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The Innovative
Business Concepts Newsletter is produced bi-monthly and contains
ideas for improving your customer service, your business, and
your personal development. Each Newsletter also has a book
review of a related text. If you have any topics you would like
for us to address in future issues, please
contact us with your request.
To register
for the newsletter
click here.
See previous monthly archives.
Innovative Business
Planning
is one of those important tasks that frequently are
overlooked. Do you make time to plan for your business?
Innovative Customer Service
Communicating with customers is a key part of any
enterprise. Is your business good at keeping customers
informed?
Your Personal Development
The world is filled with many exciting people and
destinations from which we can learn and grow. But you
don’t have to take a trip to gain the benefits; many
opportunities exist right at home.
Book Review
"Leadership
and the New Science" by Margaret J. Wheatley
Innovative
Business
We’ve all heard
it. The saying that a failure to plan is a plan to fail has
been around for years. It’s true that planning is important,
otherwise how do you establish priorities and make decisions
between alternatives without knowing where you are going.
Planning is
frequently avoided because individuals don’t know how to plan
and find it easier to just avoid. Some people mistakenly
believe that they have a plan for what they want to accomplish
but frequently those plans are not thought through. Many people
will argue that they have a plan but it takes too much time to
write the plan down. They are kidding themselves if they
believe that an unwritten plan in their head is a well thought
out approach.
Good planning
requires thought and effort to accomplish. You can begin by
identifying where your business currently stands and then
thinking about where you would like it to be in the future.
Then begin considering what it takes to achieve that future
state. What needs to change? What goals should be set? What
resources are required? What obstacles might exist?
You
will find that going through a complete planning process will
help you consider the pros and cons of various alternatives,
identify opportunities and threats, and help determine where
priorities should be established and valuable time allocated.
Then, as the daily emergencies arise, by looking at the plan you
can determine if the situation is important in reaching your
future state.
As a challenge,
take a couple of hours, sit down in a quiet location, and write
out your plan for the next year. The benefits you receive will
be well worth the time you invest. top
Innovative
Customer Service
I was talking with
a colleague a few days ago. He was relaying to me his
experiences with an ongoing kitchen upgrade project and his
encounters with the kitchen remodeling company. As the project
was nearing completion, he was pleased with the results but he
said the experience left much to be desired.
It seems that the
initial time frame he was given was about 4 weeks from start to
end. However, as the project proceeded, numerous delays were
encountered; some were unexpected but others were clearly part
of their standard procedures. During all these activities, the
remodeling company seldom contacted the homeowner to keep him
informed of the status of the project or when he could expect
additional work and completion. The project was over 3 months
old and was still incomplete.
This situation
illustrates a couple of important points about communicating
with customers. First, set realistic expectations and then work
to meet those expectations. If you make a habit of providing
the most optimistic expectation at the beginning, then the odds
are that you will have dissatisfied customers at the end.
Second, stay in contact with your customer to keep them
informed. After the initial expectations have been set,
problems may arise and require changes. If this happens, call
the customer immediately, let them know you are working on the
problem, and provide the best estimate you can for a revised
completion date.
New
customers are generally harder to obtain than maintaining
existing customers. Help to keep those existing customers and
turn them into great references by communicating with them and
keeping them informed. Not only will they love the results you
deliver, they will also appreciate how you deliver the results.
top
Your
Personal Development
We can all learn
new things and gain a greater appreciation for the world
around us just by getting involved and paying attention to the
people and situations surrounding us each day. Many say that
work and family schedules are too busy to add additional
activities but there are many ways to grow available to us on
a daily basis.
For example, if
you have a little free time, have you thought about taking a
class in a subject area that interests you? Maybe it is a craft
class, history class, computer class, cooking class, or wine
appreciation class. Whatever the subject, give it a try. Or,
as an alternative, what about helping someone else with a class
– being a tutor for your local school district. Not only will
you find you learn even more about the subject you tutor, you
will also learn from spending time with others and talking with
them.
If taking a class
or serving as a tutor requires too rigid a schedule, consider
volunteering in your community, church, or other local
organization. There are numerous organizations dealing with
young people, old people, and everything in between that would
welcome your services. You will find a high level of
satisfaction from knowing that you participated and helped
others. In addition, you will both learn and grow from the
experience.
Still too time
consuming? Then just pick up a book or make an effort to read a
magazine article addressing a subject new and different to you.
The great thing about reading is that you can do it whenever
time permits and it is a wonderful way to fill in those few free
moments that we have. Spending time driving? Then consider
books on tape.
Whatever
the environment - classroom, tutoring, serving, reading, or
listening, you will find there are always opportunities to learn
and grow. The key is watching for the opportunities and making
sure you take advantage of them when they present themselves.
top
Book Review
"Leadership and the New
Science" by Margaret J.
Wheatley
This book on
leadership presents the subject in a very different way. The
book does not present concepts and then the typical list of do’s
and don’ts. Instead, it focuses on the changes that have
occurred in the sciences (physics, chemistry, etc.) and draws
parallels to organizations and leadership.
Ms. Wheatley
begins by reviewing Newtonian theories and compares them with
organizational concepts that traditionally have been accepted.
She then begins moving into the new science of quantum mechanics
and how they apply to group behavior. The concepts simply state
that you cannot look at pieces of the whole and be able to
understand or predict the behavior of the whole. The challenge
is that you are unable to grasp the whole at a single point in
time, thus you see what appear to be unpredictable events or
chaos.
She carries these
themes further by examining stability, growth, learning, and the
purpose and handling of information. Ms. Wheatley believes that
growth takes place when there is a lack of stability and that
information is not something to be managed but broadly shared.
Information is the lifeblood that causes people to see and
interpret a situation differently and thus leads to new ideas,
approaches, and concepts.
If you are seeking
a text with answers regarding how to lead, this is not the book
for you. It contains no lists, case studies, or recommendations
regarding tried and true management approaches. In fact, she
challenges that there are no tried and true approaches.
However, it is a book that can challenge your thinking and
broaden your horizon in many ways. Its basis in the physical
sciences shows how radically the science has changed and Ms.
Wheatley will have you thinking very hard about those things you
considered “givens” in your beliefs about organizations and
leadership. top |
