Plan Your Way to Business Success

Why plan at all?

Almost anything we do will be more successful if we have thought about the outcome we want to achieve before we start. The old axiom that any road will do if we don’t know where we are going is true. However, if we do know where we would like to go, it is best to have an idea about which road to take. Assuming that one of your goals is to be successful, it would make sense to choose a road that will lead to success.

What is involved?

Any planning process has three elements to it:

  • Where are we now?
  • Where do we want to be?
  • How are we going to get there?

The most difficult part of the planning process for many people is to be able to clearly articulate where they would like to be. From a business perspective it often calls for a change of mindset away from “where is the business going to take us” to “what do we need to do to the business to take us where we would like to be”. Part of that mindset change is to then believe that it is possible to achieve. It usually also means that we cannot keep all our options open and hope for the best – we need to choose a direction and then make it happen.

Once we have chosen the destination, it is a relatively straight forward process to clearly define where we currently are and then work out what we need to do to get to where we want to go.

Strategic Plans and Business Plans – what is the difference?

A Strategic Plan provides an overall view of where we would like to be in the future – the Vision; and what business we are actually in – the Mission. It also defines the operational philosophy – the Values; and sets the high level goals. It will then set high level strategic objectives for each of the key functional areas: marketing, operations, human resources and financial resources. This is sometimes called the strategic intent.

The Business Plan takes the strategic objectives and defines the detailed strategies and actions required to achieve them. It is effectively a list of things to do. It can also be changed if circumstances change. Our overall destination or strategic intent doesn’t change, but we can detour via the business plan if we need to.

How do we do it?

The planning process can appear daunting, but it doesn’t need to be. Like most things it is easier if you have done it before and if you have the right tools. Engage a business planning expert in the process to lead you through it. There is also added value to be gained from having an objective outsider (a business consultant) involved in the process who is not emotionally attached to any of the existing sacred cows in your business.

Success in business is rarely achieved by accident. It usually involves careful planning backed up by skilful execution. It was Benjamin Franklin who said, “If you fail to prepare, you are prepared to fail”, which is another way of saying that you can plan your way to business success.

 

Engage Your Staff and Improve Your Bottom Line

Organisational leaders who exhibit a committed focus to people practices not only increase their chances of having a more engaged workforce but can also drive profit growth.

Recent studies by Real World Group and others have found that organisations with a highly engaged workforce have significantly better profit growth than those that do not.

There is no doubt that there is a high correlation between profit growth and employee engagement.

What do we mean by employee engagement?

Some people see it as being ‘job satisfaction’ but this can be a transactional relationship that is only as good as the organisation’s last round of perks or bonuses. Other people gauge employee engagement by employees’ emotional commitment to their organisation. While this is an important element it is only part of the engagement equation.

From our extensive experience in business consulting and human resource management, we take the view that employee engagement focuses on the:

  • Contribution of individuals to the organisation’s success
  • Personal satisfaction of individuals in their role.

We believe that aligning employees’ values, goals, and aspirations with those of the organisation is the best method for delivering the sustainable employee engagement required for an organisation to thrive and increase profits.

Full employee engagement represents an alignment of:

  • maximum job satisfaction – “I like my work and do it well”, with
  • maximum contribution – “I help achieve the goals of the organisation”.

Leadership commitment is one of the key features of organisations that rank highly in relation to employee engagement and effective human resource practices.

There is a very strong correlation between leadership commitment and employee engagement.

While the need to build employee engagement within a workforce may seem clearly obvious to many employers and HR managers, some businesses still fail to understand the importance of effective human resource practices to develop and engage your people.

While leadership commitment needs to come from the top of the organisation it is important to understand the key role played by line managers who are critical to the building and maintaining of high employee engagement.

Building employee engagement includes:

  • Recruiting staff who are aligned with the organisation’s values
  • Promoting flexible workplace options for employees
  • Creating succession plans for key staff
  • Providing opportunities for continued employee growth

It requires managers to build their leadership skills and not just focus on their management skills and theories of human resource management.

Practical steps you can take to help encourage higher levels of employee engagement:

  1. Set a positive tone of partnership. This is not a performance appraisal (not that we are suggesting performance appraisals should be adversarial).
  2. Talk about the importance of the employee’s job and how it fits with the organisation’s larger goals.
  3. Discuss your employee’s top priorities. Many managers find gaps in perception which can have a negative impact on engagement.
  4. Ask ‘What support do you need from me?’ and ‘What kind of feedback is most useful to you?’
  5. Talk about ways to use the employee’s talents (the ones that this person enjoys using).
  6. Ask about job conditions: What gets in the way of great accomplishments? What gets in the way of a great day at work? What does the employee enjoy most?
  7. Discuss how you work together. It is not enough to agree you should meet regularly. Clarify what that term means to you both.
  8. Agree to meet again. You can’t have one discussion and check off the box that you have addressed your employee’s engagement successfully. Engagement levels are dynamic. Things change. The conversation lays a foundation for specific HR-related discussions about performance, development, or career management. It also establishes a common language you can use to check in quickly – and regularly – about engagement issues.

Employee engagement is an integral part of managing the human resources in your business which can transform unknown ‘resources’ into people who will engage with their work, engage with your business and drive profit growth.

 

Developing Effective Systems

The primary reason for implementing systems in your business is to provide consistency and therefore predictable quality of outcomes. Effective systems also establish the means for day-to-day operational activities to manage themselves, leaving managers with the time they need to deal with exceptions and to work on business development.

A system is basically a set of rules for processing information and facilitating decisions.

