour before the cutoff time. This made the bank's own staffing extremely difficult. It had to staff for the peak one-hour period, which left skilled employees underutilized for the rest of the 7-hour day.
In an effort to even out the work flow, the bank changed its pricing, giving discounts for early wires and doubling the price for wires sent in the hour before the cutoff. It hoped some customers would send their wires earlier in the day. What did the bank find? Customer behavior did not change one bit. Customers valued sending wires late in the day and were prepared to pay for it. The department did not solve its staffing problem, but revenue increased by 30%!
ASSETS WITH HIDDEN VALUES
Sometimes companies have hidden physical assets that aren't core to the business, and they tend to give these away for free. One utility was required by regulators to replace its meters every 20 years. Even though most of the meters worked perfectly well, each year 5% of the meters were replaced and the old ones thrown away. Other utilities in different parts of the country did not face the same regulations. The company discovered there was a market for used meters and gained more than $250,000 annually by selling them. Again, this was one of more than 200 employee ideas that were implemented, a particularly impressive feat for a price-regulated utility.
In the new supercompetitive environment, the smart CEO will launch an early campaign to expand revenue. The very smart CEO will realize there is huge opportunity in the company backyard and will challenge his employees to look there first.
Neil Smith is the CEO of Promontory Growth and Innovation, a New York consulting firm that helps clients increase revenues and reduce costs in innovative ways.
The time is ripe for companies to focus on revenue growth, and a huge opportunity is surprisingly close at hand
By Neil Smith
When the new CEO of a very well-run Midwest auto insurer wanted to focus on increasing revenue, he started in an unusual way: He focused internally. "What opportunities am I missing in selling my current products to my current customers?" he asked himself.
The answer was astounding. He discovered that when a policy was coming up for renewal, the company sent out a renewal notice to customers a month in advance. But if a customer had an auto accident in the month between a renewal notice going out and the new policy going into effect, a simple computer glitch meant no increased premium was collected.
Company employees knew this was happening—they had known about it for 10 years, in fact—but they had no idea of the scale of the uncollected premium—or the cost to fix it. It turned out the cost of the computer fix was just $5,000, while the previously uncollected revenue amounted to more than $400,000 annually. The CEO was excited. The project I led with the CEO and his company found more than 300 opportunities, including this one, to increase revenue for the company by more than 15%.
GOLD IN EVERY COMPANY
As companies begin to focus on expanding revenues rather than cutting costs, it will become a far more competitive environment than when the recession began. Economic growth will be slow, and in addition, some economic activity has been permanently displaced to more competitive industrial nations, such as China and Brazil. The age of "Super Competition" is about to begin. Companies will have more chance of winning in this supercompetitive environment if they start planning for it immediately. Now is the time to get a head start on the competition and to focus on expanding revenues. And, as the CEO of the auto insurer found, there is already hidden gold in every company.
The key to unlocking this chest of gold is in the hands of the employees. Employees typically know hundreds (if not thousands) of ways to generate more revenue, but because of the way companies traditionally work, they cannot focus on these ways, as there are internal "barriers" that prevent them from collecting the additional revenue. In the case of the auto insurer, no one realized how much revenue the company was giving up, nor how little it would cost to collect it.
Just think of your own environment. How quickly can you come up with creative ideas for increasing revenue?
Based on the work I have done with more than 30 companies in more than 10 different industries across four continents since the late 1980s, I've come to realize there are typically three types of opportunity that a company has: preventing "leakage," charging for hidden value, and collecting for hidden assets.
WHEN CLIENTS GET BIGGER
Price leakage, such as that at the auto insurer, is common in every company. Another example happened at an outsourced payroll company I worked with. One source of revenue was an annual sum from each customer to cover administrative costs, based on the size of the customer. If a customer had 350 employees, it would pay less than a customer with 1,000 employees. Over time, almost all the customers grew in size. Even though the payroll company had perfect information about this growth (it did the payroll for the growing companies), it never moved its customers up to the next revenue band their size would have warranted. And over the years, many customers had more than doubled in size. Implementing this simple idea produced more than $2 million in annual revenue, and this was one of more than 200 changes implemented.
