Daniel Watson
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Introduction to Business Improvement
Welcome This carefully curated topic, provides links to quality advice and food for thought, specifically collected for the English speaking owners and managers of small to medium sized businesses, where ever they may be located. To subscribe to get daily, e-mail "headline only" updates of each day's posts, please click on the blue follow button, located above the post to the right of this one. This topic can easily be searched by using the Filter Button above. See your curator's other Social Media activities. Read your curators Scoop.it Lord of Curation citation. Please take a moment to visit our Sponsor's Website. 
Employee engagement has been a hot topic for sometime now, and business owners get a little bemused at the constant push in their direction for them to do more to engage their employees, but they don't often see the way forward in making this happen as clearly mapped out as they would wish. One way in which employee engagement can effectively be improved, is through encouraging within your business the growth of a culture of connection, being the connection of the human kind. This excellent article, describes in simple terms what a culture of connection is, and then it offers seven steps that you can take to strengthen connection in your business. 
Businesses that have survived recent tough economic times, will hopefully be seeking opportunities to grow, as soon as economic conditions indicate that the time is ripe to expand. However, before embarking on any growth strategy, a business needs to ensure that the business itself is actually ready for growth, and growth will not be hindered by cutbacks and changes made to cope with recent hard times. This excellent (very long and written specifically for larger companies) article, introduces a three question diagnostic tool, that can be used to determine whether or not your business is ready to adopt a growth strategy. 
Finding a way to disrupt the status quo in an industry, can lead to the development of a huge competitive advantage for the business that finds a way to provide a better solution to client's problems, at the same time as leaving the competitor locked into their solution. The secret to success in such an endeavour, is to take what your competitor sees as a major asset and turn it into a costly liability, that they will find it hard to escape. This excellent article, highlights an old Chinese fable to show the workings of the concept of industry disruption, and then it suggests three questions to find answers to in order to cause your own disruption. Business owners and managers, need to understand the power of positive reinforcement as a fundamental driver of improved employee engagement, and then ensure that they do not ignore acknowledging desirable behaviour, as it is observed. When the return on the investment of time in giving positive reinforcement to employees can be as high as 100:1, it makes business sense, to invest the time necessary to do this well. This excellent article, identifies that inadequate recognition of effort is a major employee issue, and it makes a strong case for improving your efforts at positively reinforcing observed desirable behaviour. 
Sloppy thinking, disorganisation, and financial greed in a business owner are three indicators that the business itself may soon find itself in trouble, especially if you don't work hard to eliminate any of these personal traits that you possess. If you can ensure that you do not display any of these three particular traits, you and your business, will be far better off for having done so. This good article, describes each of these undesirable traits, and it identifies areas to focus on the rid yourself of any of these traits that may be affecting your business progress. 
Personal productivity is always a challenge for a busy business owner, and removing oneself from daily firefighting to focussing on key activities that will drive business growth and ultimate success, is often easier said than done.
Regardless of the difficulties, successful entrepreneurs find ways to become more productive, and if your productivity is not as high as you would like, you may be able to benefit from seeing how they manage to be more productive.
This good article, identifies a range of personal productivity tip obtained from 11 different successful entrepreneurs, and whilst there are common threads these tips all contain valid suggestions that you can try. Via Martin Gysler 
Business owners are notorious for spending too much time working in their businesses and too little time working on them. The downside of such behaviour, is the limitations that it places on the ability of the busines to grow, and to ultimately achieve its full potential. This excellent article, suggests that business owners need to fire themselves from doing jobs that with them handling them, stand in the way of their company's growth. 
Improving your business also means reducing the risks of the occurrence of malicious activity, particularly that designed to damage your business or brand, and cause you financial loss. One situation where this risk becomes very real, is where employees leave a company whether on a voluntary or involuntary basis, and the business concerned has poor employee exit procedures, especially in respect to IT security considerations. This excellent article discusses the risks involved, and it offers 6 key points that you should adopt, to keep your risks associated with departing employees to a minimum. 
Most successful businesses are built up slowly over time, and they manage to develop their systems and employee capabilities in such a way, as to keep pace with the rate of growth and avoid the risk of imploding from systems and people not being able to keep up with their rate of growth. Some businesses however, rise rapidly and expand exponentially, and either survive after much turmoil and angst, or crash and burn when the upgrading of systems and people fail to keep pace with the growth. This excellent article, is for those who take the slow and steady approach, and it provides a blueprint on how to build a great business one customer at a time and without high levels of risk. 
There is a school of thought, which suggests that the B2B and B2C business models are rapidly fading into oblivion, to be replaced by P2P (People to People) Networks. Should this be true and happening right now, then business owners need to get up to speed, and look very closely at improving their engagement at all levels with the people most important to their businesses (customers and employees). This excellent article, discusses this major shift that has the potential to play havoc on the revenues of businesses that get left behind, and it introduces nine key component that will assist greater engagement with customers and employees in the new P2P business environment. 
Consumer behaviour has changed dramatically in recent years, and if your business has not adjusted its marketing efforts to reflect this massive shift, then your sales will be suffering. Customers are no longer following the old funnel of awareness, interest, desire and action as their preferred purchase path, and your marketing needs to adjust to new consumer behaviour patterns. This excellent article, discusses this major shift in consumer behaviour, and it identifies tunnel purchasing as the new common behaviour that your marketing needs to address. 
