Business | Teik Oh

Happy New Year! Now make a plan!

Dec 29 2014

It’s the start of a new year soon, so to all my readers old and new – Happy New Year!

And in the new year, after we have all recovered from those annual excesses that we always say we will avoid, we will come to the realisation that we really ought to do some planning and goal-setting for the year ahead.

Ultimately the secret of your success is to make your business grow year by year.

It is an old adage: “businesses don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan”. Time and time again surveys show that fewer than 3% to 7% of small and medium businesses that fail have ever done any business planning.

The start of a new year is the best time to start a business plan. You can “close the books” and think about new initiatives and ideas about your business. It is the business equivalent of making your New Year resolutions, but with a better process that can lead to follow-through and organized action.
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How to Implement Strategy

Dec 23 2014

Most organisations will have a strategic plan. Even if it is not a formal document, the organisation will have created a set of strategies over time, perhaps in the development of business plans, or to develop a new initiative, open a new branch or market, or even to develop internal skills and capacities.

However many of these strategies are simply not carried out to fruition. Strategic Plans, business plans or sets of well thought out strategies sit on the shelf with limited or minimal implementation. Often, this is because organisations don’t work on implementing strategies day to day. Organisations may be good at what they do on a day to day basis, such as buying, producing and selling, but these processes are conducted by functional areas who have functional responsibility for those areas. Implementation of strategies on the other hand are often cross-functional, interrupt existing responsibilities and processes, and inadequately resourced.

So, having spent scarce time and energy creating well thought out and well crafted strategies, what can you do to ensure that you are able to execute strategy effectively?
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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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Comment 13

5 Key Social Media Policies

Dec 19 2014

Social media is now huge part of everyday life. Social media can be used as a positive tool in the branding of your organisation or it could become the bane of your organisation’s credibility. It’s not only a Facebook page to share food photos with old school friends and post emoticons.

Even though they may have a social media advertising strategy, some organisations ban it internally, not allowing staff to access social media during work hours, even to the extent of blocking it on the organisation’s IT systems. Why not embrace it, show your staff trust and give them responsibility to use social media responsibly?

Why not create and use a corporate social media policy? What should this policy include to ensure that people are using social media responsibly? Here are the 5 key items to include.
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Comment 13

Are high-end businesses any different from budget-goods businesses?

Dec 18 2014

A friend of mine is an artist. She and her husband, another artist, operate a gallery where they sell their paintings and run art classes.

She asked me recently if I could help them look at new ways of doing things as finding new business was as hard as ever.

I don’t know much about how good quality art galleries work, except that artists value their work because of the effort and the pain of creativity put into their creations. An artist does not paint a painting in one or two weeks. Ask any artist and they will say that each painting took a lifetime, because it was a lifetime of experience and emotion that went into each painting.

So that means they sell high-end value goods.

However I do know that selling high-end works of art is nevertheless a retail business, and retail is hurting at the moment, whether it is a high-end store or the local $2 budget store. People are more careful with their money, they look for bargains, they haggle, and if they can, they buy online. At the same time, costs are rising – from shop rents to wages for staff, and, as the cost of the shopping basket rises, the owner has to make more profit to afford their own shopping basket.
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Increase your sales through a highly focused marketing plan!

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Category - Business

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Happy New Year! Now make a plan!

How to Implement Strategy

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

5 Key Social Media Policies

Are high-end businesses any different from budget-goods businesses?