The other major benefit of developing and documenting systems and procedures is to help to personality-proof the business. Effective systems reduce the level of dependence on particular individuals by downloading their knowledge and documenting it so that knowledge can be shared with other staff and become corporate knowledge rather than individual knowledge.

Ineffective systems usually lead to dissatisfied customers because the level of service and quality is unpredictable. It also usually means that staff are frustrated and demotivated because every task becomes a unique challenge rather than an established process with known outcomes.

Ineffective systems usually lead to dissatisfied customers because the level of service and quality is unpredictable.

This situation is difficult enough for long-term staff but without documented,  up-to-date and effective systems, new employees will be forced to rely heavily on more experienced staff for guidance to take on even the most basic of day-to-day tasks and could result in low productivity over an extended period of time for both new staff members and those providing them with training and support.

Good systems have a number of key characteristics:

  • They are documented.
  • There is some level of automation in data capture and processing information.
  • They are not reliant on individual knowledge.
  • They operate in a predictable and timely manner.
  • They provide guidance in routine decision making.
  • They improve efficiency and reduce costs.
  • They accommodate the ability to measure performance.

If you don’t have systems in place in your business, where do you start?

The starting point for implementing effective systems and processes is to establish a clear picture of the required outcomes, to assess the current position, and then to develop the logical, step-by-step processes required to consistently achieve the outcomes required. Incorporating the input from the people at the coal face who work with the processes on a day-to-day basis is essential. They are the ones who are implementing the systems and generally know what works well and what causes frustration.

It is also important to consider the relevance and implications involved with having the systems that relate to Quality Assurance and Workplace Health & Safety accredited to the relevant standards.

And once your systems have been developed and put in place, that is not the end of the story. Systems should be regularly reviewed and updated with input from both management and the staff who use the systems to ensure that the system continues to be effective. When a system is revised, take into account how your staff follow and interact with the system, any changes in the products and services you offer, in the way you do business, how your customers do business, how you interact with your customers, advances in technology, legislation changes and anything else relevant to the way your business operates in a rapidly changing world.

A safe and merry Christmas to all!

The end of another year is almost upon us. Each one seems to go more quickly than the last and the business challenges seem to grow.

Despite what we hear and read about the economy being resilient and holding up reasonably well post the mining boom, our experience would suggest that it has been tough going in most industry sectors. Generally, it has been hard work to achieve revenue and profit targets in business to business markets and very few of these businesses are showing high levels of intrinsic growth.

What we are seeing at Gibsons is that the good businesses are recognising the need to take stock of their activities and adapt to the conditions. For many clients, things may be a bit tight, but they remain positive. Most of us have been through quiet times before and emerged back into the growth cycle stronger and more capable of taking advantage of new and emerging opportunities. If conditions are quiet right now, we know that the answer is to hang in there, trim back any excess, change whatever you need to change and look forward to a brighter future.

We would like to thank all our clients who we have worked with during the past year – it has been our pleasure and privilege. We trust also that you have found the snippets of information in our blog to be of interest and value.

We wish everyone a safe and merry Christmas and look forward with optimism to the New Year.

 

The Importance of Cultural Resilience in a Downturn

If there is one thing that companies learn in an economic downturn, it is the importance of resilience – the ability of an organisation to withstand shocks and remain sustainable under prolonged periods of duress.

The most resilient companies display the following characteristics:

  • A high level of staff engagement
  • A low level of cultural entropy
  • A vision of the future shared by all employees
  • A set of values shared by all employees
  • A focus on adaptability and innovation

Not only do these qualities create resilience, they also lead to internal cohesion, a key component in building a strong internal community that can drive the goals and performance of the organisation. The current economic climate shows us that organisations that are strong on the inside are also strong on the outside.

Being strong on the inside means having a values-driven culture, a highly aligned, cohesive and effective leadership team, a low level of cultural entropy, and a high level of staff engagement. It means effective human resource management practices / people management to develop your people and develop leadership.

Cultural entropy is the degree of dysfunction in an organisation. It is the amount of energy consumed in unproductive work and is therefore unavailable for useful work. Cultural entropy arises from the presence of limiting values such as bureaucracy, internal competition, blame and fire fighting rather than an environment of promoting positive values.

The experience of our business consultants shows that low levels of cultural entropy are accompanied by high levels of financial performance and high staff engagement. Companies with these attributes are able to grow their incomes significantly faster than companies with high entropy.

The following checklist of actions will help you to build your organisation’s resilience, support you in traversing economic downturns, and place you in a strong position for success when growth rates pick up.

This checklist is based on the core principles of a ‘values’ driven organisational culture. Each of the six items on the checklist represents a critical step in building a sustainable organisation.

How to build your organisation’s resilience:

Step One: Be clear on your direction. Re-energise your vision, mission and values to build internal cohesion.

Step Two: Communicate with staff and customers: confidence is important. Ensure everyone knows what you are doing to get through when times are tough.

Step Three: Focus on your core business. Get lean. Streamline your systems and processes to reduce costs and increase agility.

Step Four: Learn to adapt to a changing environment. Eliminate activities that don’t add value.

Step Five: Build strategic alliances. Align with your customers and suppliers to create mutually supportive and beneficial relationships.

Step Six: Keep the long term in mind. Ensure your short-term plans do not compromise your long-term viability.

It all sounds fairly basic, but remember that successful organisations – both in boom times and downturns – are generally those that harness positive energy to consistently do the basics well. That includes consistent and effective human resource practices that develop and support staff and leadership to build and maintain a culture of resilience in your business.

