Today’s Octopus Agenda
August 17th, 2010
Today we are in Connecticut helping a Doctor streamline his practice. For the past 19 years he has been building a wildly successful chiropractic office seeing close to 500 patients A WEEK! He is a very successful doctor. So what does a doctor, that sees close to 2,000 patients a month, need from The Octopus Solution?
We were asked to help him do 2 things:
- Organize the practice to run more efficiently, reach max capacity and expand
- Work with the Doctor of management and balance
Today is a big day, we have designed him our “Execution Organization Board” to implement and start operating the business through. Second, we have identified areas of cost savings and have a plan of attack to work with him to save money by eliminating several gaps and duplications.
We will spend most of the day with his staff finalizing the Execution Org Board and an hour at lunch review the financial benefits.
More Octopus Action Coming Your Way!
The Octopus Solution Lectures at Suffolk University Business School
June 17th, 2010
Last night Professor Jorge Riveras hosted The Octopus Solution for his International Business class at Suffolk University, Sawyer School of Management. We were honored to join the class of 30 MBA students who were in the process of learning about corporate structures, organization and business productivity.
We had the pleasure of speaking about the work we do relating to Performance Management and Leadership with our clients and the results we have achieved. It was great for them to see how the lessons they were learning about regarding organization structure and performance are applied in the real business world and what benefits they provide.
We started the class by discussing many of the issues the students see with the companies they are presently working for and most, if not all, were performance management issues. We talked about the impacts of poor organization structures and architecture and how that can lead to poor communications, break-downs in teamwork and disorganization.
The class asked many fantastic questions about the results we generate with performance management and were very engaged in the classroom discussion. We would like to thank Professor Riveras for having our company as a guest speaker and to the class for being great participants.
Thank you Suffolk University!
BP has been asked to get involved with Marketing
May 17th, 2010
The Gulf area has a $20 Billion tourist industry and states are going to take a massive hit to visitors coming to the coast line because of the British Petroleum (BP) Oil Spill which is now spread across 160 miles. These States have asked BP to foot the bill for their marketing expenses to get the word out that they are still open for tourism.
The marketing plan to promote tourism recovery from such an epic event that has been covered so well by international media is an Everest size challenge. The news across the US has been covering the story of the oil spill and showing pictures of beaches and other polluted areas.
These states and major cities are just going to have to prove to the country that they have not been affected by the spill and emphasize the tourists attractions in their area other than beaches. Plus, what about the food? How has seafood been affected? Can I get shrimp in Louisiana? Or has the fishing industry been destroyed?
The massive recovery effort is going to take several years and the marketing challenge is going to be tough to promote tourism. Everything is working against travel to the Gulf.
Good marketing PR might be to start wind farming in the spill area and remove a dozen oil platforms!
Social Media…Everyone Claims to be an Expert!
March 17th, 2010
Social media is the wild west and many of these sites (facebook, linkedin, twitter, myspace, etc) are just in their infancy. Social media is developing into a hub within a hub. The Internet is the source of information and within this hub over 300 Million people are gathering on facebook alone to interact with one an other. With millions of people on these social sites every day, the business community wants to gain exposure with these users. But as a business how do we use these sites? What is the best way and how many do I need to be involved with? Just ask an expert!
Because of the growth of these social sites many people are crawling out of the wood work claiming to be an expert and not delivering or understanding how to cultivate them. Be carful of those that claim expert status as the social media guru’s because many people are getting burned by companies or individuals that just come into your business and open up 2-3 accounts and then leave claiming you will have fast success…it does not work that way.
Developing sites like facebook, linkedin, twitter, myspace, etc does not take long. You can set them all up in one day. The part that takes time is developing a pool of people (friends, followers, fans, connections) to interact with you and your business. The key word is interact. How can you generate interaction between you and your peers or even peer-to-peer? Interaction leads to an experience with your brand, so it is important to develop a strategy with these sites before starting to move forward. It is also critical to know what the capabilities and uses are for each site to maximize your effectiveness and to give you the most information while developing your strategy.
Do not be fooled by the people claiming to be experts in social media. Many of them do not have marketing backgrounds and may not fully understand how these sites play a role in the grand marketing plan. Plan first! Best of luck to you in this constantly changing environment.
Hey Look! It's Me!!!
February 17th, 2010
We have worked with many clients and I can say one thing is for sure…stock photos for marketing people are cold, fake and boring. In other words…get rid of them! If you have a business with thousands of members or customers, you should want them to be able to relate to the photography: e.g. “I know that person”, “That’s Me!”, “My friend is in that picture”. These types of reactions create an emotional attachment to the organization and help solidify the bonds of customer loyalty and participation.
Stock images are hard for customers to relate too. For example if you are designing a brochure for a service business and you want to include photos of people, your best choices would be to ask customers to come in and have a professional stage the shots or have models get their photos taken in the place of business. The idea is to connect the end-user of the marketing material to the business through a friendly face or an on-site photo shoot. Creating the bridge for your business to have a relationship with your customers does not start with stock photos of random people, it starts with the people you have coming in your doors every day.
So in conclusion…spend the time to take photos that give your members or customers the “Warm & Fuzzy”!!!