Author:
Daniel Scheff, December 13th, 2009
Introduction
Small business owners spend years growing their dreams into income streams that support them and their families. They sink every dime they have into developing websites, offering new products, and getting in front of potential customers. Over time, these businesses grow into entities of pride and value. It is impossible not to feel proud of an endeavor that started as an idea and evolved into a way to earn a substantial or comfortable living.
In the process of becoming a consistent and viable way to earn a living, small businesses become inherently valuable. Owning a business is like owning stock, only you own all of it. The problem, though, is finding a way to recapture some of the value you have created. Imagine owning a $1 million dollar business, but not being able to access any of that $1 million. It is a challenging situation, and it is not unique. Small business owners tend to have nearly all of their wealth in their businesses, which means that they cannot diversify their investments and protect themselves from normal business risk.
There is a way out of this predicament, and SME Capital Markets is ready to help. With a plethora of resources and advice available, small business owners can learn how to take their businesses public on http://www.smecapitalmarkets.net. Going public is not the exclusive domain of large companies with hundreds of millions of dollars in their war chests. A small public offering can be a viable way for small business owners to recapture some of the wealth they have created.
Your Most Valuable Asset
Small business owners tend to have the vast majority of their wealth tied up in their businesses. This means that you can take the actual cash that you earn (after expenses), but you cannot tap into the full value of your business. For private companies, a rule of thumb is that your business is worth 2.5 times earnings essentially 2.5 times what you make after business expenses and salaries. After you pay all your expenses, including your salary, you have a certain amount of cash left over. Your business is worth more than twice that amount, but you cannot reach the total value. So, you have a dilemma.
SME Capital Markets helps small business owners increase the value of their companies and access that value. Focused on small companies, SME Capital Markets provides information and advice on how to go public. The information and advice is focused on the issues that smaller businesses face; large companies should look elsewhere.
SME Capital Markets offers all the resources that small business owners need to make an informed decision about going public. The website offers reports, original research, and mountains of data. Using this information, small business owners can decide if going public is right for them. If it is, they can contact the companys principal, Brad Smith, to explore a public offering in more detail. Prices for information are quite reasonable, making it easy for small business owners to understand what it means to go public, and whether to take the next step.
Cashing Out
SME Capital Markets offers real advice for small business owners. Their goal is not to drag you into a difficult decision that is not appropriate for a business of your size. Instead, they prefer to help you make an informed decision. If the decision is to go public, they will help you every step of the way. Electing to go public is a serious decision, requiring a considerable amount of work (just to make the decision). SME Capital Markets endeavors to make this a realistic option for small business owners while not pushing them into unnecessary complexity.
There is a special environment for small businesses that go public the Over the Counter Bulletin Board ( OTCBB ). Unlike the big IPOs of the dotcom days, the OTCBB is for smaller companies that want to generate more capital (either for growth or as a way for the business owner to cash out). Stock prices are lower, and the stock trading patters are a bit trickier than for large companies. This venue, though, allows successful small business owners to recapture much of the wealth that they created and otherwise would not be able to touch.
Going public also can increase the value of your business. As mentioned earlier, the value of a small business usually is determined by multiplying your earnings by 2 . Not bad, right? Your business is worth more than twice the income it generates. By taking your small business public, though, it could be worth much more. Public companies tend to trade at more than 5 times the companys earnings, so by going public, you can double the value of your company.
That is the goal of SME Capital Markets. They want to help small companies that are ready to take a big step. But, they want to help in a way that only works to the benefit of the small business owner.
How the Web Helped
SME Capital Markets chose to market its services via the web for many reasons. Essentially, the web opened a much larger market to the company than simply pursuing clients through word of mouth networks or traditional print advertising. Small business owners represent a diverse, disparate market. Small business owners can be hard to find. Print advertising would have been inefficient, since small business owners read the publications that matter to their businesses. A small online retailer, for example, is more likely to read publications that cater to online retailers than small businesses. The information in the former is much more directly valuable.
The information offered by SME Capital Markets is easily delivered over the web. Small business owners can save up to 10% of the cost of a report by downloading it instead of paying for shipping and handling. The information is easy to find, and customers can access it quickly. As a result, using the web for its major presence was natural; SME Capital Markets can make its products more accessible and less expensive by operating online. This helps SME Capital Markets fulfill its mission of helping small businesses make difficult decisions without having to spend a fortune.
