Maybe We Really Have Changed
By · CommentsI
was very conscious of role changes yesterday. First, my husband and I needed to get some basics for our new home in Sonoma County California. We were running late and made a last stop at the closest Costco. The Super Bowl had started about ten minutes before and as Saints fans, we wanted to get home to cheer this special team to success.
I stopped at the bank of televisions and became engrossed with the game and stood there with a few guys who had pulled up chairs and obviously planned to make an afternoon of it.
My husband, a macho kind of male, said he would get the items we needed including an ironing board and dish drainer for the kitchen. He suggested I pull up a chair. I did. And the men, without blinking an eye, included me in their conversation about strategy.
I must admit, I am a superficial fan of the game and it only peaks my attention when there is a story like the New Orleans team that has captured the imagination of the whole country. I was in the French Quarter several weeks ago when the Saints won the right to be in the Super Bowl and it was, so I heard, even better than Mardi Gras.
We returned home in time for the end of the game, and that is when I thought maybe, just maybe, the balance between men and women is really changing.
For me, the best part of the post game hoopla was watching the Saints quarterback, Drew Brees holding his year old son. That was not so unusual.
What really impacted me was the way he was holding and kissing him. In the midst of the tumult, in the midst of his major success, it was obvious he was so focused on his son with the overtly expressed love usually reserved for a mother and a child.
I will take the images of today, a husband who changed places and bought the dish drainer while his wife was engrossed in football, a group of men, strangers, who included that woman in their discussion, and a football hero kissing his son with a gentle delight.
And coupled with my memories of being in New Orleans three weeks after hurricane Katrina to help with the recovery efforts, seeing the scenes of the fun and liveliness back in that city, it feels like change is in the air everywhere.
A Picture Perfect Business Model
By · CommentsEvery day I meet people who are really good at what they do; and every day I remind myself what I am best at. It’s not because I need the constant ego boost, but because I have to remind myself to stay focused…laser focused on the big picture instead of getting side-tracked when something sparkly catches my eye.
Why is it that companies like Kodak, Xerox and Microsoft still thrive in today’s competitive space given the fact they were founded 35, 104 and 118 years ago? It’s because not only did they stick to what they knew, they knew their strengths and they made a commitment to creating and changing the rules to stay on the leading edge. Take Kodak, for instance and their Wikipedia blurb, “Long known for its wide range of photographic film products, Kodak is re-focusing on two major markets: digital photography and digital printing.” Besides the witty use of “re-focusing,” it indicates a major shift in business model. Why did Kodak “get it” and Polaroid miss it? A one sentence explanation in Wikipedia for Polaroid about sums that up as well, “Its bankruptcy was widely believed to be the result of the failure of its senior management to anticipate the effect of digital cameras on its film business.”
My analogy is not to promote one digital camera company over another, but it is an example of defining what a picture perfect business model using best practice philosophy might look like. Sometimes we forget to change our speed. Sometimes we forget to focus. Either way, the picture is blurry; as are the lines between the way we’ve always done it and the way we need to do it going forward. Maybe somewhere between the iron-clad mission statement and a look into the crystal ball lies the secret to the every-changing business model.
This concept is illustrated in a 2006 article in Entrepreneur Magazine, where the emphasis is on progression and adaptation to change. “This kind of business-model evolution is just smart business in a marketplace that’s moving at warp speed. Gone are the days when a growing business with any hopes of long-term survival could etch a business model in stone and follow it into oblivion. Savvy customers and a fragmented marketplace require companies to move on, adapt or die. In the 21st century, it’s not merely an original idea that endures in survival of the fittest; it’s the ability to change. Strength is derived from nimbleness within the business model itself.”
