Category Archives: consultancy

Berlin, Business management, coaching, consultancy, management, new writer, start-ups, vision

Mini-series: Business Management 12

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Marketing

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The world is changing fast all the time and the marketing that worked five years ago probably won’t work today. Right now the two most successful marketing strategies for most companies are internet presence and word-of-mouth recommendation. This means that, whatever else you might be doing, the following are critical:

  • when you google your product or area of the market, how high up the Google pages do you come? It makes complete sense to give everything you can to getting yourself to the top of that list. Find out all you can about SEOs.
  • think creatively about as many ways as you can to increase the possibility of your product being recommended from person-to-person. Can you use an app, social media or even financial incentives to improve on your current situation?
  • the above two bullet points should have an effect on your use of other media. For example, very few potential customers will read a press release but many will read an interesting story about a customer who has seen success or something interesting happening as a result of using your product.

Links:

Tips for developing a marketing strategy 

Best practice: content marketing

Berlin, Business management, coaching, consultancy, free literature, management, new writer, start-ups, vision

Mini-series: Business Management 11

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Carry out a regular SWOT analysis

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Life is very busy and very quickly unimportant things begin to feel like genuine priorities and we lose sight of the main goal. Therefore it is good practice to carry out a regular SWOT analysis, looking with a very critical eye at your company’s and you team’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Once you have done so, take appropriate action in any relevant areas.

Links:

SWOT analysis

Tips on carrying out a SWOT analysis

Berlin, Business management, coaching, consultancy, free literature, management, new writer, start-ups, vision

Mini-series: Business Management 10

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Jettison everything you are doing that is not genuinely productive

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Many run the danger of continuing to do things simply because that is the way that they have always been done or because they have seen others doing things in a certain way. Please be aware that a strategy that works for a very similar company to yours may not work for your company at all. Resist the temptation to copy. Focus on your USP(s).

If you want to see something you’ve never seen before, you are going to have to do something that you have never done before.

Links:

Thinking outside of the box

5 hot tips on how to break out of habitual methods

Berlin, Business management, coaching, consultancy, free literature, management, new writer, start-ups, vision

Mini-Series: Business Management 9

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Always invest in younger people

This is important not only because of the reasons given in the paragraph above, but also because young people will keep your company feeling young and dynamic and it will make it attractive to young and old alike. Furthermore, amongst these up-and-coming employees you will most probably find the most loyal and talented future leaders of your company.

Nowadays, it is also possible to work with younger people by offering them a short to medium-term placement as part of their training/university degree. If you do this, please be aware that you will need to look after them properly and not to use them as cheap labour. Ideally, they should have a pre-arranged, formal training programme that includes time with you, professional development on the job, a mentor (not you) who looks after them pastorally and they should also work shorter hours than your paid staff so that they have time for other aspects of their personal and professional development.

Berlin, Business management, coaching, consultancy, free literature, management, new writer, start-ups, vision

Mini-Series: Business Management 8

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The future is always ten years younger than the age of your average customer

This may sound strange, but it is an important business maxim. The main challenge is that life moves on faster than we like to think. Many managers, including their friendship circle, are already at least forty years old, so when they think about how to develop their product, they think about what they would like. The reality is, however, by the time the product is on sale, several years have elapsed and in any case, the next generation of customers have already moved on to something different. So, the rule of thumb is, if you want to develop a new or existing product, find out what people at least ten years younger than your current average customer are looking for.

Links:

Apple’s target audience

Nike’s target audience

 

 

Berlin, Business management, coaching, consultancy, management, new writer, start-ups, vision

Mini-Series: Business Management 7

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Create a culture of encouragement and celebration

Almost all human beings work best in an environment of encouragement. It is therefore very important that you create a culture of encouragement. Criticism and honest feedback are of course essential, especially with colleagues who are not performing quite as well as they could. However, any negative feedback or constructive criticism should take place within the following parameters:

  • do not communicate negative feedback in the heat of the moment
  • take time to check that you have got your facts straight beyond you launch out
  • never communicate negative feedback to the employee in front of other employees of a similar standing
  • once you have introduced the theme of your feedback, give the employee ample opportunity to explain things from his/her angle first
  • then couch your criticism in a very clear, factual structured way
  • end by giving the employee an opportunity to ask any questions and with an encouraging comment about a more positive aspect of the employee’s work.

It is also best practice to offer employees regular appraisal, at least once a year. This should be done formally and with the outcome linked to professional development and, where possible and if appropriate, a pay increase. Apart from the fact that such a procedure will great benefit your company, it will also make it very attractive to other highly qualified and motivated professionals.