Lessons for Small Businesses
SME Capital Markets offers a twofold lesson for small businesses across the country. First, the services offered by this company offer small business owners a way to tap into the value of their businesses while potentially increasing that value (by going public). Also, SME Capital Markets has used the web as a way to communicate information quickly and efficiently to a distributed audience without having to increase its prices to reach this audience.
Helping small companies is fundamental to the mission of SME Capital Markets. In the world of finance, fortunes are made with larger businesses. To enter the small public company space requires a focus on service instead of astronomical profits; there is no other reason to enter that market. Consequently, SME Capital Markets remains focused on its purpose of helping small business owners enjoy the wealth they have created but cannot access. Going public is not the right decision for every small business, but SME Capital Markets can help you decide if it is the right decision for you.
In accomplishing its mission, SME Capital Markets has demonstrated the importance of using the web. The entire business would not have been viable without a way to reach a diverse, fragmented market. With the development of a simple website, using prepackaged and inexpensive components for processing payments and disseminating information, SME Capital Markets was able to launch in a short period of time and begin to serve its constituency. Its materials are accessible to entrepreneurs who may not be able to find them otherwise.
SME Capital Markets used the web to assemble expertise, generate information, and reach its market quickly and effectively, demonstrating the potency of an online presence for small businesses. With the work of SME Capital Markets, entrepreneurs can focus on new growth techniques while learning the flexibility of the online business environment.
Copyright 2006 Daniel Scheff
Author: Daniel Scheff
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Author:
Carol Flagg, December 12th, 2009
To bail or not to bail, a question before Washington and the court of public opinion. For Detroit auto makers, it appears the proposed bail out for them is dead, at least for today, anyway. No matter where you weigh in on this bailout, there are no easy answers here. What can be said of a group ofcompaniesthat relinquished any competitive position in the car building industry in favor of gas-guzzling trucks and SUV’s? Detroit perhaps took the worst route of all, recognizing that it was just easier to dominant in the market demand for trucks and SUV’s by the American consumer rather than innovate and battle it out with the more efficient, better-built imports over cars.
Innovation. Easy word to say but hard to put into practice. Yet the failure to innovate by these auto makers has pushed them to the brink of a precipice. A question we need to all be asking ourselves is this: how do we move forward towards innovation and change to create long-term sustainability and success?
To help address this question, I’ve provided some points to ponder. We all need to consider how we’re going to innovate as we head into a new year that could well be far more tumultuous than 2008. But if we truly can innovate and change, then the coming year may very well set the stage for enormous opportunities.
1) There are two kinds of companies – those in touch with the future and those operating in the past, which is already obsolete (Google vs. GM, as examples). The future is not only now, but also yesterday because as you sense the future just about to unfold tomorrow, then you need to be already looking towardsthe next future ready to be released after tomorrow. What is your next future and what does it look like for you, your staff andyour clients?
2) To afford innovation you have to have less to lose. If you eliminate all possible overhead, you’ll more easily afford innovation. If you have high overhead then you’remarried to past business practices. And even if these practices are generating profits now, it may not last becauseflexibility is the real security in today’s economic climate and a “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality no longer cuts it.
3) Innovation – bothsmall and large- is the new currency for success; competition is the old currency. If you just compete in your industry, you’ll only be incrementally better. But if you innovate, you’ll set new standards and be the leader ahead of the curve.
3) Business knowledge is essential, but innovation and flexibility are real power. The newformula for success puts less emphasis on knowledge and more on innovation and flexibility, with a ratio that may look something like this: 20% critical knowledge/80% innovation and flexibility.
4) Take a page and learn from those colleagues or companies you see as innovative. Apple’s Steve Jobs described one aspect of innovation as “saying no to 1,000 things so as to concentrate on the really important creations.”
5) Innovation and change is multi-level. This means It probably won’t be enough to create innovation and change from the top down. Company leaders will need to involve their whole teams in the process. It’s not that innovation can’t happen in a conference-room vacuum but why limit brainstorming to just top-level executives and managers? Adopt the mandate that your company is about innovation and change and that every staff member has the opportunity to contribute to this innovation.
And finally, ask yourself one more key question: is how you’re doing business today a model for growth or a model for contraction? If past and current business strategies point towards contraction then you must begin to innovate your products or services or potentially face the same precipice as Detroit. The critical factor of innovation may very well determine just how well — or poorly — your company rides out 2009.
Author: Carol Flagg
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Author:
Michael Dennis, December 10th, 2009
When I worked in the food service industry some years ago, I got a first hand look at customer service and profits. Not to toot my own horn but there I successfully handled a customer complaint and referred the customer to one of my bosses for continued service. Later I discovered the lady called back (after dealing with my boss) and complained about how he handled it, then congratulated me!