Companies frequently do not charge for the true value they provide. This often involves providing products or services in a timely fashion. One bank found that 65% of its commercial wires were sent in the hour before the cutoff time. This made the bank's own staffing extremely difficult. It had to staff for the peak one-hour period, which left skilled employees underutilized for the rest of the 7-hour day.
In an effort to even out the work flow, the bank changed its pricing, giving discounts for early wires and doubling the price for wires sent in the hour before the cutoff. It hoped some customers would send their wires earlier in the day. What did the bank find? Customer behavior did not change one bit. Customers valued sending wires late in the day and were prepared to pay for it. The department did not solve its staffing problem, but revenue increased by 30%!
ASSETS WITH HIDDEN VALUES
Sometimes companies have hidden physical assets that aren't core to the business, and they tend to give these away for free. One utility was required by regulators to replace its meters every 20 years. Even though most of the meters worked perfectly well, each year 5% of the meters were replaced and the old ones thrown away. Other utilities in different parts of the country did not face the same regulations. The company discovered there was a market for used meters and gained more than $250,000 annually by selling them. Again, this was one of more than 200 employee ideas that were implemented, a particularly impressive feat for a price-regulated utility.
In the new supercompetitive environment, the smart CEO will launch an early campaign to expand revenue. The very smart CEO will realize there is huge opportunity in the company backyard and will challenge his employees to look there first.
Neil Smith is the CEO of Promontory Growth and Innovation, a New York consulting firm that helps clients increase revenues and reduce costs in innovative ways.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Management Tip of the Day: How to Be a Good Leader in a Recession
Recessions necessitate an extra focus on tasks and results, but people should not be ignored; after all, you lead people, not results. Here are three tips for handling your people well in a recession:
- Be open and honest. Share as much information as you can. Talk to people even when there is no concrete news to share. Give people regular opportunities to discuss what's going on and ask questions.
- Encourage and motivate. Don't assume that your people are grateful that they have jobs. Show them that you appreciate their efforts, especially if they are working harder because of the recession. Give them positive feedback and extra help as needed.
- Offer training and development. These programs are a good investment in your company's future and show people that you care about their long-term career prospects.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
The Daily Stat: To Improve Business in the Developing World, Educate Women
| Executives believe that education will be the top driver of economic growth in the developing world for the next decade, according to a recent McKinsey survey. Improving the education of women is especially effective. One extra year of secondary schooling for women increases future wages 10% to 20%(compared with 5% to 15% for men), and women reinvest a larger portion of their income in health and education than men. |
| Source: Rethinking how companies address social issues |
Management Tip of the Day: Contemplating a Job Change? Think Long Term
| When making career decisions, it can be easy to heed the loudest, nearest, and quickest sources of information. Instead of listening to those short-term noises, focus on what a career move would mean long term. Ask yourself what your career goals are and what will make you most satisfied in three or five years. Manage the more immediate pressures such as the desire to make more money or the need to escape an unpleasant workplace — don't let them force you to make a rash move. Instead, focus on your long-term economic prospects and accept that all workplaces have ups and downs. |
Monday, March 15, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Management Tip of the Day: Answer these Strategy Questions Simultaneously
The two essential strategic choices are where to play and how to win. Answering these questions requires analysis and logic, yes, but most importantly, creative integration. Many good strategists only focus on one of those questions, trying diligently to figure out how to globalize or deliver a new product. A master strategist addresses both questions simultaneously and ensures the answers fit together. Don't rely on a single logic or analysis, but creatively integrate your company's choice about what market to play in and how to win there. The integration is what sets superb strategies apart from those that go nowhere.
Management Tip of the Day: Improve Customer Service with 3 Ts
Advances in technology and pressure to cut costs have changed the customer service experience. Companies now push far more function and responsibility to the consumer. Here are three ways to support and involve your customers in this new paradigm:
- Be transparent. Show your customers your company's internal systems so they feel part of the experience, not separated from it. For example, consider how shipping companies now allow customers schedule pick-ups, print labels, and track packages on their own.
- Convert or capitalize on tribes. There are groups of people who are going to blog, tweet, and find other ways to praise or complain about your products. Find your company's tribe and make it an ally in delivering a positive message.
