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All businesses know that it is essential to oversee costs and overhead. But business organization costs can sky rocket out of control if everyone doesn’t keep to the plan, or unexpected events lead to cost spikes. If you are prepared for times of hardship or cost spikes, you will have the spare cash that is needed and may barely even feel the impact if it is a short term problem. But these spare costs can take place just by a series of small cost increases like a rate increase in the electric bill, plus a fuel increase for deliveries due to increasing gas costs. So, how can you prepare for these spare costs when they hit your bottom line? Occasionally just a simple adjustment in your current price schedule can handle the costs; nevertheless, if you continue to do so, even your most faithful clients may look for greener pastures. You can fight this by planning ahead and planning smartly. Adapting for business costs is extremely important to the endurance of any business. You must make sure that you set your prices accordingly in the beginning to make sure that you are getting enough additional to handle rises in supply costs, utilities, and other operating cost. There may be times when there will be items that are simply out of your control (natural disasters), but even then a solid plan can dilute the blow to a business if they have laid out a contingency plan. During these times you still must pay your staff, pay benefits, taxes, and of course All the other day to day operating costs. Even So, small actions like a portion of income being set into a “rainy day” type of account can help make or break some business organizations. In order to keep track of business costs, many business organizations look to a Charlotte business coach that can help layout out a strategy that can keep the business lucrative even during the worst. They will always suggest working with a professional within the office that has some kind of an accounting background or the stronger option is to employ an accountant to manage these things for you. Never make a major fiscal decision without first consulting an accountant or the books to make sure that your business can afford to do what your plan is purposing to do. In the end a smart financial plan will (in most cases) trump virtually any short term hardship a company may face. Plan for the best, save for the worst.
Succeeding in business depends on the efficient management of people. You may succeed in developing these skills. It can be a plus to have a natural affinity for people, but there are numerous things you can do to make this procedure simpler.
Developing relationships: Start by using staff’s names. Engage in conversation; look co-workers in the eye during a conversation. Show respect, and be attentive to the other person’s opinion, even if you disagree or have another point of view. Listening to what others say is one of the best people management skills in your arsenal. Show interest in what people can contribute to the team.
Show integrity: Don’t make promises you won’t fulfill. When your word is broken, it will destroy trust, and if they can’t trust you people will not give you their best. When you make a statement or make a promise, you are wasting your time unless you follow through. To be honest, if you can’t be depended upon, you can be assured they will act in a similar fashion.
Feedback is important: It’s a two way street. Maintaining an open mind regarding other’s views is an important skill in managing individuals. Being accessible and open shows that you want to listen to your co-worker’s opinions, your thoughts will be respected in the same manner. Frank discussion also furthers creative troubleshooting, new methods of accomplishing the mission of the company, and improves the team dynamic. By allowing the team to express their opinions, the project becomes important to every team member. Communicating is the key: People management techniques come down to one concept — good communication. Maintaining an open door policy, listen intently to other people’s opinions, remember to welcome employees to share ideas, and allow all of your staff an equal voice. Encourage team members not only to communicate with you, but also to talk to each other. The exchange of thoughts is important in the creative process, and in communicating with each other, it becomes easy to spot any issues before they become problems, permitting corrective measures to be taken to prevent any further problems.
Some time will be required, even so the rewards are worth it. Through encouraging a good team dynamic and by listening to your team’s suggestions, you can easily have a successful business.
It’s belief in more than a few businesses that, if each member of staff has enough health and safety instruction, they now have all the knowledge required to cope with an emergency. The truth is that, regardless of the industry you’re in, staff need more than instruction in safety regulations and risk assessment. Equipping staff, selecting good supervision and promoting frequent safety practise sessions are essential to the safety at work.
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Your staff must have an efficient supervisor to watch over the shop floor, but this person also needs to play an even greater function. A supervisor needs to show enthusiasm and consider training crucial.