So how does that apply to the rest of us solo- and entrepreneurs? It means that yes, we need to stay laser focused on what we’re good at, but it also means that we need to evaluate and re-evaluation to keep our head out of the sand. Here are a few steps to keeping up with the changing times in your business:
- Brainstorm about your company ideas, products and factors that are important to your largest client base
- Discuss how their industries are changing and make sure your product is still relevant to theirs
- List your company’s core competences and things you do better than anyone else
- Brainstorm on how your core competencies can morph into products or services your customers can’t live without
- Don’t get side-tracked with smaller projects that are outside the scope of what you’re great at
- Make sure you’re offering an environment of change within your organization that is being shoved in anyone’s face
- Re-write your “tagline” or “business focus” daily, weekly or monthly until you get it right…take a snap shot then look at it in a month to make sure it has kept up with the change
The punchline to all of this is that the picture perfect business model is not the etched-in-stone model of our predecessors; ours is now one of mobility and agility. Keeping your staff part of the process is not just smart, it’s a necessity since they’re more likely to be tuned-in to the changing needs and trends of your customers. I’m always an advocate of the “go with what you know” philosophy, but that does not mean you can’t learn new things and adapt to new ways of doing them. Get the picture?
Employee Brand Differentiation
By · CommentsDifferentiating oneself in the workforce today may hold the key for many employees who are keenly interested and highly motivated to survive downsizing. While it may take extra effort, the payoff can be exponentially greater both short and long range; for the employee and the company. With discipline, determination, and drive, employees can make their mark strategically, fashionably and with ingenuity.
Why Differentiate?
Much like a business, brand awareness, credibility, and association of product are important. Human capital in the workforce can benefit by applying her own brand to her professional self.
In an experience educating employees on professional branding, I shared my most closely guarded daily motivational strategy. “My day begins by going to work for Kashlak, Inc.” Chuckles and curious grins gleaned my way and silence fell upon the room of leadership.
Explaining my line of thinking further, the room quickly realized the value of having a professional brand. For the visionaries and innovators, enthusiasm and buzz elevated the room for the remainder of the session.
It was in that three syllable comment, Kashlak, Inc. that my brand was established amongst 85 clients. They “got it”! Innovation, risk, and commodity were just a few of the immediate perceptions.
As human resources professionals take on more than ever, risk mitigation, healthy human capital psyche, and strategic innovation are all consuming.
Asking employees to identify their brand is as simple as developing a brand for a business. What do you want to be known for? What are your best attributes? What is your greatest brag?
The Payoff.
Helping employees understand professional brand differentiation in the workplace will lead to an overall healthy psyche of employees as long as the brands are exercised on a regular basis. The three D’s are crucial during the first 30 days of this exercise and must be reinforced by the department head.
The benefits of differentiating include:
- No cost to the company as the exercise can be set up simply during a standard meeting.
- Increased self esteem, covetable skills, and increased productivity.
- A focus on natural strengths and talents.
- Individualization and self worth.
- Appreciation of strengths in others.
- Elevated internal resource identification by employee for special projects or expert advice.
- Retention of top talent.
- Leveraging talent strengths which are visible and respected in functioning teams.
- Many more!
Do not wait…Differentiate!!
Get Moving!!
The Keys to Employee Retention
By · CommentsPost by Veronica Eyenga, contributing Women On Business writer
Employees are the driving force to your business’ success and retaining those key people is critical to the health of your company. The ability to keep your best employees ensures customer satisfaction, product sales, and deeply embedded organizational knowledge.
But how do you get your best employees to stick around?
Compensate fairly.
Paying your employees competitively, and fairly, shows that you respect and value them. Money isn’t the only reason people stay in a job, but it can play a significant role.
Treat people as equals.
Keep the lines of communication between employees and managers, or yourself, open. People will feel a higher sense of loyalty if they are treated as partners, not hired hands.
Encourage creativity.
Provide a challenging and creative work environment to ensure that your employees enjoy the work they do. Avoid micro-managing, it stifles creativity.
Be human.
Thank your employees, demonstrate flexibility with work/life balance, and earn your employees respect. If you can provide a positive, uplifting work environment, your employees will stick around.
Employee turnover can cause chaos and disorganization within your company. In order to keep your company at the top of its game, you need to keep your best employees.
Is there someone in your company you absolutely cannot afford to lose? How do you keep them around? Share your advice in the comments.
Visionboard for your Success
By · CommentsI invite you to take a look at my own visionboarding process: I’ve been working on some variation of this for the last 3 years now, and I’ve been keeping a “attainable goals” list since 2001, when I first started being more proactive, positive, and engaging with my chosen line of work and my personal and professional mission statement.
