In these straightened times, its a great opportunity to review your business processes & establish the foundations for the future. Never let a crisis go to waste. Rahm Emmanuel (via WSJ) Lean means taking a fundamental look at your business & driving out waste. Some of these wastes will be obvious (work in progress, re-work,… Continue reading How do you ‘lean’ a business?
Tag: Business
Social Media – Recommend something
Recommend: to present as worthy of confidence, acceptance, use, etc.; commend; mention favorably This is possibly the hardest stage and the one that most often introduces cognitive dissonance. You spend the time establishing rapport, building your understanding, demonstrating your understanding and expertise, at some point you need to recommend a solution. Obviously you want to… Continue reading Social Media – Recommend something
Social Media – Demonstrate your skillz
Demonstrate: to make evident or establish by arguments or reasoning; to describe, explain, or illustrate by examples, specimens, experiments Now is the time to join the conversation. Relate to your audience, demonstrate that you understand their world and needs. Demonstrate that you are an authentic person not just a marketing drone. This is where a… Continue reading Social Media – Demonstrate your skillz
Social Media – build Understanding
Understand: to perceive what is meant; to accept tolerantly or sympathetically This is the sage advice about having two ears and only one mouth, listen to what is going on. Even if you already have a very strong market leading brand; before you wade in, listen and observe (lurk in the parlance). The social norm’s… Continue reading Social Media – build Understanding
Social Media – establishing Rapport
Rapport: relation; connection, esp. harmonious or sympathetic relation This is ostensibly the easy bit of social media; the ‘friending’ act is usually straight forward and simple and isn’t the whole point of “social media” to be, well social? As is often the case the answer is “Yes, but… I think that the difference is between… Continue reading Social Media – establishing Rapport
Social Media; what is it good for?
Specifically, how can we build business value using social media in all its forms. Lots of smart folk have been discussing the business models (esp Alan Patrick, Seth Godin, Fred Wilson, and Sean Park) and the use of social media (esp danah boyd, Chris Brogan, Tara Hunt, and our own Nigel Legg), you could even check… Continue reading Social Media; what is it good for?
Show me the Money – BSSP
In my earlier post, I revealed some analysis that I’d asked Nigel to undertake and my interpretation of that analysis. Here I offer some thoughts on what actions businesses might take away from this. The first thing to note is that unless you’re a Bank or car company, Government support for you probably won’t change… Continue reading Show me the Money – BSSP
Business Support Simplification – an analysis
Is it possible for a Government to provide simple support to businesses? Well the UK Government thinks it is, but recognises that it hasn’t been very good at the simple part. A few years ago some wag pointed out that there were over 3,000 different grants, programmes, schemes, advice networks, etc (nobody really knew the… Continue reading Business Support Simplification – an analysis
Serendipity engineering
How valuable is engineered serendipity to your business? On my way back from a meeting in the Watershed I thought I’d stick my head into UWE’s new business incubator facility in Bush House. Only opened just before Christmas they already have a good selection of tenants including the usual scattering of graduate start-ups (such as… Continue reading Serendipity engineering
Customer delight
In my last post I talked about business process modeling and how it could help understand the activities in a business prior to cost cutting for survival. In this post I’m going to riff on the concept of delighting your customers so they come back. The hygiene factor in delighting your customers is not pissing… Continue reading Customer delight