Four TOP Organizational Issues and Solution Strategies


Breakthrough!® Can Help You Solve Real Problems... TRY IT!
Home \| Breakthrough!® Description and Photos \| About the Author \| User Feedback \| Ways to Use Breakthrough!® \| Product Reviews Putting Our Differences to Work.com \| LS Companies.com \| Debbe Kennedy.com \| Global Dialogue Center.com
These are just four samples ... Breakthrough!® identifies 52 of the most common problems facing today's organizations and it gives you over 500 cross-referenced WHAT YOU CAN DO Solution Strategies and much more! Scroll down to try all four.	Breakthrough!® Everything You Need to Start A Solution Revolution® ISBN: 0965767795 $ 30.00 by Debbe Kennedy Buy from Amazon.com
LACK OF CUSTOMER FOCUS Check your role against your goal. Take a good look at your own actions and behaviors. If your business lacks customer focus, it is likely that you'll discover your own actions, demands, and other behaviors may be sending mixed messages. Break the "rules" for being customer focused! Make your own rules for each customer based on what you learn is important to them. Different customers need different levels of personal attention and focus. Don't treat them all the same. Create "customer relationship building" confidence in your team. Help them learn by doing. Establish specific learning goals for customer contacts and visits for everyone. Share customer knowledge and learnings at team meetings. Re-examine your marketing techniques. What has worked in the past may now conflict with your focus on the customer. For example, hard core sales tactics, once thought to be acceptable to close business, or time-wasting contentious negotiations techniques used to garner the best advantage, may not continue to serve your organization well. Strengthening customer relationships starts with genuine care about the customer's success. Creating an environment of trust and ensuring all your business interactions are not only honorable, but mutually beneficial, is the challenge. Check your approach.
MORALE ISSUES: PEOPLE DON'T FEEL VALUED Examine your own behaviors and actions. Ask yourself if the discontentment you see or hear about relates to you. Be brave enough to accept the reality that YOU may be a big part of the problem. Put yourself on an improvement plan. Focus on the little things. Most of us don't need a great deal of fanfare to feel valued. To the contrary, knowing that the organizations we work for appreciate and care about our contributions remedies the major part of morale issues. If people are down, big displays of instant attention can backfire. Instead, focus on the little differences. Here are a few suggestions: Take time to say "hello" when you arrive. Try greeting people with a genuine interest in how they are. Drink your coffee in the lunchroom a few days a week. Sit down with people you don't know. If you see people hanging out by the water cooler, join them. Start building a relationship with the people who are running your organization. No one needs to be your best friend, they need to know you've taken the time to learn who they are and value their contribution to achieving your mission.
LACK OF FLEXIBILITY Develop flexibility in your people. Start broadening perspectives and experiences with your own team. 1) Make cross-training a requirement. 2) Add a requirement for everyone to enhance or build at least one skill every 6-12 months. 3) Encourage temporary assignments, so people get the feel of having to leave their own comfort zones. 4) Let them experience working in a "portable" state. Mobilize the work environment. Develop common work areas, where people go to the work, instead of the work coming to them. 5) Assign different combinations of people to work together on projects to familiarize the team with all co-workers. 6) Look for other similar ways to promote flexibility by giving people an "acclimatization" to it through experiential learning on-the-job. It's not necessary to announce or make a big deal of it, just begin making flexibility changes. As successes begin to surface and confidence begins to build, that is the time to start talking about flexibility. People will then be champions of it. Don't say no! Try it first. Check your attitude. It's easy for most of us to get into the habit of saying, "No" before thinking things through. Listen to your responses for a week or two. You'll see if this habit applies to you. Listen to other decision makers and staff, too. You may discover an organizational attitude adjustment is in order. Start rewarding flexibility with your attention. Start teaching people about flexibility through real-life examples in the work place or marketplace. Pay attention. See if you can find one example every day to demonstrate the value of flexibility. Use the best examples to talk about flexibility with your team. Raise their consciousness about why flexibility is important to your organization. Open the dialogue with them. See what ideas surface to help you begin making changes to foster flexibility.
LACK OF REAL CHANGE LEADERS Optimize---use the ones you have. Take a careful look within your organization. You may have change leaders you've just overlooked. To find them, look for those people in your organization that are doing. They know your business and they care about it even if you've hardly noticed. They are always searching for a better way. They are self-starters. They build enthusiasm in others. They may not be the flashy ones. More often, they are quietly taking action while others are still talking. Find them in your organization. Get them together and see what suggestions they can give you. Become a change leader yourself. If the thought paralyzes you, try it anyway! Spend a few minutes envisioning what you would do if all the barriers were lifted. Imagine a successful outcome. Now, trace the path backwards from the success, imagining what steps you took. Who you got involved? What actions worked? What were the early symbols of success? What were the first steps that built momentum? If you can imagine your success, you can achieve it! Start today. Look outside for role models. If you're not sure who or what a real change leader is, you may want to do a little research outside your organization to discover a few role models that will help you learn about them. For starters, you might check your public library or local bookstore for historical and contemporary stories of those who have lead great changes- those who did their part to make their business or the world a better place. You might also check books that focus on organizational change-particularly ones that focus on "change leaders," not academic theory about leading change. Recommendation: Real Change Leaders: How You Can Create Growth and High Performance at Your Company by Jon R. Katzenbach and The RCL Team, Times Business, 1995.
Copyright Leadership Solutions Companies since 1990

Breakthrough!® Can Help You Solve Real Problems... TRY IT!

