Get your teams working brilliantly!

The success of your business is largely determined by the commitment, productivity and motivation of the people who work for you. Yet it could be that up to 60% of your employees, are underutilized in their roles at work. Creating a culture of excellence is essential to growth and achievement of your long term goals. Here's our thoughts on how to make this happen...

1. Stop demotivating people!
A research study published in Harvard Management Update (January 2006) showed that the majority of employees are very motivated when they start out and after less than a year, motivation drops dramatically. The main reason cited? The management style and overall behaviour of their managers. So as a business leader your job is not to motivate anyone - this is an intrinsic drive individual to each person. All you have to do is make sure you are not demotivating them. So here are some thoughts...

• Set a purpose which inspires people and goes beyond profit and making money
• View your employees as a group of customers
• Tell your employees what they "want" to know not just what they "need" to know
• Address poor performance - there is nothing more demotivating to someone working their pants off than a colleague who does nothing and gets away with it!
• Recognise people for a job well done - praise does not breed complacency it re-inforces success.

2. Be clear about what you want from people
Involve people in defining the sort of business or team they want to be and the targets they want to set for themselves. Focus on outcomes that are essential to meeting your inspiring business purpose and make sure everyone is clear on what these are. Understanding the level of performance required gives people a sense of achievement when they meet it.

Set specific goals in 90-day increments - this enables you to monitor progress and experience wins on a routine basis.

Share, share and share. You can't overcommunicate your expectations.

3. Define repeatable models
Whether looking at your sales and marketing strategy or your core business model, defining repeatable processes which people can understand and work to will improve performance. Many people shy away from processes fearing that these will kill creativity, constrain people and drown the organisation in bureaucracy. Indeed this will happen when the process becomes the end point rather than a clearly defined structure for doing what works best, and when you don't involve people in defining how they do it best.

Think about it. If you have a sales person who consistently over achieves his sales targets by 25%, would you not want to understand how he does this and get others to follow the repeatable steps?An effective process improves each individual’s performance by establishing a common base of best practice for everyone. It also enables greater visibility of activities that work and don’t work and how people are delivering against expectations.

4. Train people
Whenever I work with organisations who want to improve performance I ask the same questions - Do you know what skills and competencies are needed to meet your business purpose? Do your people have the skills, knowledge and competencies to achieve your business purpose? For many the answer is well...not really.

Many organisations don't understand the nature or purpose of training. There is a plethora of research supporting the ROI of training. A US Department of Education survey in 2003 showed very interesting results - increasing an individual’s educational level by 10% increased productivity by 8.6%; increasing an individual’s work hours by 10% increased productivity by 6.0%; and increasing capital stock by 10% increased productivity by 3.2%

Training should be used to enable people to obtain new skills and knowledge, re-enforce existing skills and knowledge, be aligned to the business purpose and be measured.

5. Build resilience through Coaching
Consider ongoing coaching to drive performance. External coaches are often used by high performance organisations to help embed behaviours and attitudes over time. There are various individual and group coaching solutions available which can help to achieve the desired skills and competencies for high performing teams.

Coaching can help push people beyond their limits, expand skills, build confidence, maintain focus and address the real barriers to achievement - e.g. limiting beliefs, motivation and commitment. Coaching enables a person to review what works and what doesn't work for them. When it comes to world-class performance, resilience and self-discipline are just as important as mastery of the technical skills in question.

Avoid meeting death with these 9 tips

How many times have you been to a meeting not knowing why you are there, spent a few hours in discussion, played buzzword bingo and walked out non-the-wiser as to what will happen next and how the business will move forward? Meetings have been so abused in business there are now several apps which help you calculate the real costs of your meetings.

However, meetings can be extremely valuable means of building trust, forming relationships, enabling focus on a particular challenge and getting people to collaborate to solve a problem. Use them to engage, involve, discuss and discover. Here are some thoughts on how to run Awesome meetings...

1. Plan, Plan, Plan
The secret to good meetings is what happens before and after. Clearly define the purpose, plan the details and ensure you know what you want to have happen as a result of the meeting. If it is just for information sharing consider what other channels exist to communicate and save face time for real engagement.

