190 Posts found for Source_type: Article

If you have a disparate relationship between sales and marketing and want to get it together in rapid order than try the following gambit that has worked for Mark Walker, Head Coach of Marketing Whisperers, Ltd.

Give the sales team carte blanche to build an outline for a Marketing ROI model – without any marketing input. They will love it! Then tell the marketing team … [ Read more ]

Source: Culture Clash | Original Publication: CMO Magazine | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Organizational Behavior

Your first challenge is to attract the “ideators,” the people who traditionally come up with the biggest ideas, regardless of the topic.

Great ideators tend to be a bit competitive. Tap into that. Post challenges—through your intranet, bulletin board, or e-mail system—on behalf of clients, and offer prizes for anyone who can come up with the answer within a set period of time. Competitive, inventive people … [ Read more ]

Author: G. Michael Maddock | Source: Finding Your Company’s Great Thinkers | Original Publication: BusinessWeek | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

We’ve all seen those generic testimonials that are totally contrived: “Oh wow, this is the best product I ever bought and it changed my life forever!” You need real testimonials, and the best source is people that have bought your products. Send them an email that says, “Hey, hope things are going well. So happy to see how everyone is doing.” Then tell them to … [ Read more ]

Author: Michael Alexis | Source: Ramit Sethi Exposed: How He Earns Millions Blogging | Original Publication: ProBlogger | Subject: Marketing / Sales

• Providing clear minimum targets and acceptable levels of performance.
• Defining top performer profiles including extraordinary results and behaviors.
• Removing obstacles and constraints to performance (such as poor systems or processes).
• Improving the visibility of individual performance and results (such as employee dashboards).
• Creating transparency of performance relative to peers (such as league tables).
• Using top performers to coach and spread leading practices.
• Aligning talent management levers to motivate and develop performance.

[ Read more ]

Author: Catherine Farley | Source: Transforming Workforce Performance in the New Business Reality | Original Publication: Accenture | Subjects: Human Resources, Management

If the service you’re delivering is disappointing—if it’s average or spotty in a model you assumed would produce reliable excellence—a common explanation is a mismatch between your employees and the jobs you’ve tasked them to do. Sound at all familiar? If so, we advise companies to first try to get a sense of the size of the employee-job gap.

First: Go undercover. Get out of the … [ Read more ]

Author: Anne Morriss | Source: Only Human | Original Publication: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Customer-Related, Management, Organizational Behavior

New employees at Rite-Solutions get issued $10,000 worth of “opinion money” and are invited to become part of the company’s internal stock market for ideas. The stock market, named Mutual Fun, “is a mechanism to take the employee relationship beyond the transaction level—I pay you, you do a job—to an emotional level where people are entrusted with the future direction of the company, asked for … [ Read more ]

Author: Jim Lavoie | Source: Are you ‘Humbitious’ enough to lead? | Original Publication: Leader To Leader Journal | Subjects: Innovation, Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

Too often we find firms with more strategic clutter than clarity. Leaders in these firms have become enamored of the latest strategy twist and continually articulate a new way to position the firm. Nonetheless, it is possible to develop or enhance the required clarity. In one company, a newly appointed leader asked each of his direct reports to answer the question “What are we doing … [ Read more ]

Author: Dave Ulrich | Source: Aligning Firm, Leadership, and Personal Brand | Original Publication: Leader To Leader Journal | Subjects: Management, Strategy

One suggestion is to start with an exercise that is well labeled “Smart Bombing.” Analyze your company. What would you do if you were your closest competitor looking to attack your own company? Put yourself in your competitors’ position and think about how they might try to counter or off-set your advantages in the market place. Where are you possibly vulnerable?

Have your sales and … [ Read more ]

Author: Dana Baldwin | Source: Strategies and Processes for a Changing Economy | Original Publication: Center for Simplified Strategic Planning | Subjects: Competitive Intelligence, Management, Strategy

The Problem
Subordinates don’t want to offend the boss. Therefore, as you become more senior in an organization, you tend to get less feedback. Over time, you risk growing confused about your development needs and becoming isolated from criticism. While many senior executives do have outside mentors, because they do not directly observe the executive their advice is only as good as the narrative … [ Read more ]

Author: Robert S. Kaplan | Source: Top Executives Need Feedback—Here’s How They Can Get It | Original Publication: The McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Career/Employment, Personal Improvement

Separate jobs into three or four buckets based on their impact (low, moderate or high) on a handful of high-level corporate objectives such as revenue growth. Combine this with rating employees — A player, B player or C player, for example — based on their job performance. This dual-rating system can provide valuable insights into human capital deployment and compensation. For example, it can help … [ Read more ]