 

 

Marketing Strategy and Objectives

Business Marketing Strategy Statement

Once the analysis part of your business marketing strategy planning is complete, the key requirement is to articulate your overall marketing strategy. In other words, what is the overall marketing direction that will be taken in order to reach your business goals? Most importantly, the strategy statement will take into account what you have recognised as your sustainable competitive advantage and the value proposition that you will offer to the market.

Typically, a B2B marketing strategy statement will define the positioning of the business by addressing things such as whether the aim is to be a high quality / high value player; lowest cost, high volume; full service provider; specialist niche or other factors.

Business Marketing Objectives

In order to implement an effective marketing plan, you need to define exactly what you are trying to achieve. The reason that a lot of SMEs waste money is that their marketing efforts are a collection of ad hoc initiatives with no plan or structure behind what they are trying to achieve. Once you have defined what it is that you wish to achieve, it is relatively straightforward to determine whether or not an activity or initiative will take you towards your goal.

Your objectives should include an indication of the quantum of sales revenue that the marketing effort needs to support. You can construct a marketing plan that will increase sales by $1 million or $10 million, the difference will be the resource level required to implement it. The other aspect of having a quantified goal is that it will tell you whether or not you need to enter new markets.

In our role as business consultants, we often find businesses turning over $10 million that want to grow to $12.5 million over three years in a very large (say $500 million plus) market. They are considering introducing new products, setting up interstate or attacking the export market. While all of these things are laudable, the reality in many cases is that the desired growth can be achieved by better farming of the home paddock, which is known territory and will be the lowest cost option.

In B2B markets that have a large number of potential customers, the strategic objectives will usually include a statement about creating an awareness level amongst a community of potential buyers who will find you when they are ready to buy. This is what will drive your social media strategy, which these days is an essential part of how you communicate with your customers.

Some typical B2B marketing objectives:

  • Build revenue to $12 million per annum within 3 years.
  • Position the business as the industry specialist that meets all Australian Standards requirements and has compliant HSEQ systems.
  • Increase awareness amongst potential customers of the one stop shop offer.
  • Position the business as the clear choice, number two supplier to the market leader in Queensland.
  • Diversify the customer base such that no single client represents more than 20% of revenue.
  • Generate sufficient business to support a separate Service and Maintenance Department.
  • Position the business as the low risk supplier of choice in the target market.

Once you have articulated your business marketing strategy statement and defined well researched, specific and achievable marketing objectives (perhaps with the assistance of an experienced business consultant?), your B2B marketing strategy is well on its way to being successfully implemented to achieve your business objectives.

 

Running an Effective Toolbox Meeting – Part 3

To finish off our ‘Running an Effective Toolbox Meeting’ series, we provide some practical tips and ground rules to keep in mind when conducting a toolbox meeting.

With a little preparation, the right attitude, a simple process to follow and a bit of practice, business managers/supervisors can run effective toolbox meetings that produce useful results, engage employees, facilitate human resource management and assist in your day-to-day business operations.

1. Knowing How to Do it

Most people don’t enjoy speaking in public (remember the wedding speech) and this shows. However, you can learn how to run good toolbox meetings, because like a lot of other things, it is mostly experience and knowing a few ‘tricks of the trade’.

Here are a few tips, and after some practice you can get over being nervous, relax a little and run a really effective toolbox meeting.

Preparation
  • Don’t try to run a toolbox meeting with too many people.
  • Preparation is critical so make sure you set aside preparation time.
  • Employees won’t remember a lot of detail so pick out the important things.
  • Carefully think out just what it is you want to say, and sound confident.
Presentation, attitude and body language
  • Remember people can talk faster than they can listen, so don’t go too fast.
  • 85% of all communication is non-verbal, so watch the body language.
  • Don’t put yourself down by pretending you haven’t got anything important to say.
  • Position yourself so you can see everyone and they can see you.
  • Look them in the eye and make them listen to you.
  • Use some notes to make sure you don’t forget things.
  • Don’t be too self-conscious for no one will be as critical of you as you are of yourself.
  • Remember, you have called this meeting and it is very important to everyone.
Produce useful results
  • Ask open questions that will encourage people to speak up.
  • Don’t get defensive when people ask hard questions, or criticise you or the company.
  • Don’t get sucked into arguments in the toolbox meeting in front of all the others – take individual gripes offline and handle one-on-one.
  • The first couple of toolbox meetings might be ‘bitch’ sessions but persevere.
  • Don’t try to cover too much in each meeting and put a time limit on the meeting.
  • Make sure you keep notes of what has been done – this is particularly important in relation to discussion about and initiatives taken on safety. (Refer to the meeting template below.)

2. Are Employees Really Interested in Toolbox Meetings?

Yes they can be, but they don’t like boring meetings that waste their time and don’t tell them anything about how they are doing at work, what might be happening to their job and what their prospects are for earnings, promotions, training etc.

 

Where supervisors have persevered with toolbox meetings, they have quickly found that their employees, the company and the supervisors are better off as a consequence of being involved in toolbox meetings.

3. Some Basic Ground Rules for a Toolbox Meeting

  • One speaker at a time – be an active listener
  • No personal attacks/comments
  • Everyone participates, no one dominates
  • Work to understand each other’s view as well as communicating your own view to the group
  • Keep an open mind
  • Work together for solutions and agree to the action plan
  • Keep a record of the meeting (the toolbox meeting template can help you with this).

To help keep your toolbox meetings on track and to assist you to record important information from your meeting, download our Toolbox Meeting Template.

Try out these simple toolbox meetings in your business and keep an eye out for the positive results that will follow.

