Category: Planning & Management

Categories
Planning & Management

Talent Management: How to Retain Top Talent Without Derailing the Organization When Fast Tracking

Most people would not choose to build a house on a weak foundation. Why then do leaders risk the company’s future on an untested, inexperienced employee?

To keep them motivated?

To ensure they stay with the company?

But at what cost – to the employee, the employees who work for them and the company.

Yes, if you want to retain your top employees, you must…

1  Give them a reason to stay
2  Find a way to motivate them
3  Reward them.

But, if you reward too much, too fast – it can be dangerous for your entire organization.

In order for companies to retain top talent and stay competitive in today’s market they are engaging in fast tracking. This means they are moving selected employees quickly to or through managerial levels in an organization.

5 Reasons Why Fast Tracking is a Dangerous Strategy for Increasing Employee Retention

1  Skills can be learned quickly; experience takes time. In order to be an effective leader, your managers need to gain experience in:

*    Correctly identifying and solving problems
*    Framing and making good decisions
*    Dealing with the myriad of people-related issues that confront every manager in every organization
*    Organization course correction
*    Role-based leadership

2  Many times, when your organization engages in fast tracking, a new manager will set a new initiative in motion and then leave the position before the impact of the initiative is realized.They are missingthe day-to-day experience of interpersonal behaviors and interactions that come with any transition—the intangible. It’s these subtleties that are often missed. And it’s these subtleties and the way you handle them that hones a good leader.

3  Each managerial level brings new challenges and requires different skills and behaviors. Moving too quickly through an organization runs the risk of missing critical experiential learning. Experience is accretive and it is difficult to learn vicariously. What you learn today you use as a framework for how you behave and react tomorrow. Short changing this learning cycle can result in a leader derailing later.

4  When leaders derail because a company engaged in fast tracking in order to retain top talent, it creates a disastrous domino effect for the organization as a whole. We all know that the number one reason people leave a company is because of their immediate supervisor. We also know that poor decisions and poor problem solving skills can result in service and profitability deterioration for a company.

5  Fast tracking creates a winner / loser environment within the company. Unless you want to build a highly-competitive, stressful environment and internal culture that makes your employees hate Mondays because it is the start of a work week, creating winners and losers is not a good long term strategy.

Why Companies Engage in Fast Tracking Even Though It’s Dangerous to the Health of their Organization

Companies need to grow talent internally and insure smooth management transitions. And the reality is that some industries are disproportionally affected by talent shortages (such ashealthcare)and may have no other choice than to promote an employee who is truly not ready to handle the position.

(This is a common practice for technical and clinical staff promoted to management).

So what should you do?

7 Tips for Retaining Top Talent Without Hurting Your New Manager, Employees and the Company

1. Develop a succession plan for your company. This means get committed to a process or structure of internal management and talent development.

2. Identify individuals within the organization who have the potential to move into leadership positions. You should be identifying multiple candidates for each position. Don’t be afraid to take some risks in candidate identification. Not all high potential candidates initially present an outgoing and aggressive demeanor (and remember these qualities do not necessarily ensure a good manager.)

3. Provide the identified individuals with opportunities to take on additional projects to demonstrate their skills as well as their ability to learn and grow. The projectsshould create the opportunity for the candidates to “live” with the consequences and take responsibility for their actions and decisions.

4. Provide new managers with an internal mentor and an external coach to insure support during the transition process. This support should be for at least six months to one year. This process is referred to as: transition integration”.

5. Give all new managers a personality and job performance assessment. This is a valuable tool in identifying emerging leader attributes and potential risk areas. Now you will be able to enable early intervention and prevention and give the most effective support to the new manager.  This is better than the”sink or swim” approach to learning that new managers are often thrown into.

6. Provide all candidates with self-assessment tools and learning opportunities. Do this both within the organization in the form of added responsibilities and through outside learning opportunities such as conferences and executive education programs, professional memberships.

