Invest In Talent

March 25, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Top 5 reasons to invest in a Talent Management system, presented by SuccessFactors.com

In 2009, take an opportunity for your organisation to invest strategically in talent in order to make relative gains against your competition. Here are the top 5 reasons why NOW more than ever is the time to invest in a Talent Management system.

  1. Execute corporate strategy quickly in changing market dynamics - the key to affecting change and executing the company’s strategy is to create and track meaningful goals across and up and down the organisation enabling executives to be nimble in responding to adversity or market opportunity.
  2. Pay for performance and compensate more strategically – make your payroll go further by paying on individual performance and for critical roles that drive key business objectives.
  3. Retain your best performers – research shows top performers are 5 times more productive than the rest. Create a development roadmap for success to ensure they stick around.
  4. Cut costs by pruning wisely – identify and eliminate underperformers through more effective assessments and real-time analytics.
  5. Backfill key positions - discover potential talent gaps before they happen so you can take measures to develop bench strength for key positions. Having the right people in the right role at the right time creates highly responsive organisations that can thrive during adversity.

Also important:

  • Improve linkage between pay and performance
  • Develop next generation of leaders in the organisation
  • Improve employee/associate retention


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Retail Success Tips

March 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment

22 Ways of Successful Retail Managers, presented by DMSretail.com, a Retail Consulting Company.

  1. Believes and practices exemplary Customer Service.
  2. Interviews with a purpose, hires for the cause and trains with a passion.
  3. Leads by example and presents as an admirable Role Model.
  4. Motivates and Coaches all day, every day.
  5. Manages his time, plans ahead and gears for success.
  6. Communicates well and often.
  7. Holds values like Honesty and Integrity as sacred; is above reproach.
  8. Is accessible, follows up and follows through with consistency.
  9. Manages performance when and where it happens.
  10. Mentors and develops people to promote from within.
  11. Manages with a praise and reward philosophy.
  12. Knows his customers and their needs.
  13. Manages Up, Sees the Bigger Picture, Has Influence.
  14. Shows Operational excellence.
  15. Always promotes growth and is forward thinking.
  16. Networks in and out of the workplace.
  17. Possesses an unparalleled energy, ambition and enthusiasm for his work.
  18. Develops a Flair for Visual Merchandising.
  19. Has a game plan for productive store visits.
  20. Works hard and gets results.
  21. Strives for Quality and Quantity.
  22. Excels in all areas of retail, takes action and is not afraid to get his hands dirty.


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Thought For The Day

March 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Three steps to achieving what you want or keep you resolutions:

1. Goal Setting
You maintain your direction by setting a goal. This is how you can see where you are heading. Goals can be long term or short term, and it can be revised but they are there to help you chart your course.

2. Motivation
Without motivation nothing can be accomplished. Keeping your goals firmly in mind, having the motivation to get there is how you can achieve your goals.

3. Time Management
Time will not stop, but you can allocate your time to operate effectively. Without time management, even the greatest plans will not be executed.


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Creative Thinking For Effective Management

March 19, 2009 | Leave a Comment

For years I have always written a short note in my management diary. It reads: Effective Management Depends On Creative Thinking.

When a bunch of university students interviewed me for a project they were doing, I had the opportunity to touch on my ideas for creative thinking in the management process. Creative thinking is not to be confused with creative management, which to me means little or nothing. Creative thinking is a means to breakthrough the barriers to your performance levels, it is how you motivate your people, and it is a tenet of leadership.

Recently, I came across this, written by Edward de Bono, in The Thinking Manager. “Everyone should seek to be creative, even though creativity is full of risks and uncertainties”. Edward de Bono is a leading creative thinker in management today, highly critical of  many management practices.

Creative think can work for us. He goes on to point four points of ignorance holding back the creative effort:

  1. Why should anyone seek to be creative? There is the risk of failure. There is the need to persuade others. There is a need for political skills. It is much better to sit quietly and do what you are supposed to do.
  2. If things are going well, who needs creativity? If things are going badly, then there is no time for the uncertainties of creativity.
  3. If you set out to be creative - and even if you use the powerful tools of lateral thinking - you cannot be sure of a result.
  4. There is a further problem. Every valuable creative idea we examine must always be logical in hindsight - otherwise it would have no value. So it is assumed, erroneously, that logic could have reached the idea in the first place. Not so.

Here is how to make creative thinking work. Confidence is a key factor in creative effort. Those who have succeeded in having creative ideas in the past are much more willing to make a creative effort. They know from experience that new ideas are possible. They have experienced the joy and achievement of having a new idea.

