5 Steps to a Strong Finish
August 11th, 2010
As stated above the summer is almost over and its time to ramp up your 4th quarter strategy to finish the year strong. The summer, for most businesses, is a time to run around crazy or a time to take it easy. If you are a business who is extremely busy do you have a strategy to keep this inflow up for the 4th quarter? If you a business who has enjoyed the sun and time off, do you have a strategy in place to ramp it up? Either way here are five steps to help you finish the year strong.
Step 1: Re-Visit Your Purpose
Have you ever taken a long vacation and had time to think about your life, business and why you are here on earth? This type of vacation can help you to get grounded and re-focused on WHY you do what you do. If you don’t have time to take a vacation but still need this type of re-focusing, look at your purpose? Your purpose is your guiding light for every decision, personally and professionally. If you do not have a purpose this is a good time to develop one. Your purpose is your why behind the work that you do. It is not a mission or vision statement it is the reason why you have a mission statement and why you get out of bed every morning. Re-visit your purpose!
Step 2: Daily Habits
Success is defined by your daily habits. Take inventory of your daily habits and see which ones are assisting your success and which ones are taking away from your success? What is an activity that you do on a daily basis? Is it calling leads, watching TV, working out, text messaging, etc. Some of these habits may not be working towards your purpose but maybe pulling you away from them. Re-define your purpose and establish habits that are working towards your goals.
Step 3: Evaluate the Numbers
Now that you have re-visited your purpose and established some new winning habits its time to evaluate the past seven months of 2010 to see what has worked for your company and what has not worked? This evaluating process is essential to your success. Take a look at your marketing expenses, what produced revenue and what did not? Look at your revenue dollars, again what area of your business was successful and what areas need improvement? The hard core numbers will work as a guide for you to achieve success. If your company had a success with a new social media marketing campaign that showed a reasonable Return on Investment, then maybe it is time to do it again? You should able to look at a Profit and Loss statement for your business and get a clear picture on what has worked and what has not worked. If not, send us your P&L and we will do a complimentary evaluation for you.
Step 4: Accountability
“I’m smart enough to know that I don’t have all the answers , but dumb enough to think that I can do it all myself.” -Dr Bill Nolan, Co-Founder of The Octopus Solution. Don’t fall into this trap, use the appropriate resources. Ask for help. Use your employees. Don’t do it all yourself. Most business owners are control freaks and think that they can do it all themselves. We do not want you to fall into this trap. Make a 4th quarter game plan and delegate the items that are not ESSENTIAL for you to do on your own. It is ok to have someone else do but make sure you get a “by-when” from them. Anytime you delegate something to another employee or yourself get a “by-when” form the person. By When will this item be accomplished? You cannot do it all yourself, so delegate, follow-up and follow-through.
Step 5: Stay the Course
Once you have a game plan in place you must stay the course for at least six months before you can re-evaluate it again. If you started a new product launch and it has not produced in the first couple of months as hoped don’t give up on it right away. Things take time but we also don’t want to throw away good money. This is why the first four steps are essential to creating a new game plan and sticking to it. Evaluating the numbers will allow you to make accurate business decisions not emotional ones. “Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.” -Dalai Lama
Performance Management and your YMCA Program Directors
June 11th, 2010
Does your Fitness, Aquatics, Youth, Camps, Special Programs, etc have a tendency to end up in their own silo’s? In many Y’s these program directors tend to get bogged down in their own world and do not see the other departments around them. Break free and Climb Higher!
Side Note: In a larger YMCA (even with a single location) the importance of a Chief Operating Officer is critical for managing performance and communications across the program boundaries.
Performance Management aligns the actions and plans of program departments to that of the CEO and Board’s Strategic Plan. And provides performance measures, systems of accountability, communications, and how to manage the process to achieve the strategic objectives of the Y.
Many organizations do not review the foundation and structure of their Y before creating a strategic plan. Once they try to execute a strategic plan they discover that the organization structure does not support the plan needs and demands. The plan must be built on the strengths of the organization structure. Many times we adjust the organization structure for maximum performance, THEN design the plan, THEN guide our clients through successfully executing the plan, and THEN complete the objectives successfully.
Performance Management will help to better communication in your organization, increase production, boost member satisfaction and solidify teamwork.
If you are interested in speaking with us about our Performance Management system and how it provides your YMCA with a break-through method for managing and executing, please email us at: info@theoctopussolution.com
How to Build Customer Loyalty
May 11th, 2010
One of the biggest assets you have is the history of your business. History creates a foundation for being able to support a company whether it be through purchasing, partnership, support, or loyalty. Many corporations train new employees the history of the firm during their orientation process, so that they gain an understanding of where the company came from and what they are fighting/working for.