In addition to following health and safety legislation, the individual supervising also needs to ensure that each employee works efficiently. This is no simple job. A good standard business knowledge is a necessity for a supervisory role not to mention a very high level of understanding of the safety laws, the identification of problem areas, and first aid.
Offering basic training in health and safety is not adequate for your staff. They must gain practical experience of risk assessment and the recognition of hazards. They additionally need insights into the steps necessary to remedy the situation and understanding what to do when disaster strikes. Your staff are only properly prepared when their training and procedures have become automatic. Training is by all accounts ineffective without safety apparatus. When they don’t have equipment they require, or even find out that items are damaged when they are needed, all the education available can not help them.
Maintaining your equipment on a regular basis is a good idea. When you have a problem with your equipment, be certain to get it remedied as soon as possible and put it back in the appropriate place. Your workforce must get the right health and safety education, but in addition they require the right supplies, regular practises, and an experienced supervisor who can get everyone excited about working safely. When you follow this advice you should see that health and safety legislation will soon become a normal component of life in the workplace rather than an inconvenience everyone has to make an effort to think about all the time.
Many very successful business owners may never have had a formal strategic plan. Some think, “Why do we need to do strategic planning? We’re doing great just like we are.”
It’s not unusual for a small business owner to have the following questions:
• Why do I need to have a strategic plan? Can’t I just tell everyone what our goals will be?
• How do I get started?
• Can I facilitate the planning sessions, or do I need to hire a professional facilitator?
• Will this be like other plans which, after spending time and money, just sat on a shelf?
If you’ve determined that you are indeed ready to begin a strategic planning process there are several steps to pave the way and ensure the plan gets executed.
Step One: Get Ready
We recommend using a professional facilitator for the initial part of the planning. The role of the facilitator will be to:
o Lead the group in an objective/neutral way.
o Make sure ideas and decisions are not lost.
o Make sure the desired outcomes are kept in front of the group.
o Be more objective and therefore handle difficult situations.
o Challenge assumptions.
o Encourage equal participation.
After you’ve decided you’re going to create a plan, you’ll need to think about who to include in the group. Everyone who will be affected by the decisions or the information should be represented.
o Whose input do you need?
o Who is needed to make a decision?
o Who must buy into the plan?
Those in management positions often think they know what’s going on with the business, but the people in the ranks are the ones that really know. They can offer honest feedback on what’s working, what’s not working or what’s missing. The more input you have, the stronger your decisions will be.
If you involve everyone affected by the plan, you’ll build a company understanding and commitment to see it through. Everyone will feel a sense of ownership in carrying it out.
Step Two: Plan the Meeting
What you do before a meeting and how you follow up after a meeting are equally important to what happens during the meeting. When planning the meeting, clarify your desired outcomes. “What do we want to accomplish?” For example, at the first meeting you might determine company values, brand promise and vision. At the second meeting you might set goals, determine key numbers and develop your action plan. We recommend using a facilitator for these two meetings.
Let everyone know what to expect. Be clear with the group about how the meeting will run and about the decision-making process. The best way to create commitment and participation is to be clear about why you’re meeting. This is important because nothing hurts morale more than a misunderstanding about why people are there, and what their role will be in the meetings and in the decision making.
Get the appropriate people involved early in planning the meeting. This will reduce their resistance. You’ll be less likely to hear comments like, “We’re too busy. Why do we need a plan? Aren’t we doing okay as we are?” If you get the right people involved early, commitment will be higher which will lead to the plan being effective.
Step Three: Conduct the Meeting
Spend some time at the beginning of the sessions with what is called “inclusion” or “group building”. If you spend time getting everyone on the same page, it will be time well spent. This is crucial, so don’t cut it too short.
Pay attention to the content and the process of the meeting. The content is the agenda and decisions to be made. The process is how the discussion happens and how decisions are made. Be assured, paying attention to process increases the likelihood that the tasks get done and will go a long way toward making the meeting more effective and productive.