The problem is schools does not encourage creative thinking, and workplace does not expect it. Most people do what is expected of them. Creativity then is associated with mavericks, and yet all leading CEOs can be consider mavericks one way or the other. It is how they achieve new breakthroughs and how they continue to deliver performances in the face of adverse economic environment.

To get creativity into an organization you must make it an expectation. The effort to have ideas is key. If new ideas are an expectation, then people will make an effort to have new ideas. Their confidence will grow and eventually there will be a creative organization.


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How To Interpret KPI?

January 14, 2009 | Leave a Comment


Some retailers have difficulty figuring out reasons why their sales revenue is unsatisfactory. Key Performance Indicators, or KPI as they are most often referred to, are absolutely crucial for any business. Retail is no different.

This is a fact; if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. And, going even further, if you don’t know exactly how you are measuring it and how to interpret the result, you are not managing it.

Retail maths is crucial in retail management. Gaining an understanding of retail math lets the Store Manager put everything in perspective. The Store Manager gains new insight into exactly what is going on in their store. The Store Manager who knows some retail math will be able to focus on his store performance and interpret results much more easily. He will see the relationship between his sales performance, sales target, expenses, and how it reflects on his profit and loss. Just knowing all of the components makes it easy to see what needs to be improved upon.

The Store Manager will understand the current situation and the root cause. He will see that all alternative countermeasures were explored, and are deployed - even ones that are unpopular. He will know what to track when the plan is being executed, how to check the results against expectations, and see what additional countermeasures are needed to handle any gaps.

In any business, results come as an outcome of specific actions taken, not blind luck.

For more resources on Retail Maths.

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Management Competes, Not Products

January 1, 2009 | 1 Comment


From time to time, you come across an article that stays with you. This is an article that I have kept with me over the years. My notes indicates that it was published in our local newspaper, Daily Express in February 2002. Written by Gunther Conradi.

At that time, I was in the midst of my marketing module for an MBA program. It just made sense to me because for a retailer to outlast his competition, it is management that is the winning factor. Not products, prices or advertisement. Unfortunately,  many of my colleagues focused solely on the 4 Ps - Product, Price, Promotion, Place. Well, yes but if you don’t manage the 4 Ps, nothing you do will make you stand out from the crowd.

Other than the 30 years he mentioned, this is one of my favorite articles. I have been through the crash of 1997 when Asians economies took a major hit, and forex currency rates doubled. Yet in the years from 1997 to 2002, my retail unit experience sales growth of over 20%. We captured market share and outlasted many competitors. The lesson I learned was that there is no substitute for effective management.

It takes good management to secure that business behavior is in accordance with the changing patterns in the marketplace, including the overall environment.

Managers make or break an enterprise. Just look at the list of bankruptcies, de-listed companies and the hundreds suspended from trading ….. then we see what disastrous consequences bad management has to account for.

In business, a corporation’s life expectancy can be directly traced to the general level of its managerial competence. Managerial incompetence is a frequently over-looked factor when business go down and prices go up.

Management has its problems, challenges, commitment and place, playing the pivotal role ….. more managers are required but many of them have a poor perception on what they are supposed to be. The better management will respond positively when a downturn occurs. They do not accept a downturn as the cause of business failure. If there is a crisis, then there ought to be a crisis management, a contingency plan. The better management will always have and hold the competitive edge.

There must be practical ability and motivation to meet the challenges of the next 30 years. The task for today’s managers is to create conditions for tomorrow, to prepare their organizations to move into the future.

It is management that competes in the marketplace and not the products.

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The Wal-Mart Way

October 6, 2008 | Leave a Comment


I have just posted a review of The Wal-Mart Way by Don Soderquist, the former C.O.O. and Vice-Chairman of Wal-Mart. This is the inside story of the success of the world’s largest company.

Reviewing this book wasn’t easy, there were so many lessons and points that were very useful. Don Soderquist goes into details on their commitment to hardwork, integrity, the company’s core values, excellence in execution and their focus on the customer. You find yourself comparing your company’s culture against Wal-Mart’s.

Many companies are already doing what Wal-Mart does, it’s a matter of degrees. Wal-Mart places unrelenting focus on what they do. The point is, you won’t get this kind of commitment from your people unless the management absolutely commits to the vision and lead the charge.

