Organisational Development | Teik Oh

Creating a Mission-oriented Organisation Structure

Jun 16 2015

As you start or grow your business sooner or later you will employ people.

Perhaps what started as a micro-business with just you or you and your spouse begins to grow and you need to leverage your time. The tasks that you once divided up between the two of you seamlessly have to be explained to your new staff. You need to draw up “job descriptions” so that everyone knew what they were responsible for, so that you reduced confusion when something might be forgotten. In time this grows in complexity and you need to have different teams looking after different parts of the business.

This can happen with anywhere upwards of three people!

So you start to doodle organisational structures – you know, you at the top, then the people who are in charge of different aspects of the business who report directly to you, then below them the people who work in their sections who report to them.

The problem is, these structure diagrams seem so straight-forward, but are they organised so you get work done – or are they organised so that the focus of all your work is towards your mission?

There’s a saying in management consulting – “strategy creates structure”.

This means that in order to work out the optimal structure for your business, you need to make sure that the structure is created by your strategy. Otherwise “structure forces strategy”, or in other words your strategies start to be formulated in accordance with what your structure implies. For example if you had a structure that included a design team separate from a construction team, that structure may force a strategy upon you that says you will only make what has been designed. If on the other hand if strategy created structure, you may find that you start with the best strategy – to make products that are designed by people in and outside your business. Then you design your structure that either does away with a design team or incorporates them into a “build and design team” thereby increasing innovation and flexibility.

So, how do you create an organisation structure that is mission-oriented?

Get over to the website after you have watched the video and start the conversation. What does your organisation structure look like? Is it mission-oriented or do you find that the structure itself changes the mission?

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How to implement lasting change in your business

Jun 09 2015

We know that death and taxes are constant. Well, when you are in business, change is also constant.

There’s an old saying – “if you do nothing, something terrible happens….nothing”.

In business change can be demanded by the market, by your customers changing, by new trends and technologies, by changing team members and by your own changing life goals. If you don’t change, one of these things will jump out an bite you and if you don’t respond, your business will inevitably suffer.

But if you’ve ever tried to change something in your business, have you found that it may have worked for a while, then after some time, people slip back into their old ways. Or, it has been impossible to put through a change because people just don’t want anything to do with it!

Why is that?

Because change has to be implemented by people, and people just hate change.

You know how it is. You get comfortable doing the same things over and over again. In fact you get really good at it that you can do it in your sleep, with your eyes closed! You get so good at it that you start to justify why you don’t need to change – it would cost too much, you would need retraining, it would take a long time to be as efficient as the way you have been doing it because you can do it in your sleep, with your eyes closed.

You even say this when the need for change is staring you in the face.

Your product is getting old. New entrants into the market are using mobile apps to deliver your product. Yet you say “they’re not as good, they don’t go into the detail like your hands on approach can provide”. While that may be true enough your customers are voting with your feet. Remember Kodak had the best film processing chain in the world. They stuck to what they knew because it was so good. Meanwhile customers started buying better and better digital cameras.

So, how do you implement change in your business that will “stick”?

Here’s those 8 steps again:-

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7 Pillars of entrepreneural success

Jun 08 2015

I intend to give the readers of my blog value – thousands of dollars of value – for free with each post.

In my consulting practice I can charge up to $5,000 a day for my advice and in consulting engagements on start-ups, business diagnoses, strategic planning and marketing. Honestly, the time it takes me to prepare the information in these posts, and the value of the 30 plus years of experience I bring to these tips and tools, make each post of around $2,000 in value.

And you get it for free!

But the value I can give you doesn’t just rest in my own head. Sometimes I come across great articles about business and entrepreneurs that I can’t resist sharing with you.

And hey, it means I get 3 or 4 hours off not having to write or film another post of my own!

This week I came across a great article by Macquarie Bank about the 7 Pillars of being a successful entrepreneurial business:-

Be patient
Grow expertise by building your business organically
Be disciplined with cost management
Hire industry experts where needed
Empower your people
Keep the essence of your business alive
Stay on top of new technologies and innovations.

Here’s the link to the article:-

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How to grow your business with no external capital

Jun 05 2015

You’ve started your business. You may have been running a few years and you are now at a stage where you need some capital to organically grow your business to its next stage.

We all want to see our businesses grow into something bigger, but finding external capital is difficult these days. Where are the angels when you need them, especially if you don’t want to go into debt?

Well there are things you can do to grow your business from within. Watch this week’s video to see what you can do.

Remember – there are always innovative ways to find capital from within your business. Sure, if you could get an injection of $250,000 to half a million, what you could do to your business! But when it’s not there, it’s not there and your growth will have to be organic and a little bit slower. But grow you can.

As always the fun starts after you watch the video – what do you think? What are your ideas or experiences in finding organic capital?

Get over to https://teikoh.com and leave a comment. Better still, sign up at here and be part of the Masterclass conversation!

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Starting in Business

Jun 01 2015

Are you thinking of starting your own business?

A 2014 survey showed that it is the dream of almost 60% of people in employment. I don’t know how many people not in employment wish to start a business, but either people in jobs really hate their jobs or it is built in to our genes that we want to be masters of our own destiny.

So if you want to start a business, what do you need to know?

In my opinion, having helped many successful start-ups over the last 30 years (and nursed a few failures!) I believe what you need to know is the answer to two basic questions.

Firstly, how will my business grow and prosper over many years? And secondly, what are the basic supports I need when I start?

Let’s deal with the first question first – how will your business grow and prosper over many years?

To answer this question you need information about the following:-

What kind of person am I?
What exactly is my business?
What skills do I need?
What money will I need?
What is my plan to grow and prosper?

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Category - Organisational Development

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Creating a Mission-oriented Organisation Structure

How to implement lasting change in your business

7 Pillars of entrepreneural success

How to grow your business with no external capital

Starting in Business