I was stunned! Partly because my superior showed a lower level of service than his humble peon, mostly because she said she’d never come back into the restaurant. And she never did.
So what is customer service? The successful management of customer orders, questions, and complaints pretty much sums up customer service. Most managers think of customer service, support, care, as what happens when a customer has a complaint, but that’s only part of it. Great customer service means great products, sales reps, and support too. It’s a combination of many things.
And successful (or unsuccessful) customer service can make or break your profit margin. Customers who aren’t happy, won’t return. They’ll also tell other people about their terrible experience and the flood of people not coming to your website will spread like wildfire. Good or bad, word of mouth moves swiftly especially today. Keep in mind, it costs a lot less to keep a customer than to gain a new one.
To avoid costly hits to your public rep, it’s usually a great idea to start your customer service off right. Begin by taking orders professionally, accurately, and quickly the first time. And strive to do this every time. Customers who have to wait on the phone, even a couple minutes, wade through an ocean of automated menu options, or give their life history just to place an order will go elsewhere. Give your valued customers many ways to easily order: credit cards, check, money order, by phone, by mail many ways and they’ll likely pull out that wallet.
When it comes to post sale complaints, take the same approach to efficiency you used during the order. Make your customer support fast and effective. If a customer has a complaint about a product, they couldn’t care less why it doesn’t work or why you goofed up they just want it taken care of. So by following a few steps, you can keep profitable customers when complaints come in:
* Listen to the customer. Let them rant and vent their beef with your product or service. Don’t interrupt, just pay attention to what they’re saying and why they’re unhappy. Put yourself in their shoes and ask, how would I feel if this happened to me what would I do?
* Empathize with them. Tell your unhappy customer, I can see why you’d feel that way. Be sincere and honest. If you’ve listened and put yourself in their shoes, you really will see why they feel that way.
* Apologize. Offer an apology for the problem or defect. In the spirit of going above and beyond the customer’s expectations, you could offer a coupon, freebie, or future discount as part of your apology. This approach definitely makes a difference.
* Fix the problem. Take care of the problem by offering a speedy refund, give them online credit, exchange their faulty product for a new one, or do anything else you need to do to make them happy customers once again. After they’re content, thank them for their business.
If your business is growing, you’ll likely have less and less time to deal directly with your customers. So it’s important that your employees have great customer service skills too. Run a workshop or conduct a half-a-day meeting just on the subject of customer service. Explain how and why the customer is the boss, then teach them how to show great service every time.
Follow through with your customer policies. You should devote every single day to making the customer’s experience better. All it takes is one snappy employee, one unhappy incident, to set your profits back considerably.
To make sure everything related to customer service is going well, routinely monitor complaints and comments. Even if a customer is unhappy during the order, it will likely end up as a complaint. And if the customer has a really good experience during the order, it will end up as a comment.
Start by using a complaint form. A place for the exact complaint, action taken to correct it, and person handling the customer should be the basics on every complaint form. Not only will you begin to see patterns in product defects, you’ll also begin to see patterns in employees who are not giving 110% every time. This is a good responsibility tool.
Next, use a comment form. This form can identify who is giving the best customer service, so you can reward and encourage them and others to keep it up.
Outstanding customer service is the foundation of any business. It’s the smiling faces, the warm tone in the voices, and the resolution of problems that keep customers coming back for more. A huge factor in building higher profits, even 300% or more, is your ability to treat your customers with value. If they feel like they are wanted and valued, they’ll always return to open their wallets.
Author: Michael Dennis
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Author:
Ed Sykes, December 7th, 2009
Outstanding customer service is the key to creating a successful organization during any economic time… but especially during challenging economic times. It’s amazing how most organizations will invest millions, if not billions, of dollars on new computer systems, new displays, new phone systems, and new marketing campaigns to try to acquire new customers. The moment of truth comes, however, when the new customer has first contact with these organizations. If the customer is ignored, disrespected, and disappointed with the customer service experience, that customer may never come back. When this occurs, these organizations apparently haven’t heard the old saying, “You only get one chance to make a great first impression.”
What about the present customer base? Many times these customers are treated with indifference and, in many cases, quietly go away to do business with a competitor.
Why not jumpstart your organization’s success with outstanding customer service? It doesn’t matter if you are involved in retail, restaurant management, consumer products, or even the government, customer service is being recognized as the key to increasing productivity, decreasing employee turnover, and increasing an organization’s bottom line. Especially during challenging economic times, the quality of your customer care determines if you remain in business to serve customers or cease to exist.
