Benefit From a Fraction of Your Employees

You only benefit from a fraction of your employees’ potential value.

Your greatest, most expensive and ironically, most under-utilized resource are your employees. This is why Transformance is passionate about realizing the value of human capital in organizations. Employee costs may be as high as 60% of your expenditure as a business; doesn’t it make sense to obtain value from that investment? Unfortunately, many businesses only receive a small fraction of benefit. In many companies, only a handful of key leaders, managers and influencers are given a voice. The rest of their workforce has a limited opportunity to make a difference. 

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Employee underutilization usually increases the closer you are to the frontlines of a company. Frontline employees are often perceived to be less important than middle managers. However, they usually have the most value to offer. Their close proximity to the day- to-day action of your business gives them an ideal position to identify your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

 The classic example of an underutilized employee is the cleaner. They may be considered the “lowest man on the totem pole,” however they often have the best opportunity to identify waste and inefficiency. They walk the line, cleaning, sweeping and observing. They witness delays when a part is not connected properly upstream. They see the fatigue and frustration on workers’ faces as the day progresses. They remove hundreds of pounds of unnecessary waste and damaged product that could have been saved or reworked. I once went into a Mercedes showroom which was immaculate and ended up having to use the washroom – it was literally filthy and completely at odds with the Mercedes brand and philosophy. Just because it was out of sight, it doesn’t mean that it should be out of mind. An engaged cleaner would have resolved this.

So imagine the improvement in overall quality, job-satisfaction and cost-saving if you knew what “your cleaner” knows. Now, multiply the value of all the unreported, ideas, knowledge and insights of every employee in your company. The untapped value is enormous.

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When you don’t involve and leverage employees contribution the following happens:

·         Employees often do not feel connected to their company’s strategies.

·         Employees do not know what is expected of them.

·         Employees do not know how their performance will be evaluated.

·         Employees feel isolated from the decision making process.

·         Employees feel supervisors can arbitrarily prevent or slow their promotion.

Your objective should be to replace an “us versus them” culture with a culture that creates generations of leaders. When possible, you should adopt a policy of hiring new employees at the bottom and promoting existing employees to the top. You should replace subjective annual reviews with ongoing mentorship that assesses an employee’s performance in a completely fair, open and democratic way.

At Transformance we love the concepts of coaching and mentoring, and all successful companies have these two great pillars in place.

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Fast Goal Setting For Dummies

Fast Goal setting for dummies – Part 1

You know what – goal setting can be fun!

First of all you need to identify your personal values which will then enable you to set goals to reflect those values.  There is absolutely no point in having goals if you don’t identify what makes you tick. Everyone can say they want a big house, car, boat but you have to identify why!

Easier said than done? Sure it is – it’s easy!

To start all you need is a pen, paper and a willingness to be honest. This is to do with you, no-one else. You should allow at least 30 minutes to accomplish your task.

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 So, ready, steady,  go ……

1.       You need to be relaxed, nothing will be accomplished if you are tense. Make sure you are on your own in a quiet relaxed atmosphere. Maybe put some mood music on, even meditate for a few minutes, just to clear your mind.

2.       Ask yourself a question at a time and, no cheating, be honest.

(a)    First question – if you knew Doomsday was about to occur, what would you want to achieve.

(b)   Second question – describe the person that you believe you are when you are at your absolute peak. Use adjectives, colours whatever you like to describe yourself

(c)    Third question – who would you say was your role model and why?

(d)   At the end of your life, how do you want to be remembered?

Now if you have been honest, then you should have an idea of what matters to you i.e. your values!

3.       So now, lets start to identify your goals using your values

(a)     What do you love doing, what makes you happy?

(b)   What would your dream life be? Don’t hold back on this one.

(c)    What are you great at? What’s your USP?

(d)   What would you do if you were guaranteed to succeed

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 For Section 3 you may need to divide out your life into personal, career and helping others. In personal you should include relationships (family, friends and partner), health and fitness, hobbies and just sheer pleasure! For career incorporate your ideal worklife, money, colleagues, company, working for yourself? In the “helping others” include what you would like to give back to the world, ie. What charitable acts would you like to achieve?

So looking at all of these you should now be able to write down  at least 3 goals for each section (and hopefully more!). Look at them closely, are they really, really what YOU dream of – again be honest. There is absolutely no point in setting goals if they mean nothing to you and you have only included them because you think you should.

Check your goals against your values – do they match?