Listen to everyone. Make sure everyone has a chance to speak - the more involved everyone is, the more accountable they will be to the decisions made in the strategic planning session. When people are involved in making decisions they are much more likely to carry them out. This builds a sense of ownership - they are more invested in the outcome
Step Four: Don’t Let it Sit on a Shelf
Don’t just write up the plan, pat yourself on the back and put it away. Write it up and then make sure everyone gets a copy. Develop a system for reviewing and tracking the plan.. Whatever system you choose, make it consistent. Have weekly, monthly and quarterly meetings. Verne Harnish, in his book Mastering the Rockefeller Habits talks about developing a “rhythm” that will help keep everyone focused and consistent on knowing how they fit in to the company goals and plans. They will be performing at a higher level. There will be better alignment around the strategic decisions made in the planning session.
Communication will be more effective. Regular meetings give the opportunity to ask important questions such as, “Are we doing the right thing?” If not, then you have the opportunity to stop and re-think the decisions. Regular meetings give the opportunity to make the best decisions you can as you progress, and manage the plan as a team. By keeping your plan dynamic, you can relate it to the issues that come up on a daily basis. You can use your judgment and intuition to strategize about new issues in relation to the plan. It helps you keep the priorities clear.
The plan needs to be solid yet flexible enough that when new insights and ideas emerge you can be open to them. You want to have the freedom to keep your meetings creative.
Step Five: Celebrate!
Whatever you do, don’t forget this step. Although your strategic plan doesn’t have to be perfect, you and your team deserve to celebrate your hard work and accomplishments.
©2005 Julane Borth
Julane Borth is co-founder of EWF International®, an Oklahoma based firm providing peer advisory groups for women business owners and executives. EWF International®franchises are available throughout the Southwest.
View this article and others at http://www.ewfinternational.com; julane@ewfinternational.com
Top executives and managers in other industries know it is not only acceptable, but necessary to benchmark with other industries to obtain process improvements. For example, a major hotel chain desires to improve guest services. This chain not only has other hotel chains to examine for comparisons, but also can and should look at theme parks or retail corporations. Instead of comparing hotels to hotels, the hotel’s guest service policies are compared with the guest service policies of theme parks, restaurants, and others. Valuable lessons are gleaned from this benchmarking process. While the industries may function very differently, their fundamental guest service processes are common and provide learning opportunities for all parties. Similarly, retailers have made major improvements in inventory acquisition, warehousing, distribution and tracking. Hospitals haven’t typically studied these processes, citing the “uniqueness” of the healthcare and hospital operations as the reason. As a result, many hospitals continue to practice outdated and non-integrated supply transactions, as opposed to making supply management a priority. Many,processes are similar enough across industries for healthcare managers to learn and adapt process improvements from others.
Even though healthcare downplays cross-industry benchmarking because of the uniqueness of healthcare, they also believe that healthcare-to-healthcare benchmarks are valid only with those organizations exactly alike in structure, size, scope, culture, affiliations, physical layout, etc., etc. For example, an outpatient clinic wants to improve its cardiac rehabilitation services but only wants to be benchmarked against clinics offering cardiac rehabilitation services that use Saturdays to deal with overflow, as they do. Healthcare systems also want to benchmark with other systems as opposed to stand-alone facilities. While it is important to determine the way others handle issues, using practice and environmental factors to eliminate potential benchmarking partners reduces the value and learning opportunities for the organizations doing the benchmarking.
Does a Twin Exist?
It is virtually impossible for a hospital to find an identical apple. There are approximately 5,800 hospitals in the United States. Focusing on, for example, only 500-bed, non-profits, can narrow this even further. Simply by adding a few more criteria … academic teaching hospital vs. not; location; managed care penetration; number of buildings; outpatient volumes; etc., simple mathematics shows that a hospital can eliminate all potential hospitals as benchmarking partners.