The following are eight secrets to giving outstanding customer service so that your organization will be successful:
1. Hire Right
Organizations that give outstanding service invest in hiring right each and every time. They realize that they want the best employees interacting with their customers. Who is the best customer service employee to hire? Hire for attitude, not for aptitude. Hire the employee that has a great customer service attitude and has a great personality, takes initiative, has great communication skills, can show empathy, and has an eye for detail. If a prospective customer care employee has a great attitude, you can always train that employee to learn the skills. Also, the employee should be a solution creator, not a problem maker.
2. Make Outstanding Customer Service Your Mission
What is your organization’s mission statement? What does the mission statement say about how you should treat your customer? Are you communicating this to all your employees, no matter what position they have in the organization? Take the time during meetings, e-mails, phone calls, and other communication opportunities to express the mission statement and how it relates to giving outstanding customer service. Ask during your meeting, “What did we do this week to live our mission statement and its customer service values?”
3. Create Standards
What is the minimum you will accept when giving outstanding customer service? Once you and your organization agree on your customer care standards, work to exceed your standards. Do not, especially during challenging times in your organization, sacrifice the quality of your customer service. Once you go below your standards, you customers will immediate know and take their business elsewhere. Take time to exceed your standards and be successful.
4. Train, Coach, and Mentor
Invest in continuous customer service training, coaching, and mentoring so that your customer service representatives “get it right” with each and every service situation. This is even more important during challenging economic times when organizations have the temptation to cut back on their customer service budgets. If your customer service budget is cut back, find creative ways to provide the training for your employees. Provide your employees with “lunch n’ learn” programs instead of full day programs, allow your more experienced employees to coach and mentor less experienced employees, provide online training, and look for “learning moments” within your customer service team meetings.
5. Take Care of Your Internal Customers
The best service oriented organizations understand that if you make your internal customers (employees, support departments, vendors, etc.) happy, this will translate to happy external customers. Invest in communicating your customer service goals with other departments and ask for their help. Also, create happy internal customers by delivering what you promised; whether it’s information you promised, a key task you promised to perform to help them help you, or giving them enough notice ahead of time so that their schedules and needs are met. This will translate to happier customers and a more successful organization.
6. Deliver More Than What Is Promised
Have you ever heard of the expression, “Promise them the moon and give them the universe”? Well, this applies to customer service. An important component of outstanding customer service is managing your customer’s expectations for service. If you promise a certain level of service and exceed that level of customer expectation, you have a happy customer who will come back again and again and tell others about your organization.
7. Ask for Feedback
Take time to acquire feedback from your customers. Embrace your customer’s feedback as opportunities to improve your service and create additional opportunities for you and your organization. If you ask for feedback, you must be willing to listen to the feedback and take positive action. For example, I am impressed when I go shopping in one particular supermarket. When I check out, the cashiers will always ask, “Did you find everything today?” Then they will actually wait for your answer before moving forward with the transaction. When was the last time you received that treatment?
8. Thank the Customer
The two most important words in customer service are “thank you.” Invest in the time to train your customer care representatives to thank the customer. Be sincere in your thanks by smiling, looking the person in the eye, or even if you are talking on the phone, smile and clearly say “thank you.” Thank customers for their time, for choosing your organization, for their patience, etc., but thank them. Thank your customers by starting a customer appreciation program. There are too many competitors, especially in a challenging economic environment, just waiting to take your customers. Create loyal customers who feel appreciated and will come back to your organization again and again.
Invest your time and efforts to applying the above customer service secrets, and you and your organization will be far ahead of the competition and excel in any economic time.
Author: Ed Sykes
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Author:
Peter Adebi, December 7th, 2009
The brightest business ideas and strategies will fail or yield suboptimal results in an obstructive culture. Resistance to change, territoriality, silo mentality, lack of trust, fear, unidirectional communication, inbreeding, blame game, egomania (sense of invincibility, of always being right, often leading to disregard for warnings, due process and the law) and limited leadership gene pools have prevented — and continue to prevent — some organizations from achieving the desired level of success.
Indeed, many corporations have fallen by the wayside due to their inability to overcome these cultural barriers. To ensure that culture doesn’t trump strategy, executives must develop a culture that supports rapid and constant change. They must develop a culture that supports innovation.