2. Give everyone something to do
Rather than have one person chair the meeting have a revolving chair so that each person is responsible for keeping the meeting on track. In group work make people assign a time-keeper, facilitator, presenter etc. People don't like doing it but knowing they have a role makes them step up to the task.

3. Engage the senses
We interpret the world through our senses. Good meetings should aim to engage our sensory experience (visual, auditory and kineasthetic are the most common). Get people standing up and moving by having issues/ challenges/ tasks around the room. Use visual images and videos in presentations, avoid too many bullets. Tell stories.

4. Give people time to reflect
We all have different learning styles. Some of us like to get stuck in and do things others like to step back and reflect. Rather than one meeting consider holding two shorter meetings, allowing people time to reflect in between. Allow people time to do their thinking up front (especially important for introverts)

5. Bring a "Plus One"
Bring people who are not related to the team or task into the meeting. They can often bring a fresh perspective.

6. Genuinely involve people
Meetings can often be railroaded by the loudest voice and brainstorming can exclude the reflective, introverted members who have valuable contributions to make. Along with group work consider structured paired work, silent mindmaps (where people write down their ideas on a group worksheet and build on others ideas) and brain train (where each person writes down an idea and passes it to the next who builds on the idea, who then passes it onto the next).

7. Give people homework
The subject of the meeting should not be a secret. Get participants to do some pre-meeting preparation. Give them research or feedback gathering tasks and have them present back in the meeting - formally or in a group.

8. Get feedback
Ask people how they felt the meeting went. You may want to do this anonymously so that people can be honest.

9.  Do what has been agreed
All too often we agree actions and never hear about them again, until the next meeting where the same issue comes up. Allocate enough time during your meeting to agree realistic actions - what will be done, when and by whom. Check that it is achievable - dont just assign a task and hope for the best. Then keep the participants updated at regular intervals on what has and hasn't been done. Be honest.

Get stuff done - real life tips

Do you have an ever growing to do list? Are you managing mutiple tasks at the same time and seem to take a long time to get everything done? Dr Edward Hallowell a physchiatrist and author identified a condition called "attention deficit trait". A workplace phemomenon that leads to distractibility, restlessness and impulsiveness caused by having too many tasks to do. 49% of us are interrupted by distractions every 15 minutes resulting in a third of us not being able to get our work done and 1/4 of us not being able to think creatively.

Over the past few months I decided to put into practice some new strategies, based on sound psychology and coaching principles to improve my productivity, creativity and passion for work. Here are some of the things that have worked for me which may help you too.

1. Focus on why
When you link daily tasks to something meaningful you are more motivated to make it work. Think about the purpose of your organisation or your role in the organisation. Think about what that task contributes to your purpose. If the task does not make a difference then don't do it. If it does than think about it in the context of achieving your goal. That report you are writing, that meeting you need to arrange, that data you need to mine will take on more momentum if it is seen as an important part of making your goals happen.

2. Do what's important
You can spend your whole day engaged in busy activity without actually moving forward. You need to find a way of doing the most important. The problem, when you priorisite (as I have always found) everything can seem important and most people will end up with 25 priorities - just another to do list with a different name.

So I started putting tasks into piles -  MUST DO and NICE TO DO - and really challenging myself to ask how essential each task was in achieving my goal. When I really put the musts down on paper it helped me to gain clarity on what I needed to do - and there were far fewer musts than nice to do's. Interestingly I started getting through more of the important tasks and was able to move onto more of the nice to do's. I was also able to let go of tasks that really contributed little to the overall outcome.

3. Eat a frog for Breakfast
This comes from a Mark Twain quote. If you have to eat a frog (which may be a daunting thought for many!), have it for breakfast and the rest of the day will be free from worry. Effectively you need to do the biggest/ the scariest/ the least liked task first otherwise you will worry and procrastinate over it all day. In my own experience, though tricky to stick to, its incredibly effective. The additional benefit is that those big scary tasks, when done straight away become less onerous, less daunting and far easier.  

4. Find a place to put mental distractions
Distractions are inevitable. Whilst you can shut yourself away from colleagues and family to get stuff done, you can't get away from your own mind that easily. So here's an exercise that can help.