7. Monitor your new manager’s progress (through the supervisor andmentoring and coaching support) andreview your succession plan each year. Evaluate the success of the current program and the individuals in the program. Improve where necessary and identify and support new leadership candidates.

Be aware that some candidates simply may not be interested in this more protracted and performance based approach. They may feel threatened or choose to leave. That’s OK too. The risk of promoting too quicklyand the derailment that could occur is not worth the harm an unprepared manager can bring to the organization.

Talent is to be developed, not anointed.

Categories
Planning & Management

Two Entrepreneurs Track Performance for Future Success

To know where a business is going, an entrepreneur must know where it’s been. In setting and achieving effective goals for her company, then, a business owner should study its past performance and the performance of its many systems.

A recent study from Jane Out of the Box, an authority on female entrepreneurs, reveals there are five distinct types of women in business. Based on professional market research of more than 2,500 women in business, this study shows that each type of business owner has a unique approach to running a business – and therefore each one has a unique combination of needs. This article outlines two of the five types and provides tips for tracking a business’ systems and using information gleaned during that research to provide a strong future.

Tenacity Jane is an entrepreneur with an undeniable passion for her business, and one who tends to be struggling with cash flow. As a result, she’s working longer hours, and making less money than she’d like to be. Nevertheless, Tenacity Jane is bound and determined to make her business a success. At 31% of women in business, Tenacity Janes are the largest group of female entrepreneurs.

For this business owner, measuring performance is absolutely imperative because doing so will allow her the opportunity to see which systems are working and which aren’t, and therefore, to better leverage her limited resources.

By talking candidly with customers, Tenacity Jane can learn a lot about which aspects of her company bring in money, and which do not. Many Tenacity Jane business owners lack a singular focus, and therefore, they are working on a variety of things at once. It’s likely that a Tenacity Jane may try advertising in several venues at the same time, believing that if she advertises in many places, she has a better chance of catching a customer’s attention. However, she may be better served by her marketing efforts if she performs some research to determine where customers are really finding out about her. For example, let’s say she’s spending several hundred dollars per month advertising in the newspaper and on the radio. In talking to customers, she learns that most of them don’t read the newspaper, but they heard her ad on the radio. She could save money by skipping the newspaper advertising, or make her spending more effective by pumping it only into radio advertising.

Accidental Jane is a successful, confident business owner who never actually set out to start a business. Instead, she may have decided to start a business due to frustration with her job or a layoff and then she decided to use her business and personal contacts to strike out on her own. Or, she may have started making something that served her own unmet needs and found other customers with the same need, thus giving birth to a business. Although Accidental Jane may sometimes struggle with prioritizing what she needs to do next in her business, she enjoys what she does and is making good money. About 18% of all women business owners fit the Accidental Jane profile.

Many of the Accidental Jane entrepreneurs we interviewed expressed a high level of contentment. They are happy with the amount of money they make, and they are often working the way they want, with whom they want, at the times they want, without feeling overloaded. Some, though, reported feeling stressed as their business ebbs and flows, depending on their marketing efforts. For Accidental Jane, measuring performance metrics can provide two basic improvements to her lifestyle: it can maintain consistency in Accidental Jane’s workload, and it can help her to increase her profit without much additional effort.

Because she is a consummate professional, Accidental Jane’s customers usually provide her with positive feedback. This is a great way to gather testimonials (just ask!), and it’s also a gauge of what’s working. Accidental Jane also can create an effortless, automated marketing system that helps her maintain her workflow, and then she can use software to determine which marketing technique is drawing customers. She may use tweets to draw people to her web site, and/or send out a weekly newsletter. Software can keep track of which people visited her web site after receiving tweets, and which visited after receiving a weekly newsletter –  and which of those bought a product or service. In this way, Accidental Jane can almost effortlessly keep track of which of her marketing techniques are working, and which aren’t.

No matter how successful a business owner and her business are, she can make continued improvements by paying careful attention to which systems are working. Whether she can dedicate more resources to a more successful marketing campaign or take the resources from a weaker campaign and put them toward another business need, tracking performance metrics allows her to maximize efficiency and capitalize on success.