As Lewis D. Eigen, author and business leader, once remarked, “Yesterday’s miracle is today’s intolerable condition.” Considering that Eigen made this statement 21 years ago, the idea of innovation being critical to an organization’s success is not new.
What’s changed is the pace at which innovation occurs. In earlier times, organizations had six months or so to prepare for the impact of a disruptive invention or technology. Now, according to Juan Enriquez, CEO of Biotechonomy (a research and investment firm), founding director of the Harvard Business School Life Sciences Project, and author of the insightful book As the Future Catches You, companies have about 24 hours to prepare for change.
He also predicts this time frame will continue to shrink. For an organization to allow innovation to thrive and reap the resultant benefits, HR executives should consider the recommendations given below.
As Socrates said: Know thyself. Change can be initiated at any level of the organization. However, it has the farthest reach when it starts at the top.
Executives must have a personal commitment to taking the necessary steps and modeling the appropriate behaviors in order to reach the desired future state. The executive’s character — integrity, genuineness, consistency (especially between word and action) — is one of the most significant factors in establishing the credibility of a change initiative.
As John Tillotson, a 17th-century English clergyman, pointed out, “They who are in the highest places, and have the most power, have the least liberty, because they are most observed.”
While folklore teaches us to practice what we preach, it’s expedient for leaders to preach what they practice. The credibility of leadership is not based on promises but on past actions.
Attitude and disposition also have significant implications for leaders. Napoleon Bonaparte once described a leader as a “dealer in hope.” Transitioning from one state to another and improving or creating products can be challenging. Long transitions, difficulty predicting timelines for improvements or discoveries, “failed” experiments, etc., add to the level of complexity and stress that employees deal with.
To help employees maintain focus and sustain a high level of performance, a leader must carry the banner of hope. He or she needs to maintain a positive disposition toward achieving the desired change. This is critical as employees ride on the confidence of their leaders. If leadership caves, they will fall through as well. Style and preferences make a statement. When a candidate for a chief innovation officer position shows up in a bow tie and monkey suit, and accentuates the look by pulling out a 10-pound, first-generation laptop to demonstrate accomplishments, what runs through the mind of the interviewer? Or imagine the executives at Sony preferred Microsoft’s Xbox 360 for personal use while simultaneously touting Sony’s own PlayStation 3 as the most advanced gaming machine. Don’t let your preferences undercut your efforts in leading your organization toward continuous innovation.
Executives have to model the actions and behaviors they want to see in the workforce. They must share the “CEO” title and role in the process. I’m not talking about the chief executive officer here, but rather the chief example officer.
Introduce cultural elements that facilitate innovation. Transforming a culture is perhaps the most difficult and time-consuming type of change. Culture is a set of beliefs and practices that guide the actions and behaviors of a group. Such beliefs and traditions accumulate over time and are preserved for subsequent generations. Culture, therefore, is meant to withstand time.
Your organization’s ability to innovate and grow is subject to the limitations in your culture. Consider the importance of these aspects in attempting to turn your business culture into a change-inducing force: Common language: Organizations that have made headway in building an innovation-fostering environment create and use a common language. This language defines the organization’s future orientation. It identifies where the organization is headed and provides a road map for reaching the destination.
In his first year as CEO, Jerry Jurgensen introduced a new lingua franca at Nationwide — ImagiNationwide. The translation for ImagiNationwide is “how we think.” Jurgensen was on a mission to grow the company through expansion and innovation. The strategic imperatives and goals of the organization were to be defined and executed in the framework of ImagiNationwide. Other key lexicons he introduced include Drivers of Value Creation, Values Driving Behavior, Extending Our Boundaries and Culture of Discipline. Specific initiatives, performance standards and behavioral expectations were subsumed under each of these subtitles. Nationwide’s executives spent a great deal of time educating the workforce on this language. During orientation new employees learned what ImagiNationwide stood for and how they should be involved. Jurgensen achieved much of his goal of introducing innovative products and improving existing ones. He grew the net income of the company from $138 million in 2001, one year after he took office, to more than $1 billion in 2005.
A common language serves to galvanize the workforce and sharpen future focus.
Space:When developing an innovative culture, a deliberate effort must be made to create space for innovation. The word space is used here in a spacio-temporal sense. It’s not the same as adding on work or creating new goals. It involves making time and space for innovation to occur.
Fifteen percent of scientists’ time at 3M can be spent on projects of their choosing. During this “personal project” time, Art Fry, a 3M employee, improved upon the impermanent adhesive discovered earlier by a co-worker. The result is the Post-it note. Since its launch in 1980, this product continues to be a cash cow for 3M.