Author: Eric Krell | Source: Human Capital Management: How CFOs Manage Investments In Their Company’s Biggest Asset | Original Publication: Business Finance | Subject: Human Resources

Headsets.com president and CEO Mike Faith offers employees several opportunities to earn bonuses. The most unique one is a $50 award for complaining. “On their time sheets every week, people have an opportunity to make comments, from praise for another employee to complaints. I pick a bunch each week to pay $50 to. I’m most often eager to pay for complaints. Whether I think it’s … [ Read more ]

Author: Lesley Hensell | Source: The Root of All Great Service | Original Publication: CRM Buyer

Several studies have shown that when groups fail to arrive at decisions, it’s often because they devote too much time to finding common ground rather than weighing the pros and cons of what each person is saying. Meetings are especially ineffective when attendees begin by disclosing which way they are leaning; upon voicing an opinion about a decision, people are more likely to ignore information … [ Read more ]

Author: Matt Palmquist | Source: Listen First, Comment Later | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Change depends on the effectiveness of those providing the consequences – the sponsors of the change. But sponsorship is a cascading process and a “black hole” anywhere along the line will stop the change process below it. That’s why it’s essential to build a Sponsorship Spine from the bottom up. You can’t really appoint sponsors. You start by targeting the people who will need to … [ Read more ]

Author: Patrick Litre | Source: Realize results: Busting Three Common Myths of Change Management | Original Publication: Bain | Subject: Change Management

Organization design can and should provide an effective and practical resolution to many stubborn strategy and business-execution issues. If a redesign is to work, senior executives need to recognize that all three elements of design—structure, individual capabilities, and roles and collaboration—are essential in making a change.

If an organization’s structure is its skeleton, then individual capabilities are its muscular system, providing energy and vitality, … [ Read more ]

Author: Julie Kilmann | Source: Role Charters | Original Publication: Boston Consulting Group | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Sometimes workplace rules don’t have anything to do with customer engagement, a better workplace, limiting risk or liability, or avoiding catastrophes—they exist to make life easier for a small part of the organization without any regard for other more important factors. These rules ensure compliance with the policies of a particular department. And those in that department often fiercely guard and protect their rules.

[ Read more ]

Author: Tom Rieger | Source: Guarding the Guards: Crushing the Bureaucratic Rules that Limit Success | Original Publication: ChangeThis | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

37signals recently held a Comedy Central-style celebrity roast of its top-selling product in an attempt to find out what employees really thought were its weaknesses and ways it could be improved.

How was this different than the usual product meeting? For one thing, everyone was there. Designers, programmers, customer service folks—everyone had an opportunity to rip on something without worrying about hurt feelings. People … [ Read more ]

Author: Jason Fried | Source: Want to Know What Your Employees Really Think? | Original Publication: Inc. Magazine | Subject: Management

There’s a new story at your business every day. Maybe you dreamed up a great idea or shot down a bad one. Maybe a customer surprised you with the way he or she uses your product. Perhaps a client or an employee came to you with a suggestion for something you’d never thought of before.

There are hidden opportunities in these everyday moments. They make great … [ Read more ]

Author: Jason Fried | Source: Telling Your Company’s Story in Video | Original Publication: Inc. Magazine | Subject: Marketing / Sales

Every change initiative has its own unique risk profile. Bain has identified 30 specific risks that threaten to disrupt change efforts, things like poor sponsorship and change overload. These risks tend to occur with predictable patterns over the life cycle of a change. But only a handful of these risks determine success or failure at each stage. At the beginning of a change initiative, for … [ Read more ]

Author: Patrick Litre | Source: Realize results: Busting Three Common Myths of Change Management | Original Publication: Bain | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

Looking back at past forecasts and their realizations can help prevent overconfidence and suggest places where unexpected factors may emerge. Recently, researchers Victor Jose, Bob Nau, and Bob Winkler at Duke University proposed new rules to score and reward good forecasts. An effective “scoring rule” provides incentives to discourage the forecaster from sandbagging, a proverbial problem in corporate life. For example, Gap Inc. measures the … [ Read more ]

Author: Tim Laseter | Source: Cleaning the Crystal Ball | Original Publication: strategy+business | Subject: Management

Rather than the typical scenario, in which a supervisor decides whom to hire, the employees who will be the new worker’s peers make the choice. Hiring managers tend to select applicants who think like them, but that often fails to create the best group chemistry. “The hiring teams do a much better job of picking people and you’ve got people surrounding that new person who … [ Read more ]

Author: Lynn Chambers | Source: Weaving a New Corporate Culture | Original Publication: CFO | Subject: Human Resources