Really, would it kill you to spend an extra 30 seconds with a user to make sure the fix you just applied actually works?
This Network World article shares the frustration end-users have with IT staff. If improving quality and service are important to you, your internal customers are a good place to start!
3. New rule: The customer is king.
Old rule: Shareholders rule.
The take away:
I’m not sure why this rule has been violated for so long, since it’s the most important rule in the book!
Where does shareholder value come from? If you follow the money trail, you’ll find out that the customer controls your ability to increase value for your shareholders.
You provide a product or service. If it’s a product or service your potential customers want and like, they will take the product/service in exchange for money. Eventually that money makes its way to shareholders. No customer = no money = no increase in shareholder value. Simple.
The corollary to this rule says: Once you have a customer, do what ever you need to do to keep them as a customer. Why?
A business degree or an MBA should not be needed to understand this simple concept, yet many companies large and small violate this canon every single chance they get.
Keep reading →
2. New rule: Find a niche, create something new.
Old rule: Be no. 1 or no. 2 in your market.
The Take Away:
The principle reason why “No. 1” and ”No. 2” companies are being outdone and left behind by smaller organizations, is because no. 1 and no. 2 business have trapped themselves into defending and maintaining past successes, instead of learning from past success while simultaneously and unceasingly looking for ways to better understand the ever changing and evolving needs of the customer. The consumer beverage market was turning away from sugary soda and towards the health benefits of water. Coke finally stopped defending the past, paid attention to today’s market reality and has forged ahead into the future with its own bottled water beverage.
If you change and renew your business for the sole purpose of better understanding and serving your customers, then being no. 1 or no. 2 is no longer important. This perspective also assures that you will have a much higher success rate profiting from the ever changing needs of your market.
Old Rule: Big dogs own the Street
New Rule: It’s not about size anymore – its about agility, adaptability and flexibility
During the Industrial Revolution and up until the 1990’s, the name of the game was that big physical size meant big, big profits. For 160 years this seemed to be true.
Jack Welch, the celebrity CEO emeritus of GE, used his charisma and power to espouse and promote his sacred tenants of how best to manage and run a company and achieve success. Although his intensions were good, his commandments were flawed from the very beginning in three ways.
Keep reading →
Not too long ago, I spoke about the importance of passion as a key element to the ultimate success of any business enterprise.
A lot of people feel uncomfortable with the idea of “passion” and prefer the cold and simple characteristics of balance sheet numbers. Others, on the other hand, remember when the passion they once had for their business was burned out of them, from the harsh realities of the business world.
Keep reading →
Most business seem to be on the constant search for the “magic bullet” or “holy grail” that will guarantee huge profits like they’ve never experienced before. They look at spread sheets, balance sheets, try to lower costs, install or upgrade new IT systems, but these measures only seem to make a small dent (or waste more money).
Do you want the secret on how to forever increase your revenue forever, from this day forward?
Keep reading →
10 things to watch out for if you want to stay on top.
By Stephanie N. Mehta, FORTUNE senior writer
June 29 2006
NEW YORK (FORTUNE) — It is one of the great paradoxes of business: All too often, the companies that boast market-leading positions, huge number of “touch points” with their consumers and all kinds of other advantages often are the least likely to innovate. They are the ones that say, “Oh, that market is too small for me to address,” or, “That’s not how we do business.”
And then they watch as some other guy (often a start-up or an unexpected rival) leads the charge into a new area.
From CNNMoney
Rank: 1
You! The consumer as creator
Why You Matter:
They’ve long said the customer is always right. But they never really meant it. Now they have no choice. You — or rather, the collaborative intelligence of tens of millions of people, the networked you — continually create and filter new forms of content, anointing the useful, the relevant, and the amusing and rejecting the rest. You do it on websites like Amazon, Flickr, and YouTube, via podcasts and SMS polling, and on millions of self-published blogs. In every case, you’ve become an integral part of the action as a member of the aggregated, interactive, self-organizing, auto-entertaining audience. But the You Revolution goes well beyond user-generated content. Companies as diverse as Delta Air Lines and T-Mobile are turning to you to create their ad slogans. Procter & Gamble and Lego are incorporating your ideas into new products. You constructed open-source and are its customer and its caretaker. None of this should be a surprise, since it was you — your crazy passions and hobbies and obsessions — that built out the Web in the first place. And somewhere out there, you’re building Web 3.0. We don’t yet know what that is, but one thing’s for sure: It will matter.
Business Week
By David Kiley – JUNE 28, 2006
New CEO Dieter Zetsche aims to beat Lexus in quality, make the Smart division profitable, and lift Chrysler’s productivity — and all by 2008
For a man in the top job at the German automaker just six months, DaimlerChrysler chief executive Dieter Zetsche is setting some hard-to-reach targets for himself. By 2008, says Zetsche, in a wide ranging interview with BusinessWeek, Mercedes-Benz will match or beat Lexus in J.D. Power & Associates quality ranking. The beleaguered Smart car division will be profitable. And Chrysler Group’s productivity will be ahead of Detroit rivals Ford (F ) and General Motors (GM ) and be all but tied with Toyota (TM ) and Nissan (NSANY ).
Zetsche, who had successfully led Chrysler, took over the Mercedes-Benz division last September after being tapped to succeed former chairman Jürgen Schrempp last January. Mercedes-Benz chief Eckhard Cordes left the company after being passed over.
By Glenn Somerville
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. employers added an unexpectedly strong 211,000 jobs in March and the jobless rate slipped to a 4-1/2-year low, according to a government report on Friday that underlined a relatively vigorous labor market.
The pace of hiring last month exceeded the 190,000-job gain forecast by analysts, who also had expected the unemployment rate, which fell to 4.7 percent, to be unchanged at February’s 4.8 percent.
The March unemployment rate matched the January rate, but it has not been lower than that since July 2001, when it was at 4.6 percent.
By Chris Isidore
March 22, 2006
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) – General Motors is offering hourly workers as much as $140,000 each to leave company as the troubled automaker extends its push to cut labor costs and put an end to billions of dollars in losses.
GM announced an agreement with the United Auto Workers union Wednesday, although it did not give the details of the offer extended to all 113,000 U.S. hourly employees.
