Posted by Dave Lorenzo - Business Coach

Carnival of Career Intensity – Post Five – Sept. 30, 2006 

Peter Kua presents Redesign your business in 6 steps posted at RadicalHop.com: Business. Innovation. Passion.  

Your company has been in business for many years now, and you’ve observed sweeping changes in the business landscape in terms of pace, competition, consumer demands and human resources in the last decade. This is especially true if you’re in the high-tech, fast-paced business of consumer electronics, computer hardware and software. How does your business stay ahead of your competitors who are constantly nibbling at your heels? Company loyalty is all but dead. How then, does your business retain top talent - for a little longer - to continue churning out new product breakthroughs to satisfy the never ending consumer thirst for ever faster, smaller and feature-filled gadgets? Here’s how:

Clear the way to the top. This means normal employees – your star engineers, brilliant designers and software whiz – can go straight to the C-level executives with their bright ideas. In the past, there had been too many potentially profitable ideas that were killed at middle management level. Designers had been demoralized. Whiz programmers had been disheartened. They had left and joined other companies which then made millions out of those “rejected” ideas.

Design first, engineering second. In the past, designers had to build their products around what engineers constructed. With today’s consumers demanding smaller, more user-friendly and cuter devices, now the top priority is in the design. And engineering will have to follow suit, cracking their heads on how to fit their widgets into the designer’s work of art.

Environment that permits questioning. Yes. Have an environment that allows free flow of communication. An environment that permits everyone to question everyone else, including their bosses. Sometimes bosses are so stuck to the ancestral ways of doing things that they don’t realize there are better means to execute something. So it’s good to allow yourself to be challenged, especially by an employee who is smarter than you in certain areas.

Train, teach, school. Employees love companies that don’t only treat them as workhorses, but ships them off to value-added training. MBAs for better business acumen. Design schools to discover the latest trends. Engineering doctorates for superior R&D skills. Train those employees of yours.

Reach out to the world. Don’t only stick to your own country. Reach out globally. Have sales and marketing offices worldwide. Tap the global talent by setting up design centers in major cities. People in different countries possess different perspectives and different ways of looking at things. Did I hear you say you’ve no money to do that? Form win-win, profit sharing partnerships with foreign companies that share your vision!

Have a bizarre outlook. See beyond your core competency. Look at how consumers are really using your products, from packaging to accompanying CDs to manuals and accessories. Improve every aspect of these. You’d be surprised to learn how a badly written manual can turn off consumers so much that they would never buy any of your company’s products again.

 

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