Without customers, a business wouldn’t exist. The purpose of a business is to create value for customers. It’s a creative capacity, not a consumptive capacity. Therefore, the right goals are goals that contribute something that the customer ultimately buys. Something that satisfies the customer. To make this tangible, imagine you were a part of a team that assembled a chair.…
Category: Meaningful Management
Read a book during 9 to 5
When’s the last time you read a book, during 9 to 5? And not in a situation where you were searching for an explicit answer to something pressing at the moment. Also, not in a situation where someone else assigned the reading to you. When was the last time you decided to read a book to improve? Is it something…
Project by project to salary?
Someone asked recently “how do we shift from a project-by-project cash flow mentality and process to being able to pay a recurring salary”? That’s a common occurrence for many small firms. Here are two things that immediately came to mind: #1 – One thing to think about, if you want to switch your mentality – is to imagine what your…
Who you are today and how to become what you want to be
The things you did a year ago defined who you will be a year from now. Today was set in stone perhaps two years ago. Two years from now will be defined by the choices you make today. What do you want to be in two years and what do you need to do today to set the ball in…
Getting others on board
If you have a method of working that you think is superior to another way, and you want to encourage other people to get on board, then start with asking yourself why one way is superior to another. Look for the benefits that are a reward for using a different approach. For example, if you think washing dishes by hand…
Timely feedback, a novel concept
Accenture is apparently ditching their archaic, yearly performance review. And instead: “employees (will) receive timely feedback from their managers on an ongoing basis following assignments. What a novel concept, who would’ve thunk it. What bothers me is the following that was quoted in an article related to the matter, in the Washington Post: These companies say their own research, as…
Are you managing the wrong thing?
Far too often we worry about managing a product or a service. Hence the designation Product Manager, Project Manager, or Customer Service Manager. We’re trying to manage the quality of the product or service we provide. Managing the product is splitting up and dolling out work–micromanagement–instead of letting people do that. It’s translating output to input, and only providing knowledge…
A recession is no excuse
External forces in business, like a recession, are a simple fact of reality. It’s not a matter of if, rather it’s only a matter of when. Blaming poor performance on external factors is admitting you didn’t have a vision. That your business has always been out of your control. Those that had a vision that didn’t cut it aren’t out…
Hourly billing and risk adversion
This came up in a comment on my post about What kind of results can you guarantee?: “If you practice value-based pricing, you better be awesome at predicting the future.” I don’t have a link to the original source of this statement, but the statement itself captures an important sentiment. Every day we take risks in life and we don’t…