What's This Thing Called "Culture"?

A culture statement is used as a guide for a business entity to foster a congruent relationship with the people it works with. The culture within an organisation will attract a certain style of person to it (good or bad, productive or non-productive) and you can control this attraction by having a stated or desired culture and management working to maintain that culture within the organisation.

Culture / Values are beliefs which owners, management and employees hold in common and endeavour to put into practice. The culture guides management and employees in performing their work. Specifically, you should ask, "What are the basic beliefs that we share as a business?"

Just imagine a business employing a manager to operate the business. How dramatically would the business change under the following two different management styles!

General Manager #1

Manager #1 has an autocratic style and has always believed that employees steal from them, don’t work toward the best interest of the business and are only there for their self-interest. This manager does not believe that any of the staff are responsible enough to take on any task without full supervision. Manager #1 believes that their suppliers are trying to overcharge and under deliver and are always late with delivery. They also believe that their customers are out to take advantage of them and are always accusing them of wrongful dealings.

General Manager #2

Manager #2 involves the supervision staff members in their decision making process and treats all staff with respect. Manager #2 still makes the decision and does so with efficiency and the full loyalty of their staff members. Manager #2 understands that 95% of most problems arising in the workplace are system related and finds ways to combat and correct any problems. Manager #2 believes that the staff are doing the best that they can and given the choice only want to see the business improve.

In the example above the manager would create a culture for the business. If a culture is not designed for the business and that culture adhered to then the culture will be randomly selected by the management staff in place … mainly by their undying personality.

Icon Business Solutions have designed a culture for the business to foster growth and cooperation and believe that we will all benefit from adhering to the cultural attributes in place… therefore a culture statement has been designed to support us in our endeavours.

What’s yours?

A One-Page Strategic Plan? Yes - It Is Possible

A guest spot this week on PLANNING by Verne Harnish from www.Gazelles.com

Verne is the author of “Mastering the Rockefeller Habits” and runs a consulting firm in North America that provides executive education, coaching and technology services to help mid-market companies around the world build and execute a strategic plan.

VISION – A DREAM WITH A PLAN – Most people don’t have visions, they have

dreams. The one-page planning document guides you to answer 7 simple questions

around your dream – Who, What, When, Where, How, Why and the always difficult

“but Should we or Shouldn’t we?”

You’ll see these anchor questions at the top of each column of the one-page planning document and bolded below to provide you a verbal and visual clue to match the “how to” sections with the appropriate columns on the form.

TWO OVERARCHING IDEAS – Alignment and Simplicity. The one-page planning

document is designed to encourage simplicity (there’s not a lot of space to write, so you must be concise and focused) and alignment (think of the document as a crossword puzzle, where figuratively“4 down” needs to align with “7 across.”).

FOUR KEY DECISIONS to help you move forward with purpose and direction – Essentially the “bottom lines” of the form:

1) Getting the Right People (aligned with the Core Values and Purpose)

2) Long Term Goal – BHAG

3) Strategy – Brand Promises and X Factor

4) Short Term Focus – Critical Number(s) for the year and each quarter

If you get these decisions right, everything else falls into place much easier. And you’ll likely dominate your industry, have three to five times industry average profitability, have a lot of cash, and will grow revenues at twice the industry average. In addition, customers and employees will be attracted to your business.

DOWNLOAD PLANNING DOCUMENT here and contact Andy to help you put together your one-page plan for YOUR business.

Andy Burrows

Icon Business Solutions - Coaching in Business

Social Media: Hype or Must Have?

Where is the third most populous place on earth? It is not India or Indonesia, but Facebook. So with over 500million users and people spending a growing amount of time there every day, can you make money there as a small business owner?

I believe the answer is both yes and no. Sounds like I am sitting on the fence, but I am not. My limited experience of social media (SM) networks indicates that if you expect to make sales directly from its use, you are in for disappointment. Where SM works best is as a reputation builder and from there it is possible to leverage it to drive traffic to where you CAN convert interest into sales. Of course where reputations can be build they can also be destroyed and social networks will do this quicker than anything else. By their very nature they spread ideas and opinions very fast and generally have more credibility in the users eyes than traditional media devices.

If you are in the Business-to-Consumer market, I believe you MUST have SM networking in your marketing activity plan. Consumers are paying less and less attention to traditional advertising and more to what their friends are saying on Facebook or Twitter. The ROI is a bit harder to measure in the B2B space. How many overworked, financially stressed business owners spend much time twittering or on Facebook to find out information, or have an extra hour or two per day to update their profiles? I think the jury is still out, but never-the-less ALL business owners should up-skill themselves more in this area and quickly. The pace of change is increasing and who knows where it will lead. If you aren’t on the train now, when you finally can see how to leverage SM networks for your business, it may be too late to jump on. I believe social media networks should primarily be used to strengthen your BRAND in the marketplace and to increase the level of trust that customers and potential customers have in you. Provide interesting and useful content. Aim to help people and educate them. As the level of trust increases, so too should the referrals, inquiries and conversion rates at the pointy end of the sales process. Or so the theory goes.

So how should a business owner implement SM network tactics? The first thing to do is STOP. Take a bit of time to PLAN your activities and make sure you are doing it for the right reasons, know who your target is and how best to engage with them. Some questions to ask yourself:

1. What are the needs of my business?

2. What am I using the site for?

3. Whose attention am I trying to get

4. Which sites do I want to take on?

5. What will be the hub of my SM network and what are the spokes?

6. How can I drive traffic to my website or my place of business?

7. Who’s going to manage my page/blog/twitter/etc?

8. Who’s going to be the personality of my SM posts?

Once you have answered these questions you are a bit better prepared to start monitoring the SM networks you are likely to use and then jump in with your own activities. Then like any marketing activity, monitor, review and improve what you do. Get into it.

For help with your small business marketing needs, contact the Andy Burrows for a FREE no obligation review of your business at Icon Business Solutions