Requiring multiple and non-relevant criteria narrows the list of acceptable benchmarking partners. Hospitals are complex operations. There are an infinite number of differences among hospitals, and there isn’t one exactly like another. Eric Franz, Manager of Financial Services at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, Illinois, agrees. “There is no twin hospital out there,” says Franz. “It just doesn’t exist. We are unique and we want to be unique.” It makes no sense, then, for hospitals to proclaim their uniqueness while at the same time developing lists of criteria “acceptable” benchmarking partners must meet. For hospitals to use benchmarking effectively, they must accept the fact that their twin doesn’t exist. Then, they can use their resources to learn instead of wasting resources benchmarking their level of uniqueness. Apples-to-Apples
Misconstrued - The Benchmarking Poison
Consider this example of how the value of a benchmark decreases as the hospital attempts to narrowly define acceptable benchmarking partners:
Apples-to-Apples: Benchmark the cost of medical transcription functions at hospitals. McIntoshes-to-McIntoshes: Benchmark the cost of medical transcription functions at hospitals with a centralized transcription department that out sources at least 60 percent of their transcriptions.
New England McIntoshes-to-New England McIntoshes: Benchmark the cost of medical transcription functions at a system-wide set of hospitals with a centralized transcription department that out sources at least 60 percent of their transcription, writing at least 40 different types of reports and an average TAT for History & Physicals of 24 hours. There should be at least three but no more than six hospitals in the system, located at least 10 miles apart, but within a radius of 124 miles.
Similar benchmarking “requirements” surface in many situations.
System-based hospitals only want to be compared to other systems, “preferably one with a similar structure and size”. Why? How will they know if their system structure is a competitive advantage if they don’t compare themselves to different structures or stand-alone hospitals? These highly selective criteria result in a less useful benchmark and less value for the facility that does the benchmarking. Attempting to “benchmark with a similar transcription department” in the above example obscures the impact in-house vs. outsource transcription; centralized vs. decentralized transcription; stand-alone vs. corporate systems has on turn-around time, cost, accuracy, etc., … the exact opposite result expected of a good benchmark.
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall
What do healthcare organizations learn from the search for and ultimately from their “twin” hospital? The search process teaches them that if they add enough criteria, they can reduce their learning pool and maintain the status quo because “there’s no one out there like me!”. If they happen to find a few “twin hospitals” to compare with, they’ll find that their solutions are similar … again reducing the learning opportunities (what can you learn from someone who’s just like you?). Getting an organization to recognize that the perceived “differences” likely point to improvement opportunities is difficult. How much more comforting is it to believe that “my costs could be lower except I have these corporate allocations, and a non-integrated information system, and a high managed care penetration”, than to come to grips with the fact that your costs are higher because of your choices (stand alone vs. corporate) and practices (allowing departments to purchase information systems that don’t interface).
It’s ridiculous to let truly minor differences eliminate cross-organization learning opportunities. According to Franz, there are enough similarities among hospitals to determine where improvements can be made. “The comparison hospitals we used for benchmarking were 80 to 85 percent similar, which is enough to get a good start on this process,” says Franz.
In addition to searching for twins, hospitals similarly search for best practices … thought by many managers to be the holy grail of process improvement. In the transcription example above, you can almost hear the manager thinking “… if I can find the best practice with respect to transcription, my problems will be solved”. The problem here is, similar to the twin hospital, there’s not a single “best practice” for most healthcare operations. A recent survey of hospitals found that many hospitals that had previously outsourced transcription were now bringing the function in-house; while in-house operations were looking for transcription vendors.
Why?
Changes in fit with their culture, their work force, and their environment. The “make” vs. “buy” decision is very dependent on the individual organization. So, while buying transcription services is a best practice for Hospital A, it might be a miserable failure for Hospital B. That is the job of the managers … to sort through their options, coalesce good ideas from multiple sources and come up with the most effective practice for their organization. One hospital cannot simply implement another hospital’s method without adaptation since the cultures, layouts and environments of each are different. Remember … hospitals claim to be unique and therefore they can’t be compared in a benchmark. Why then, would they willingly presume that someone outside their organization knows what the best practice is for them? Instead, a hospital must take bits and pieces from others’ most effective practices and formulate the most effective practice for their organization.
