Innovation & Survival: Two Sides of the Same Coin

                                                 CHALLENGE THE STATUS QUO FOR INNOVATION                      Photo CreditDabra Larson

Business is a Two Way Street, Either Innovate or Perish

Any business organization is a highly complex system that is comparable to advanced machinery. Like a machine it has multiple components, interacts with the environment in which it operates, needs to be operated by skilled people, exists for a specific purpose and consists of intertwined internal processes culminating into intricate input-output cycles. It must be observed here that any machine needs to be upgraded to an improved version over a period of time. This is necessitated by a variety of factors including but not limited to emergence of a better technology, enhanced ease of operation, wider service objectives, increased competition, changes in the user tastes & preferences, etc. This up-gradation is necessary for the machine to remain relevant to the users it is designed to serve or there is a clearly defined path to oblivion by being labelled as obsolete. And the business world is no different, as we have numerous examples of huge businesses with highly successful product categories which were doing very well at one point in time but they failed to adapt themselves to the dynamic environmental changes over a period of time. Today these businesses stand relegated to the annals of business history as their glory has diminished with time.

“One Best Way” Becomes Ineffective with Onslaught of Time

The businesses must take a cue from this point that if they have been successful during the past years or decades the credit goes to their struggle which led to the winning innovation responsible for their success during their start-up phase, where they could come out with an effective strategy which worked very well for them in addressing the specific set of environmental forces prevailing at that point in time. As the time passes by, changes happen in the market, competition, technology, customer preferences, etc, which render the erstwhile success strategy redundant, it ceases to add any value in the changed circumstances, on the contrary it gets in the way of the progress of the business, because the executive team is overtly obsessed by the "one best way" of doing the things as that had always worked in the past. The real problem is the obsession of the executive team with the "one best way" of doing things. But they miss out on re-validating their set of assumptions which were deeply embedded into the development of that "one best way". The “one best way” which earlier worked for the business loses its relevance in the context of the changing business realities where the earlier assumptions do not hold any ground, as these assumptions need to be questioned on a continuous basis to successfully address the challenges posed by the dynamic environmental uncertainties.

Businesses Must Innovate to Safeguard against Extinction

As there is a continuous need to carry out maintenance of a machine, similarly an organization must also be continuously monitored for any ailing divisions that may be requiring surgery or some other treatment. The emphasis must be laid on innovation, as the executive team needs to conduct in depth research to decipher the prevailing business trends and generate improved solutions to create value for their business organization. A very critical point to be noted here is the concept of preventive maintenance, where the catch is to proactively maintain the machine through continuous inspection and ensuring that the machine is kept in an efficient working state by carrying out proactive repairs before any actual work loss or breakdown occurs. Here if any complacency sets into the approach chosen by the executive team of the business organization, it necessarily overlooks the highly critical innovation through preventive maintenance resulting in guaranteed inefficiencies in conducting its business leading towards the impending organizational failure. As compared to the proactive preventive maintenance adopted for up-keeping the machines, the business organizations must also prevent the organizational break down by converting the challenges faced by them into opportunities through proactive preventive maintenance leading towards effective innovation. If the proactive preventive maintenance is not adopted by the business organizations then sooner or later an epidemic or a catastrophe hits them, putting them in a distressful situation, where getting into the fire-fighting mode is the only option left with them. In such a state of distress, it is quite natural for the business organization to shift its complete focus & energy from its core business objectives towards the fight against extinction, but with little chances of survival.

Innovative Mind Set: Key to Business Survival

Innovation is not necessarily a paradigm shift bringing about business disruption as it may come in multiple forms. For a marketing division it may be an act of identifying new uses its products can serve with an entirely untouched market segment, for the production team it may be an equivalent of a more efficient production process capable of delivering better quality in lesser time & cost, for a chip design organization it may be introduction of a more compact sophisticated design capable of delivering better value, reliability & speed as compared to the previous versions, etc. So a progressive organization needs to continuously challenge the status quo. Its executive team must be intelligently obsessed with the idea of innovation by identifying organizational challenges and converting them into opportunities. This innovative approach needs to be an organization wide culture for an exponential impact on the overall functioning and well being of the organization under consideration. It is a very widely known fact that the organizations which were considered very successful for a series of decades eventually became obsolete because they could not adapt themselves to their changing realities. The real challenge for the progressive businesses lies in continuously reinventing themselves through an innovative mindset to ensure that they remain relevant to the changing business landscape by re-validating their assumptions and redefining their new set of values, beliefs & assumptions on which their complete organizational competencies, strategies, effectiveness, success and long term survival are based.