And if you need advice or assistance with any HR / people management issues or in managing your day-to-day business operations, talk to an experienced business consultant.

 

Market Research Techniques for B2B Marketers

Two useful market research techniques for B2B marketers are provided below.

Win / Loss Analysis

The Win / Loss Analysis is a very simple but powerful research technique developed by Research By Design – download a full description from their website www.researchbydesign.com.au

All that is needed is to have follow-up conversations with customers who have recently purchased your product or service and those who have enquired about your product or service but not proceeded with that purchase.

Then, compare the reasons why your customers do purchase your product or service and why others do not. This will help you to understand the key buying criteria of your customers. It will also provide you with information about what your competitors are doing better than you are and help you to pick up early warning signals in regard to what you need to improve about your product or service.

Strategy Canvas

The Strategy Canvas derives from the concept of the Blue Ocean Strategy, developed by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne who are professors at INSEAD, an international university with campuses in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. The technique involves looking for the gaps in the market (the blue ocean) that represent opportunities. We have adapted the concept to provide a useful B2B market research tool for SMEs and use this tool in our role as business consultants.

It begins by identifying the competitive issues that you as the business owner or manager believe are relevant / important to your market. These could include issues such as performance, timeliness of delivery, price, customer service, quality etc.

You would then go to the market and ask respondents to rate on a scale of 1 to 10 the importance of each parameter to them; the performance of your company for each item, and the combined performance of all the suppliers in the market for each item. You would then rate your own business and plot the four lines on a chart. An example is provided below.

Industry Strategy Canvas Builders

In this particular B2B market research example, the company that our business consultant worked with supplies products to and installs products for builders. The competitive factors thought to be the most important by the business owners / managers were:

  • On site performance
  • On time delivery
  • Price
  • Customer service
  • Communication
  • Quote turnaround time
  • Quality

Of these factors, our business consultant found that those most important to the market were: on site performance and price, followed by on time delivery, customer service and quality.

The issues that stand out are that the company has a much higher opinion of the importance of its performance than the market does; two of the areas that it scores best in are the least important to the market; it is not price competitive; and on time delivery is weak. In addition, it is apparent that the rest of the industry is perceived as not being significantly any better.

The strategy that the company in conjunction with our business consultant decided upon was to focus on reducing costs to become more price competitive and to address the systems that impact on delivery time. By focusing on these two issues identified in the market research, this company could lift themselves above their competitors and provide a more relevant service to the market.

This technique also lends itself well to annual reviews to measure changes in performance.

 

Business Growth Opportunities

How Do You Evaluate Business Growth Opportunities?

It is useful to have a means of grouping and assessing the growth opportunities that are available for your business. There are four overarching business growth strategies to consider, as shown in the Anshoff matrix diagram [1].

The matrix considers existing products and new products as well as existing markets and new markets. The most straightforward growth strategy is to sell more of the products and services you already have into the markets you already know – market penetration. With this approach you don’t need to do or get to know anything new.

Anshoff-matrix-diagramThis business growth strategy is dependent on the level of market share you currently have. If your current market share is very high, further market penetration will be difficult; if it is low to moderate (as is the case with most B2B SME markets) then increasing your market penetration is the strategy of least resistance and likely to produce the fastest business growth results.

The next options to consider are either introducing existing products into new markets (market development) or new products into existing markets (product development). In both cases, one of the two dimensions is known and understood which limits the amount of change required for success. The choice of strategy will normally depend on whether the company is better at product development or marketing.

The most difficult challenge is where everything is new – diversification with new products being introduced into new markets. This requires expertise in both product development and market development.

The matrix allows you to group your potential growth opportunities for comparison and evaluation. You can identify which quadrant of the matrix sits best with your strengths and then compare and assess business growth strategies within the quadrant.

Before looking at where the growth opportunities are, it is important to consider the quantum of the growth that you are looking for. The more aggressive your growth target, the more likely you will need to look for new products or new markets or both in order to achieve it.

[1] First presented by Igor Anshoff in his book Corporate Strategy – McGraw Hill 1965.

 

Market Segmentation: B2B Marketing

Why is Segmenting Your Market Useful?

In most cases, it is useful to analyse your market to see if it divides into groups or segments that have like needs. You may find that the requirements one segment has for your product or service are different to those of another. Then, based on the market segmentation and the needs of various market segments, you can plan your Business to Business (B2B) marketing strategy and tailor your offers and communication messages in a far more targeted and meaningful way.

In regard to B2B marketing, segmentation of your market may also go beyond the level of an overall business customer and down to a division or department level of individual business customers.

For instance, if you are selling components to an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) that also has a service division, you may find the lead times required are quite different for the two divisions. A short lead time may be a key requirement of the service department but may not be a priority for the production department. Therefore, you will need to adapt your offer and the presentation of your value proposition to suit the specific department and/or market segment. You may even need to use different distribution channels.

You could find that your market does segment neatly by industry or customer type, size or geography. In most B2B markets, this is generally the way customers are divided into groups, however, unless the segmentation provides you with a group with similar needs and buying behaviours, the grouping is unlikely to be very useful. For instance, if you are selling a product to dry food warehouses and cold stores, but their needs are the same, segmenting by industry is not particularly useful.

The key things to look for when segmenting your market are that the segments are:

  • Meaningful – grouped on parameters that will determine how you approach them,
  • Identifiable – actually recognisable and reachable in real life – not just a conceptual grouping,
  • Substantial – a group that is large enough to warrant having resources specifically applied to it, and
  • Accessible – you can reach them in a practical and cost effective way.