Who’s the Fairest of Them All?
The hospitals and healthcare systems that will be the “fairest in the land” are those who can avoid the common benchmarking mistakes. They will figure out WHAT they want to benchmark. If they want to improve costs, they will benchmark costs and not poison the “apples-to-apples” comparisons with non-relevant criteria such as payer mix, physical layouts, corporate structure, etc., on the way to determining their cost opportunities. The hospitals who use benchmarking as an effective tool will not waste their precious labor resources trying to find a twin hospital because they realize that reduces learning opportunities and encourages managers to think that the status quo is acceptable. Winnowing the list of acceptable learning partners narrows the value and usefulness of the benchmarking results.
The healthcare organizations that will benefit from benchmarking are the ones who realize that the relevant points of difference are driven by their own practices, structures and choices; and, they will make changes accordingly.
Hospitals who gather many effective practices and blend them into a strategy that meets the needs of their organization will benefit. These hospitals know that slavishly mimicking a process without consideration of their own culture, values and needs is managerial malpractice. Rather than comparing New England McIntoshes-to-New England McIntoshes, organizations who understand that the best use of benchmarking is to identify gaps in their performance, will be the ones who will learn from many others in the effort to find the most appropriate apples to improve their own unique processes and performance.
Shelley Burns is Director of Knowledge Management at The Healthcare Management Council Inc., a benchmarking and consulting firm located in Needham, Massachusetts. For further information, call (781) 449-5287 or visit the company Web site http://www.HMC-benchmarks.com
When do you want to make time for a networking group?
One of the most valuable tools you have is your calendar. This tool actually rules how you conduct your day. If you take control of your calendar, you will actually be able to control most of what happens to you at work (and at home). You need to spend a small amount of time each day reviewing your calendar for the next 5 working days. Yes, you will have appointments beyond 5 days but the most important ones will be in the next few days. You should always plan your calendar so that it fits your travel and administrative time. A calendar cannot just be appointments and meetings, you must also schedule when the actual work of putting together a proposal or servicing a customer will take place. The calendar should also include “down time” for you to catch your breath, and don’t forget that you need to keep up with the latest business developments in your niche.
A person that is not able to control their calendar will find that each day has a new challenge, how to get everything done in 12 hours or less. Quite often this challenge is never conquered unless the calendar is controlled by careful planning. You must plan your networking meetings and also plan to follow up and send out information you have promised. A good calendar will allow you to make better business relationships.
Planning is one of the keys to successful businesses. The plan does not have to be elaborate; it simply has to show you what your daily limitations are and also what extra “emergency” time you have built in. For example, some doctors will build in a little slack time for drop-ins or emergencies. They know ahead of time that there is a good chance that this will happen, and if it does not, then other things will fill in the void. Part of your planning should also include time when you can help others, and so maybe you have time to receive help too, occasionally!
Bette Daoust, Ph.D. has been networking with others since leaving high school years ago. Realizing that no one really cared about what she did in life unless she had someone to tell and excite. She decided to find the best ways to get people’s attention, be creative in how she presented herself and products, getting people to know who she was, and being visible all the time. Her friends and colleagues have often dubbed her the “Networking Queen”. Blueprint for Networking Success: 150 ways to promote yourself is the first in this series. Blueprint for Branding Yourself: Another 150 ways to promote yourself is planned for release in 2005. For more information visit http://www.BlueprintBooks.com
Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.
There are other useful definitions in this field, for example, creativity can be defined as consisting of a number of ideas, a number of diverse ideas and a number of novel ideas.