Interested in learning more about the five Jane types and which Jane you are? Check out www.janeoutofthebox.com

About the Author:

Michele DeKinder-Smith is the founder of Jane out of the Box, an online resource dedicated to the women entrepreneur community. Discover more incredibly useful information for running a small business by taking the FREE Jane Types Assessment at Jane out of the Box. Offering networking and marketing opportunities, key resources and mentorship from successful women in business, Jane Out of the Box is online at www.janeoutofthebox.com

Categories
Planning & Management

Time Management Tips for Two Types of Female Entrepreneurs

On its own, running a business requires exceptional time-management skills. Add to that running a household, raising children, and finding time for some well-deserved rest and relaxation, and “time management” takes on a whole new dimension. So how do busy entrepreneurs meet all their obligations – and meet them well?

A recent study from Jane Out of the Box, an authority on female entrepreneurs, reveals there are five distinct types of women in business. Based on professional market research of more than 1,000 women in business, this study shows that each type of business owner has a unique approach to running a business – and therefore each one has a unique combination of needs. This article outlines two of the five types and provides tips for time management that ensure success as the various types of entrepreneurs define it.

Go Jane Go is passionate about her work and provides excellent service, so she has plenty of clients – so much so, she’s struggling to keep up with demand. She may be a classic overachiever, taking on volunteer opportunities as well, because she’s eager to make an impact on the world and she often struggles to say no. Because she wants to say yes to so many people, she may even be in denial about how many hours she actually works during the course of a week. As a result, she may be running herself ragged and feeling guilty about neglecting herself and others who are important to her.

Of all the types of business owners, Go Jane Go is most in need of improved time management systems. She strives to give her all in doing the right thing and being a good person. She loves what she does and believes strongly in being of service to others while being the best at what she does. Often, Go Jane Go business owners are in denial about the amount of hours they actually work; for example, some reported working only 40 hours per week but still feeling overwhelmed and a bit frazzled. When we questioned them about it, they admitted that they worked only 40 billable hours per week but put in significantly more hours on other business-related tasks. Her desire to help others, coupled with her reluctance to turn down most requests leaves her feeling stressed and overcommitted much of the time. How can she rectify that?

* Park It. By creating a “parking lot” for goals of every type, Go Jane Go can stop worrying about what she hasn’t accomplished and set a schedule for accomplishing it. Create two lists. The first should include immediate goals and should be kept visible. The second should include more long-term goals and should be filed away and viewed every month to 6 months, to determine where goals stand periodically. By writing down goals, large and small, business and personal, this parking lot takes the weight off Go Jane Go’s shoulders – she won’t forget any of these important goals, and she won’t have to worry constantly about them, either.

* Overlap. It’s essential that Go Jane Go prioritize – after all, she has so much going on, she has to know where to start so she can check tasks off her long to-do list. Once she’s prioritized, Go Jane Go can make a game of finding ways to fit her priorities together. For example, if meaningful relationships, family time, helping others and managing time by hiring someone to do her less favorite tasks are priorities, Go Jane Go may consider hiring a family member to do some of the work she doesn’t enjoy as well. In this way, she gets to spend time with that family member, help that family member by providing a job, and work on the activities she enjoys.

* Accept Help. Go Jane Go doesn’t want to burden others and will take on loathsome burdens to avoid doing so. However, by asking for help, Go Jane Go may feel less overwhelmed and provide an opportunity for loved ones to return favors she’s done for them, She can ask her husband to pick up the kids or make dinner, or she can ask a friend to listen while she vents about a work problem. Getting help in completing even small tasks can significantly lighten Go Jane Go’s load.

Jane Dough is an entrepreneur who enjoys running her business. Generally, she makes a nice living. She is comfortable and determined in buying and selling, which may be why she’s five times more likely than the average female business owner to hit the million dollar mark. Jane Dough is clear in her priorities and may be intentionally and actively growing an asset-based or legacy business. It is estimated that 18% of women entrepreneurs fall in the category of Jane Dough.