Sanjay Sharma

EFFECTIVE GOVERNANCE MODEL FOR BUILDING ETHICAL ORGANIZATIONS

Many Large Organizations Suffer from Rampage Unethical Practices

The problem with our world starts when people with vested interests get into positions of authority. Many large organizations suffer from rampage unethical practices conspired by a very small number of people in influential & authoritative positions. There are obvious undesirable fall-outs, for the stake holders, of not being able to check this menace before it manifests into volcanic eruptions causing shock-waves leading to ripples of panic & devastation right through the organization and beyond

Symptoms Exhibited by Suffering Organizations

Organizations suffering from the impact of unethical practices may exhibit symptoms including but not limited to clandestine predetermined customary commissions, nepotism, favoritism and unhealthy politics aimed at promoting the vested interests of few favorites at the expense of the organization as well as the other interest groups including all ethical actors putting them in a strongly disadvantageous position. Work cultures marred by this evil strangle creativity, innovation, justice, growth, motivation and prosperity. In all likely-hood such a trend plummet the organization towards a downward spiral of hopelessness, destitution & complete loss of focus on the organizational values and objectives

Recipe for an Ethical Organizations?

Solution lies in whole hearted adoption of these rich practices within the governance framework of your organization

1.       Unwavering commitment of the stake holders towards building an ethical organization

2.       Keeping aside a budget towards accomplishing “Ethics and Compliance”

3.       Organization wide dissemination of the code of conduct manual, detailing the definition of integrity violation for identification & prevention of corrupt practices

4.       Building complete transparency around the processes and systems of your organization

5.       Carefully structuring the whistle blower policy

6.       Conducting surprise inspections of the individual work stations 

7.       Benchmarking organizational costs with contemporary market practices & scenario through real time studies and researches

8.       Ensuring optimum frequency of intra organizational employee transfers in case of a single business entity and inter organizational employee transfers in case of a multiple business entity. This also takes care of the critical business areas such as business continuity planning by lining up future business leaders capable of shouldering bigger responsibilities of your organization.

9.       Making contribution towards Knowledge Management system an integral component of the employee KPI (key Performance Indicators) matrix

10.   Developing significant overlaps in the employee KPI matrices as a proactive measure towards implementing a strong checks & balances mechanism.

11.   Carrying out unexpected audits of the organizational processes

12.   Zero tolerance policy for integrity violation
13.   Continuous reviewing and updating of the  governance framework to keep it effective and relevant to the changing times

Sanjay Sharma

TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT - TIMELESS & ALL PERVASIVE PARADIGM

Assume Complete Responsibility for Your Present Situation

Whenever you happen to experience an urge for challenging the status quo for reasons ranging from modifications in the personal goals to the observed deviations in the execution of your business plan, it is only wise to assume complete responsibility for your present situation, without even the faintest impression of any lesion to the external environment, people or factors around you. It is a great idea to assume 100% responsibility for your present situation, to be able to effectively handle these challenges. Hiding behind any person, circumstances or justifications is no solution. Instead getting in the middle and handling the bull by its horns by taking complete responsibility for the debacle is the only way out. As most of the people, you may like to trust with the responsibility of solving your problems, may not match the quality of self service solution that you are capable of producing for your pressing priorities

Focus On Continuous Improvement in Your Action Zone

Total quality management teaches us the importance of exploring new horizons by focusing on continuous improvement in our action zone. Please note that the emphasis here is not on being perfect, but on the contrary this is a system which believes in the capability of humans to learn from their mistakes leading towards continuous improvement. The other important tenet is the belief that whatever may be the level of excellence accomplished by you , it can always be improved further by identifying some flaw somewhere which can be rectified  to move from good to better , where best is yet to come. The beauty of this paradigm is that it is timeless and all pervasive with no exceptions

Generate a Win-Win Situation for All Concerned

For you to know that whether you have worked out the right solution, the basic test lies in generating a win-win situation for all concerned. The simple format for achieving this is to list down the systems that your solution is going to affect, then empathize with each element to understand weather the solution provided by you would be acceptable to you if you were in their shoes. All affirmative answers are an indication of your awesome solution which has the capacity of propelling you, in the right direction, from good to better.

