Posts

Share Your Financial Results and Improve Performance

Should you share your firm’s financial results with this staff? This is one of the questions that business owners face every day, and all too often the answer is no.

But no is probably the wrong answer. An organization can very often improve performance and get its employees bought into it’s mission and purpose simply by sharing financial results with the employees.


Hi there! This article is available for free. Login or register as a StrategyDriven Personal Business Advisor Self-Guided Client by:

Subscribing to the Self Guided Program - It's Free!


 


About the Author

Bill Hettinger, Ph.D. is an internationally known consultant, educator, and thought leader who has trained numerous students, business owners, and managers in finance, entrepreneurship and small-business creation.

His latest book is Finance Without Fear: A Guide to Creating and Managing a Profitable Business. Finance Without Fear is an easy to understand guide to finance that not only explains the key concepts of finance, but also explains what the numbers mean and how finance can be used to create a business with a competitive advantage. He can be contacted at [email protected]. To read Bill’s complete biography, click here.

Guardrails: Keep Your Projects Out of the Weeds

StrategyDriven Strategic Planning ArticleThink about if there were no guardrails on the freeway. It would be all too easy to run off the road and find yourself hurt and way off the fast track to your end destination.

Business is a fast and zigzagging road – a road that needs guardrails to keep businesses and projects on track. On your road to success (whether it be to increase profits, become an industry leader, capture more market share, etc.), you need to establish your own guardrails so you do not drive your company or project into the weeds.

Establish Guardrails

I worked in several large companies during my corporate career, and I can’t tell you the number of pet projects that became my pet peeves. I saw literally millions and millions of dollars flow into projects that had no real metrics and timeline in place. In other words, these projects had no guardrails.

You can ensure that your projects don’t waste time or money by simply putting the correct boundaries in place. You must think, “this is what we’re trying to drive to and if we don’t get to it at this point, we’re going to go back to the drawing board to go after the next idea.”

Proper Boundaries

To establish proper boundaries, you must do the following:

  1. Identify the major steps (or zig zags) that will take you to your goal. Example: Zig #1: Drive to profitability – have product bring in $20K in revenue.
  2. Define when you have completed your zig zag. Example: We will have sold 15K units of product.
  3. Set a deadline to assess your team’s progress. Example:We will have sold 15K units of product and bring in $20K in revenue by April 2012, or we will go back to the drawing board.

Zigzagging to Success

Establishing guardrails is just one element of the entire Zig Zag Principle. I encourage you to be strategic and deliberate about the way you approach your business. It may seem counterintuitive, but zigzagging to your goal (rather than charging straight for it), with the correct guardrails in place, will lead you and your business to success.


About the Author

Rich Christiansen describes himself as ‘a perfectly good business executive, turned entrepreneur.’ Before becoming an entrepreneur, he was a skilled executive and market innovator in the corporate world. He was General Manager at both Mitsubishi Electric and About.com. After 20 years in the technology industry, he discovered that his true passion and talent is in launching start-up companies.

Rich has founded or co-founded 32 businesses. These ventures were bootstrapped with just $5,000 to $10,000 of starting capital. Eleven of those businesses were miserable failures, but eleven have became wildly successful multi-million dollar businesses. Rich has identified The Zig Zag Principle as his secret formula for optimizing success while minimizing failure. It is also his methodology for setting goals and living a happy, healthy life. To read Rich Christiansen’s full biography, click here.

Corporate Cultures – Individual Initiated, Rules and Standards Controlled Environment

The Individual Initiated, Knowledge and Skills Controlled Environment represents a culture that is moving toward greater consistency in action if not action initiation. These organizations are still largely guided by local controls and individual contributors and lack the more rigorous oversight and activity reinforcement realized in supervisory and leader led companies. Thus, these organizations gain a limited amount of increased consistency while still maintaining a high level of innovation and flexibility.


Hi there! Gain access to this article with a StrategyDriven Insights Library – Total Access subscription or buy access to the article itself.

Subscribe to the StrategyDriven Insights Library

Sign-up now for your StrategyDriven Insights Library – Total Access subscription for as low as $15 / month (paid annually).

Not sure? Click here to learn more.

Buy the Article

Don’t need a subscription? Buy access to Corporate Cultures – Individual Initiated, Rules and Standards Controlled Environment for just $2!

Corporate Cultures – Supervisor Initiated, Knowledge and Skills Controlled Environment

The Supervisor Initiated, Knowledge and Skills Controlled Environment represents a somewhat centrally controlled environment. This culture set benefits from greater local control than the leader initiated organization while still maintaining a degree of oversight that enhances centralized direction setting as compared with individual initiated cultures. However, the general lack of guiding processes or standards allows a great deal of operational flexibility; limiting the degree of consistency gained by these organizations.


Hi there! Gain access to this article with a StrategyDriven Insights Library – Total Access subscription or buy access to the article itself.

Subscribe to the StrategyDriven Insights Library

Sign-up now for your StrategyDriven Insights Library – Total Access subscription for as low as $15 / month (paid annually).

Not sure? Click here to learn more.

Buy the Article

Don’t need a subscription? Buy access to Corporate Cultures – Supervisor Initiated, Knowledge and Skills Controlled Environment for just $2!

Talent Management Best Practice 2 – Maintain Up-To-Date Job Descriptions

Today’s fast moving marketplace demands that companies be in an almost constant state of change in order to remain competitive. Subsequently, businesses reorganize, new roles are created, and existing positions eliminated on an almost continuous basis. Throughout these changes, it remains important to keep all organization members well aligned and focused on achieving the company’s mission goals. To do this requires ongoing retranslation of these goals to the day-to-day activities of the workforce. Often overlooked but important to maintaining alignment is the updating of job description documents.


Hi there! Gain access to this article with a StrategyDriven Insights Library – Total Access subscription or buy access to the article itself.

Subscribe to the StrategyDriven Insights Library

Sign-up now for your StrategyDriven Insights Library – Total Access subscription for as low as $15 / month (paid annually).

Not sure? Click here to learn more.

Buy the Article

Don’t need a subscription? Buy access to Talent Management Best Practice 2 – Maintain Up-To-Date Job Descriptions for just $2!

Additional Resource

The link between job descriptions, employee behaviors, and performance reviews is further highlighted by Garry Ridge in his book, Helping People Win at Work: A Business Philosophy Called “Don’t Mark My Paper, Help Me Get an A”. Listen as Garry shares his insights on improving workforce performance with us during his StrategyDriven Podcast interview.