Teik Oh

You must know detail about your business

Aug 25 2014

I have worked with clients on their businesses and when asked about some detail like ” what profit margin do you make on that product” or “how many hours do your people work on average”, they don’t know.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about micromanagement here – I am a firm believer in systems and procedures and a living vision that explain to team members what they do, how they should do it, and why they should do it, leaving you to concentrate on strategic matters that have impact.

However, you do need to know, nay, must know, the detail of your business model and your business functions.

When I was in my thirties, my mother developed terminal cancer and I looked after her palliative care at home because she wanted to die at home. I was assisted by an effective tertiary care medical system – home nurses, oncology visits, medical equipment supplied and so on. Her GP was also mine and once he asked me what medication she was getting and I replied “I don’t know, some large white pills that the oncologist prescribed” thinking that was the affair of professionals whom I had delegated professional care to. My GP looked me in the eye and said:-

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The Vision Driven Organisation

Aug 18 2014

For many years now, I have championed the value of the vision-driven organisation and vision-driven planning. And now, I see more and more examples where the principles of vision-driven planning being used in business affairs, organisational structuring, customer service, team development, and even in day to day personal living.

So what is a vision-driven organisation or business? It is the principle of aligning everything that you do and believe in, your core values, organisational structure, goals and objectives and strategies, towards the ultimate achievement of a vision.

Oprah calls it The Secret at work – I have always maintained it is about creating a corporate culture that takes the hard effort out of any organisation. The principle is based around creating a vision of where you want to be by exploring the picture from different “perspectives”, where, from each perspective you ask the question, “on achievement of my vision, how will the business look from the perspective of….”

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5 Steps to make your company Vision tangible

Aug 12 2014

How many of us have word-smithed a company Vision Statement, perhaps even after a weekend workshop locked up with our senior managers, or we may even have paid big money to have a consultant workshop it with us and create that perfect Vision Statement?

Great, I can see all those hands held up. Now, how many of us use that Vision Statement day by day to assist our companies move in the direction the Vision Statement envisions? Not too many hands up now!

How many of us can honestly say our teams understand the tangible behavioral aspects of our Vision Statements to the extent they use it on a day by day basis to assess their own performance in team-working, customer relationships, objective-achievement, procedural efficiency? Read More

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A Branding Opportunity – Hit or Miss?

Jul 30 2014

Here’s something that just happened to me, which I think is a branding opportunity gone amiss, and only somewhat recovered. I am doing home renovations and have to have 2 sensors of the home alarm disconnected, and booked a technician for today (the last day before work starts). I’m waiting and no technician arrives, so I phone the alarm company. I explain the situation.

Alarm: I rang and left a message saying the tech couldn’t come today….

Me: Where did you call?

Alarm: Your home phone.

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Let’s all stick to our own knitting!

Jul 28 2014

I’m about to insult lawyers.

The rest of you – you needn’t cheer quite so raucously. I only choose to use lawyers as an example of a highly trained group of professionals, skilled and experienced in what they do and good at their multi-faceted jobs, but because of that, think that they can self-handle other aspects of their business where different specialist skills and experience are required.

I could have chosen accountants, or doctors, or engineers (there, some of you are not so comfortable now are you?).

One of my clients is a firm of commercial lawyers specialising in insolvency. In their business they run the constant risk that their clients cannot pay. To give them their due they always perform at their best and never stint on service, despite this possibility, but now and then, they get caught.

In one such instance they worked for an owner of advertising billboards scattered around the suburbs. Having satisfactorily won the case for their client they found that the client is cash strapped and unable to pay them, asking for a payment plan over a year or so. Clearly not a good situation. The senior partner, true to the entrepreneurial spirit of the firm then negotiated a contra arrangement where they get to use two billboards and paste up advertising for the law firm over a year. In this way a $20,000 doubtful debt is used to gain $40,000 worth of billboard advertising – quite an advantage? Read More

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