Do this now for 2018 team-building success
I have a two-part assignment for you: Decide how many special, engagement-boosting activities you would like to organize in 2018, and Put them on the calendar…in “ink.” By “special, engagement-boosting activities” I’m talking about the events you treat your team to that are fun or encourage either professional or personal growth. These are the things that make your company special. They are the activities employees will boast about on their social media accounts. I think most businesses are sold on the importance of these events, but many get so bogged down in the regular planning required to get the day-to-day work done that they don’t invest sufficient time in these morale-boosting activities. Therefore, decide how many you can afford to hold and then put them on the company calendar. A few ideas may come to mind immediately. Perhaps you’ve done this before and you have a sense for the kinds of activities your team enjoys the most. If you have some good ideas, schedule them. You can also get volunteers to do some planning or ask employees for suggestions. To prime the pump, here are some ideas that I believe will build loyalty and enthusiasm for your business: Volunteer work. Send out teams to work at some of your favorite nonprofit community organizations. This gives people a greater sense of meaning and folks who don’t normally work together can get to know one another. Games. Have a game night or conduct an ongoing tournament of some kind. I heard about one organization that had a Connect Four tournament. Games were played between individuals during lunch or breaks and then everyone got together to witness the championship match of the tournament. Maybe you could do something like this in parallel with March Madness. Take me out to the ball game. Take your crew to a local professional sporting event. Businesses use these to entertain clients, but in the long run, you’ll may get better bang for your buck by treating your team members. Spa day. I’m hearing about more and more companies bringing in a masseuse to squeeze the stress out of employees. Sounds like a good idea to me. Health and wellness counseling. Exercise and nutrition coaches are the rage today. Having a more healthy team delivers many benefits. First, your employees and their families benefit from improved health. Next, you tend to suffer fewer sick days. Finally, more fit and alert employees turn out better work. Consider adding a gym membership or discount to your benefits package. Company picnic. This is a traditional way to boost employee morale and engagement. However, if you’ve gotten into a rut, do something different this year: change locations or splurge on the catering. Create office themed days or weeks. Halloween is the model here, but don’t be restricted to that old stalwart. Maybe you could have a bakeoff week where the expert bakers on your team bring in samples of their best creations. Check out a National Day Calendar for some inspiration – some of the special pet days might give you some ideas. DIY TED Talks. Find team members who have special knowledge and an enthusiasm for sharing it, then get people together for a short presentation. The topics can be business related, but perhaps someone would love to share knowledge...
read moreA simple strategy to make more progress this year than ever before
Want to blast into the new year or the next season at your company with a real bang? Consider having an “If only…” brainstorming session with as many members of your team as is practical. Here’s what you do: Announce a week or so in advance you’re going to have an “If only…” session. Tell everyone to think of their jobs and your company as they complete statements that start with the words “If only…” Give them some examples, such as, “If only we had a better system of logging customer service calls we could reduce mistakes,” or “If only we had enough money to buy a better printer we could send out great looking, updated product brochures.” Get everyone together for a meeting to share their “If only…” statements. Capture them all and put together a team to prioritize them. Encourage your team to think both big, small, and in between. No idea is too big – or expensive – to be considered and no idea is so small that it doesn’t have the potential to make a positive difference in your company. In fact, the “bread-and-butter” progress in companies generally happens via a continual chain of incremental improvements. This isn’t to discount the big, bold moves you need to make from time to time – they are very important – but there is no improvement too small to be implemented…even if it something as seemingly insignificant as changing the brand of ball point pens you stock to one preferred by those on your team who are constantly filling out forms. When you have compiled your list, circulate it or even post it in a place where everyone will see it. Then start working on it. Have a way to note when initiatives are in progress and when they are completed. Seeing that you actually follow up on suggestions from your team will improve employee morale and loyalty; these improvements alone will boost productivity. You see, this system pays off in two ways: by making the improvements themselves and by boosting your team’s commitment to the success of your company. As you go into this process, let everyone know that you don’t have any sacred cows. Just because you’ve “always done things a certain way” doesn’t mean that you won’t consider another approach to accomplishing your goals. Encourage people to look at legacy operations from a fresh perspective. Encourage people to think across department lines. Try it. What do you have to lose? You don’t want to be sitting at your desk a year from now thinking, “If only I had held that ‘If only…’ meeting, we might have had a more robust and progressive...