I have always admired the way they do business, and I see a lot of similarities from my previous company. We built the company from a turnover of $10 million to almost $200 million. We didn’t get there by doing things half-heartedly, nor do you achieve any degree of success without commitment. The company I was with was sold to the largest retailer in Malaysia, and is now part of an organization with international businesses.

I have read many positive and negative reports on Wal-Mart. But their success is undisputed and they are the largest retailer in the world today. As a retailer, you have to study The Wal-Mart Way. You will find a lot helpful tips, many of which you are already using. However, to achieve superiority in your field, the commitment to excellence (an overused word I know) and the focus on execution has to be unrelenting. You cannot have everyday low price without everyday low cost in your operations.

Read it and let me know what you think. The Wal-Mart Way review is here.

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Time Is A Scarce Resource

October 2, 2008 | 2 Comments


When someone says to you, “I’m sorry, but I just don’t have the time.” you know they are lying. What they are actually saying is ” I don’t want to spend time with you, in the manner you’re suggesting.”

As managers, we control how we invest our time. We don’t want to sit in on unproductive meetings, or on low-priority issues. If the job cannot be done in the course of a normal working day, there is either something work with the job or that person just isn’t performing.

I’ve seen time-management programs that actually take up even more of our time, we attend meetings to schedule our work, meetings to update head office management the progress of our work. Then the people who can help our business are told that we are not available because we are all at a meeting.

I like to invest my time in the following ways:

  1. Talking to our customers to discover our problems.
  2. Develop the people I work with.
  3. Learn and assimilate information and new techniques.
  4. Create new standards to improve our performances.
  5. Show ways to motivate the organization.

Invest your time in things and people that matters. Keep pushing the information down to the front-lines. Keep the channels of communication open. When you do that, your people will know the direction you are headed, and have the knowledge to handle problems down at their level. And you will be the first to hear about it.

Recommended reading: First Class Manager by Andrew Rondeau.

Also recommended: Our Emperors Have No Clothes by Alan Weiss.

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Updating Our HR Policy

September 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment


Sometimes, you find a product that makes you ask “why didn’t I see that 3 years ago?” or “Where was that when I needed it?”.

Here’s a story for you. A few years ago, the group management team and the retail outlet managers spent an entire afternoon reviewing, and giving input on how we can update our human resources policies and procedures. It was an important issue, but it sure made for a long afternoon. That long afternoon dragged on into the evening.

When the meeting was over, I was appointed to oversee the revision of our company’s HR policies. That meant reviewing the entire manual for the company. Some of the policies were 10 years old, and we’ve stopped using them years ago. Can you imagine doing everything from scratch? We had to review, rewrite, re-type every single thing. Sure, we had a great team, but I still had a retail outlet to manage. I still had to do 20 million in sales.

Recently, I came across a product called Instant HR Policies and Procedures. It is a set of templates that covers everything in HR matters. Everything from staff benefits, performance reviews, code of conduct, etc.

Let me tell you, if I had a set templates like that, the job would have been completed in half the time. We had to research and test every proposal we came up with. At that time, getting information or examples wasn’t easy. It’s not like we could buy it of the shelf, and most companies won’t even think about letting us see what they were using. I suspect that not very many companies have a clear-cut, documented and up-to-date HR policy and procedures.

If you’re interested in this great product, read about it here.

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Recognize Your Strength

September 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment


How do you know how effective you are?

We all want to be more successful, more effective in our work, to be recognized as the BEST. Why? Because by being the best you call the shots, be it in your career or your life. You earn more, enjoy life more and you get to buy the things you want. People will recognize that you are a First-Class Manager.

So if you want to be more successful, more effective, more recognized, where should you start? The best place to start is with a self-assessment.

Effective First-Class Managers exude self-confidence.

  • How do you react in different situations?
  • Do you know what your strengths are?
  • How well do you know yourself?
  • How do you treat your people?
  • How do you perform under pressure?

Most Managers do not know what their strengths are. These days too many Managers concentrate on their weaknesses and even worse their staff’s weaknesses. I am sure most people will work on their weaknesses, to improve their performance. That’s alright. You should do that. However, when you focus on your strengths, you have the opportunity to be great!

I want to share with you the tools and techniques to understand your strengths and to find out how effective you really are. Using these tools and techniques you will grow to be a First-Class manager.

Identify your talents, build them into strengths and enjoy consistent, near-perfect performance. Organizations and individuals will see a dramatic increase in performance, customer satisfaction, commitment and greater success where managers are in roles where they are using their strengths.

Read The First-Class Manager by Andrew Rondeau, “How to simply and easily be a respected Manager earning a Top Income”.

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