Think about all the distractions that you want to put aside for a period of time to get something done. Focus on them intently. Now think about where you want to put these distractions. It could be anything - a box, a room, a basket, another country! When you have a place focus on what that place looks like - what colour, shape, sound, temperature it has. When you have a clear image you can mentally move the distractions to this place. When you are ready to deal with the distractions you can let them out.

5. Keep track
Keep a log of everything you do and what distracts you. Whilst you may have a timesheet if client facing or feel you have a grasp on what you work in the week, you'll be amazed at what is really going on when you honestly track it.

6. Take a break
This may seem counter intuitive, but there is only so much our brains can handle when immersed in a project. Taking 5 minutes to do something else, change your perspective, get fresh air, go for a walk can give you much needed perspective and renewed momentum to get the task done.

7. Allocate realistic time
Often we try to snatch time inbetween meetings, late at night or whilst doing other things. We block time out for meetings but few of us schedule time for actual work and stick to it. If you have something important to do block time out in your diary. Treat it like a real meeting  - with yourself. Then only focus on the task in hand.

8. Work out how you personally get things done
There is lots of advice out there about getting stuff done. Often you have the best answers yourself. Neurolinguistic programming is all about modelling the stuctures of behaviour. It's about finding out how you uniquely do things and then repeating that model. Here's an exercise...

Think back to a time when you were the best you could be at getting a task done. Think about how you got the task done. What happened to make you start the task; what happened when you worked on the task; how did you finish the task; what helped you and hindered you in getting the task done? When you understand what it is you personally and uniquely do to get something done then you can apply it to any new task. Here's my personal model for getting big stuff done (whether I have a week or a day to do it this is what works best for me)...

• Focus on why I am doing it - the benefit
• Allocate time to start
• Do some research - get inspired
• Write down ideas
• Do something else
• Come back to the task and get 25% of it done - doing more research and ideas
• Do something else 
• Come back to the task and get 95% complete - remind myself why I am doing it
• Do something else
• Come back to the task - check the 95%, complete the 5% and check it.  

Which marketing channel is right for your business?

Which marketing channel to use is a constant challenge for many businesses, especially with the increasing opportunities in mobile and inbound marketing - the options can seem endless, confusing and daunting. Choosing the right channels, however, lies in defining what "effective" commucation means for your business and there are a number of things to consider. 

1. Objectives: What are you trying to achieve? This has to be the start point and is often given fleeting thought. For each and every communication you need to think what do I want my target audience to do as a result. Then you can ask which channels could help me do it. If you are building relationships then online/ off line editorial and email marketing (along with a raft of other channels) will be key.

2. Target audience reach: Whichever channel you use, it needs to be able to get to as many of your target audience as you need to get to achieve your objectives (and within your budget). Some channels lend themselves to certain age groups, demographics and needstates. If you are targeting youth then mobile and social media are a must. If you are selling landscaping ornaments to the over 60's then print is a very relevant channel.

3. Budget: As mentioned above. If you have no marketing budget then email marketing and social media are going to be must haves. But even if you have a large budget you still need to make sure you are achieving the above, in order to maximise the efficiency of your spend.You need to look at all the options and work out what is the most cost effective way of reaching your target audience and achieving your objective. You dont need to get into complex ROI's to get an idea. Look at how many of your target audience will be exposed to your communication, how well the channel helps you achieve your objective (give it a score) and then work out the cost per communication hit.

4. Creative Content: And lastly, perhaps most importantly, the effectiveness of a channel is directly related to the quality of its content. Blogging, without interesting, engaging, value added content won't get you very far. Emails that spam or sell too much will not build relationships. Print ads that are bland, uncreative and don't inspire desire will fail, regardless of how much money is thrown at them!

Ready for growth? 5 things to consider

There is a tipping point in any business, whether moving from start-up to going concern, from going concern to taking on staff or from single business to replication whereby you need to review and assess your business's readiness for growth. Here are 5 things to consider:

1. Do you have solid Foundations?

80% of the internal pain I see in organisations is due to leaders wanting to acquire new business without the appropriate systems in place to manage existing business smoothly. At each stage of growth you need to review your core processes – IT, HR, business development, customer service etc. Even a small start up needs to make consideration to these and make sure they operate effectively as growth diverts resources from core. You  need ensure that they are appropriate for the current delivery of services (i.e. without any pain points) and make an assessment of what would need to happen/ change to move to the next stage.