read moreHere we go again: Facebook edges businesses out of news feed
Sometimes I think Mark Zuckerberg sees the people and businesses who inhabit his world – aka Facebook – like dolls at a 4-year-old’s tea party. He sits us where he likes. He makes us interact with each other however the mood strikes him on any given day. Currently, Zuckerberg is in the mood to decrease the amount of time you spend on Facebook (this caused FB stock to drop, costing Zuckerberg $3.3 billion) and to accomplish this, he ordered his people to feature less content from businesses, brands, and media in users’ news feeds. The reasoning behind Zuckerberg’s decision is that he wants Facebook to bring us closer together with the people “who matter to us.” The boom in public posts from businesses and other entities started to claim too much territory on our news feeds, according to Zuckerberg. Of course, we’ll have to wait to see what the ultimate impact of this may have. His pronouncement could be more PR than priority, if, for example, the decrease in public posts is very small. On the positive side, Zuckerberg gives businesses a pretty good hint if they want their public content to work their way into people’s news feeds. The content “should encourage meaningful interactions between people.” He gives examples of how there are communities of Facebook users around TV shows and sports teams. You can probably relate to these kinds of groups. (As I’m writing this, the NFL playoffs are well underway and I imagine many Minnesota fans – after their team’s last-second win – are making comments to some public Facebook content posted by the Vikings organization.) The point is that what you post as a business should have the potential to create general interest and engagement within your desired audience. A mere business pronouncement of some sort would probably fall short of these criteria. Post content that starts a conversation. Zuckerberg also points out that live video creates more interest than recorded video. That should be further encouragement for you to explore how you can leverage Facebook Live. I wonder if these kinds of moves weaken Facebook and social media marketing because they make planning difficult for businesses. If your audience exposure can change at the whim of one person, how can you budget or measure results? It’s not crazy to believe that investors and accountants are shooting Zuckerberg emails right now asking him what he thinks he’s doing. After all, virtually every move Facebook has made up to this point is to encourage more business involvement in the social media platform. If he weakens Facebook as a marketing channel, perhaps someday – although not soon – a competitor will rise up. Mark Zuckerberg on stage at Facebook’s F8 Conference image by Maurizio Pesce from Milan, Italia [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia...
read moreThis week in small business: Get back to the basics!
In spring training teams, always start with reinforcing the fundamentals and we seemed to have a lot of that across the Internet last week. Below you’ll find links to posts that focus on creating great habits, protecting your business online, building your brand, financial basics, and more. Leadership, management, and productivity For many small business owners, their business and personal finances are closely linked. For that reason, I think many owners will benefit from the solid financial advice in Edward Shepard’s How to Make the Two Most Important Habits for Financial Success (and, the two habits definitely carry over to the business world.) Sometimes you need to take time out with a great book. In this essay by Dan Coughlin, he looks back at his 2017 reading highlights. You’ll find many inspiring titles here. John Rampton is right on the money in his article on working smarter not harder. His 10 tips will help you make 2018 your most productive year yet. Kathy Larchian leads marketing, operations, and growth, and manages the creative team at the design and invention firm PENSA. Don’t miss Laura Emily Dunn’s profile of Larchian in the Huffpost. In today’s online world you can’t have too much cybersecurity, so make sure you’re up on Bill Hess’ eight ways to protect your business from online risks. (Number one seems obvious, but I bet many businesses neglect it.) Marketing and sales Richard Bensted covers SEO and human-centered design fundamentals well in his BizCommunity article on how to build brand experiences with SEO. While the year is still young, bone up on 2018’s five key digital marketing trends as forecast by Maddy Osman. Next, compare Maddy’s list to the nine social media trends Chris Parbey says to expect this year. Don’t go into hiring an SEO agency with false expectations. To prepare yourself, check out Georgi Todorov’s SEMrush piece. Entrepreneurship, startups, and innovation For much of the country lawn-mowing season isn’t here yet, so you should have time to read Jonathan Blumberg’s article about Christy Webber, who turned a summer lawn mowing job into a multi-million dollar business. There’s no denying today’s youth movement and that’s why the advice from 10 members of the Young Entrepreneur Council on the most important thing to keep in mind, should be helpful. List Stiffler puts the spotlight on an interesting startup: Armoire. It’s a woman’s clothing rental service. Next disruption or next disappearing act? Politics, government, and the economy Did you know that over the course of 2017, small business optimism posted an all-time yearly high? The NFIB published its results last...
