Change Management | Teik Oh

Recession proof your business

Jan 02 2015

Is it possible to recession-proof your business? Probably not, despite the wealth of internet articles on how to do so (about 3.3 million hits on Google and counting).

However, what is possible is to arm your business with a series of simple and common sense business strategies to protect it against tough times.

There are defensive and offensive strategies. As profit performance heads south, it is difficult not to panic and begin to tighten all the hatches. However you can tighten too much. Hence, while it is natural to concentrate on the defensive strategies, it is important to keep in mind offensive strategies – those that your business should implement to ensure that you are the one in your industry that keeps selling when others are closing down.

Let us deal with the defensive strategies first. There are six strategies that you need to implement. These are:
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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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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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Managing People? Learn about 3 skills

Dec 15 2014

Yes, we have read about “Leadership” and how that is different from “Management”. Yes, we are well aware that moving a large group of people towards common goals require vision and the ability to translate that vision to the employees. Yes, we are clear about how productive a vibrant and self-motivated workforce can be.

But wait, what if we are talking about managing rather than leading (some of us remain “managers” of people after all). What if we are talking about managing the work of individuals? After all you can’t “lead” 50 individuals individually.

What do you have to do?

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Category - Change Management

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Recession proof your business

3 Rules to Keep Customers

How to Implement Strategy

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

Managing People? Learn about 3 skills