- Open the door to new talent. Some of your customers may be so enthusiastic about your product that they can sell it better than you. Find ways to discover who these customers are and capitalize on their talents, and passions.
The Daily Stat: Chinese Are Increasingly Obsessed with the Web
70%. In China's 60 largest cities, that's the average amount of leisure time spent on the internet, according to a survey by Max Magni and Yuval Atsmon of McKinsey. One couple in the study reported that their squabbles over computer time got so bad they considered divorcing, but the purchase of a second PC saved the marriage, the researchers say.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Deliver a Better Presentation by Reminding Yourself It's Not About You - Presentations - Lifehacker
http://lifehacker.com/5487667/
We all give presentations in our work and lives, whether it's a one-on-one meeting with your boss or a lecture to a room full of people. Psychology Today offers a great guide to giving a successful presentation.
I'm presenting a panel at SXSW this year, and the fact is, as is the case with many people, public speaking still rankles my nerves. Psychology professor Nancy Darling offers some great suggestions for giving a good presentation, and reminds us nervous speakers that it's really not about us:
There are five main components to pulling together a good presentation:
- Choose a goal;
- Find a storyline that will help the group reach that goal;
- Develop a series of activities or a method of presentation that allows you to develop your storyline. Don't let your media determine your storyline!
- Remember that your role is to facilitate the group reaching its shared goal. This is your primary responsibility!
- Remember that it's not about you. All that matters is the experience of the other people in the room.
It's easy to get caught up in nerves when you're giving a presentation, but try to remember that the focus of the presentation is really on the information you're trying to get across, not on you. If you're confident in your information, let that boost the confidence you've got in your presentation.
Even if you're not a nervous presenter, I'd recommend giving Darling's guide a read through. It's full of solid suggestions for improving your presentations.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Management Tip of the Day: Don’t Get Defensive, Ask Questions
When you are criticized or told "no," your instinct may be to immediately fight back and defend your position or project. Next time you face resistance, instead of articulating all the reasons why you are right or why your project should be funded, ask a few simple questions. Questions like, "Why did you say that?" or "What led you to that conclusion?" can help the other person rethink his assumptions and help you understand more about where he is coming from. Asking questions allows you to get beyond the immediate disagreement and deeper into what is driving each side.
'Good' Beats 'Innovative' Nearly Every Time - BusinessWeek
An obsession with innovation leads executives down the wrong path. Just trying to be good would be a smarter focus
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/feb2010/id20100222_506858.htm?link_position=link3
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Forbes.com: The World's Best-Paid Cities
The World's Best-Paid Cities
Which of the globe's workers fatten their wallets most?
By Francesca Levy
Which of the globe's workers fatten their wallets most?
By Francesca Levy
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Management Tip of the Day: Define Your Company's Purpose in a Sentence
| Great companies have a single purpose that drives them toward success. That purpose is simple, straightforward, and no longer than a sentence. For example, Google's is "We organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," and ING Direct's is "We lead Americans back to savings." This is not a tag line but a single idea that defines the company's reason for existing. Discover what your company is best at and put it into a sentence. Don't settle with being the middle of the road, but strive to be the most responsive, most colorful, or most focused. Then, make sure that everyone in your company knows that sentence and uses it to drive success. |
The Daily Stat: Most Global Profits Come from Turbulent Industries
| Two thirds. That's how much of the global profit pool is in turbulent industries like media, telecom, autos, airlines, and financial services. All those industries are undergoing fundamental changes to their core business models. |
| Source: Profit from the Core: A Return to Growth in Turbulent Times by Chris Zook and James G. Allen |
Management Tip of the Day: 3 Ways Focusing on Social Problems Can Help Your Company
There has been a shift in the past few years: companies are addressing societal problems not as charity but as a way to make money and expand opportunities. Here are three ways to improve your company's ability to innovate by contributing to the fight against social problems:
- Create a bigger pool of ideas. Don't focus just on your market or function, but think about how solutions in your market can help serve a broader audience. This expanded thinking will put more ideas into your innovation funnel.
- Increase partnerships. Committing to helping other people inspires a willingness to reach beyond the company walls and build new partnerships that often lead to new ideas.
- Focus on solutions. When employees know that their ideas will help people, they are more likely to feel motivated to focus on innovative solutions.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)