Part 2 will be how you bring these goals to fruition – watch this space.

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What happens when hit a bump in growth

What happens when hit a bump in growth?

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You know the situation, something is not right. Your business growth has plateaued. Your value proposition still works, but you lose old customers as fast as you gain new customers. You mistakenly attribute this loss to normal customer attrition.

You are trying to increase your marketing engine harder but sales remain flat. The economic climate does not really encourage you to spend more of your cash on marketing, with little hope of return.

You add new products. You target new customer audiences. You experience short-term increases in sales but it is not the breakthrough you hoped for. Sales fall, then rise and then fall again. You feel like you are on a treadmill. It is exhausting. You settle into your new normal. 

All of your time and energy is devoted to keeping your house of cards standing.

One of the obvious things you can do is look to your existing customer base. Can you sell more products and services to them, or are you just relying on a single sale, based purely on new customers and new business?

Can you put together an attractive offer that will make them either repurchase or buy an additional product or service?

Do you know if your customers are satisfied with what you sold them? If they are, what are you doing to increase their connection to your business so they are the road to becoming loyal customers and advocates? Moving on from this, are you in a position to seek active referrals and recommendations from existing customers and if you do that how are you going to reassure your existing customers that you are really going to look after their referrals? Are you going to recompense your own customers for those referrals?

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 The point I am trying to make is this – if you new business acquisition from new customers is slowing or becoming costly to attain, then look to cross selling to your existing customers and consider a referral or member get member program.

Customer retention and customer development are not just for large corporations.

Start as you mean to go on.

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Considerations for starting your Business

What makes a company great?

It is a vibe and an experience. You know that employees are connected to the company goals and they really connect with customers. They are knowledgeable, eager to please, deliver innovation and ideas.

So the big questions to ask yourself is your company great?

If not, what do you need to do to make it great?

Let’ start at the very beginning – have you created your company’s “secret sauce.”  This is the special distinction that makes you and your products/services stand out. They are the value propositions that will cut through the clutter to make customers be aware of you and want to buy from YOU, not your competitors. So what are the ingredients in your “secret sauce?”

Your time, energy and resources at this stage must be focused on doing everything you believe is essential to creating great products and driving customers to your door. Everything else is secondary until you have cracked this. Launching with mediocre products, service and attitude will not create a successful thriving business.

 This has to be your first big step.

We will continue from this theme throughout the next series of blogs.

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Planning for 2013

Transformance is now offering a unique visual way to plan your business for 2013.

The planning session is highly interactive and guided by a highly experienced business consultant, who will add value and help you explore many new possibilities.

If you have a team, the process engenders great team bonding and team building. Everyone has an opportunity to think and contribute creatively.

More about the Process

The Business Model Canvas is a convenient visual framework for talking about a business model. It is a poster format chart that enables 9 elements of a business model to be captured and discussed by a group of people working together. The nine 

elements are visualised in the cartoon at the right. They are:

 1.           Customer segments: for whom do we aim to create value? Who are our most important customers?

2.           Value Propositions: what do we offer to whom? What value do we deliver to a customer in a given segment? What needs do we satisfy?

3.           Channels: how do we reach each customer segment? What is easiest for the customer?

4.           Customer Relationships: how do we build and maintain these? How do they fit effectively in both the customer’s world and our own?

5.           Revenue Streams: for what will our customers pay? How much? How would they prefer to pay?

6.           Key Resources: what resources are essential to deliver our Value Propositions through the Channels and maintain our Customer Relationships?

7.           Key Activities: what are the most important things you must do to make your business work?

8.           Key Partnerships: who are our Key Partners and why? What Key Resources do they provide and what Key Activities do they carry out? What’s in it for them? What relationship should we have?

9.           Cost Structure: what costs are implied by our Business Model? Which are largest? What is fixed and what is variable? What drives them?

At the end of the session you will in effect have an ACTIONABLE strategy map that you can deploy quickly. You will have a clear indication as to where revenue is coming from and how it can be grown, plus the associated costs, so that financial outcomes can be accurately estimated.

An example of a completed canvas

We will provide a full Powerpoint Presentation of the Canvas outcomes, which can then be used internally as the plan is implemente

For more information and to book a free 30 minute detailed exploratory session with one of our consultants, either:

email me here or Skype:michaelw.reap

The investment for the Business Planning Workshop starts from as little as Euro 495 – a modest investment for your success in 2013.