Brand Leadership | Teik Oh

How To Build Innovation Into Your Business

Feb 23 2015

I have facilitated many strategic and business plans, and read many more, where either embedded in vision and mission statements or spelt out in goals and objectives, is the desire to “be an innovative company”.

Why? What does this mean? Why is innovation important to your business?

To many businesses, when they say they are “innovative” it just means they are flexible and helpful in their service. You want a cashflow projection when you get your tax done? Sure we can do that. So you want a flexible payment plan after we provide you with our legal services? No problem we can tailor one for you. You want a house built off plan but you need a wall repositioned? No problem.

Well, that’s not innovation, that’s just giving good service!

However to some businesses, innovation is critical to the business’ development and growth – innovation that keeps it one step ahead of the competition; innovation that creates a point of difference; innovation that ensures the business and its staff keep developing and growing. In such businesses you need to build innovation into your business model.

To start with it is important to be clear why innovation is necessary in your business and what you mean by innovation. Your staff need to be clear whether they are required to come up with the cure for cancer or whether it is about small but significant change, say to customer service systems. It is also important to realise that innovation means change, particularly if innovation is to be a constant. Are your staff and systems ready to cope with that? Stress is not conducive to innovation so a madly busy office will not be a hot bed for innovation.

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Know your REAL Product

In order to market your product or service effectively, you need to understand what is your real product.

Your product or service is not a list of features. I have heard so often people describing their product or service to me as a whole bunch of features:-

“It’s made of the hardiest materials”

“The design of the micro-circuits came from Germany”

“Our accountants prepare your tax return using their skill”

“The contracts our lawyers draw up include all the legal requirements”.

Features don’t sell products. Customers don’t look for features, they look for the benefits your product provides them and that meets their needs. No one needs “hardy materials” or small German circuits or a skillfully prepared tax return, or even a contract that contains everything it should. People buy something that “lasts forever”, a device that’s small, a tax refund, legal peace of mind.

This video below provides the how and why of getting to know your real product.

Feb 20 2015

Why Teams Fail

Jan 12 2015

Many articles have been written about how high performing teams are formed.

My personal favourite is the “PERFORM” model, which is about:-
PURPOSE – high-performing teams share a strong sense of purpose
EMPOWERMENT – members collectively have a sense of power and feel that they have the necessary skills and resources to get things done
RELATIONSHIP – members have strong relationships, open and honest communication, and accept leaders’ moderation of conflicts
FLEXIBILITY – Individuals in the team share responsibility for leadership in a given situation and can fulfill different tasks that the team need to move forward
OPTIMAL PERFORMANCE – there is evidence that tasks are accomplished quickly and effectively through use of problem-solving skills and the use of each others’ differences in perspective
RECOGNITION – members respect and appreciate the membership of others and individual and collective accomplishments are frequently recognised by each other and by the leaders
MORALE – members feel pride and excitement about membership and confidence is strong.
On the other hand, less is written about why teams fail. Indeed, you can say that teams fail because they do not possess all of the above 7 characteristics, and you would be right. However team failures are often caused, not by lacking in positive traits but more by possessing negative behaviours.
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3 Rules to Keep Customers

Dec 31 2014

Businesses, and business owners, go through a natural evolutionary cycle.

Often, small businesses are started by the young (or in my case, comparatively young!) full of excitement and enthusiasm. Small business owners start with an idea – sometimes it’s simply an idea that working for yourself has got to be better than working for the Man, more often it’s the idea of making or at least selling the better mousetrap.

At the start we jump at every opportunity to “find business”. We attend seminars and hand out business cards, we follow leads, we make friends with customers and develop relationships and referral bases. However in time, the energy spent finding business dissipates somewhat. Sometimes this comes from disappointment but more usually because running a business is genuinely hard and over time, as the business employs more and more staff, it’s natural that some of those duties to find new business start to fall on new staff.
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WE are always right? Or keep questioning our old ways of thinking?

Dec 22 2014

For a brief moment women wearing burqas and niqabs were banned from sitting in the Australian Parliament’s public galleries. This was later changed as long as they revealed their faces for identification at security checkpoints.

In a show of protest three men wearing a Ku Klux Klan uniform, a motorcycle crash helmet and a niqab tried to enter the Parliament building. They were met by security outside who told them that the helmet and the KKK hat were not allowed inside whereas the person wearing the niqab would have to reveal their face but could then put the veil back on.

There followed a (mild) furore on social media about inequality and the overblown political correctness. People rallied around the cry that “we” shouldn’t bow to the powerful minority as “we” had our own standards.

However the social media commentators seem to have missed various points:-

1. They themselves had probably lived or visited overseas where local law meant that drug possession was punishable by death, that you couldn’t chew gum on the streets, that many other things we did not agree with was law, and we protested that “they” the majority should listen to “us”;

2. They recognised “our” team’s views and believed they were right but they did not recognise the “other” team’s views could possibly be right;

3. The burqa, hijab and niqab, along with saffron robes, and nuns’ habits are part of a particular religion’s accepted dress;

4. The KKK uniform is a recognisable uniform of hate and racism; and

5. A motorcycle crash helmet is a – hello – HELMET!

But what does this have to do with business?
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Increase your sales through a highly focused marketing plan!

SMART Marketing: In this book, the owners of a small business are led through the SMART Marketing 7 Step Process to produce a marketing plan targeted at their most desirable customers. Any business can use these principles and in 4 to 6 weeks implement a plan to get them through the door! Find out how...

The SMART Marketing Workbook: Companion to “SMART Marketing”, this workbook sets out the SMART Marketing process in 7 workshops for you and your staff to complete questionnaires and templates that at the end, form the marketing plan you need to sell your REAL product to your REAL customer! View now...

Category - Brand Leadership

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How To Build Innovation Into Your Business

Know your REAL Product

Why Teams Fail

3 Rules to Keep Customers

WE are always right? Or keep questioning our old ways of thinking?