Business Strategies Blog

 from the experts at Corporate Performance Strategies

Archive for September, 2008

What Motivates our Employees?

16 September 2008 Dave Brookmire 0 Comments

As employers, it is sometimes easy to get caught up in the rush and chaos of each day – running our businesses, problem solving and staying in the black. We know the key to long term success for any business depends heavily on employee enthusiasm, dedication and motivation, but we can often lose sight of what motivates us and ourselves as people, and let the demands of our businesses take the place of what is truly important in life. As leaders in our businesses, we have to always be conscious of the fact that, at the end of the day, we are all human. The best way to motivate our employees and win their loyalty is to also remind them that we respect who they are as people, and appreciate the values and priorities that motivate them. This video gives a great example of some of the things we can’t lose sight of in either our personal lives or in our business practices:

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Customer Focused Approach in Strategic Planning

11 September 2008 Dave Brookmire 0 Comments

Are your products and processes customer/client focused? Or are you trying to sell products and services blindly? This video by Robin Lawton of International Management Consultants, Inc. gives a clear picture of why this strategy doesn’t work, and why designing your strategies around your customers is incredibly more effective than expecting your target market to adapt to you. (Hey, just ask Google!)

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A Different Approach to Employee Feedback

02 September 2008 Dave Brookmire 0 Comments

As business leaders, we all know the importance of giving regular, valuable feedback to our employees to help them identify areas of strength and weakness and to encourage their professional growth.

Marshall Goldsmith, one of today’s leading management thinkers, has developed a new approach to employee feedback called FeedForward. This exceptional tool, instead of focusing on past performance, focuses on suggestions for the future. By looking ahead, this method works to help employees work towards and achieve positive change in their future:

“Providing feedback has long been considered to be an essential skill for leaders. As they strive to achieve the goals of the organization, employees need to know how they are doing. They need to know if their performance is in line with what their leaders expect. They need to learn what they have done well and what they need to change.

“There is a fundamental problem with all types of feedback: it focuses on the past, on what has already occurred – not on the infinite variety of opportunities that can happen in the future. As such, feedback can be limited and static, as opposed to expansive and dynamic.”

Learn more about the FeedForward tool here.

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