Since Steve Jobs’ sad passing, I have been doing a lot of reading about his style of management, ideas, creativity and concepts. He will always be remembered as a genius in my eyes, and has left a big gap in the world of creativity.

I cam across this quote that is typical of the man, and would like to share it with you.

“It’s not enough to make your offer or performance great, it should be INSANELY great. Incremental improvements over your competition’s offers, or even your own previous offers, don’t cut it. You should shoot for TEN times better.”

To Steve, being outstanding means redefining existing standards of performance, and challenging existing paradigms of best practices.  So what do you do if your performance is not currently
superior to everyone and everything else around you? Easy. Decide to deliver outstanding results, and deliver them – starting right NOW!

Think about it. Every opportunity offers a chance to perform in an outstanding manner. No matter what your business, you must be able to engineer your performance so that is PROFOUNDLY superior, thus separating you from everyone in the marketplace. If you are simply just a little better than the competition, you run the risk of being overtaken as they improve faster than you.

In Formula One racing, winning is often measured in hundredth’s of a second. If you are just a few hundredth’s behind someone else in qualifying, you start yards and yards behind them. That could make the difference between being cut up and out of the race at the first corner, or flying away in front of all the trouble.

In business, we don’t measure success in hundredth’s. Steve Jobs was talking about becoming FAR superior than that. If you aim for OUTSTANDING, you may fall slightly short but you will still be better than the rest. And if you become better by far, you create pain for the competition and a future that gets better and better.

So, thank you, Steve. Thank you for giving us all something to aim at. And thank you for showing us a mindset that makes a real difference in the real world.

Thanks again

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Training Course

Click below for a:
Free email course “Improve your Management Skills”

The 7S Model was developed in the 1980s and is still valuable as a management model today.

It can be used in situations where you are trying to align various aspects of your business, especially where you are going through rapid and uncertain change.

Developed by the McKinsey Group, the 7S model involves seven factors which can be categorised as either “hard” or “soft” elements:

Hard Elements would include your strategy for change, the structure of the organisation and the systems you use.

Soft elements would be the shared values that you and your team employ, the skill-sets that you need, the style you adopt and the knowledge and abilities of your staff

“Hard” elements can be identified and influenced more easily: They would be driven by the organisation charts and reporting lines within the business and they may include the systems you use to get work done.

“Soft” elements are, by their very nature, more difficult to manage and may be affected by the culture of the organisation. But you have to apply yourself to these as much as the hard elements, as they provide the support structure for the successful implementation of any change, and they are all interdependent on each other.

You need to ask yourself where you are now and where you want to be in the future. The model will help you assess these elements with these searching questions:

Strategy:

* What is our strategy, in real terms?
* What are our strategic objectives?
* What will we do about the competition?
* What will our customers demand from us in the future?

Structure:

* How is the company set up?
* What is the organisational structure?
* How do the teams work together to achieve goals?
* How do the team members work together?
* What is the quality of communication?

Systems:

* What are the main systems we use in the company?
* How do we monitor and measure the systems?
* What processes do we currently use?

Shared Values:

* What are the values we keep to within the business?
* What is the corporate culture?
* What is the strength of these values?
* How are we communicating those values?

Style:

* What style does the management team adopt?
* How effective is it?
* How would we rate the teamwork among our staff?

Staff:

* How do our teams specialise in their roles or are they more general in their responsibilities?
* Have we the right people in the right places?
* What development do they need?

Skills:

* What are the strongest skills we have in the company?
* What skill gaps are there?
* Do we have staff who can do the job competently?
* How do we measure and reward success?

The McKinsey 7Ss model can be applied to almost any issue at work. If there are any inconsistencies in some of the above elements, maybe your team or company isn’t working effectively enough. The model can help reveal these inconsistencies, and you can work to ensure these elements are matched up to help you share values and objectives with your teams that are responsible for making it happen.

Thanks again

Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Course

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”

The Balance Business Scorecard, also referred to simply as the balance scorecard, started out as a way to measure performance but later evolved into a method by which we could begin implementing strategic planning methods along with full management systems.

What does the scorecard do? It actually gives CEOs, managers, and leaders a tool to use when turning a plan into a real course of action. It’s one thing to have a plan written out on paper, but an entirely different thing to actually implement that plan and see it work. What’s the point of having a vision or mission statement if you aren’t sure what steps need to be taken in order to reach those goals?

The Balance Business Scorecard looks at the following four main business perspectives:

• Learning & Growth – This category focuses on how well you train your employees, foster the appropriate organisational attitudes, and the steps you take to turn your staff into a group of valuable resources.

• Business Processes – This category directly relates to how in tune you are with process improvement and management. As a manager, you should know and understand how well the business is operating and whether or not the product you create meets the quality criteria you expect.

• Customers – This perspective focuses on whether or not your organisation is really making customers happy. Happy customers remain customers for the long haul.

• Finances – Keeping accurate financial records is as important today as ever before. Make sure your financial information is being handled effectively and that it is being treated as the sensitive personal information it really is.

Having all of this information in check will allow you to view your organisation as a whole and implement a plan to actually achieve your goals. The success of your organisation is only as good as your vision. Do you have a plan?

Thanks again,
Sean

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Training

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”

Everyone within your organisation is responsible for effective information management, but it seems as though the higher up you are on the corporate ladder the more information you end up being responsible for. As a manager, it’s up to you to make sure that all of the information you receive is passed on to the appropriate parties in a timely manner.

At the lowest level, your employees, team members, or customer service personnel are most likely responsible for maintaining client or project files. The information they receive must be organised so that anyone who picks up the file can understand its contents and find the data he needs.

As a manager, you are responsible for receiving information from various sources. These may include upper management, human resources, accounting, or other departments that impact your work. You then have to sort through that information, organize it, and pass it on to the appropriate parties. Once a project is completed, you must take the information from your team members and create a final document to be presented to upper management or your clients. Information is constantly coming at you from all directions.

Thankfully, advancing technology has enabled us to move away from paper files and store all of our information electronically. This has allowed for increased process improvement but in the beginning most companies experienced quite a bit of resistance to change. Many employees were nervous about learning how to use the new software applications associated with better information management. Now that these programs have been around for some time, most people learn about them in high school and college courses designed to prepare them for the business world.

I urge you to take a few minutes out of your day to evaluate your information management skills. Are you an organized person or do you have to spend a considerable amount of time searching for the documents you need? You may need to simply spend a few hours organizing your information or you might need more training on the information management systems already in place. It’s up to you to identify your needs and take action to increase your effectiveness as an information manager.

Thanks again,

Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Management Training

Click below for a:
FREE email course “Improve Your Management Skills”