There are distinct processes that enhance problem identification and idea generation and, similarly, distinct processes that enhance idea selection, development and commercialisation. Whilst there is no sure fire route to commercial success, these processes improve the probability that good ideas will be generated and selected and that investment in developing and commercialising those ideas will not be wasted.
Core Competency and Competitive Advantage
A core competence is one which critically underpins the organisation’s competitive advantage. Companies can differentiate themselves from their competitors with specific core competencies, but often not for long. The differentiation is difficult to sustain and can often be imitated by competitors.
The integration (and attainment) of constituent skills that is the distinguishing mark of a core competence, is achieved and sustained through developing strong dynamic capabilities, particularly in a world of innovation based competition.
Whilst a core competence is a source of competitive advantage, not all competitive advantages arise from core competencies.
Often seemingly unassailable advantages prove transitory because of a change of underlying factors.
The very existence of competitive advantage sets in motion creative innovations that, as competitors strive to level the playing field, cause the advantage to dissipate.
Recognition of, and adaptation, to change is thus a pre-requisite of successful strategy. For many organisations, the only truly sustainable advantage comes from out-innovating the competition.
These and other topics are covered in depth in the MBA dissertation on Managing Creativity & Innovation, which can be purchased (along with a Creativity and Innovation DIY Audit, Good Idea Generator Software and Power Point Presentation) from http://www.managing-creativity.com/
You can also receive a regular, free newsletter by entering your email address at this site.
You are free to reproduce this article as long as no changes are made and the author’s name and site URL are retained.
Kal Bishop MBA, is a management consultant based in London, UK. He has consulted in the visual media and software industries and for clients such as Toshiba and Transport for London. He has led Improv, creativity and innovation workshops, exhibited artwork in San Francisco, Los Angeles and London and written a number of screenplays. He is a passionate traveller. He can be reached on http://www.managing-creativity.com/
FINDING DIRECTION: An organization can’t succeed without direction. Direction means having clear goals and guidelines; set goals and guidelines for staff to follow. When staff direction is needed, you must provide effective procedures for everyone to follow. Have guidelines and goals firmly set to keep the gray areas to the absolute minimum. It’s up to you, to keep the departmental goals and that sense of direction so that it is not allowed to be buried beneath the workload.
UNDERSTANDING AN ORGANIZATION’S DIRECTION: Successful leaders also understand the organization’s direction, and act along those lines. As a leader, you will also have to maintain a healthy flexibility within the organization. For example, one day you may attend a departmental meeting where the message is, “Spend, spend, spend, new research is your major goal.” The next month you may get a memo from the CEO that says, “cut 50% of your research budget in two weeks” .After having just re-directed your group, you must now adopt this new goal and create a lean and mean team that will strip excess expenditures to the quick. If you are a good leader, you are also an informed leader. You should work hard to be a helicopter; always moving around in various circles, hearing what’s what so that very little will come as a surprise.
GUIDELINES TO SET DIRECTION: –Set goals and objectives for the organization. Ask, “What does the organization want to accomplish, when, and how?” –Break down goals by department. This gives each sector in the organization a clear picture of their goals. –Encourage staff to set annual goals and objectives. Next, have them break down their goals into monthly tasks, going as far as setting weekly goals. Work towards monthly or weekly goals isn’t always feasible, but within time, it will get easier. Set goals is the first step to meeting them. –Organize procedures. Every task has a procedure. Write it down and include it in your procedures manual. Make sure every procedure has a clear set of steps and is accessible to staff. –Delegate. Give responsibility to those who earn it. Don’t make every little decision yourself. Give staff responsibility with direction, and you give them greater confidence and competence.