Putting Our Differences to Work.com | LS Companies.com | Debbe Kennedy.com | Global Dialogue Center.com

These are just four samples ... Breakthrough!® identifies 52 of the most common problems facing today's organizations and it gives you over 500 cross-referenced WHAT YOU CAN DO Solution Strategies and much more!

Scroll down to try all four.

Breakthrough!® Everything You Need to Start A Solution Revolution®
ISBN: 0965767795

$ 30.00

by Debbe Kennedy

Buy from Amazon.com

LACK OF CUSTOMER FOCUS

Check your role against your goal. Take a good look at your own actions and behaviors. If your business lacks customer focus, it is likely that you'll discover your own actions, demands, and other behaviors may be sending mixed messages.

Break the "rules" for being customer focused! Make your own rules for each customer based on what you learn is important to them. Different customers need different levels of personal attention and focus. Don't treat them all the same.

Create "customer relationship building" confidence in your team. Help them learn by doing. Establish specific learning goals for customer contacts and visits for everyone. Share customer knowledge and learnings at team meetings.

Re-examine your marketing techniques. What has worked in the past may now conflict with your focus on the customer. For example, hard core sales tactics, once thought to be acceptable to close business, or time-wasting contentious negotiations techniques used to garner the best advantage, may not continue to serve your organization well. Strengthening customer relationships starts with genuine care about the customer's success. Creating an environment of trust and ensuring all your business interactions are not only honorable, but mutually beneficial, is the challenge. Check your approach.

MORALE ISSUES: PEOPLE DON'T FEEL VALUED

Examine your own behaviors and actions. Ask yourself if the discontentment you see or hear about relates to you. Be brave enough to accept the reality that YOU may be a big part of the problem. Put yourself on an improvement plan.

Focus on the little things. Most of us don't need a great deal of fanfare to feel valued. To the contrary, knowing that the organizations we work for appreciate and care about our contributions remedies the major part of morale issues. If people are down, big displays of instant attention can backfire. Instead, focus on the little differences. Here are a few suggestions: Take time to say "hello" when you arrive. Try greeting people with a genuine interest in how they are. Drink your coffee in the lunchroom a few days a week. Sit down with people you don't know. If you see people hanging out by the water cooler, join them. Start building a relationship with the people who are running your organization. No one needs to be your best friend, they need to know you've taken the time to learn who they are and value their contribution to achieving your mission.

LACK OF FLEXIBILITY

Develop flexibility in your people. Start broadening perspectives and experiences with your own team. 1) Make cross-training a requirement. 2) Add a requirement for everyone to enhance or build at least one skill every 6-12 months. 3) Encourage temporary assignments, so people get the feel of having to leave their own comfort zones. 4) Let them experience working in a "portable" state. Mobilize the work environment. Develop common work areas, where people go to the work, instead of the work coming to them. 5) Assign different combinations of people to work together on projects to familiarize the team with all co-workers. 6) Look for other similar ways to promote flexibility by giving people an "acclimatization" to it through experiential learning on-the-job. It's not necessary to announce or make a big deal of it, just begin making flexibility changes. As successes begin to surface and confidence begins to build, that is the time to start talking about flexibility. People will then be champions of it.

Don't say no! Try it first. Check your attitude. It's easy for most of us to get into the habit of saying, "No" before thinking things through. Listen to your responses for a week or two. You'll see if this habit applies to you. Listen to other decision makers and staff, too. You may discover an organizational attitude adjustment is in order.

Start rewarding flexibility with your attention. Start teaching people about flexibility through real-life examples in the work place or marketplace. Pay attention. See if you can find one example every day to demonstrate the value of flexibility. Use the best examples to talk about flexibility with your team. Raise their consciousness about why flexibility is important to your organization. Open the dialogue with them. See what ideas surface to help you begin making changes to foster flexibility.

LACK OF REAL CHANGE LEADERS

Optimize---use the ones you have. Take a careful look within your organization. You may have change leaders you've just overlooked. To find them, look for those people in your organization that are doing. They know your business and they care about it even if you've hardly noticed. They are always searching for a better way. They are self-starters. They build enthusiasm in others. They may not be the flashy ones. More often, they are quietly taking action while others are still talking. Find them in your organization. Get them together and see what suggestions they can give you.

Become a change leader yourself. If the thought paralyzes you, try it anyway! Spend a few minutes envisioning what you would do if all the barriers were lifted. Imagine a successful outcome. Now, trace the path backwards from the success, imagining what steps you took. Who you got involved? What actions worked? What were the early symbols of success? What were the first steps that built momentum? If you can imagine your success, you can achieve it! Start today.

Look outside for role models. If you're not sure who or what a real change leader is, you may want to do a little research outside your organization to discover a few role models that will help you learn about them. For starters, you might check your public library or local bookstore for historical and contemporary stories of those who have lead great changes- those who did their part to make their business or the world a better place. You might also check books that focus on organizational change-particularly ones that focus on "change leaders," not academic theory about leading change. Recommendation: Real Change Leaders: How You Can Create Growth and High Performance at Your Company by Jon R. Katzenbach and The RCL Team, Times Business, 1995.