At Google, one of the world’s most innovative companies, the intranet is the platform for innovation. Every piece of work is posted on it. This enables employees to find similar projects or technologies, locate experts, and comment on or join projects. By laying work bare, Google eliminated the knowledge and communication barriers that arise from working in compartmentalized environments. This enables the company to benefit from fluid intelligence.
Fluid intelligence arises from sharing knowledge and information across traditional boundaries. It’s how leading organizations are responding to complex challenges and breaking new ground. The United States Army’s http://www.companycommand.com Web site is a poster child for fluid intelligence.
This site is a portal for company commanders to exchange and refine ideas. Beyond that, commanders in battlefront are able to ask questions of their peers across the world. This gives them access to the most current thinking and relevant experience on an issue in real time.
Corning Inc., named a Best Practice Champion in Organizational Change by the Best Practice Institute, ensures that work teams practice behaviors that foster innovation by appointing an innovation manager to work with each team. Also called learning coaches, these managers coach team members on how to overcome communication barriers and collaborate across boundaries in raising and solving complex problems.
Crossbreeding: Many organizations traditionally scout and hire people for leadership positions exclusively from within. Some insist on limiting C-level positions to close family and friends. Often referred to as inbreeding, this approach tends to overlook the vast pool of talent outside the organization. The right talent is the most critical ingredient in building an innovative culture. Whether the organization sees its competition as regional, national or global, it should cast its net accordingly in filling key positions.
If your organization wishes to achieve extraordinary results, it must be willing to make extraordinary moves. When Nationwide was looking to build its brand, it hired the brand manager at Victoria’s Secret. Innovative organizations look beyond their industry and direct competition for the right talent. They find an organization that has excelled or has a core competency in the area of the position they wish to fill. They then seek out the brains behind the organization’s success.
Women such as Indra Nooyi (CEO, PepsiCo), Ann Mulcahy (CEO, Xerox), and Pat Woertz (CEO, ADM), among countless others, prove that when it comes to talent, gender is not a factor.
Another trend that innovative organizations have adopted is hiring talent with future-oriented skills and capabilities as opposed to the prevalent practice of hiring for past but increasingly irrelevant experience.
As one of the top human resource executives at EDS, 35-year-old Tracey M. Friend had already founded and sold an Internet recruitment and training company. She had demonstrated the entrepreneurial acumen that EDS desired to cultivate. Recognized by Business Week as a champion of innovation, Marissa Mayer, vice president for search products and user experience, and the No. 3 executive at Google, was born in 1975. In the journey toward enduring success, age cannot be a roadblock.
Experimentation:Experimentation and prototyping are hallmarks of an innovative culture. Nonetheless, they are the least likely to be embraced. This is primarily because the Wall Street-driven short-term outlook doesn’t foster the type of long-term investment they require. The fact that an experiment might be conducted several times before a commercially viable product emerges is a deterrent. Business experimentation is a process of seeking and testing ideas about processes, products and services. In addition to accelerating learning, it is the engine of innovation. Wal-Mart learned this a long time ago and has successfully turned controlled, cost-effective business experimentation into a core competency.
James Cash, professor emeritus of Harvard Business School, and Keri Pearlson, research director with The Concours Group, attribute much of Wal-Mart’s success to a strong culture of experimentation. Among other organizations, they identified GE’s “imagination breakthroughs” as another successful experimental model.
Organizations that wish to invent the future and set the pace for their industries must become adept at experimentation.
Conclusion
For any of these recommendations to be effective, existing cultural barriers must first be identified and addressed. An executive might not even need the endorsement of the board of directors to tackle many obstructions to creating an innovative culture.
Most organizations have mission statements, and this can be a useful tool. However, a limiting mission statement can become an institutionalized framework that’s difficult to challenge and a potential constraint to innovation. It could prevent an organization from venturing into markets that hold promise. Nokia, a one-time paper mill, could not have become a global mobile phone giant if its mission statement had limited it only to paper production.
All efforts toward building an innovative culture should be centered on a thorough knowledge of the customer. Your organization is at a disadvantage if the competition knows the customer better than you do.
The Center for Creative Leadership recently conducted a worldwide survey on the future of leadership. Based on their findings, they recommend five new skills for the leaders of the future: co-inquiry (emphasizing cross-boundary collaboration and fluid intelligence), adaptability, risk taking, navigating challenges and paying attention. All five skills are critical in building a culture of innovation. Executives will do well to grow these skills in their organizations.
Author: Peter Adebi
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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