2. Is your value proposition clear?

Many organizations miss this part. Why? Because it takes time and it takes discipline. If you’re managing a project or enterprise, figure out what it is that you really do better than anyone else. Clearly understand what problem your service or product is solving. Figure out what’s important, what contribution you make and what you offer that others can’t. If 1,000 people can provide a service the way you do, it is going to be very hard to grow.

3. Is there a sound economic engine at the heart of your business?

This is all about having a clear and robust business model which defines how you deliver value to customers, and how you can organize your enterprise to best meet stakeholder needs and get paid for doing so. The business model determines your sustainability – your ability to deliver your organisations’ vision and mission and continue to deliver the benefits to the people you serve. Without a robust business model it is hard to scale up, be that through funding, investment or access to new customers and markets.

4. Do you have a learning culture?

Growth brings change and change brings stress to an organisation. The people within that organisation need to be in the mindset where change can happen with as few growing pains as possible. An organisation which has a learning culture (as opposed to a blame culture, a targets culture or an innovation culture) will stand a better chance of managing the change. A learning culture encourages experimentation, review and reflection, all of which are important in the change process.

  

5. Do you know where you want to go?

This is all about having a clear, inspiring and shared vision and strategy for growth. It’s about making choices over where you want to go, putting small steps in place which go in the right direction and being disciplined in thought and action so that you get where you are going.

Beyond Smart: 5 strategies to achieve team goals

Working with teams can be tricky. It is challenging enough to achieve your own goals let alone align a group of people with their unique motivations, beliefs, personal objectives and experiences to a single goal, and one which may not be at the top of their list of priorities.

Whilst we are advocates of setting SMART objectives as a means of achieving team goals, SMART is simply a structure for thinking about and planning your goals. It is not the whole story. And because it has been used as a blunt instrument in the management world the mere mention of the word can be met with groans of despair by teams across the UK.

Here are 5 things you need to do to help teams achieve your business goals in addition to SMART.

1.  Give people something worth being part of

Jim Rohn once said "You want to set a goal that is big enough that in the process of achieving it you become someone worth becoming." You don't have to be the CEO to do this. Regardless of the size of your team or your level in the organisation you work with your team to set a vision that is meaningful, important and motivating. Generally – this is not going to be expressed as making more money, getting more customers or being number one.
If you can help people relate goals to purposein the work that they do then you will stand a better chance of keeping them engaged and focused on achieving their goals.

2. Your team has the answers, involve them

Involve people in goal setting and decision-making, particularly if they are on the front line, they have a significantly better perspective on what's really going on. Each person will bring a different perspective, experience, skill-set and knowledge to a particular problem.  Give everyone the chance to be heard. Listen intently, especially to the negative (yes some people are life's moaners, but the vast majority of negative feedback is valuable information about your business) and the quiet ones.

When goals are set from the top, with each manager setting goals for the next person down, then you may be setting your business up to fail. Goal setting like this leads to silo thinking, with each person only looking at their corner of the business at best and active sabotaging of your business goals at worst.

3. Start with what you want to have happen

What is the change that you want to make? What do you want to be different about the current situation? You should seek to describe the type of change and the number of changes in detail with you team. Really get into the detail of change. So instead of having a team goal to “develop a work plan by Q3”, your team may get to a goal such as “develop a simple, living plan, which makes it easy for others to understand what we do and work with us”. In this way your team will help you to define the benefits of the goal that will solve a particular problem.

It is also more motivating to focus on the benefits.  Research indicates that the more time you spend focusing on the benefit of the goal the more likely you and your team are to achieve it. ("Letting Good Opportunities Pass Us By: Examining the Role of Mindset during Goal Pursuit." Journal of Consumer Research: December 2010.)

This is the specific part of SMART taken to another level.  