Like Go Jane Go, Jane Dough runs a successful business and takes home a large personal income. Unlike Go Jane Go, though, Jane Dough is adept at time management and sometimes delegates too much rather than not enough. Jane Dough moves quickly and decisively, and runs her business like a “natural-born entrepreneur,”  meeting traditional standards of success, while striking a great work-life balance. Even with so much success, this type of business owner can improve her business’ efficiency and its productivity by keeping a few suggestions in mind.

* Document. System documentation maximizes efficiency because it reveals every step of every system, therefore revealing steps that may be obsolete or repetitive, and therefore unnecessary. It also provides a system by which a new employee can learn the ins and outs of his or her job in the case that a seasoned employee leaves the company. This will reduce learning and training time.

* Track Performance. By carefully keeping track of key performance metrics, Jane Dough can determine whether the efforts she’s putting into various aspects of her business are paying off. If they’re not, she can spend less time there and more time on aspects that are productive. For example, let’s consider a Jane Dough who has spent a considerable amount of non-billable time on developing a new web site. She tracks visitors and purchases, and discovers that although her site is receiving a lot of traffic, people aren’t buying after visiting it. On the other hand, she’s getting tons of calls from people mentioning a radio ad she placed, which promised listeners a discount if they mentioned the ad. By putting in place tracking systems (software for the web site and a discount on the radio ad), this Jane Dough will learn where her resources are best spent.

Managing time appropriately is absolutely critical in striking a satisfactory work-life balance, and in growing a business. Every type of entrepreneur can improve her time management skills, whether it’s to find more personal time or to maximize a company’s efficiency.

About the Author:

Michele DeKinder-Smith is the founder of Jane out of the Box, an online resource dedicated to the women entrepreneur community. Discover more incredibly useful information for running a small business by taking the FREE Jane Types Assessment at Jane out of the Box. Offering networking and marketing opportunities, key resources and mentorship from successful women in business, Jane Out of the Box is online at www.janeoutofthebox.com

Categories
Planning & Management

4 Simple Steps for Creating Your Strategic Marketing Action Plan (MAP)

Your strategic Marketing Action Plan (MAP) is a document that is used to plan your day-to-day marketing activities/strategies for running your online business; in other words it’s your MAP to online business management success. And just like a real map, your MAP tells you exactly how to get from point A to point B and the route you need to take in order to get there.

When you have your MAP in place it eliminates the guess work – you always know what you’re doing, when you’re doing it, and how you’re going to implement the strategies.

Creating a Marketing Action Plan can seem very daunting if you’ve not done this kind of detailed planning before; it can be difficult to know where to start.  My favorite tool for creating my strategic MAP is a spreadsheet because of the row/column formatting that spreadsheets use.

Today I’d like to make that process easy for you and share with you my insider secrets so that you can create your own MAP.

1. Heart of your business – your MAP is not a document that you create, look at once, and then set aside to review in a year’s time.  Like a real map you continually refer to (typically on a weekly basis) so that you know you’re going in the right direction. And if you do sway off course a little, maybe for a pit stop along the way, you can easily update it as necessary.

Your MAP will provide you with your ‘Big Picture’ route for the year.  You’ll want to keep it handy so that you can refer to it often, whether you print it out and keep it on your desk, or have easy access to it on your PC.

2. Chunk it down – the easiest and simplest way for you to manage your MAP is to break it down into doable action steps, so that you don’t feel overwhelmed by feeling you have to plan out your entire route in one go. You’re going on a journey and as such there might be detours along the way. I highly advise you to chunk down your MAP, first into quarters, then into months, and then into weeks.

3. See any overlaps/conflicts – as you’ve been planning out your marketing activities for the upcoming year, having it all together in one place will allow you to see any overlaps or conflicts in your plan.  Similarly it will also allow you to see any gaps too.

4. Automatically creates your weekly/monthly To Do list – this is one of my favorite aspects of creating my MAP because when I chunk everything down into quarters/months/weeks I find that I create my weekly action list.  And it’s so much easier to be able to just focus on that week’s action steps and so implement them.

