Some useful advice for small businesses in a down economy

All countries all over the world had to face one of the biggest regression in history. The more developed the countries were, the worse consequences they got from the down economy. The Great Depression of 2008 - 2009 has made many companies break down and lose everything they have had. Nevertheless, some small enterprises still found the way to survive and even got successful through this hardest time. The question is how they could do that. The article "Succeed in a Down Economy" would help us understand more about how some of the small businesses can succeed, as well as provide other small enterprises with some useful advice that they could utilize to overcome the thread of breaking down. In this article, Liz Lasater, the CEO of Red Arrow Logistics Company reveals some of her tips to succeed despite the depression. She mainly focuses on 5 factors: understanding customers, being reliable, not stopping spending money but needing to financially prudent, being strategic and building a strong team.
First, having customers is the reason for a company to exist. The enterprises need to understand what the customers need and how to meet their needs. Companies need to be adaptable to customer's demand.
Secondly, the small enterprises should keep their promises once they deliver it in order to get trust from the customers.
During tough times, people tend to stop spending money. However, a successful company would find smart ways to cut costs while still providing quality customer service and staying visible to your customers.
Together with the changes of the economy, the business should also develop strategies. Match your services and products to your customers and determine which industries and companies may have the greatest need for your services in the current business climate.
Last but not least, building a strong team also plays a very important role in conducting success.

Reference:
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/tips/archives/2010/10/succeed_in_a_down_economy.html

Something about Corruption

People often think that corruption is somehow related to social problems or politics more than to business. However, corruption in Vietnam is a big problem which the government have to strive different ways to reduce it. Corruption normally has bad effect on investment and economic growth. The article U.S. Falls in Annual Corruption Survey by David Jolly has reminded me about this problem. I also looked at the Corruption Perceptions Index 2010 Result and found my country's ranking is 116 with really high score while U.S. is much better with the rank of 22.

You can access the full article at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/business/global/27ranking.html?ref=business

Or look at the ranking table at:

http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/results

The Prisoners' Dilemma

In Dr. Hatfield's class, we played a very interesting game called "The Prisoners' Dilemma Game." Actually, I have heard about this game in my micro-economics class in Vietnam a couple years ago. I found this game not only sound fun but also help me understand more about competition and cooperation between two parties in business world. Generally in this game, we assume that the police arrest two people doubted to commit a crime and put them in two separate rooms. The police offer if either of the two prisoners confesses and the other does not, he will be free and the other one will get the harsh sentence. If both of them keep silence, they both get the lightest sentence and if both confess, it will be worse sentence for both than when they keep silent. The class was divided in 4 groups and each two groups would play the role of one prisoner and compete with the other one. After the game, I learned a lesson - if we kept betraying each other, we would definitely lose. Instead, if we cooperated, we would win and get the extra credits for the next exam. In real life, it is not always easy to obtain Win-Win but that the goal for us to get the best outcomes, especially in business.

Wiki - The powerful communication tool

We have talked about Wiki in BA512 class and actually, each student in class has to select one specific category to contribute to. Many people think that Wiki is similar to blog or some social networks such as Facebook or Twitter. However, what differentiates a wiki from a blog is the fact that multiple people can -- and usually do in the case of popular wikis -- work on a single piece of content. This means that a single article could have as few as a single author or as many as tens or even hundreds of authors. This is very different from a blog where an article will usually have only one author. Some blogs are collaborative efforts of multiple bloggers, but even then, a single article is generally attributed to a single blogger.

The business wiki is one of the most powerful Enterprise 2.0 tools and is capable of transforming the nature of communication within a company. While normal corporate communication flows in a straight line, often from top to bottom, a business wiki can create a synergy of communication that flows from the bottom up.

Designed as a simple-to-use collaborative tool, wikis have risen through the ranks of content management systems. From replacing an internal knowledge base to providing templates for reports and memos, wikis are invading the workplace and changing the way we do business. Here are some of the advantages of using Wiki in business:

Global communications is an obvious target for a wiki in the workplace.

More than just keeping employees around the world informed, a global wiki can provide a method for teams with members in different locations to work together seamlessly and share information on a project.

Another excellent use for the business wiki is as a replacement for knowledge bases and frequently asked questions (FAQs). The collaborative nature of wikis makes it the perfect tool for small teams of people who need to create and distribute information to a large group of readers.

Wikis can also play a role in enhancing meetings, and in some cases, replace them altogether. A wiki can be a great place to store meeting minutes and provide the opportunity for employees to offer additional input outside of the meeting.