4. Keep your goals alive

You set goals at the start of the year with or for your team, or at the start of a project and then you spend the rest of the year doing other “stuff”. By the time you get to the end of the year you open your bottom draw, pull out your goals and work out if you have met them or not. Sound familiar?

If something is important enough to be a goal make it visible to everyone. It keeps the goal top of mind for your team and it tells others of your intentions. In a number of research studies, going public was found to be motivating in helping people achieve their goals. (Self reinforcement effects: An artefact of social setting. Journal of applied behaviour analysis 1985).

Turn them into a living plan with mini-steps, timescales and measures and keep this somewhere visible too. 70-75% of people experience the world through their visually so bring your goals and plans to life. Use a variety of imagery, colour, fonts and media to bring your goals to life. Keeping your goals visible will also stimulate your team to review progress on a regular basis, but make sure you also allocate specific time to do this.

5.  Reward, reward, reward

How often do you tell people they have done well? Hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly? We hear managers say they only praise when the team has done exceptionally well i.e. if they are simply doing a good job this is what they get paid for, so none necessary.

But praise and reward is exceptionally important in valuing people (especially when it is combined with the ability to challenge unacceptable behaviour). There is a correlation between praise and repeating desired behaviour. Research supports the use of external incentives such as encouragement and social approval in building internal motivation. (David Beswick, Management implications of the interaction between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic rewards. University of Melbourne).

Creating an environment of authentic reward is one in which people enjoy working. You may also want to consider letting the team determine how they would like to be rewarded for achieving certain sub-goals.  For each step the team or an individual takes in achieving your business goal, make sure you encourage and praise.

Business plan mania!

Over the past 2 weeks all of our focus has been on business planning and helping people access investing opportunities. So this weeks blog is... you guessed it!

Every business needs a business plan. Right? Whether setting up a business, looking for investment or looking to grow an existing business the business plan is one of your most important tools.

There are a million resources on what a business plan should contain, but for many the process ends up feeling like a box ticking exercise. And rather than a tool to guide thinking and actions in your business it sits in your bottom draw, gathering dust or is rolled out as a 100 page edition of war and peace with lots of great big words, fine looking figures and little robust thinking to underpin it.

Before putting anything down on paper ask yourself - who am I writing the plan for and what am I going to do with it? If it is for yourself then you need a plan that is a living tool helping you track activity. If it is for investors or funders you need to focus on the elements that are important to them and cut out anything else.

When you have a clear picture of why you are doing it, you will be able to develop a plan that actually helps you achieve your growth and financial objectives.

Here's our approach
• The who. What is your market and what is the target audience?
• The pain. What problem are you solving?
• The alternatives: Who is the competition and what other risks exist?
• The solution. What is it you do best and why can only you do it?
• The model: What is your economic engine & associate income streams?
• The people: Who is involved directly and indirectly in your vision?
• The roadmap: Past and future action plans and milestones

Save the appendix for financial projections and information that supports the above in greater detail.

And some top tips

1. Describe a well researched market, drawing on multiple sources of data including primary (1st hand data gathered from surveys or interviews with potential customers for instance) and secondary research (data compiled by others such as statistics from ONS - office or national statistics – government white papers, research reports from other organisations etc)

2. Give a real assessment of the competition. Anyone who thinks they have no competition needs to get real – all customer needs are being met by someone, somewhere, regardless of how well.

3. A sound market model detailing the proportion of the market that your solutions will access. Many people make the mistake of quoting the market size as the market opportunity. Investors will look at the total addressable market (the portion of the market that your product could fulfill)

4. Make sure you have a clear, differentiated offering that solves a market problem. Competitive positioning can help to demonstrate the gap your offering fulfills.

5. Be compelling and passionate and bring your plan to life. Whomever, you are communicating your plan to is a human being after all. Remember less is more. It should not be an exercise in how much information you can amass. Think about your audience. What is the key information they need to make a decision? How can you communicate this to them as succinctly as possible?

6. Ensure you and you team are well connected. Demonstrating that you can get others involved with your vision across stakeholder groups is important.

