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Recommended Resource – Soup: A recipe to nourish your team and culture

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Soup: A Recipe to Nourish Your Team and Culture
by Jon Gordon

About the Reference

Soup: A Recipe to Nourish Your Team and Culture a business novel by Jon Gordon illustrates the significant impact senior leaders have on setting and nurturing their organization’s culture. Jon goes on to reveal how culture, in-turn, drives performance and ultimately an organization’s success.

Benefits of Using this Reference

StrategyDriven Contributors believe leaders at the top set the tone and tenor of the organization’s performance; that the workforce will, over time, embody a set of beliefs aligned with senior management’s decisions and actions.

StrategyDriven Contributors like Soup for the way in which the relationship between senior leader decisions and actions, organizational beliefs and work ethic, and overall company results is illustrated. Through the story of Soup, Inc., Jon reveals the nuances of decisions and actions by a CEO and how these effect those immediately around her and are then translated throughout the workforce. These easy-to-relate-to interactions follow closely with our own experience with personnel reactions in the workplace; making Soup‘s lessons both real and applicable.

The lessons in Soup go one step further; illustrating in an implementable step-by-step fashion how to positively impact and change an organization’s culture.

Soup‘s insights and implementable actions on how to constructively improve an organization’s culture makes it a StrategyDriven recommended read.

The Not-So-Secret Secrets to Making It Big: Five Surprisingly Doable Steps That Will Propel You to the Top

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Have you ever said to yourself, How in the world did [insert name of powerful business executive] get to where he is? He’s not any smarter than I am! Well, chances are you’re right. That executive who made it big probably doesn’t have more powerful brain cells than you… but what he (or she!) probably does have are three non-glamorous but crucial qualities: focus, discipline, and follow-up.

These three qualities might not sound extraordinary, but they can truly set you apart. The truth is, there isn’t a simple magic bullet that will propel you straight to the top. Success in any endeavor, especially business, really comes down to specific character traits and habits. If you have those qualities, you’ll excel. And if you don’t, you probably won’t.

I speak from experience: I have launched a number of successful business ventures, including OfficeMax and my newest business, Max-Wellness, a new and unique health and wellness chain. And I think that making sure that you constantly work with focus and discipline, and always, always follow up are crucial ingredients of getting the results you want – whether you’re launching a start-up, leading a team of employees, or going after that big promotion.

Before you ever craft a sales strategy or walk into a client meeting, whether or not you have a chance of success has already been decided by how you think about your work, what you have to do, and how you do it. Outcomes are shaped by your focus, discipline, and commitment to follow-up…or lack thereof. It’s important to remember that achievements are often less dependent on your technical know-how and more dependent on how you organize and think.

Read on to learn what these three qualities look like in practice, and how you can make them work for you:

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About the Authors

Michael Feuer cofounded OfficeMax in 1988 starting with one store and $20,000 of his own money, a partner, and a small group of investors. As CEO, he grew it to more than 1,000 stores worldwide with annual sales topping $5 billion. He is also CEO of Max-Ventures, a venture capital and retail consulting firm, and founder and CEO of Max-Wellness, a comprehensive health and wellness retail chain that launched in 2010. After opening initial laboratory test stores in Florida and Ohio, a national roll-out is now underway. To read Michael Feuer’s complete biography, click here.

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

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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.

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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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:20 — 33.5MB)

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The Advisor’s Corner – When Should Consultants Be Used?

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Question:

We’ve brought in a number of high priced consultants to perform a business case analysis. In hind sight, it appears we could have done the same work with internal resources. Why then did we hire these costly advisors?

StrategyDriven Response:

There are many reasons for hiring consultants. One or more of these likely applied in your situation:

  1. The consultants brought unique insights and experiences from outside your organization; enabling them to develop and present points of view that would otherwise have not been available for consideration.
  2. The organization staff did not have the capacity to perform the given task. Therefore, the consultants were hired to augment the labor pool.
  3. The existing staff had the capacity but not the knowledge and skills to perform the work. (Note that this appears to not be a factor given the question asked but is a legitimate reason for hiring consultants.)
  4. The organization is reluctant to implement the recommendations made by those internal resources not viewed as being experts in a particular area. Subsequently, the consultants are brought in because of their ‘expert status’ that leaders know will enable them to move forward with a desired course of action.

The reason for engaging consultants should always be understood prior to hiring them. Clear, quantifiable expectations should be documented within the statement of work that define the value they are to bring to the organization whether that is external knowledge and experience, labor augmentation, skills augmentation, or to drive a particular perspective. The consultants must be held to the achievement of these established goals in order to ensure they have met the return on investment promised by their employment.

Final Thought…

Using consultants should always be on a temporary basis. Some organizations fall prey to hiring consultants for temporary staff augmentation only to find that these individuals remain in position for years if not decades. Such circumstances highlight an understaffing condition that should be alleviated by the typically less expensive option of hiring additional resources rather than engaging costly consultants for extended periods.

Additional Resources

StrategyDriven Contributors further highlight the benefits of using consultants in the article, Independent Assessors.

Competing on Service: Eleven Ways to Beat the Competition by ‘Hugging’ Your Customers

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The U.S. economy is still in a deep funk, and for many small business owners that means business isn’t exactly booming. Forced to do more with much less, the small businesses that have managed to survive and even thrive during these tough times have recognized one important factor: You can’t always compete on price, but you can compete on service. And the best thing about great customer service is that providing it doesn’t cost you an extra penny.

When your competition is scrounging for customers, you have to hold yours close, and that starts with great customer service.

Today’s small business owners need to understand that cutting costs will not save their business. Remember, customers are concerned about their own financial security. When they walk into a business, they need to feel cherished and special. They need to be ‘hugged’ by great customer service. Customers don’t expect to get bottom-of-the-barrel prices everywhere they go, but they do expect to be treated with respect.

Great customer service doesn’t just happen. It starts with employees who have been trained in the science of service.

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About the Author

Edward D. Hess is author of Growing an Entrepreneurial Business: Concepts & Cases and is a professor of business administration and Batten Executive-in-Residence at the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia. He is the author of nine books, over 60 cases, and over 60 articles. His work has appeared in over 200 media outlets around the world including CNBC, Fox Business News, Dow Jones Radio, WSJ Radio, MSNBC Radio, NPR, Forbes, Bloomberg, BusinessWeek, CFO magazine, Financial Executive, Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Big Think, the Washington Post, and Financial Times. His book Smart Growth: Building an Enduring Business by Managing the Risks of Growth was named a 2010 Top 25 Business Book for Business Owners by Inc. magazine.