The aim of segmenting your B2B market is to ensure you are specifically aiming your offer at a group of business customers who have like needs and are not just taking a shotgun approach to the market as a whole.

 

Running an Effective Toolbox Meeting – Part 2

Part 1 of the Running an Effective Toolbox Meeting introduced the idea of what a toolbox meeting is and how this kind of informal staff meeting can both help in the day-to-day operations of your business operations and with the challenges of managing your human resources.

It also covered the nuts and bolts of why meetings in the workplace can go wrong.

In summary, there are four things which have often gone wrong in staff meetings:

  1. The meeting was held in the wrong place at the wrong time.
  2. The supervisor didn’t have anything important to say and didn’t want to be there either.
  3. The supervisor didn’t know how to run the meeting.
  4. The employees had been to these sorts of meetings before and thought they were a waste of time.

Perhaps if we can sort out some answers to these ‘nuts and bolts’ difficulties then the result will be better toolbox meetings.

A. Choose the right place and time for toolbox meetings

Do it on ‘their patch’, choose a meeting location where your staff feel comfortable and they will be more inclined to get involved.

B. Have something to say

Once supervisors have some useable information to circulate, they are more likely to be willing to hold the toolbox meeting.

C. Know how to run a toolbox meeting and feel good about it

An effective toolbox meeting has five parts:

  1. Feeding back the answers to questions asked at the last meeting.
  2. Providing some fresh information about the business – ‘the big picture’.
  3. Providing information on how the employees at the meeting are going – that’s the ‘little picture’.
  4. This then sets the stage to ask about any ideas, difficulties, queries etc which the employees might have, and these become the basis of point 1. at the next toolbox meeting.
  5. Raise and address any issues relating to workplace health and safety. Incorporate WH&S information and training sessions

Let’s take these parts of an effective toolbox meeting one at a time:

Responding to previous meeting

The best way for supervisors to show they are fair dinkum is to find out the answers to employee queries etc. and to feed this information back to them. A word of warning, however, the first few toolbox meetings may contain a lot of grumbling and complaining, so be ready to cop a bit. However, it is amazing how this reduces once the supervisor proves he or she is fair dinkum and will follow up on problems. It is also important to let people know that there may be problems that cannot be addressed in the short term due to financial or other constraints, so focus on the things that can be controlled.

The big picture

This can include information on performance (e.g. are we making budget?), production quality and quantity data, new products, planned changes, capital expenditure and so forth. Some managers are not sure that their employees can be trusted with this information. This can be addressed by talking in relative terms such as a comparison with last month or last year or a percentage of target achieved.

The little picture

Here the emphasis then shifts to the local level where the supervisor provides some information on just how things are in the workplace. Not only do the employees find out more about how they are doing, but they are also put into the position where they will be asked to provide some input into what is going on at work – and that leads us to part d).

Ideas and problems

Nearly all managers now understand that their employees do have some precious ideas on how to do the job better. This part of the process is designed to get them to throw these ideas ‘into the ring’. It is important to note that they will do this not only because it will be good for the company (a bit idealistic that!) but because they can now see that it is in their own interest to get the job done better.

Supervisors will need to persevere as, initially, toolboxing can be a big shock to most employees too.

This won’t happen initially, so supervisors will need to persevere but hang in, for toolboxing is a big shock to most employees too – they are not used to being trusted with information or being asked to be involved in the business – so they need to become comfortable with the process and the fact that their ideas and comments are welcome and valuable and will be heard and considered by management.

Safety

The toolbox meeting is an ideal vehicle to use to discuss safety issues and to embed safety into the culture of the organisation. It also creates a record that shows that management takes safety seriously and has a proactive approach to providing a safe workplace. Use the toolbox meeting to establish safety blitz teams and to report on outcomes. Also use the meeting to undertake safety training activities.

Use toolbox meetings to embed safety into the culture of your organisation.

For some practical tips and ground rules for conducting a ToolBox Meeting, look out for Running and Effective Toolbox Meeting – Part 3.

 

Running an Effective Toolbox Meeting – Part 1

1. What are Toolbox Meetings?

A few supervisors and managers have been holding successful toolbox meetings for many years, but now the secret is out. The reality is that they are easy to run and do produce very good results on a regular basis.

How do Toolbox Meetings work?

The supervisor merely sits down somewhere at work (perhaps on the toolbox, hence the name) and talks over work related issues with his or her employees. This also allows workers to tell the supervisor what is really going on with the job, resulting in a two-way communication flow. This is an informal process and therefore has advantages over more formal meetings where people often feel uncomfortable or don’t think the meeting has much to do with them.

Research shows that business performance increases significantly when people are engaged so it is important to find effective ways to pass on information to employees and receive information back from staff – and toolbox meetings can be the answer.

2. Why are Toolbox Meetings so Important?

  1. Toolbox meetings allow for two things which are quite critical to successful business operations and effective human resource management and employee engagement:
    • They are the best way to give employees more information about the business, about what changes are occurring, how they are doing, what is going right, what is going wrong – both at the broader level and most importantly, at the local level. They can help you manage your human resources.
    • They are often the best way for management and supervisors to tap into the most precious information which employees have and which they are usually willing to share if only we ask them in the right way. All of us understand that the person doing the job knows just what is going wrong and what can be done to improve things and toolbox meetings can be the way to gather this information. Increased employee engagement leads to better business performance.
  2. Toolbox meetings are also important because we now have the evidence that employees are interested in what is happening to the business they work in. That should be no surprise, but somehow it often is. Employees are interested in information about their jobs, changes that are going on locally, how they are doing, their own prospects for promotion, what training is available and so on. Most importantly, they want to hear about all of this from the person they would like to believe before anyone else – their immediate supervisor.

