Lesson from Drucker

Peter Drucker was a world leader in management theory, ideas, and trends. Here are some lessons you could learn from Peter Drucker.

1. "Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. A product is not quality because it is hard to make and costs a lot of money, as manufacturers typically believe. Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality."
   
2. "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."
   
3. "The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said."
   
4. “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
   
5. "Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes."
   
6. "Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility."
   
7. “The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say 'I'. And that's not because they have trained themselves not to say 'I'. They don't think 'I'. They think 'we'; they think 'team'. They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but 'we' gets the credit.... This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.”

Think about the above seven quotes every week and how it applies to you and your organisation. Remember, you lead your organisation or area of influence and that puts you in a position of responsibility.

Put the first quote on your wall and stare at it for 10 minutes while thinking about what Drucker is saying and how if effects every level of your organisation. Do you and your staff already recognise this fact? What can you do to bring this thinking and focus to your organisation?

Get to know your customer

I've been reminded recently about the importance of getting to know your customer and ensuring that you do regular customer research.

The question that always comes up when someone want to do customer research is: "How do I get customers to respond; and when they do respond to actually complete the whole survey?"

This is a difficult question to answer, but from my own experience and reading other people experiences there are only two real answers:

• Keep it short;
  
• Offer an incentive.

In the past I've offered a free trip to the Gold Coast, and this got us a very good response rate and an acceptable drop off rate for what was quite a long survey. I don't normally reccommend long surveys; but when I stepped into this company they had no idea of their customer base and we needed to get a lot of information relatively quickly so we could move forward with some education on our current audience. This only worked as we had a reasonably high value incentive to offer.

The easiest way to do surveys where you don't want to offer a major prize or incentive is to create short, simple surveys on a singular issue. Sometimes these short surveys can be the most powerful and informative as they get right to the point of only the one issue.

A great customer survey is the one recommended by Ben McConnell in his recent blog post entitled Remodeling Customer Surveys. Ben's customer feedback survey uses just four very powerful questions focusses around the customers experiences when dealing with your company. This survey will provide you with great feedback on customer satisfaction and experiences, give you and indication of how much word of mouth marketing your are acheiving, and what your company can do to improve.

My final word on customer surveys is this: Keep them simple, know what information you want to gather, and always follow through on the information you gather.

Excercise 4 Life

In a world where obesity is endemic i think that Amanda Imber has hit the nail on the head with her article entitled "Finding Inspiration on the Treadmill"

The gist of Amanda's article is that research has been done on the effect of excercise on our ability to be creative. The results are very conclusively in the "Excercise = More Creativity" corner and that a simple 5-10 minutes exercise before a brainstorming or creativity session will give results that non-exercised people could only dream about.

Thanks to Amanda and Get to the Po!nt for their great information!!

Zeald - Free Website Seminar

Are you based in New Zealand?

Do you have, or want to have a website?

Do you want that website to work and actually get you the rewards that the web can offer?

Some partners and I are going to a free seminar held by Zeald in Albany, Auckland on Weds the 21st May. This was one of the benefits of visiting the Small Business Expo a few weeks ago. The mini seminar (20mins) at the expo gave a brief introduction into what this half day seminar will teach us. The brief of the Seminar is:

Secrets of Website Persuasion
Discover How To Turn Your Website Into One of The Most Powerful Sales and Marketing Tools Employed Within Your Business! Learn How To Create a Powerful Website That Persuades Your Website Visitors To Take Action!

Get along if you are able, otherwise Zeald runs seminars thoughout New Zealand all though the year.

Recorded Message Voodoo

I just got a phone call from my mobile provider Vodafone New Zealand asking me to pay my overdue bill. Now, i pay my bill every month, i just pay it on the last possible day before i am cut off so I've come to expect this, but there is a twist. The phone call was a prerecorded message and was not tailored to me at all. There is nothing i hate more than getting a phone call and saying hello only to hear back "this is a pre recorded message from...." I hang up straight away each and every time, no matter what.

A tip... do not do this. It is bad marketing, let alone a very poor attempt at communication as the message NEVER get through.

As for Vodafone? Send me a simple SMS message with my overdue amount at an early phase, and keep sending them to me every second day until i pay up. Vodafone NZ used to do this and it worked well for me, the new way doesn't.

SMS reminders work extremely well as they aren't intrusive and they stay on the phone as a permanent reminder.

Get to the Po!nt

I get this in my email inbox every day, and every day it adds value to my morning and gives me something to take away and use, or at least a little bit of a new idea.

Go to here to view the archive/treasure chest of information ad to subscribe.

6 Ways to get Happy Employees

One of the hardest things when running a small business is to keep employees motivated and pointed towards the common target. If a small business has unmotivated employees the results can be disastrous as the employees are generally the face of your company and can often have a long and lasting effect on your business through their work and behaviours. Often making sure employees falls to the bottom of the list of things to do... after all, in small business there is always too much to do for the owner.

Motivating employees is hard, no doubt about it, but other than being an inspirational public speaker there are ways to get the job done and get your employees happy and motivated; and motivation doesn't mean paying them more!! The most effective means of motivating employees always has and always will remain free.

1. Thank your employees for their hard work. A simple "Thank You" is often the most powerful thing a manager can do. It is also the one thing many managers don't do often enough.

2. Celebrate their successes with them, after all, they are your successes too!

3. Give them something small that will make life easier every day. It could be a proper coffee machine, free supplies of Red Bull, a nice chair to sit on. These things don't cost much but make work that much more enjoyable and comfortable. (And if it involves caffeine then your employees will also be more productive!!)

4. Empower your employees. Not all the time, but at least some of the time. Show you have trust in their abilities.

5. Shout lunch for everyone once in a while. You will be surprised how happy your staff will be after. An amazing side effect of this is that your staff will actually tell you about new ideas they have had which will make your business run more efficiently and make you more money.

6. Education. Help your employees learn, and give them some freedom to learn. It doesn't really matter what, but learning something new stimulates the brain, encourages creativity, and gives people a sense of accomplishment and success. If an employee learns how to be a better sales person, office assistant, janitor, or accountant isn't that better for your business too?

Please post your comments below on interesting ways that you've been motivated or motivated others.