Sanjay Sharma

SPIRIT OF NATIONALISM - SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY, 360 DEGREE LEADERSHIP & PERSONAL EFFECTIVENESS

  

Show The Path and Lead The Way

As a business do you realize the importance of your day to day conduct, in motivating and inspiring people, who come in your direct or indirect contact. There is no better way than modelling when it comes to showing the path and leading the way. In a scenario where technology, GDP, economy, innovation, education standard, living standard, industrial growth rate and most of the tangible parameters seem to be doing well, still we know that there is some-thing more that is needed to move the nation to a point where it can keep its head high and be self reliant in taking its own decisions rather than depending on others to support its cause. This is the time to redefine the concept of social responsibility as linked to the spirit of nationalism and 360 degree leadership through accomplishment of personal effectiveness

Align Your Own Work With That Of The Nation

Whether you may be in a job or business, it always pays to be effective in your role by being helpful to those around you. You must constantly focus your energy on the effectiveness with which you are contributing towards the goals of your department, organization or business. Healthy competition or complementing, the strengths of your co-worker – countrymen, must be the key word to watch for.  Delving deeper into this concept will make you align your own work with that of the nation as a whole. You need to understand that for your country to be stronger, it needs to possess more wealth, for the country to possess more wealth the countrymen must be productively employed to generate that wealth for your nation

Strengthen  The Society & Culture by Contributing Towards The True Spirit of Nationalism

The social responsibility must not be looked upon as a mere tool , only for gaining appreciation and meeting mandatory compliance norms, but this must also be a measure of setting up of right example and promoting brotherhood, harmony and nationalism amongst the people as and when they come in contact of your business. This is the only way to bear the torch of nationalism to a level where each torch in-turn ignites a multiple number, this continued process has the potential to transform the business landscape and strengthen the society & culture by contributing towards the true spirit of nationalism through personal effectiveness

Sanjay Sharma

CORRECT VALUE SYSTEM, PREREQUISITE TO ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS

Is Incorrect Value System Affecting Your Business Performance?

Many a times the problems and difficulties faced by an organization are on account of not living its correct values. This anomaly could emanate from any of these causes

• ·           There are no clearly spelt-out organizational values.· 
•          The values are clearly written down but the behavior of your organization is not consistent with these values.·         
•      Value statement is flawed as it doesn’t reflect the correct values of the organization, thereby rendering all further implementation or evaluation efforts, an exercise in futility

All  Successful Businesses Live Their Correct Values 

Let’s look at the proactive solution to facilitate accomplishment of optimum organizational effectiveness, through identification, crystallization and implementation of the correct values by your organization. Being aware of the correct values of your organization is a very critical component and a key driver of the strategic, tactical or operational decisions made in your organization. Which means every worker on the shop floor, every field sales officer, every manager, every board member is aware of the organizational priorities. This facilitates uniformity in organization wide responses across different geographies, departments, hierarchies, business conditions, etc, leading towards the predictable service or product quality delivered to the vendors, suppliers and the internal as well as the external customers.

This clearly explains why the best of the organizations across the globe have a consistent track of the way in which they conduct their business. Implementation of clearly defined values lies at the heart of all successful organizations, whether local or global.

Check-list to Evaluate Whether Your Business Is Suffering From This Anomaly

1.     Do you receive frequent customer complaints regarding quality of the product/ service   delivered?
2.    Do you find that motivating your employees towards higher productivity levels is a big challenge?
3.    Have you noticed a lack of coordination between different departments/ teams in your organization      for even simplest activities?
4.        Despite your continued efforts you are not able to build a healthy brand image in the eyes of your customers?

If the answer to one or more of these questions is yes, then your organization needs to revise its value statement by identifying its correct values and ensuring that its behavior is consistent with these values for accomplishing organizational effectiveness.

For any assistance, you may write to us at  admin@successnsynergy.com  or visit our website  www.successnsynergy.com . It shall be our pleasure to assist you..

Sanjay Sharma

7 Tips for Setting-Up Successful Retail Business

1. Know the Buying Preferences of your Target Segment

The customers are continuously looking at the innovative ways, best suited to them, for satisfying their needs. The real test lies in finding out what are they looking for. The next step is to see whether you are already doing it or not. If you are already following that practice you just need to go deeper into it to find the new depth of that practice, if this is not already happening in your organization try conducting a pilot test to learn if it really has the promise to warrant an organization wide initiative. If the pilot runs well, this is the time to see if it can either open a new insight for the marketers or it can be used to strengthen the existing offer to the market.  

2. Ensure Competitive Positioning of  Your Brand

Let the customers know what they can expect from your brand. It is not always a good idea to take competition head on, either in terms of the features or the pricing. A better option could be to work a little extra to highlight a niche feature where sufficient market exists for it and price it at a reasonable level so as to match the buying capacity of the target market, as well as leave substantial surplus on the table, for the business to fuel its motivation to carry out the project in the long run.