My main purpose in being here on the planet is to educate, empower, and connect, and the specific avenue where I choose to do this is through working at my web design company supporting women in business and progressive organizations. I strongly support minority women and green business women.
My keywords list includes: green, sustainable, holistic, organic, fair trade, collaboration, open source, PHP/mySQL, Drupal, content management system, web design, web development. As a web developer, I work with multiple clients who are just formulating their overall business plan and strategy, and I like to think that the exercise of identifying what you’ll put on your website helps you understand what you are attempting to do through your business or endeavor.
I invite you to distill your outlook on work into a few paragraphs and start sharing that, talking about it, and focusing on it. By having a very niche, specific, and laser-like intensity about the kinds of customers we work with, I feel like our company has been able to achieve success.
Here’s my visionboard slideshow: I review this daily.
Hello there! Firstly i just wanted to say i’m very excited to be writing on womenonbusiness.com. This will be my first post. I love debates and interactions, so if you have anything to say, about my style of writing to the points i have put across, feel free to comment!
so here we go….
Due to stereotypes and years of oppression, some women still have a difficult time being assertive without coming across too over-bearing at work. Moving over too much in the other direction, they often let themselves get walked over. Women have shown themselves to be as good as men when it comes down to getting work done. But even now, we can have a tough time getting stuff done by other people for us. If you are not happy with the quality or time delivery of work you are assigning to people who work for you, consider the following tips (they may seem simple – but you’d be suprised at how often they are overlooked!):
- When you give somebody an assignment, be as clear as possible as to what you expect back. An example of a similar document is necessary for something that the worker has never produced for you before.
- Specify when you want to see the outline, the draft, and the final copy. Make sure you get buy in from the other person on whether they can make those dates. Pulling dates out of the air is a good way to make sure stuff does not get done in time.
- Break down deliverables into small assignments. Depending on your relationship with the worker, you may want to see daily results at first until they can show themselves to be trustworthy with longer assignments.
- Do not push back delivery dates unless you believe that the person has a legitimate reason for not making their dates. Stress that you really need the documents when you and that person agreed on the delivery dates. Accept the work but make sure the person understands that the delivery is late and could impact other deliverables.
- Do not sweat the small stuff. While everything delivered needs to meet quality standards, consider that sometimes a product needs to be good enough. Just because somebody working for you does not word a document exactly how you would document it, does not mean that you need to send it back with edits. As long as the document generally says what it needs to, let it be.
- Regarding small edits, just do them yourself. It will take longer for you to write down what you need to be done and communicate what you need to be done then if you just did them yourself. Do a comparison for yourself until you get the hang of what you need to push back and what you should just do yourself.
- Regarding status updates, a weekly meeting is fine and quick morning conference call are acceptable as well. If you are already talking to the person on a daily basis, there is no reason to send out additional status emails other than to follow through on a conversation. What ends up happening is that people end up having more meetings and phone calls and emails about doing work than actually doing work.
- Following through on meetings and phone calls is a very good way to get others to realize that you are serious about getting stuff done. For example, you could send out a reminder after the meeting, “Per our morning meeting or conference call, you stated that you are XX percent done with the draft and plan to provide me with a final copy by the end of business today. If this is not your understanding or anything comes up that may impact our schedule, please let me know.”
- If you are concerned that your work is not getting the priority it needs or deserves, do a walk-by. Too many people in management positions build an imaginary wall between themselves and the people who work for them. You might want to limit how many drinks you have with them after work, but certainly get comfortable with walking around and physically checking up on people, especially when they do not expect it. Do not make this a scheduled routine. Vary your visit times. Don’t make it look official, more like a “checking to see how you’re doing” type thing.
- Check the status of documents first thing in the morning and before you leave at night if you were expecting deliverables. If you do not receive what you were expecting, send out a quick email following through. Do not threaten. Just persist. Persistence is usually enough to make people feel uncomfortable when they are sitting on a deliverable.
I hope that you will see that while it takes more work up front to be assertive when delegating work, it will pay off when deadlines come around.