7. Avoid pipedream financials. Make sure financials are backed up with robust and evidence-based assumptions.

8. Remember people ultimately invest in people. That means they will invest in YOU if you are convincing and credible.

If you want any more information on what we present here just send us an email info@provadisgroup.com

Measuring what you do can get you more work! - Measure for success series #2

Measuring impact is talked about a lot in the social sector but very rarely undertaken as part of normal business activity or used effectively in communication. Possibly because the powers that be have shrouded it in mystery and overly complicated processes, such as Social Return on Investment or because it is often an afterthought undertaken at the end of a project.

But measuring value allows you to increase your understanding of the impact of your work, have a stronger communication of the value of your work to key stakeholders and improve your programme management and planning. Measuring impact can be expensive, especially if you bring in external consultants to carry out the full process. However, you can prepare yourself by introducing methods into your work that ensures you capture the right data at the right time.
There are different models and techniques used to evaluate your programme and reach SROI. The methodology discussed here is known as building the chain of impact.

Key points on process

1. Evaluation should be prepared before you start your project delivery – so think about what you want to achieve as a result of your programme and how you will measure it before you start. It is an iterative process so you can always go back and test your assumptions during the programme.

2. Develop an evaluation plan when designing services.

3. Assign measurable objectives to each stage of need – these can become your Key Performance Indicators.

4. Develop data collection methods that compliment your service – use simple methods like surveys, 10 point scales and action logs.

5. Learn as you go and amend your programme to steer it towards success.

Some questions to consider

• Who are we targeting?
• What are we planning to do?
• What are the key elements of our service?
• What quality standards do we want to meet?
• What outcomes do we want to achieve? What change do you want to see happen, for whom?

If you want to learn more about measuring impact we are running a workshop at Action for Social Enterprise on 25th November 2011.

“How demonstrating impact can grow your enterprise”

Download the programme here http://bit.ly/oEzxHi

If you want to grow, measure - Measure for Success Series #1

Measuring what you do is almost as important as coming up with ideas, strategies and action plans in the first place. When you monitor how your organization is performing, you are looking at how efficiently you do the work. You are perfecting your repeatable model which enables long term and sustainable growth.

When you measure your business you are able to answer important questions. Do you work cost-effectively? Are you duplicating work? Are you communicating with each other? Are you hitting your targets? When you review an individual programme, you are looking at the impact and effectiveness of the work you are doing. Is it making a difference to users, customers and other stakeholders? When you measure your marketing activity you are looking at what is helping you attract customers (and what isn't working so well) and whether your money is giving you a good return.

Without measuring you don’t know if you are achieving what you have set out to achieve.

Measure the stuff that matters

If you have gone through the effort of planning, setting objectives and strategies then make sure you spend time tracking this. By not tracking your activity you are demonstrating that what you are doing doesn’t really matter. Tracking reinforces the idea that what you are doing is important to meeting your goals. It signals to everyone in your business what you value in the business.

Respond to the measures

There’s nothing more frustrating than putting together facts and figures that no-one does anything with. If you are going to measure something there has got to be a clear understanding of what you will do with the results. This is key. If you have no intention of changing (or cannot change) a part of your product or service then don’t measure that part. It will simply frustrate you and your customers.

So think about what activities are essential to track, why you are tracking them and what you want to do with the results. Act on the information you receive. If a certain customer service level or performance parameter is not meeting target work out a strategy for improving it.

We think that making sure what you are measuring is working for you and not against you is so important that we are spending the rest of October focusing on what, how and when to measure your business. Look out for next weeks’ installment. Start with measurement don’t end with it - the importance of planning.

Ask different questions

In great organisations strategic planning is driven by the search for the right questions more than the search for the right answers. How do you know if you have achieved the optimal, preferred outcome unless you have exhausted all the questions, including the too difficult to answer, no-one talks about that particular problem, nothing will ever change in any case type of questions. But until you make the commitment to ask, you will never know if you are getting the best solutions.

Sometimes our brains need to be challenged in different ways; we need to see the world from different perspectives to make a leap forward. So...the next time you are planning or looking to improve, rather than asking - what's going wrong? What are the challenges? How can we do things differently? - try asking the following:

• If you were starting afresh what would you really want?
• What has not yet happened?
• What are you about to let go of?
• What hero will have inspired you?
• What outcome would you rather have?

You never know where it could lead you!