We are taught our great country’s history in school growing up and most of us develop a loyalty and allegiance to the United States of America. Why? Why does that happen? It happens because we connect to the success stories and people who have made our country great and we develop a loyalty and passion for defending and part of our great nation. So let’s take that same idea and principle into our companies and get more energy from the employee’s and more brand loyalty from our customers.
People like to work and stay busy, but they do not like to work jobs they feel do not contribute. What if an employee was doing a small job that they thought was pointless, yet played a critical role in the businesses success? Shouldn’t the employee know that? It all starts with teaching employees the history of the business and where it came from and only then can you generate passion for support and true initiative, and link it to an individuals job.
Coke, MacDonald’s, JP Morgan, GE, and many other organizations have deep-rooted history in our country and because of that they have maintained success. These are brands that have “grown up” with our country and have a vivid history of involvement with growth, innovation and job production. But you however, may only have a start-up or a business that has been around for 5 years…so what! You still have a story to tell. Your story is what connects people to take an interest in your business. The more foundation you can build the bigger building you can construct on it, so remember that if you want to build a huge international business you may want to look at sharing your background, success and history with as many people as possible to build the biggest foundation possible.
Start with your employees. Sit them down and have a history night that leads into the day they got hired. Make sure your history is part of your new employee training. Look at The United States Marine Corps…the first part of their boot camp training is one week of Marine Corps history. Ever wonder why the Marines are the best of the military? Because they are honored to say “I am a US Marine” because they know the men and women that came before them and what the value of being a Marine truly is.
What is the value of being an employee or customer to your business?
Get Organization, then Make More Money!
March 11th, 2010
Before stepping into the fast and complex world of marketing you may want to make sure your ducks are in a row and that the proper foundation is laid to build on for marketing success. Implementing an organizational board may seem simple and obvious because it is; however, the management system that relies upon its basic outline is more complex. The entire success of your business can rely on something as simple as an org board and chain of command. Before any kind of change can be made within your business, the Org Board must first be designed. 
A typical organizational chart, like the ones found in many companies throughout the world typically only shows name, rank, title, and branch. What do these words even mean in terms of actual responsibility or execution or clarity?
“Organization charts and fancy titles count for next to nothing.” - Colin Powell (Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff: 1989-93 )
Thank you Mr. Powell. We couldn’t agree more. An organizational chart filled with meaningless names serves as nothing more than an office decoration. Within The Octopus Solution Performance Management Board, each department of your business is controlled by one personn: an employee responsible for the people and duties within that department. Each position on the org board has been assigned the following: Name, Chain of Command, Objective(s), Responsibilities, and Statistics.
Director: This person is responsible for completing the objectives and fulfilling the responsibilities of the designated department. In your business, if you are a single owner, you may be the Director of each and every department. Each Director is equal to another because each job is just as important as the next.
Objective: The objective of the department represents the goal. For example, the objective of the Marketing may be to bring new customers into the business. (Sales is responsible for the close)
Responsibilities: Each and every responsibility for Every position in the organization for each person will be listed on the Org Board. This will drastically reduce confusion and poor communication. It will also help people clearly see where they fit in the business and how there rolls impact the rest of the organization.
Performance Measures: To remove emotion from decision making abut performance you want to define what the business wants a specific job to product as a product. For example: you may want to receive statistics from your sales team on number of outgoing correspondence vs. number of meetings vs. proposals vs. closed deals. This will help you forecast and measure employees and determine where they need help.
The second part is communication. We have talked about this in past blog, but the most important part is to keep a single means of agreed upon communication among all staff so that there is no miss understanding.
We have touched on the high level of an Organization Board, which we call an Executable Organization Board because you can see action being taken place with this ever-changing board.
I get knocked down, but I get up again!
January 11th, 2010
Taking hits in business sucks! We have our awesome ups and hurtful downs and it is the downs where we learn the most and are able to show are true colors.
Taking calculate and sometimes crazy risks allow you in marketing to break through ceilings and go to that next level. Sometimes you crash and burn too. The message I want to convey in this Blog post is that marketing is all about risk taking and pushing the boundaries. As you pushing the limits you will gain more of an understanding of the capabilities of your company and employees. You will also start to see key indicators around what common threads move your business forward and what move them backwards; this discovery is done through risk taking.
But, there is also the possibility that your ideas or risk taking will lead you flat on your face stuck in a rut. 
When your ideas do not work and you have landed on your face, pick yourself back up or ask someone to help you get back up and get in the game. Being resilient in marketing, and in business, is critical to success and sustainability.