Employees are interested in what is happening to the business they work in and in information about their jobs

3. The Nuts and Bolts of Toolbox Meetings

Over the years, a lot of supervisors have tried ‘having a meeting’ with their employees and many times these have been quite disastrous. Usually, this has been because the nuts and bolts have not been right. In particular, there are four things which have often gone wrong:

  1. They have been held in the wrong place at the wrong time.
  2. The supervisor did not have anything important to say and probably didn’t want to hold the meeting in the first place and that quickly shows.
  3. The supervisor didn’t know how to run the meeting and it became an embarrassing shambles.
  4. The employees had been through these sorts of meetings before and thought they were a waste of time. They had offered ideas before but nothing happened, so they figured why bother?

For more on Toolbox meetings and how to tighten those loose nuts and bolts and avoid disastrous or simply ineffective meetings, look out for Running an Effective Toolbox Meeting – Part 2.

 

Situation Analysis to kick off your Business Marketing Strategy

How To Develop Your Business Marketing Strategy: Situation analysis

Business Marketing Strategies are developed from a straightforward analysis. It begins with a situation analysis.

Situation analysis

What is the current condition of your business and the market that you are in? Or what is your starting point? And what does your business need to do to achieve its vision?

A situation analysis establishes the current condition of your business and the market and is the starting point for establishing what your business needs to do to achieve its vision.

SWOT Analysis

This simple technique is used to identify and evaluate possible strategies to guide the future direction of your business.

It looks at Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Strengths and weaknesses tend to be internal issues; opportunities and threats tend to be external.

SWOT-AnalysisYou can best determine your SWOT factors in a brain storming session with your key staff. The most important part of the analysis is to decide what you intend to do about each factor.

Ideally, aim to apply your strengths to opportunities. Alternatively, look at how to address a weakness that may be stopping you from taking advantage of an opportunity, or decide what action to take to block a threat.

Strengths (internal, positive factors)

Strengths describe the positive attributes, tangible and intangible, internal to your organization.

Weaknesses (internal, negative factors)

Weaknesses are aspects of your business that detract from the value you offer or place you at a competitive disadvantage. You need to select strategies that do not depend on these attributes. Alternatively, if the best opportunities available to you are dependent on these weaker aspects, do something about them .

Opportunities (external, positive factors)

Opportunities are external attractive factors that your business could take advantage of in order to prosper.

Threats (external, negative factors)

Threats include external factors beyond your control that could place your strategy, or the business itself, at risk. You may have no control over these, but you may benefit by having contingency plans to address them if they should occur.

Have you done a SWOT analysis on your business lately? If you want to develop a business marketing strategy for your business (or perhaps you simply haven’t done a situational analysis on your business recently) then schedule time now to make a SWOT analysis a priority.

Get your key staff members together to contribute their ideas and perspectives and encourage them to invest in the planning process for your business marketing strategy right from the start. Perhaps you could seek out a business consultant who can offer their expertise as an independent third party to help you to create a marketing strategy.

However you decide to do it, performing a situation analysis is the first step to a business marketing strategy that will enable your business to achieve the vision you have for it.

 

Know your Business Direction: Business Marketing Plan

You Cannot Develop a Marketing Plan if You Don’t Know Where Your Business is Going

Marketing cannot exist in isolation from the overall business strategy.

Before you can establish and implement an effective marketing plan, you must first define the overall strategic goals for the business. For example, the marketing plan for a business to grow from $5 million to $6 million will be quite different to the marketing plan to grow from $5 million to $10 million.

Any business planning process involves three elements:

  • Establish where you are now
  • Identify where you want to be or what you want to achieve
  • Determine how you are going to get there.

The critical difference that impacts the planning process for Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) compared to large organisations is that, in most SMEs, the owner / managing director and his or her family are directly involved in running the business to achieve personal goals. Whereas, in large companies, the business is generally run by professional managers to achieve corporate goals.

Therefore, the starting point for a business marketing plan for an SME is to have a clear understanding of what the goals or personal mission statements are for each of the stakeholders. Only then can you develop a clear vision for the business and define the business goals. The marketing strategy can then be developed to achieve the business goals.

B2B Marketing for SMEs

Do you have more than enough customers for your business?

Most business owners and managers would say no and, in fact, many struggle with the day-to-day task of continually generating new sales.

Consistent attention to marketing and business development is essential for any business owner.

Are you a small to medium enterprise (SME) with a customer base of other businesses (B2B)?

Most of the articles and available information about marketing focus on consumer marketing (B2C) but if your customers are other businesses (B2B) then your marketing approach is essentially quite different.

In response to this gap in information, we have put together a paper that provides practical insights into B2B marketing for SMEs.

It incorporates the wide and varied experience of our business consultants and highlights typical shortcomings that we have found in B2B marketing.

Starting at the very beginning, it examines your overall business strategy and looks at how to develop a B2B marketing plan that matches your business strategy and fits your business and your industry.

The FREE detailed B2B Marketing for SMEs whitepaper can be downloaded from the Gibsons Consulting website.

Employer of Choice – Becoming a Learning Organisation

Business Success: The Human Factor (Part 6 of 6)

Is your business successful and profitable?

Are your people productive? Are your employees costing you money?

If you missed the earlier parts of our Employer of Choice series, you may wish to start with: ‘Become an Employer of Choice’.

Our people management series kicks off by looking at the various human resource management issues consistently found in the SME sector that worry business owners. It then covers Effective Staff Selection, Induction, Performance Management, and Employee Exit Procedures.