Links:

10 tips on empowering your staff

16 clever ways to show employee appreciation

 

Business management, coaching, consultancy, management, new writer, start-ups

Mini-series: Business Management 6

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Meetings, agendas and minutes

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Meetings are essential in any organisation but you need to monitor whether or not they are serving any real purpose. If they are not, they should be dropped or radically changed. Every meeting, especially a regular meeting, should have a very clear purpose, not only to you, but also to your team. Then, in order to make its importance clear to your team, you should ensure the following:

  • an agenda should be sent out in advance, where possible giving your team members the opportunity to contribute to it. The number of items should be clearly manageable and not overwhelming. There should also be at the beginning a brief review of the action points from the last meeting.
  • items on the agenda should have a time-limit and a designated person responsible for them. There should also be an appointed  chair (not necessarily you as the manager but the person who can best chair a meeting in your team), a minute-taker and a time-keeper.
  • The minutes should be brief and to the point with action points and a named person responsible for each action point and a deadline by when the item should be achieved. The minutes should be distributed promptly to everyone as soon as possible after the meeting.

 

Useful links:

http://www.practicallyperfectpa.com/2012/tips-on-good-minute-taking/10/03/

Business management, coaching, consultancy, management, new writer, start-ups

Mini-series: Business Management 5

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Work smart, not harder

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One of the most common mistakes made by managers and leaders is to keep working more intensely and for longer hours as the stress increases. This is fatal, for many obvious reasons, such as the danger of burnout, but most importantly because it causes the manager to lose sight of what is going on in the company. Ways of working smarter, not harder have to be found, for example:

  • take a radical look at your working day and jettison everything that is not important
  • re-visit your company vision and check that you are not spending time doing things that do not, or no longer, line up with your vision
  • audit your tasks into the four categories of urgent and important, urgent and not important, important and not urgent and not important and not urgent and plan your diary well in advance with this audit in mind
  • look to delegate as much as you can to members of your team

One of the best and most well-known books on self-management is “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey.

Berlin, Business management, coaching, consultancy, management, start-ups, vision

Mini-series: Business Management 4

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Team is everything

The long-term success of any company lies in the quality of the leadership and vision, finance, the quality of the product, good marketing and, very importantly, team-work. Many leaders only pay lip-service to team work since it is the nature of who they are that they deep-down often believe that they can do everything better themselves. Yet this fatal for two reasons: first it breeds a sense of insecurity into the employees and secondly it will lead to burn-out since the leader simply cannot do everything, especially as the company grows.

So, if team is so important, how can a good team be created?

  • invest quality time in discovering the strengths and weaknesses of your team members, in particular with regards to their knowledge, skills, aspirations and motivations. There are well-know tools such as Belbin and Myers-Briggs that can help you with this important analysis.
  • do everything you can to align or re-align your team member’s skills with the vision, values and requirements of your company
  • hold regular, meaningful team meetings that give your employees a real sense of being a very significant member of your team
  • never talk negatively about one team member to another since this breeds a culture of mistrust throughout the company
  • provide opportunities for your team to get to know one another outside of the work environment
  • be aware that if you ever put anything, however important it may be to you, before the above points, you are sending the message that the team is not that important to you. Actions always speak louder than words.

More to follow in the next few days ….

 

Business management, coaching, consultancy, management, new writer, start-ups, vision

Mini-series: Business Management 3

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Taking on staff

Taking on staff is one of the biggest commitments a leader or manager makes. Here are some principles:

  • it may sound rather harsh, but it is for everyone’s long-term benefit: be slow to hire and quick to fire
  • in the early days, you may not be able to attract the perfect employee who has both the skills you need to get important tasks achieved and who can represent the values of your company. If you cannot find the perfect employee, in the early days it is better to employ someone who can get the tasks done efficiently in order to free you up from things that you shouldn’t be doing, but in the longer term it is critical that you employ people who can represent the values of your company
  • this also means that you need to be aware that you will need to adjust both your staff and your employment criteria as your company grows

There’s still more to come in this min-series in the days to come …

Useful links:

http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/7155-startup-hiring-tips.html

http://www.smallbusiness.co.uk/running-a-business/employing-staff/

http://humanresources.about.com/od/recruiting/tp/recruiting_employee.htm

http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveolenski/2015/05/15/6-tips-for-hiring-the-right-employee/#64686ff9377f