Quotes and Concepts to Spark Flashcards
If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete!
Use this to determine if your business is likely to be successful. Are the strengths noted better than your competitors? If not, does not give you a competitive advantage.
A business exists to create (and retain) a customer!
Re-orientate your thinking. Build trust. Keep your word.
To improve business performance, (1) More cohesion is required rather than more hierarchy. (2) What is required is a network of leaders.
Unlike managers, leaders do not require positional power to influence people.
The only unforgivable sin in business is to run out of cash.
Cash is King!
Watch the costs and profits will take care of themselves.
Pay attention to the little things as an extension of this thought and reap huge rewards.
Today’s conventional wisdom was once radical and untried.
SCAMPER - Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to other use, Eliminate, Reverse.
20 uses for a fork or a balloon.
Two basic ways to expand your business.
(1) Take inventory of what you are good at extend out from your skills. (2) Determine what your customer’s (REALLY) need and work backwards, even if that means learning new skills.
Red Ocean Strategy and Blue Ocean Strategy.
Red Ocean Strategy is concerned with existing markets [Practices]. Blue Ocean Strategies is concerned with new markets [Practices].
Failing organisations (and departments) are usually over-managed and under-led.
Organisations (and departments) fail because they are too slow to react to changing circumstances and emerging threats. To survive, you need a workforce that is flexible and willing to make decisions without referring every little issue up the chain of command.
Stop viewing your organisation through the single lens of your own background and instead view it in all its complex details and interrelations.
You need to stop thinking like an accountant, engineer or HR Manager and start thinking like a General Manager.
Two golden rules..
(1) First impressions count! How you look and present yourself is very important.
(2) Always appear self-confident but not arrogant! Stand straight, smile and look people in the eye when you speak.
How we are evaluated (every time!).
(1) How we look.
(2) What we do.
(3) What we say.
(4) How we say it.
Preferable to present solutions rather than questions or requests for views.
Make good, clear, firm recommendations and people will see you as a confident, professional problem solver who knows how to get things done. These are the attributes you need to be known for.
Work with what you have to begin.
The task is to manage what there is and to create what could or should be.
Importance of not micro-managing.
Flowers grow when you feed and water them, not when you continually pull them out of the ground to see how the roots are doing. Its about granting staff freedom and discretion to do their job well.