Subsequent articles discuss Effective Communication, Meetings, and Goal Setting and Feedback; then Rewards and Recognition; Selling the Value to Employees; and Building Leadership and Succession into your Business.

One of the keys to business success is employee engagement and alignment.

Staff Engagement = Motivation = Performance = Productivity = Profitability

What other human resource management strategies can you use to ensure your business becomes an employer of choice?

Become a Learning Organisation:

Monitoring, Measuring, Understanding and Working on Your People and Your Business

Understanding Your Organisation – Monitoring and Evaluating Success

There are many tools that enable you to see deep into your organisation. In skilled hands a range of these diagnostic tools provides an objective window into the human health of your organisation. There are clear steps to this very fundamental process:

  • Regularly assess the key barometers of human success
  • Review and understand the key drivers
  • Objectively measure and analyse those drivers
  • Review the results in a team environment
  • Develop a course of action to improve and and/or maintain a strong human culture within your business

Then, TAKE ACTION.

Act on what you see and understand by implementing actions that continue to build and maintain strong engagement and alignment, the essence of a strong team.

You can then fine tune and continually learn how to improve employee engagement and alignment and ultimately the human and business health of your organisation.

Human health does not eventuate via a once off feel good employee survey. It is a continuous process.

Become a learning organisation. And become an Employer of Choice.

Sound simple? Yet in the current business environment where sourcing and retaining the right people is so difficult, managers and supervisors all too often don’t apply these basic human resource management principles.

VERY IMPORTANT – It is never too late to act.

You’ll be amazed at the results if you do apply these basic principles. And if you need advice or assistance with people management issues or business planning, talk to an experienced business consultant.

 

Employer of Choice – Building Leadership and Succession into Your Business

Business Success: The Human Factor (Part 5 of 6)

If you missed the introduction to this people management series, how about starting with: ‘Become an Employer of Choice’.

Our Employer of Choice series starts with a look at the various human resource management issues consistently found in the SME sector that worry business owners, and then covers Effective Staff Selection, Induction, Performance Management, and Employee Exit Procedures.

Subsequent articles discuss Effective Communication, Meetings, and Goal Setting and Feedback; then Rewards and Recognition; and Selling the Value to Employees.

Staff Engagement = Motivation = Performance = Productivity = Profitability

Building Leadership and Succession into Your Business

Knowledge, Skills and Attribute Development – Set your people up for success

Stage 1 – Build success in your team in their current roles

  • Understand and establish role criteria – What defines success for each role in your business?
  • Knowledge – What are the knowledge requirements for each role within your organisation?
  • Skills – What are the skill requirements for each role within your organisation?
  • Attributes – What are the key attributes, qualities or values required for each role within your organisation?

Define and document each role in the organisation clearly and thoroughly to provide a blueprint for success.

  • Assess your team against their roles – How well do they meet the criteria for their respective roles in your organisation?

Assessments often reveal human weaknesses in your organisation which may require difficult decisions to be made. For example, there may be a need for an organisational restructure.

  • Take ACTION
Human Resource Case Study: Assessment of suitability of employees for their role

For an SME that Gibsons Business Consulting recently provided human resource management consulting services, using the above process it was found that 14 out of 26 key people employed in the business were deemed not suitable for their roles.

The result:

  • Some staff moved on,
  • Some staff changed roles, and
  • Some staff stepped up and met their role criteria.

The bottom line is that all of the employees of this business now meet the criteria set for their role, and business performance has improved measurably as a result.

For those employees who stepped up with the aim to meeting their role criteria, the following human resources management approach was undertaken:

  • Train staff where their knowledge or skills do not meet the criteria for their role.
  • Mentor staff where their attributes are inconsistent with the criteria for the role.
  • Revise or change role definition while the development process takes place to allow time for staff to transition effectively into their new role.
  • Regularly review staff against the criteria set for their role and provide feedback supported by action and support.

The above human resources management approach should be followed for every role in your organisation to ensure every member of your team meets her or his role criteria. This is the blueprint for individual, team and ultimately, business success.

Stage 2 – Build succession in your team in their future roles – become a learning organisation

These assessments become the blueprints for future leaders. Rising stars become obvious through this process as does their development into their next career move. Actions can be taken well in advance to train and mentor people into their next career move before it happens. Intentional leadership development and succession planning as part of your human resource management and business planning sets the business and staff up for ongoing future success and development.

Your employees will thank you for it and you will not only build a strong team, you will create the basis for true succession in your business by developing your future leaders in a dynamic and pro-active way.

Sound simple? Yet in the current business environment where sourcing and retaining the right people is so difficult, managers and supervisors all too often don’t apply these basic human resource management principles.

It is never too late to act.

You’ll be amazed at the results if you do apply these basic principles. And if you need a hand with any people management issues or human resource management initiatives, talk to an experienced business consultant.

The next blog and final blog in this series is ‘Employer of Choice – Becoming a Learning Organisation‘.

Employer of Choice – Selling the Value to Employees

Business Success: The Human Factor (Part 4 of 6)

Is your business successful and profitable?

Are your people productive? Are your employees costing you money?

If you missed the beginning of this people management series, you may like to start with: ‘Become an Employer of Choice’.

This first article in this series builds the foundations to becoming an employer of choice by looking at the various human resource management issues consistently found in the SME sector that worry business owners; and then covers Effective Staff Selection, Induction, Performance Management, and Employee Exit Procedures.