3. Use Footfalls Criteria to Choose your Retail Location

Where to locate your retail outlet? This is a very import and complex question. The answer to this question can be obtained either by finding a location where your target customers flock in large numbers, numbers large enough to be a true representative of the sample size capable of replicating the major characteristics of your target segment or by analyzing the presence of other retail businesses, focusing on similar target segment, indicative of successfully verifying the footfall criteria. The latter approach can prove to be a glittering death trap for your business, if such outlets are struggling to achieve their vital numbers including requisite footfall & profitability. Thus conducting first hand primary research, which may seem to be a time consuming-painstaking affair, is always a better option because it can provide you the extra dose of much needed confidence, in case the business goes through a rough patch during the initial phase.       

4. Deploy Attractive Promotion Strategy & EffectiveCommunication Tools

The customers are actively searching for special deals, promotions, clearance sales & bundled offers. This aspect of consumer behavior offers a great opportunity for retail businesses to proactively design promotions, capable of creating a favorable perception in the minds of the customers, thereby grabbing the attention of customers with a fair possibility of getting a share of their wallet.

It is seen that many a great promotions fail to create the desired customer response due to the ineffective communication tools deployed by the retailers. It is important to note that to create a promotion that can work is only one part of the story whereas to deploy the right communication tools for effectively delivering the message to the customers is a totally different ball game. For a promotion to be effective it needs to simultaneously address both these concern areas.    

5.Train your Sales Staff for Achieving  Customer Satisfaction

Customers are very demanding and they expect correct & timely resolution of their queries by the attending retail staff. The focus should not be just on closing the sales but on closing the sales through customer satisfaction because the statistics reveal that in the long run a satisfied customer would good mouth your retail business to at least three people whereas a dissatisfied customer would bad mouth your retail business to at least nine people. So decide for yourself if you can possibly afford to take the risk of creating dissatisfied customers by not having adequately trained sales staff.

Most retail organizations confuse employee training with the tons of organizational processes & product knowledge provided to their sales staff in the garb of training, resulting in information overload to which the retail employees are generally subjected. Whereas training here refers to   building the capability of the retail employees to take informed decisions in the light of the organizational process & the product manuals, in conjunction with a judicious mix of correct ettiquettes, respectful communication & customer friendly attitude ,creating a magnetic effect on the customer, resulting in repeated purchases & good mouthing to others thereby building healthy brand perception, customer loyalty & last but not the least ,the long term profitability of your retail business.  

6. Proactively Look for Customer Feedback

Customer is the most important link in the entire retail chain. If you have any doubts please review any piece of available marketing literature which keeps referring that it all starts (with identifying customer needs) and ends (with taking post consumption/usage customer feedback) with listening to the customer.

The success of most retail organizations hinges on their capability of engaging with their customers in the complete decision making cycle of the customers to foster a greater understanding of the needs and buying preferences of the customers and to know how well your retail business is succeeding in matching these needs & preferences. So if you have not yet designed  a strong customer engagement & feedback mechanism , ensure it is up & working at the lightening speed lest should you lose your hard earned customers to the other retailers , who have already put their effective customer engagement & feedback systems in place.    

7. Use Cost Effectiveness as a Measure to Evaluate Business Success.

When looking at their massive advertising spends and the mammoth customer pulls created by them, it seemed that most businesses were doing exceptionally well. In the end they came down as huge loss making businesses of all times, the magnitude of their losses defying all the justifiable proportions. It all happens when the key decision makers are overtly possessed with only any one single parameter such as market share, top line growth, geographical presence or unit sales volume at the cost of considering the whole business as a large system comprising smaller interdependent subsystems.

Before your project goes off the mark and even at all times thereafter prudence in financial management is one of the best ways towards building and sustaining a robust retail business through the crests & troughs of the business cycle.

For more information please visit our website www.successnsynergy.com. You may also contact us at admin@successnsynergy.com. The services offered by us include entrepreneurship development, project feasibility study, systems & process design, organization development, investment options and business partnerships. It shall be our pleasure to be assisting you.

Sanjay Sharma

REASONS WHY BUSINESSES FAIL?

These Reasons Emanate From the Common Mother Source

Most businesses fail to take off or fail to achieve their potential due to multiple reasons. There may be an underlying logic, to explain these failures, such as poor decision making, lack of market intelligence, not playing to your core business strengths, unprofessional approach towards business, ineffective team configuration, inappropriate business model etc, and this logic may seem to be the apparent origin of these failures, but a careful analysis reveals that most of these reasons emanate from another common mother source. This common source of business failure is the arrogance of the business owner, where the business owner considers himself to be the know all and deliberately fails to succeed by failing to recognize the key elements of the professional management approach responsible for the success of the worlds’ best business organizations.

