Corporate Culture | Teik Oh

Communicating Organisational Change

May 18 2015

Open and honest communication is essential in your business in order to keep staff engaged. When your business is about to implement some substantial change such as significant expansion, changing procedures, building a new team, changing business models like going from bricks and mortar to online, communication becomes even more critical.

When you want to open communications channels about organisational change, you need to send the right message to the right people at the right time. These messages need to be custom-built to the audience and the stage of progress, they need to address fear, they need to deal with natural resistance to change, and they need to use different media.

The key is – what is appropriate to the specific stakeholder?

The importance of communication in organisational change cannot be over-stated. Handled badly and you could end up with a vision that is misunderstood, as against all stakeholders involved attaining a common understanding of the goals and direction of change. It can be the difference between fear and resistance versus motivation and co-ordination.

However, the enormity of the task cannot be under-stated.

A management school study found that the total amount of information given to an employee in three months averaged 2.3 million words and numbers. A typical communication about change within those three months involved a 30 minute speech plus a one-hour meeting plus one memo and one internal news article that included 13,400 words and numbers. So the typical communication about change consisted of 0.58% of total communication!

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Six Steps to Make Your Business Resilient

May 11 2015

As I write this, there are fresh concerns across the world economy over recovery in Europe and North America, Chinese GDP is slowing, and the Australian mining boom seems to be coming to an end.

These are world-wide economic affairs, and as owners of small businesses you might be wondering how this affects you, the small fish in a big pond.

The effect on you trickles down from what happens on a global scale. As countries batten the hatches, the larger companies in your nation’s economy slow down because their customers buy less. These larger companies buy from smaller companies, and these smaller companies buy from you. As the larger companies tighten the belt, employees might lose their jobs. Some of these individuals buy from you. Business might still seem good to you today, but it may take some time for an economic crisis to trickle down.

Nevertheless all is not doom and gloom, there are some signs of opportunity that encourages continued optimism. So what do you do today with these mixed messages?

As a small or micro-business you need to recognise and take advantage of modest opportunities to grow, but at the same time recognise the existence of potential downside risks.

Certainly, pay attention to your bottom line but at the same time, focus on cash flow and not just profit growth. Ensure that you are putting away sufficient working capital to survive any shocks. You need to continue pursuing business opportunities, but with discipline and careful planning. And, this is the time to put in genuine efforts at reorganising your business for efficiency.

As a small or micro business today, realising that you are at the mercy of market forces outside your control, I would look at these 6 steps to build resilience into your business.

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Are YOU making your business too complex?

May 04 2015

Who said running a business was easy?

It’s a bit like learning to drive a car. You have to remember to look in the mirror; you have to press on the clutch and then change gears; don’t look down, you have to steer; and don’t forget which is the accelerator and which is the brake pedal – what, I have to do this all at once?

So, anything to reduce complexity would be a boon for business owners, right? A bit like driving an automatic, at least that’s ONE pedal and the gearshift out of the way!

A business has four areas that can attract layers of complexity:-

The structure
The products
The processes
Management behaviour.

The business structure can be complex. There is the legal entity, and each different one has different regulatory and reporting aspects, some more complex than others. You can review the legal entity and perhaps choose one that is more simple to operate (but be careful of tax ramifications in any change).

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Four Steps to make a Merger Work

Apr 27 2015

One of the most difficult operational issues is the merger of two corporate cultures.

If you are running a micro-business or even a small business at the smaller end of SME’s, you might think this does not apply to you. I disagree.

From time to time small businesses will “merge” with another culture. You may buy a business that is already operational and with staff who have been there for some time. In this case you will need to “merge” your personal business culture with that of the business you just bought. If indeed you already run a business, you might buy a smaller one – that’s a merger of two cultures. Perhaps you are in a situation where one of your competitors or colleagues suggest you “get together” – that’s an obvious merger.

Whatever the situation, if you are faced with having to put together two people or two groups of people, it is not a simple equation of 1+1=2. Different organisations have different values, different processes, and different ways of doing things that are justifiable to each. The key is to get together and start working efficiently as soon as possible.

Mergers can be successfully managed if you understand some key success factors and there is actually a “formula” that you can apply.

The key success factors of a merger are:-

Effective planning and execution
An overall and well communicated vision of why this is taking place
Effective and quick alignment and integration
Fast and focused transition.

I summarise the implementation of these key success factors as “Plan well, Fit Quick, Work Quick, and Grow Quick”.

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Do you live up to your “Brand”?

Apr 24 2015

What is your “Brand”? Do you live up to it?

Branding is not about your logo, or corporate colours, it is about the way your team behaves in front of customers and other stakeholders. Your brand emanates from your Vision. Your Vision should provide a clear and distinctive picture about what you aspire to be, and it should have inherent in it the types of values you uphold – this is what we do, this is how we do it, this is who we are.

Instilling your brand culture into your people is as much about leadership as it is about marketing. If your people believe in the vision, and behave in a way as if they are already there, then they will display to the inside and outside world what kind of business you are. If you talk about the “quality” of your business but your people can’t deal with customers in a quality way, you are being hypocritical about your brand. If you talk about “customer service” but your people don’t return phone calls, who will believe what you say?

I was facilitating a planning session for a Not-For-Profit recently when it struck me how similar “branding” is with For-Profit companies. Are you doing what you do best? Do you do it as if you were living your Vision?

As usual, the best comes after the viewing – come to the website https://teikoh.com and tell me what your brand is. Tell me how you live it (or not!).

While you’re there, sign up with your name and email address and I’ll make sure that these tips on growing your business get sent to you. Oh and don’t worry, we value our subscribers and we will never provide your information to any spammy people!

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Category - Corporate Culture

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Communicating Organisational Change

Six Steps to Make Your Business Resilient

Are YOU making your business too complex?

Four Steps to make a Merger Work

Do you live up to your “Brand”?