Copyright AE Schwartz & Associates All rights reserved. For additional presentation materials and resources: ReadySetPresent and for a Free listing as a Trainer, Consultant, Speaker, Vendor/Organization: TrainingConsortium
CEO, A.E. Schwartz & Associates, Boston, MA., a comprehensive organization which offers over 40 skills based management training programs. Mr. Schwartz conducts over 150 programs annually for clients in industry, research, technology, government, Fortune 100/500 companies, and nonprofit organizations worldwide. He is often found at conferences as a key note presenter and/or facilitator. His style is fast-paced, participatory, practical, and humorous. He has authored over 65 books and products, and taught/lectured at over a dozen colleges and universities throughout the United States.
Looking out through my picture window during a recent winter storm, I
felt like I was in a giant snow globe. Big, fluffy snowflakes were falling,
covering everything with a nice wintry blanket. Ah, how nice. I love
snow… all two feet of it in my driveway!!
Now don’t get me wrong, I really do love snow (send more!) but it does
take its toll my back was a bit sore, and it grew more difficult to keep
my eyes open as the day carried on. I slept like a rock that night.
It could have been worse, I could have totally wiped myself out by trying
to shovel it all at once. We do it all the time. Bite off more than we can
chew, or grow impatient and try to rush through, or into things. We can
apply this to other areas of life as well. If we rush through things we can
end up suffering in the long run.
You know how I handled the snow? Bit by bit. Little by little. I went out at
7 am and shoveled the first 9 inches. Then my wife and I went out two
more times that day to take care of the rest. I learned this “technique”
from my father. When I was younger he always had me outside clearing
the driveway with him, against my best (punk) judgement at the time.
We’d go out at regular intervals to “keep ahead of it” as he said. Smart.
Now, how many times do we not think to “keep ahead” of things in our
lives. I don’t know about you, but I do it all the time. I want things done
right away, I can’t stand waiting. Lately, I’ve noticed my attitude changing
a bit. I’m still impatient in some respects, but I’m more patient with myself.
I’m the one who needs developing, and that takes time.
If you feel like you’re getting nowhere, even wasting time, take heart. Life
isn’t meant to be lived in one day, or even a week. Life is development,
learning and experiencing.
Don’t waste life by worrying about time. Live life by using time. Bit by bit.
Drew Vics, an artist, writer & musician from New Jersey, writes for
http://www.Myeyez.net, and for other websites online.
As a leader, your success depends upon your ability to get things done: up, down and across all lines. To survive and succeed, you must learn four essential skills of persuading people. You must convince others to take action on your behalf even when you have no formal authority.
Persuasion is an essential proficiency for all leaders, requiring you to move people toward a position they don’t currently hold. You must not only make a rational argument, but also frame your ideas, approaches and solutions in ways that appeal to diverse groups of people with basic human emotions.
Preparing the Way
Any direct attempt to persuade may provoke colleagues to oppose and polarize. Because persuasion is a learning and negotiating process, it must include three phases: discovery, preparation and dialogue.
Before you even begin to speak, consider your position from every angle. Presenting your ideas takes planning, to learn about your audience and prepare your arguments.
Dialogue occurs both before and during the persuasion process. You must invite people to discuss solutions, debate the merits of your position, offer honest feedback and suggest alternatives. You must test and revise ideas to reflect colleagues’ concerns and needs. Success depends on being open-minded and willing to incorporate compromises.
Four Steps to Successful Persuasion
Leading through persuasion requires you to follow four essential steps:
In today’s organizations, work is generally completed by cross-functional teams of peers, with a mix of baby boomers and Gen-Xers who show little tolerance for authority. Electronic communication and globalization have further eroded the traditional hierarchy. People who perform work don’t just ask “what should I do?” but “why should I do it?”
Leaders must answer the “why” question effectively. Persuasion is an essential proficiency for all leaders who want to succeed in the 21st century organization.
Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D. writes articles for business and executive coaches and consultants. She provides articles on leadership and executive development for sale, and PDF and HTML formatted newsletters through her website, http://www.CustomizedNewsletters.com.
You can subscribe to Newsletter Nuggets at http://www.customizednewsletters.com and get weekly updates on writing better newsletters and blogs.