A Note From The President

Avil Beckford, President

It's September, the children are back in school, and you're back from vacation energized. It's like a new year! So, what are you going to do differently? What courses are you planning to take? What about that art class, writing course, that pottery or cooking workshop that you've been meaning to take for the past five years? The course doesn't have to be work related. Wouldn't it be fun to take a course with someone who you'd like to connect with, but have not had the time to do so? Taking a fun course is one way to feed your creative spirit.

To do something a little different this month, I am going to ask two young people to share their views with us on continuous learning. What can we learn from them?

"As an account executive at a large agency in Manhattan, effective communication is imperative. In order to continue my goal of continuous self improvement, I will be taking a writing course that is offered through my agency. The course will be very useful in communicating with my clients. In addition the knowledge I gain will be applicable in other areas of my professional career." Renae Powell

"My company offers several training seminars during the year on topics ranging from "Negotiation Skills" to "Introduction to Excel". Sad to say, I've only utilized the opportunity once. My aunt, who is one of the best un-published writers that I've ever known, has always stressed the importance of strong writing skills. This semester, I will take heed to her advice; I will be one of the few employees at my company taking advantage of the writing course being offered. Additionally, I'm preparing for the GMAT. If continuous learning is the way to go, then I'm revved up and ready to go. Are you?" Camile Beckford

Book Review

Review of The Strategic Enterprise: Growing A Business For The 21st Century by Bill Bishop

Bill Bishop defines a Strategic Enterprise as a company that uses the Relationship-First Formula, which means that it builds its business around customer type as opposed to product type. The author uses the formulae below to demonstrate what he is trying to say.

Product First Formula: Product x Large Number = Success
Relationship-First Formula: Quality Relationships x Unique Value = Success

Bishop builds the case for relationship selling by asserting that organizations need to shift focus from the products they sell to the people who buy them. The book is loaded with many pointers, and provides numerous examples of the problems that can prevent a business from reaching out to its customers. Bishop talks about how "most companies today use the incremental method and try to succeed by patching up their fundamentally flawed systems. Primarily, companies use this method because they spend most of their time living in the past. They can't envision an ideal model of the future, because they have so much invested in what they have already done." The author also talks about eight limiting factors that can strand your company on the Performance Plateau.

1. Focusing on short-term goals
2. Working individually or in small groups
3. Thinking only products and services
4. Trying to beat the competition
5. Focusing on sales, not marketing
6. Creating tools for specific situations
7. Being a slave to technology
8. Focusing only on existing markets

To further explore focusing on short-term goals, Bishop delves into the characteristics of companies plagued by this limiting factor. For example, "short-term thinking is a key symptom of a company stuck on the Performance Plateau. Executives, salespeople, employees, and shareholders focus solely on achieving better monthly or quarterly results… Caught in the rush to achieve short-term goals, the company does not take the time to install a bigger, better, or more powerful engine." Characteristics of a firm that focuses on short-term goals include: have no long-term vision of success for their companies, make major decisions and radical changes based on temporary setbacks, and strive to increase sales and profitability by doing the same things only faster, more often, and better.

Five Great Ideas

1. It's important to take time off regularly to plan and build a better business. By making less money in the short-term, you can make more money in the long-term
2. Success now takes more than a better product or service, no matter what your business or industry, your business must be built around specific types of customers, not around your products or services
3. A well-designed information technology system will give you a greater chance of success and allow you to deliver unique value faster, better and in a more individualized way
4. A strategic enterprise starts every project or initiative with a vision - a detailed blueprint of the ideal outcome to achieve success
5. Your customer type must be a kind of person, not a kind of company or organization because you do business with, and have a relationship with a person not an organization. People buy your services and write the cheques, not organizations

Though The Strategic Enterprise provides many mini case studies and examples of the problems that companies face when using the product first strategy, the author tells you rather than shows you, so you'd have to hire a consultant to implement the relationship-first strategy in your company. The book is loaded with information, but lacks the depth necessary for you to be able to make the changes necessary within your company. Despite the shortcoming, I recommend the book because you'll glean insights and it will make you think about your customers a little differently.

September's Book List

The Strategic Enterprise, Bill Bishop

Survey Results

"Writing: A Ticket to Work . . . Or a Ticket Out"

A survey of 120 human resource directors in companies affiliated with Business Roundtable, an association of chief executive officers from U.S. corporations found that:

• People who cannot write and communicate clearly will not be hired, and if already working, are unlikely to last long enough to be considered for promotion
• Half of responding companies reported that they take writing into consideration when hiring professional employees and when making promotion decisions
• Two-thirds of salaried employees in large American companies have some writing responsibility
• Between one-fifth and one-third of employees in fast-growing service sectors have some writing responsibility
• More than 40% of responding firms offer or require training for salaried employees with writing deficiencies
• Based on survey responses, the Commission estimates that remedying deficiencies in writing costs American corporations as much as $3.1 billion annually
• Writing expectations are not as high for "hourly" workers as they are for "salaried" workers
• 80% or more of the companies in the service and finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) sectors, the corporations with the greatest employment-growth potential, assess writing during hiring
• More than half of all responding companies report that they "frequently" or "almost always" produce technical reports (59 percent), formal reports (62 percent), and memos and correspondence (70 percent). Communication through e-mail and PowerPoint presentations is almost universal. "Because of e-mail, more employees have to write more often.
  

Source: http://www.writingcommission.org/pr/writing_for_employ.html
http://www.writingcommission.org/prod_downloads/writingcom/writing-ticket-to-work.pdf

How Did They Do That?

Stephen Abram, VP Innovation, SirsiDynix http://www.sirsi.com

Challenge: I work for a software solutions company that provides software to many libraries in North America. The biggest challenge that I face is understanding the marketplace in which our firm operates. We collect lots of data, and we harvest data from our client servers. We know what's happening in libraries across North America. So, we know what users in libraries are doing, but we also want to know why they are doing it.

Solution: We conducted focus group interviews of hundreds of library end-users, using the Cynefin process to identify what they are trying to achieve and what their unique needs are. This process provided only a partial picture so we also collected hundreds of stories from librarians to understand and identify the gap between what they are ultimately trying to achieve and what their users' needs are. We are using a sophisticated software to drill down into the data to find psychological patterns in stories, and develop profiles. Ultimately our aim is to build library systems around the end-user, to make our clients more successful, which will make us more successful.

Lessons Learned

1. Problems are often complex and you need to find a multifaceted solution
2. You need to look at things from different dimensions
   

What Can Ambeck Do For You:

Ambeck Enterprise provides diverse business research and analysis services to senior level executives, through the relevant distillation of diverse facts and data.

Formula For Success

Stephen Abram

I would say that the formula for success is listening, asking questions and continuous learning.

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