Many small business owners, get bogged down in trying to “do it all” themselves and never hire employees, never delegate or outsource work, and thus their businesses never grow. If your business is to ever grow, you will need to consider employing a team to assist you undertake the work, which needs to be done before your business can effectively grow. This good article, suggests that all successful business owners surround themselves with savvy team members, and it recommends that you hire helpers and then focus your time primarily on providing the expertise that your clients need and want from you. |
Word of Mouth is the greatest free marketing a business can have, and any steps a business can take to generate a greater volume of word of mouth endorsements, is well worth the investment of any resources required. Social media has changed the game, and made it far easier for smart businesses to encourage people to give great word of mouth endorsements, to their businesses. This excellent article, discusses the three step engagement cycle that leads to greater word of mouth recommendations, and for each step it provides examples that you can use to develop improved levels of word of mouth for your business. 
The concept of corporate culture can be somewhat foreign to a small business owner, but once a business becomes an employer and grows to the point where it has a solid foundation and can expect to survive, it will have developed its own corporate or business culture. It is important to be able to determine whether the culture that has developed in your business, is a strong culture or a weak culture, and to do this you need to know how to assess your own culture. This excellent article, provides a clear overview of what corporate culture is and why it is important to build a strong culture, and then it provides a guide for you to follow to effectively assess your own business culture. 
Small business is a tough gig at the best of times, but when times get tougher, every small business owner has to fight hard in order to flourish. Unfortunately, with the limited resources available to a small business, a business owner must be careful about where and how they choose to fight their competitors. This good article, suggests avoiding feuds at all costs, and only choosing to fight where you know you can win. 
Many apparently profitable small businesses go broke because they simply fail to effectively manage their cash flow, and simply run out of funds at critical points, and have to close up to avoid the penalties associated with insolvent trading rules. Profitable businesses can run out of cash for a number of reasons, however if business owners pay attention to a number of key elements of their businesses, the risk of this happening can be significantly reduced. This excellent article, identifies where your cash supply can be tied up, and it offers suggestions for how to ensure that this cash makes it into your bank account as quickly as possible. 
One of the toughest tasks faced by a business owner or manager, is confronting an employee to discuss any aspect of the performance of their duties that have become a cause for concern, and which are impacting on the business in a negative way.
Some business owners will do almost anything to avoid such confrontations, but failing to address such performance issues or leaving it far too long to address them, can lead to much wider problems throughout the business.
This excellent article (including links to 2 other relevant articles), suggests that performance feedback is actually a gift to the employee involved, and it offers a 10 point checklist that you can follow to assist you to effectively confront the issues at hand.
Via The Fish Firm II 
Customer Relations Management (CRM) in this digital age, requires the deployment of an appropriate software program, in order for any SME business to be truly effective in managing their customers and their relationships with those customers. A CRM program is not just a tool for sales and marketing types in a business, it should be integral to the business strategy, and used by everyone in the business as part of their respective roles. This excellent article, explains why CRM is a must have tool for small business owners, and it identifies the top five CRM trends and discusses CRM best practices that you can implement in your business.
In any business, differences in opinions, approaches to task, individual's backgrounds, and levels of expertise make for great opportunities for collaborative effort to drive innovation and greater business success. Unfortunately, what often happens in businesses is that these differences tend not to be utilised, and a condition similar to group think develops at the expense of innovative thought and action. In this excellent 4 minute video, Cathy Davidson, Duke University professor and HASTAC co-founder, shares three new ways to collaborate, share, and learn, which if implemented will make your business a more productive enterprise. 
Small business owners often manage their enterprises under the notion that the future will closely resemble the past. Unfortunately, the world we operate in today is often extremely unpredictable, and that means business owners need to radically change their thought process, in order to take control of their futures. This excellent article, offers a three step process used by serial entrepreneurs, that business owners can follow if they find that their usual thought processes are not delivering the results they need. 
Business owners need to understand that meaningful conflict is a cornerstone in healthy, successful organisations and that conflict is necessary for effective problem solving, and for effective interpersonal relationships. Unfortunately, in many businesses conflict avoidance is the most common communication practice, and should any conflict arise between employees, the conflict resolution handbook quickly comes into play. This excellent article describes the concept of meaningful conflict, provides four tips to help you to develop meaningful workplace conflict, and suggests some rules of the game for all involved to follow. 
The systems that support any business operation, are also the cause of many of the problems that businesses experience, and at the same time systems can be the solution to the same problems. Often the systems supporting a business are legacy systems, or simply dumb systems in terms of their design and fitness for the purpose they need to serve, and business owners and managers need to be aware of this situation and take steps to provide their business with the systems that it now needs. This excellent (heavy reading) article, suggests that leaders faced with dumb systems should actively set out to create a system or a culture that is fit for purpose, and then position themselves as stewards of their culture to ensure business problems are minimised. 
Many business owners do a lot of things right, but when it comes to the pointy end of the business, they let themselves down by failing to maximise the selling opportunities they could be exploiting to drive revenues higher. A key selling opportunity is in your print or online advertising material, and few business owners and managers fully maximise the potential returns, from the investments they make in this area. This excellent list, identifies 10 ways you can improve you advertising, and receive far greater returns on your advertising expenditure. 
Most business owners intuitively know that if their employees trust each other, their working relationships will be smoother, and the pace at which decisions are made and implemented will be far quicker. In any business environment, it is not possible to make it mandatory for employees to trust each other, but business owners and managers can create environments where people can more easily choose to trust each other. This excellent article, suggests that if you build the trust within the team you will build the team, and it suggests eight tips on how to create the right environment for trust to flourish. As a business owner or manager, your attitude directly affects your employees and your employees’ attitudes directly impact on your customers, and if that impact is negative then your business will not perform as it should. If you want to have co-operative employees, who work well as a team and whose attitudes towards their work positively impact on the customer experience, then you need to ensure that your own attitude towards employees is appropriate. This good article, suggests that you need to hold your employees in high esteem, make them feel valued, and increase their engagement, and it offers three things that you need to do to achieve these objectives. |
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