Change is a Challenge which Must Be Won!

Fourteen elements are critical to a successful business: Vision and a customer-centric Corporate Culture; strong, passionate Leadership and Management; efficient Manufacture and Distribution; high Productivity; Differentiation from competitors; efficient Pricing; developing a market Niche; excellent Communication to your team and customers; performance Metrics, and continual Innovation. Oh, and yes, you need to offer a reasonable product or service.

None of these are constant, all require continued review, revision and updating as the environment in which we operate continues to change. Society and public attitudes, competitors’ products, technology, media and communication vehicles, level of knowledge and market opportunities all continually evolve. Failure to address the challenge of change in any aspect of business will lead to a significant loss in performance.

Working as a consultant to major corporations in Europe, North America and Australia; being on the board of 6 companies with diverse interest; presenting at some 70 conferences a year for global companies and working with the world’s business leaders has provided me with a clear insight into why some companies enjoy enormous success while others flounder.

Leadership is the key, but not only the leadership by the board and CEO but the leadership demonstrated by all division heads, section managers and the influencers throughout the organisation. If your board and management structure, leadership, internal communication and teamwork, corporate culture, customer service, your marketing and advertising performance and marketing metrics are not finely turned and consistently updated, watch out!

One of the issues which affects the performance of most companies is a lack of training. How do you become a champion team? You have fully committed, motivated and passionate leadership and you train all your players at the highest level. How do you become a champion company? You must follow the same approach.

In 2006 I was a keynote speaker at the American Advertising Federation, The American Marketing Association, The Marketing Forum 2006 in England, The Italian Marketing Forum and the American Chamber of Commerce Marketing Forum in Sydney. In all, I attended presentations and workshops by every one of the 134 world’s top business leaders. What I learned was amazing. Not only techniques, technologies and trends, but even more important, attitude. While the business leaders are passionate, motivated and dedicated and, almost to a person, wonderful communicators, most companies provide little or no training. Many companies who have conferences spend more on the dessert than they do on the speaker. This is absurd. I continuously hear that my fee is too high and they obtain a free or low cost industry speaker instead. How does this advance the knowledge or attitudes of the employees? I must admit to being amazed that companies in Eastern Europe, South America, South Africa and the heartlands of the US willingly pay double and triple the fees that Australian companies pay for good speakers in order to get the latest global information.

It takes knowledge to change! Knowledge about every aspect of a business. While my business knowledge today is quite broad, let’s focus on my speciality for a moment … marketing.

How many companies can truly say that they have really differentiated their product offering from their competitors? How many marketers are really using the new technology vehicles, such as viral marketing using email, web, cell phones, chat rooms, or are using variable data technologies? Harvard studies show that if 80% of a company’s sales don’t come from repeat business or word of mouth, the company will likely fail. Yet how many companies have truly customer-centric marketing strategies? Over 95% of businesses are still focusing on free to air TV, radio and press – media dinosaurs which are becoming increasingly ineffective!

How many companies have shown true leadership, have a corporate culture which permeates every aspect of the business, empower staff to not only make recommendations but implement them, measure the performance of every initiative they take, or know the ROI of all marketing initiatives? Sadly, the answer is very few.

It is often said that small businesses have major advantages over big companies because they have better grass roots intelligence, they are more flexible and faster to adjust to change. In the past 12 months I have given my “Winning Mindset” presentation to many companies including Intel (100,000 employees), Skanska (60,000 employees) and Toyota (286,000 employees), so you don’t have to be small to be flexible, motivated, highly efficient and extremely profitable.

We can all do it, we just need to be ready and full prepared to address the challenge of change!