Some points to remember as you’re putting together your marketing plan:

  • Seeding in ezine/networks – as soon as you’re clear on what programs/products/services you’re going to be offering and when, start mentioning them in your newsletter and to your social networks.  You don’t need to give a whole lot of detail – simply say that you’re working on something new, or an exciting project etc.  and this will start to create interest in your offerings.
  • Marketing – plan out when you’re going to be opening registrations and when you’re going to be running promotions.  This is important so that you don’t have any overlaps in your promotions/activities.
  • Delivering – also plan out when you’re going to be delivering your programs too, again to avoid any overlaps/conflicts in your promotions and activities.
  • Team Members – know which team members you’re going to need support from to help you implement your goals, i.e. virtual assistant, graphic designer, web designer etc.  You may need to contact them several weeks in advance so plan this in too.
  • Dates – and finally it’s important to include all dates in your Marketing Action Plan so that nothing gets missed out.

As my financial adviser reminded me just last week, you’re running a marathon not a sprint, and the same is true for your business also. Follow these simple steps for creating your strategic Marketing Action Plan and you’ll soon find yourself on track for achieving your business goals.

Categories
Planning & Management

Best of the Janes: Improving Time Management

While each business owner has her own unique style, habits and characteristics, every business owner can benefit from improving her time management skills. Whether better time management helps an entrepreneur feel less overwhelmed or provides her with a stronger focus to move her company forward, it undoubtedly will contribute to her overall satisfaction.

Whether she’s a Jane Dough, a Go Jane Go, a Merry Jane, an Accidental Jane or a Tenacity Jane, every female entrepreneur can benefit from the following advice:

* Find an efficient, measurable marketing system. To determine whether a marketing system is efficient, a business owner must be able to measure it. Many computer-generated marketing systems provide software that tracks how often web site visitors buy, or how often someone performing a search ends up at a particular web site. By tracking those and similar metrics, business owners can determine whether their resources are well-spent. Also, the key to marketing efficiency is to ensure that her marketing message is clear and concise, and is directed at the right audience.

* Create a filter. If a businesswoman feels overwhelmed by her workload, she may consider creating a filter, through which all projects must pass before she takes them on. For example, if it’s important to a business owner that a project stretches her creativity, takes only a certain number of hours to complete, and fits in with her vacation schedule, she may decide to accept only projects that fit all 3 criteria. By doing so, she will improve her efficiency because she will be able to work smarter on projects she truly enjoys, rather than working harder on every project that comes her way.

* Set goals. Goals provide direction, so that a business owner focuses her time and energy on moving forward. This way, the time she spends on her business is effective and efficient – and productive.

* Park it. While not all entrepreneurs feel overwhelmed all of the time, an effective way to remain focused on the most important tasks at hand is to create a couple of ongoing lists of projects. The first should be a list of short-term or immediate projects, and it should be visible all the time. The second should be a list of longer-term projects, kept filed away and reviewed periodically. This way, a business owner doesn’t have to worry that she’ll forget about something important – it’s written down – and she always has a visible reminder of the timeliest projects.

* Document systems. By writing down every single step of every single system in her business, an entrepreneur can determine where she can streamline to increase efficiency. Such documentation will reveal obsolete or repetitive steps and it will also reduce training and learning time in the case of an employee transition.

Every woman business owner defines success differently; however, improved time management means more time to strive for success, however success is defined. While entrepreneurial and personal values vary from woman to woman, everyone can benefit from increased efficiency.

Interested in learning more about the five Jane types and which Jane you are? Check out www.janeoutofthebox.com

About the Author:

Michele DeKinder-Smith is the founder of Jane out of the Box, an online resource dedicated to the women entrepreneur community. Discover more incredibly useful information for running a small business by taking the FREE Jane Types Assessment at Jane out of the Box. Offering networking and marketing opportunities, key resources and mentorship from successful women in business, Jane Out of the Box is online at www.janeoutofthebox.com