Corporate Culture | Teik Oh

The New Way of Working

Apr 17 2015

Once upon a time (I’m a Baby-Boomer) when my boss said jump I asked “how high”. This just isn’t true anymore. With Gen X and Gen Y you need to really engage your workforce – and if you do, you will reap the effective and optimal performance that comes from an engaged and motivated workforce.

So what is “engagement”? It’s not just about liking where you work, it’s about being invested in the time you spend there, believing so much in the value of what you do that you provide discretionary effort – in other words, you jump before you are asked because you see that it is needed. Engagement is about making people believe that the business’ success helps them, helps others, and is worthwhile, and that its success is their success.

This week’s video lays out this “new” way of working.

So how do you engage people? Read More

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Building Better Leaders at Work

Apr 06 2015

A 2014 Gallup survey found that more than 70% of Australians were disengaged at work. At the same time we know that Australian businesses invest billions in annual leadership training and leadership development initiatives. So why are trained leaders failing to engage their people?

While I only have information from this survey of Australian businesses, I have worked in other countries around the world and I can assure you that while the quanta may be different, the truth is that the vast majority of people at work feel disengaged. If this is a worldwide trend, then businesses are investing significant resources into something that is not providing them with anything like the desired outcome.

First of all, let’s look at what benefits employee engagement can bring to your company. These benefits are true whether or not you have several tens of people working for you or several hundreds, or even if you only have 2 or 3 employees. True engagement isn’t just “happy” or “satisfied”. True employee engagement means that the employee has an emotional commitment to the employer and its goals that will result in more discretionary effort. It is the difference between someone doing their job as expected or even well, and someone providing discretionary effort to do their jobs as if it enriched their own lives. In terms of service and sales, customers know the difference between someone loving what they do and someone who is competent at it, and it brings extra customer satisfaction.

Engaged employees are more productive, going the extra mile because they see the success of the company as having meaning to them. Their motivation leads to higher productivity. Studies show that offices with engaged employees were up to 46% more productive. Engaged employees lower the risk of employee turnover because they are more invested in the long term success of the company, thus avoiding loss of experience and decreasing costs of retraining and recruitment.

And if you think that’s only biting around the edges, Standard Chartered Bank found that branches with increased levels of employee engagement had a 16% higher profit margin growth than branches with decreased levels of engagement.. It actually affects your bottom line.

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How to Implement Change in your Business

Mar 27 2015

What do they say about only two things being constant – death and taxes? Well I have news for you – in today’s world horrible people find new ways to cause death, and governments change taxes all the time! There’s only one thing that’s constant – change is constant!

The problem is people hate change. Whether you want to introduce a small change such as your price list, or something bigger like a new process for doing something in your business, or something really stressful like a merger or opening a new branch, people will hate it and voice the question “why?”

Whenever you want to introduce change, you need to bring people with you. Implementing change is all about leadership, leadership that puts in front of people a desirable and inspirational future picture of the company. Leadership is required in communicating the desirability of that future and therefore why people need to embrace the change that is necessary. Leaders need to explain the why’s, what’s, who’s and how’s of change.

This video discusses what you need to do:-

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What would I do to your business if I took over?

Mar 16 2015

In response to an article I published earlier, I received an interesting query. Jim, who is the owner-manager of a wholefoods distribution business based in Denver, Colorado, and who employs 20 people across two states, asks what changes I might make to his business if I took it over, sight unseen.

Before I thought “sight unseen” was a bit unfair, Jim explained that he felt his business performance was starting to plateau and wondered if there were any common changes he could put into place in order to shake it up.

This question raised issues about business growth as well as about efficiency, so it made me think of the key aspects of a business that any business should think about changing today. So, sight unseen, here is what I might do.

First, I would spend some time every day seeing customers, suppliers, staff and other key stakeholders, either one on one or in groups, or at least talk to them on the telephone. I believe business today needs to maintain good relationships with key stakeholders, especially customers, staff and suppliers. If you do business with friends, it is hard for friends to stop doing business with you. As well, you can get great feedback to your face – that’s always a catalyst for change especially if the feedback is (constructive) criticism! The topics for discussion would be how we are doing business together, could I help them more, and how we might be supportive of each other if times got bad. Added to that would be more personal topics if you feel this is appropriate, such as how their businesses were syncing with their personal goals. This type of personal information can help you both in designing different business models.

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Cultivate surprise in your business!

Mar 13 2015

In business it is critical that you formulate and write down your plans. The old adage “businesses do not plan to fail, they fail to plan” is so true! Throughout the world the statistics is quite consistent – between 70% and 80% of startup businesses fail within the first three years, and when asked, most of these business owners say that they operated without a plan.

And yet, in my three decades of helping clients start and grow businesses, I can tell you, hand on heart, that your business plan is out of date as soon as it is written!

What? So why the heck am I spending this much time (and probably money) planning and documenting my plan?

Because you need to have an idea of what you are up against, what opportunities you can take advantage of, and how you will go about it. With a plan, as some of your assumptions change or circumstances change them, you will know the strategic direction you are heading, the steps you intended to take and how you can adjust them to suit the changed circumstances. Without a plan all you can do is react, follow events, rather than create them.

So how do you deal with changing circumstances? In this video I talk about expecting surprises to pop up. Cultivate the ability to look for surprises and the flexibility to take them on board as opportunities! Read More

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Category - Corporate Culture

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The New Way of Working

Building Better Leaders at Work

How to Implement Change in your Business

What would I do to your business if I took over?

Cultivate surprise in your business!