read moreThe lesson of the 1-legged seagull
It’s easier to reach people today than ever before in history. However, that is both a blessing and a curse. Why? Because if it’s easier for you to reach people, it’s also easier for everyone on the planet to reach people. This leads to email overload, sensory overload, Internet addiction, tech burnout, and all kinds of modern day problems. For the business owner, the problem narrows down to the question of how to get noticed. Have you ever been on an ocean beach where hundreds of seagulls were scurrying up and down the edge of the water doing that “Mine! Mine! Mine!” seagull scream? If not at the shore, I’m sure you’ve experienced something similar in an open field or school yard. I remember one day like that, but as I scanned the flock of gulls – more like a herd, actually – one caught my eye. It was hopping around and keeping up with all the other gulls despite the fact that it only had one leg. I had to look two or three times to make sure I was seeing it right. I thought maybe it merely had one leg tucked into its belly or something. But no, this gull was getting by with just one spindly little seagull leg. Once I noticed it, I couldn’t take my eyes off the one-legged gull. You need to learn a lesson from that bird and apply it to your online marketing. That gull captured my attention and held it for two very basic reasons: It was different from all the rest, and It had an emotionally appealing story to tell. The other hundred seagulls “reached” me, but the one-legged gull was the only bird that “touched” me. First, note that it didn’t take a lot to catch my eye. After all, seagull legs are pretty tiny. I think this gull’s hopping motion is what I noticed, and even that wasn’t too different from how two-legged gulls get around on the sand. Here’s the point: Our senses are quite good. We are visually screening our environment virtually every waking hour and we notice little things. You don’t have to be radically different visually to stand out from the crowd. You just need to have that one noticeable difference. I’ve discussed this many times in regards to your product or service, but the same principle applies to your marketing materials. Second, once you catch your prospects’ eye, you need to grab their heart. I’m using the word “heart” here in a very general way. Your appeal doesn’t need to bring tears to your prospect’s eyes; it just needs to connect on some emotional level. The promise or proof of superior quality might grab the hearts of people who have been suffering through less than stellar quality, for example. These points are important to remember when you’re developing marketing campaigns. We all want our marketing campaigns to return hundreds of qualified prospects. You can do this by spending a lot of money on ad buys – or you can differentiate your materials and design them in ways that push the right emotional buttons and get just as many prospects with smaller ad buys. The question you need to ask yourself is this: Are you “touching” people or merely “reaching”...
read moreBye-bye Boomers! Adios Gen Xers! Millennials in management: Are you ready?
As we look toward the coming year, I think it’s a good time to take a “long view” of how we are assimilating Millennials into our companies. The position of Millennials in the workforce is a topic often covered in business blogs like mine, and that’s a good thing because it’s an important issue. Exactly how important it is jumped out at me the other day when Paychex published the company’s latest special report – The Rise of the Millennial Employee. The first item in the report is the graph below, which shows the trends of Millennials, Gen Xers, and Baby Boomers as percentages of the small business workforce between 2011 and 2017. The exit of Gen Xers and Baby Boomers is rather dramatic! The Millennial overview The report also provides interesting statistics on which areas of the country employ Millennials more and less, along with some earning comparisons between Millennials and the working population as a whole. However, I don’t think there’s too many unexpected findings here. Generally, Millennials are making less than the national average in earnings, but that is almost certainly due to the fact that they are in the earlier years of their careers. That, I believe, is also reflected in the fact that the Paychex study found that wages are increasing faster for Millennials than for the overall work force. The Millennial challenge I like the advice Paychex gives small business owners for dealing with the growing Millennial workforce. They divide it up into three important areas: Attracting Millennial Talent, Engaging Millennial Talent, and Growing Millennial Talent. Smart small business owners will put objectives, plans, and systems in place that address each of these areas. I’ve previously discussed attracting and engaging Millennials for your small business team, but I think it’s time we also started to get very serious about growing the Millennial talent we have – or will soon have – working with us. This is made abundantly clear by the above graph: Current leaders from the Baby Boomer and Generation X groups are on their way out of the workforce. We need to help Millennials prepare for taking over the helm. And frankly, the businesses that do this best will be the businesses that flourish in the coming decades. Paychex offers some sound advice in this area. Millennials in management You need to provide the opportunities for professional development, including additional training outside of your workplace. I need to add an important observation to this. Millennials are strapped with far more college debt than were graduates from previous generations. In fact, just yesterday I heard about a bright Millennial recent graduate who is looking to hire on with a company that will help her pay for her master’s degree. See what you can do to help your talented and promising Millennial employees. Another point Paychex makes is that if you’re able to find ways to take advantage of Millennials’ passions by using them within your business, it builds their confidence and helps them fit better within your organization. Finally, keep the conversation going. When Millennials come on board, discuss career goals, put a plan in place, and monitor it together so they can feel like they’re making...
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