When faced with challenges that call for new thinking, how can you come up with fresh ideas, providing breakthrough thinking and innovative solutions?
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Have you ever found yourself in a negotiation frustrated when the other side is unwilling to move on an issue which appears to you to have limited importance to them? Perhaps you are facing a Straw Man?
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Many executives wish they could get their organisations to make decisions faster and get things done faster. Wishing they could get people to work together and make critical decisions to get projects completed. In many organisations, it is hard to get teams to move faster, but there are ways to get teams to decide faster and act faster.
We have a one day process called Solve Your Impossible Problem (SYIP), so I was fascinated to read this book. What’s different and when should we use the Sprint process?
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In July, CEO Sigma Healthcare Mark Hooper announced losing a contract worth $1.7 Billion and in the next financial year earnings would half to $50 Million. Sigma distribute products to 400 stores for My Chemist and Chemist Warehouse and could not negotiate a new contract with their biggest customer.
What does this mean for Sigma?
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Many managers are not good at solving problems. What do we mean? Well, many managers don't dig deep enough. In their haste to prove they can solve problems, they react to the first possible cause of a problem.
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When changing made-up minds, we looked at some Cialdini tools and the power of stories. Once you understand the foundations of persuasion, there are many insights from persuasion research that can help in specific practical situations. The book The Small Big written by Steve Martin, Noah Goldstein and guru Robert Cialdini is a fantastic source of ideas. The idea of the book is to share some small things that can make a big difference to persuasion. There are 50 short chapters each devoted to an idea supported by rigorous research.
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A small group of organisations are serious about increasing their performance using innovation. A larger group pay lip service to increasing their performance using innovation. Those that pay lip service are unaware of how their policies and practices can discourage innovation. What can discourage innovation? We explore some wisdom from the book, Seeing what others don't: The remarkable ways we gain insights by Gary Klein. Who?
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Customers you can't afford to lose are those customers who supply a good portion of your revenue or profit. Or they can be customers who are growing faster than the rest of the marketplace. The thought of losing one of these customers scares you so much that you might feel tightness in your stomach.
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For those cases when you face people with made-up minds, we continue to give you some ideas to get unstuck and to get other people to change their minds. In part 1 we used some of the ideas of persuasion guru, Robert Cialdini.
Many powerful ways to change made-up minds use emotion. Business psychologist Peter Sullivan often explains that the word emotion can be written as e-motion and explains this as e is the electrical force that puts us into motion.
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n business, we are bombarded by information telling us that it’s the end of the financial year. Go to the mall, and JB Hifi and Harvey Norman shout at you too. We’ve even created a new word EOFY.
So what does that mean for you? Well, there are some opportunities to negotiate good deals. Why? Because you know that the other person is negotiating with a deadline and they need to get the sale.
What do we mean?
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Managers constantly want to get better results, better results for themselves and better results for their organisation. One way to improve performance is to get improved performance from individuals. For managers to improve their own performance and their organisation’s performance, they need to know a secret.
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Regularly, clients ask how to change others minds, especially when it appears the other person has made up their mind and seems unlikely to change. Sometimes this is because you are not trying to persuade the other person, you are just giving them your opinion and then getting frustrated because they don’t agree with you. But let’s assume you have tried some professional ways to persuade and you are stuck. In a series of blogs, we will give you some ideas to get unstuck and to get other people to change their minds.
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Saving costs is good, improving productivity is good, increasing sales is good, executing strategy is good, more growth is good and more profit is good. Well, experience shows it’s easy to make savings on a spreadsheet, it’s a little harder to announce the changes, and it’s tough to deliver the improvement in profit.
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What insights did I get from attending last week’s Medical Technology Association of Australia’s (MTAA) summit on Value-Based Health Care?
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The word strategy is often misused and misunderstood. When we use the word we mean the simple definition used by the McKinsey consultant Kenichi Omhae: strategy is the intersection of three groups: customers, competitors and the company.
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Consider a typical two person negotiation: buying a house or buying a computer. Our experience shows most of these negotiations involve four major issues. For example, with a house: buy price, when to exchange money, size of deposit, what existing items in the house will be included. Or, when buying a new car: buy price, trade in value for existing car, length of warranty and what extras might be included (e.g. better audio system, rust proofing or special wheels). Whenever preparing for a negotiation we always advise you to use a planning sheet.
Read More![Focus on Growth_Now! [Part 2]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5385613ee4b0883f7108f96f/1521604438735-P19PUZWWDZO07R7PSAHP/Female+bodybuilder+compressed.jpg)
Companies are spending more time on how to compete in competitive markets using value. Four factors give best companies a competitive edge that drives growth:
- Intimately manage your top 10 – 20 key clients.
- Identify and manage your exceptional & strategic suppliers.
- Focus on your unique value proposition for your market – your competitive edge.
- Align throughout the company around the top 3 factors, always— allocating resources, developing talent & managing operating costs— for growth.
In an earlier blog, we explained the first two factors that drive growth. In this blog, we will expand on factors 3 and 4.
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Today's customers are intently focused on getting the lowest price. With advances in technology customers can compare products and prices before they speak to you. Increased competition is making price pressure more intense, with a race to the lowest price being the easiest way to win the deal. But, at what cost to your company?
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Everyone is individual, yet we alter our behaviour according to different circumstances. Think about the way you interact with your friends. You don’t treat all your friends the same, do you? Isn’t there someone you know who’s a bit more sensitive than most – so you have to be extra careful not to hurt their feelings. Or what about that member of the family with such thick skin that you need to be blunt?
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To gain an advantage in an increasingly competitive marketplace, it is essential that your culture represents your strategy. So, how can you start changing your culture? You can make this complex or simple. Let’s assume you want to make a start, and you want to understand some practical levers you can pull to start change.
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