Failure to Respect the Expertise

It is like being your own doctor, manufacturing your own footwear for personal use, teaching your kid at home instead of sending to school etc, and if such an approach is adopted it would surely take the human civilization back to the inefficiencies of the stone age, as all these examples point towards an attitude of arrogance , of disrespect towards the specialists by failing to engage them for getting their best. It is absolutely critical for the business owner to understand the scientific principles of division of labor and their linkages with the business economics, where each specialized job is handled by a specialist department or individual, but if business owner fails to respect this expertise, there is a high probability of failure as far as accomplishing the desired business results is concerned.

Is Your Business Suffering Because of Your Arrogance?

Check list to know if your business is suffering because of your arrogance

• Am I aware of my core strengths?
• Do I engage experts for business areas not falling with-in my core strengths?
• Have I identified a team of reliable business consultants?
• Do I take help of professional consultants while working outside my core strengths?

The affirmative answers to these questions indicate that you are not suffering from arrogance symptoms but if there are one or more negative answers then you need to review your business approach as well as performance.

What’s the answer?

The answer lies in improving the probability of your business success by knowing your key strengths, identifying, authenticating and engaging the source of expert knowledge for the weak-links highlighted by your SWOT analysis to take your business to the next level.

The author of this article is a consultant & trainer and may be reached at admin@successnsynergy.com for any consulting or training requirements that you may have in any of the subject areas covered in this write-up alternatively you may visit our website www.successnsynergy.com for more details

Sanjay Sharma

Improve The Efficiency of Your Sales Operations

The customers today have numerous options , normally a customer would compare you with your competitors . Therefore it is absolutely critical to fully equip your team for offering a delightful customer experience. In today’s sales warfare the customers are very demanding , the bad news is that any of your competitors offering delightful customer experience will take away the market share and the good news is that, now you know that just by offering delightful customer experience your organization can substantially improve the efficiency of its sales operations

Process Flow

The first step is to define the process flow , detailing the steps right from the first point of interaction with the customer ie. from the time lead is generated till the time the sale is closed

Sales Organization

This is a very crucial aspect, as optimum resource allocation shall be the key difference only in terms of the efficiency with which the customers are served but also the profitability of operations which in turn is affected by the cost of acquiring each new customer. Thus a sales organization must be structured to produce delightful customer experience while optimizing the new customer acquisition cost at a reasonable level.

• Recruitment of Team Members

 The detailed job descriptions must be developed based on the carefully mapped competency requirements against specific roles highlighting the applicable key responsibility areas. The recruiter must then handpick the most suitable candidates ,who are the best fit in terms of the predefined recruitment standards.

• Training For Success

 Each individual team member must be trained for their specific roles and the skills necessary in effective discharge of their key responsibilities. To be most effective the training must be done periodically and must be based on the systematic identification of training needs.

Building Proactive Controls

SOP Manual

Standard Operating Procedure(SOP) Manual is the sacred organizational document that lists the detailed steps involved in carrying out the specified processes effectively. There are numerous advantages of a well documented SOP Manual , a few of them that immediately come to mind including consistency of doing specific tasks, transparency in operations as all team members know how a specific situation needs to be addressed, faster response, professional work environment, standardization of best practices,etc. With the passage of time the newer versions of SOP Manuals are published by the progressively professional organizations. With repeated editions this document becomes an important knowledge repository pertaining to the specific organizational processes in question.

Reporting Formats

It is customary to have different reporting formats for each specific role, these are designed keeping in mind the critical aspect of the information sought and the periodicity of such requirement as suitable to the business needs of the key decision makers.

Performance Reviews

A vast majority of sales organizations conduct periodic performance reviews as a ritual, but ironically a large number of them end up building counterproductive practices and mindset  as a consequence of such exercises because of the lack of professional management outlook on the part of the managers responsible for carrying out this activity. Professionally conducted performance reviews can go a long way in improving the customer delight ,long term profitability and sustenance of the organization.

Mystery Shopping

This is an extremely important tool in the kitty of professional organizations to get a real time account of the efficiency with which their employees are interacting with their customers. The outcome of such exercises can help in bringing about revolutionary changes in the manner the sales operations are conducted

Surprise Audits

As a result of this activity , the employees are always on their toes thereby shedding the in-effective attitude mired complacency and inaction , thereby promoting a proactive and action oriented work culture.

The author of this article is a consultant & trainer and may be reached atadmin@successnsynergy.com for any consulting or training requirements that you may have in any of the subject areas covered in this write-up

Sanjay Sharma