The others articles discuss Effective Communication, Meetings, and Goal Setting and Feedback; and Rewards and Recognition to engage and align staff.

One of the keys to business success is employee engagement and alignment.

Staff Engagement = Motivation = Performance = Productivity = Profitability

Why would someone want to work for your business?

Why would an employee or prospective employee consider you to be an employer of choice?

Selling the Value to Your Employees

Employees’ Value Proposition – Understanding and Respecting the Individual’s Path to Success

Selling Products and Services to current and prospective customers is all about understanding the Value Proposition of those customers. When we know what represents value to our customers then we can develop clear sales and marketing plans built around communicating and delivering that value to them.

Not only do we need to communicate that value to customers, we also need to communicate that value to employees.

One of the keys to attracting and retaining quality staff is based around understanding their Value Proposition, that is, understanding what drives your current and prospective employees to want to work for you.

The key first step is to Understand the Employees Value Proposition. What are the key factors that your employees use to determine the value in working for you?

VERY IMPORTANT: if you don’t know the key factors behind your employees’ value proposition then find out.

Then, build the right messages into your communication processes in all areas of your human resource management:

  • Recruitment and Selection
  • Induction
  • Performance Management
  • Skills Development and
  • Rewards and Recognition.

Remember, you must communicate that value to current employees as well as to prospective employees.

So, train your Managers and Supervisors to do it right. Then, sell it to current and prospective employees, and not only once – over and over again – and keep reviewing and refining the message because the Value Proposition will change over time.

It is never too late to act.

The next blog in this series is ‘Employer of Choice – Building Leadership and Succession into Your Business‘.

Managing Your Business Cashflow

The most critical issue for almost every business and often the one that does not get the attention it deserves is managing business cashflow.

There are too many stories of profitable businesses that have gone to the wall because they have run out of cash.

A few ideas to help with your cashflow management:

  • Measure your cashflow. You can’t manage it if you don’t measure it. Prepare a cashflow projection for the year, the quarter and the month with increasing levels of detail. Have a plan for next week if things are a bit shaky. You don’t need to be an accountant to forecast your cashflow.
  • A cashflow projection is exactly that, a projection, not an accurate formula. It is your best estimate of all the cash coming in over a period versus cash going out. You will need to use your knowledge of the market, your expectation of sales and customer behaviour patterns to make the most accurate assumptions that you can. You will also need a line item in your projection for each major item of expenditure and show when it is expected to be paid.
  • If the outlook is tight, look for ways to release cash into the business.
    • Receivables: Get invoices out promptly and chase payments before they are due. Offer incentives for quick settlement of invoices. Ask for deposits and progress payments from your customers. Have a credit policy and stick to it.
    • Payables: Don’t pay bills before they are due. Negotiate better payment terms with your suppliers. Source raw material on consignment. Look closely at the value of settlement discounts.
    • Shorten the operating cycle: Review every aspect of your operation to reduce the amount of time between raw material coming in and finished goods being invoiced. Reduce inventory levels – don’t buy large quantities of stock that you don’t need in order to get a better price. Clear dead and slow moving stock.
    • Debt factoring: Consider using a financial factoring service to take on your debtors function. Debt factoring will discount the amount you will receive but will provide immediate payment of invoices.

Planning ahead is vital to successfully managing your business cashflow. You will be in a much stronger position to arrange a line of credit with your bank when your cash position is strong rather than waiting until you are desperately short. Include your bank manager as one of the key people that you stay in touch with and keep him or her appraised of how your business is performing.

 

 

Employer of Choice – Rewards and Recognition

Business Success: The Human Factor (Part 3 of 6)

If you missed part 1 of this people management series, you may like to start with: ‘Become an Employer of Choice’.

The first two articles in our series build the foundations to becoming an employer of choice. Part 1 looks at the various human resource management issues that worry SME business owners; and covers Effective Staff Selection, Induction, Performance Management, and Employee Exit Procedures. Part 2 discusses Effective Communication, Meetings, and Goal Setting and Feedback.

One of the keys to business success is employee engagement and alignment.

Staff Engagement = Motivation = Performance = Productivity = Profitability

What other human resource management strategies can you use to ensure your business becomes an employer of choice?

Rewards and Recognition

Rewards and Recognition – Value the Individual’s Contribution to Team Success

Reward and recognise positive performance by employees. The term ‘reward’ will often bring to mind the idea of a financial bonus and, yes, no doubt monetary rewards would be welcomed by your employees but remember there are many ways to reward staff without paying them more money:

  • Up-to-date tools and equipment, for example, software
  • Office facilities and décor
  • Flexible salary packaging
  • Flexible hours
  • Celebrating business success, and
  • Recognition!!

A regular audit of the tools, equipment, workstations, software, computer equipment, office décor, factory layout, safety and cleanliness is strongly recommended for every business to assess the workplace in terms of what it offers its employees. All too often this is overlooked and can become significant in how the employee views you as an employer.

Flexibility in hours and location also provides a positive environment for staff.

Business success should be celebrated with the team in various ways. Success breeds a positive environment in which to work.

Recognition is often forgotten in workplaces today. Personal feedback is built into the performance management framework above. However, other more personal and public forms of feedback or recognition should be utilised in the workplace to acknowledge and affirm employee performance and ultimately build powerful staff loyalty. This is a powerful lever for engaging and aligning staff in the workplace.

Sound simple? Yet in the current business environment where sourcing and retaining the right people is so difficult, managers and supervisors all too often don’t apply these basic human resource management principles.

REMEMBER, it is never too late to act.

The next blog in this series is ‘Employer of Choice – Selling the Value to Employees‘.