October 2011
Understanding and job alignment are two keys to high performance. Executives often face a difficult challenge of explaining their company’s business in a simple format.
The Business Model Canvas helps solve this problem. In a single page, the canvas captures:
- Key partners
- Key activities
- Key resources
- Value proposition
- Customer relationships
- Channels
- Customer segments
- Cost structure
- Revenue streams
Originally designed for business brainstorming, we see useful applications for explaining the big picture to employees and engaging them in the process of improving all business functions. It’s a document that executives can use for presentations, leave with employees after meetings, and post in public spaces around the company.
As a bonus, it’s a useful strategic planning document for the executives to use in retreats and other strategy sessions.
August 2011
Crises come in two forms. Those that happen to you and those that you cause.
Your company is at risk for both if you don’t anticipate how you will respond if hacked.
Hacking is an insidious, invasive event because most of the time it involves personal data that customers entrusted to your organization for some business purpose. Companies have tried to cover hacks in the past, which led to new laws requiring disclosure for any size of data breach.
The only acceptable response to a data breach is swift and honest. That’s impossible if you haven’t anticipated and prepare for the possibility of a breach. We recommend drafting your worst-case-scenario communication to customers, i.e. the worst possible loss of data. You can always tone it down from there. Make sure to apologize for any inconvenience, emphasize your commitment to proactive communications with customers, and outline cooperation with law enforcement.
And make sure to have your legal team review the communication in advance. You don’t want attorneys holding up the process when customers are waiting to hear from you.
Swift, honest communication will win you points and minimize the overall damage to your company’s reputation.
A slow and overly corporate response creates the second type of crisis – the type that you cause. Communications that shift responsibility, try to rationalize a bad situation, and/or offer no remedy to the problem can actually deepen customers’ pain. That’s not a good thing for you.
June 2011
Most organizations hate change. It’s built into our DNA.
Yet every organization has to embrace change to survive.
How leaders communicate change can be as important as the change itself. Most companies stumble with the order of their messages, much like the saying, “Ready, Fire, Aim!”
Engaging employees in the change requires three pieces of information:
- Why does the organization have to change?
- How is the organization going to change?
- Where will the organization be after the change?
Most organizations make the mistake of starting with how the change will happen. The emphasis on operations creates confusion (“What’s going on?”) and even resentment (“Is this the latest program-of-the-week?”) among employees.
A better approach is to begin with why the change is necessary. The picture has to be clear to employees that staying in place will hurt the organization – and potentially jobs.
Follow with where the organization will be after the change. Leaders should paint a clear vision of the new and better organization. This will help to answer some of the WIIFM (what’s in it for me) questions from employees.
The last step is how the change will happen.
April 2011
Companies often ask us what’s the best policy for responding to negative blog posts and comments in social media.
What is most helpful is the categorization of negative posts. The Air Force identified four of them:
- Troll – a post dedicated to bashing and degrading others
- Rager – a post that is a rant, joke, or generally satirical of the Air Force
- Misguided – a post that features erroneous facts
- Unhappy customer – a post that is a result of a negative experience
The Air Force only responds to posts falling in the last two categories. They recognize that nothing the Air Force says will influence the first two and choose to monitor rather than respond.
The final piece is crafting an effective response. The strategy focuses on transparency, sourcing, timeliness, tone, and influence.
Written originally for blogs, the policy could certainly be adapted for other social media.
February 2011
Are you getting the most out of LinkedIn? Most of us aren’t.
Best practices for LinkedIn fall into three categories: optimizing your profile, networking, and participation.
Optimizing your profile
- Change your professional headline from your job title to your areas of expertise. This will help more people find you in a search.
- Utilize the summary section fully. A complete summary will help people understand your skills and accomplishments.
You can change your professional headline and summary by editing your profile.
Networking
- Three old/three new connections. Every week, try to connect with three old friends and add three new friends by connecting with other people at client companies, prospects, or likely referral sources.
- Follow companies. The follow button appears when you look for companies using the search function in the top right. The follow function makes sure you see when users at that company update their profiles.
Participation
- Monitor LinkedIn Answers. This is a great way to research questions people are asking about your field and to find potential new connections.
MLT Creative has an excellent LinkedIn toolkit with more ideas for maximizing LinkedIn for business development.
December 2010
The end of the year is a good time to polish off the plans for the coming year. Verne Harnish is an international business consultant and author of Mastering the Rockefeller Habits. He recently published his list of common strategic planning mistakes that companies make.
- Playing not to lose vs. playing to win. Sometimes, it’s easy to play defense when you really should go on the offense.
- Making decisions in a vacuum. The best companies have a process for gathering feedback and input from their customers before setting priorities.
- Doing everything clients ask. The quickest way to commoditization is augmenting your products/services until they look the same as your competitors’ products/services. Great companies have a system for evaluating and choosing the best client requests.
- Keeping middle management in the dark. Like listening to clients, great companies ask their people for suggestions and ideas.
- Setting too many priorities. According to Harnish, great companies have no more than three to five priorities at any one time.