A wiki can also reduce the number of meetings needed to keep a project on track. Communication and synergy of ideas are the two main goals of most meetings, and a wiki is an excellent tool that can accomplish both of these goals.

Taking the wiki meeting one step further, a wiki can be used to centralize the information and organization of an entire project. Not only could it store meeting notes and provide brainstorming synergy, it can organize the project into an open environment with two-way communication.

Project documentation can sometimes be a dirty word in business, especially in information technology departments. Everyone strives for it, but not everyone has it. This is mainly because of the intuition barrier. Simply put, project documentation is often not a very intuitive process, and when something is not intuitive, it bogs down.

This post is summarized from this website:
http://webtrends.about.com/od/wiki/a/what_is_a_wiki.htm

Motivating Workers in Tough Times

In Dr. Hatfield's class, we have been discussing about motivation which is one of the most important element to conduct employees' great performance. In the time of recession as it is now, motivating employees seems to be an issue that many companies have to deal with.

Despite living through possibly the worst economic recession since the Great Depression, some offices may still be filled with truly motivated people—energetic, driven, ambitious, hard-working, competitive. These are just the sort of traits needed to turn a company around. But most CEOs these days are struggling to figure out how to deal with downsized workforces populated with employees who suffer from a long list of a very different variety of social characteristics. Among them: dread, apathy, passivity, carelessness, and possibly even resentment.

Jon Katzenbach, CEO of Katzenbach Partners, has built a career out of cracking the code to inspire people. The author of The Discipline of Teams and The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization, Katzenbach argues that the key to encouraging people has more to do with figuring out how to connect them emotionally to their work than throwing money or promotions at them.

BusinessWeek's Emily Thornton recently talked to Katzenbach about how his philosophy can be applied during this recession. Below are edited excerpts from their conversation.

What do you believe is the best way to motivate people during this recession?

We see the same problems in turnaround situations. That's analogous to what happens during a recession. It's when companies have to restructure and do all sorts of painful things. If you don't also concentrate on the more positive aspects of motivation, you don't get nearly as far in terms of behavior change and performance gains.

Relying on mandating, making tough decisions, and telling people that this is the way life is and you have to get through it, is not the same thing as getting them motivated to do it. The motivation impetus for most employees is at least as much emotional as it is a rational process. So you have to do something to connect with the emotional side of the employee.

How do you suggest managers make positive connections with employees?

It helps if you're adept at using some of the informal aspects of the organization along with the formal. That's counterintuitive to many leaders in tough situations who tend to fall back on the formal elements that they can control. Thus they work down that axis by changing objectives, changing programs, changing incentives, changing structures, redesigning processes.

[Such tactics] may change the cost structure. But the more successful companies in turnaround situations give at least as much attention to getting people to feel good about what they have to do in their daily work, and that's more of an emotional challenge. To address the emotional challenge, you have to actively influence the informal interactions of the organization, rather than sitting back and watching it or even worse, undermining its positive influence. In my mind, managing in this different world will put a premium on actively influencing the informal elements in ways that complement and accelerate the formal efforts.

What do you mean by informal elements?

In every organization, there are communities of common interest that exist. For example, people who smoke gather together wherever they can smoke; people of different gender and ethnic backgrounds tend to form communities. You want to have a sense for what those are, and which of them might be influenced in ways that are helpful in influencing key behaviors .

We find a practical way to do that is to go right down to the front line and find what I call the master motivators who are already recognized for their unique ability to gain the emotional commitment of their people.

The interesting thing about the master motivator is that they intuitively make better use of informal networks and communities of common interest than most good managers do.

No matter how crummy things are, there's a master motivator down there who is taking care of his people by focusing them on the work they have to do each and every day, and finding a way to make them feel good about it. If you can find a handful of those, they're very insightful about what can work under today's difficult conditions. Their whole focus is, 'I have 22 people working for me. I have to keep them feeling good about what we have to do here. That's what I do.' The stuff they do is very different from what good managers do.

It's much more focused on the work itself, and much more likely to make use of informal sources of pride in that work. Their "mental compass" is always centered on how do I make Charlie and Emma feel good about the work we have to do here—no matter how boring, routine or difficult it may be. Understanding what they do in this regard and how they do it is incredibly helpful when you're trying to extend the emotional connections that can mobilize critical behaviors during difficult times.

What do these supervisors do that managers don't?

These "master motivators" recognize that every person has a different definition of success. And that's not what most leadership systems do. The system assumes that every person's definition of success is to climb the promotion ladder and make more money. In contrast, the master motivator knows there are a lot of people whose definition of success is tied more to their family or their community or something else in their personal lives. They're very clear on the fact that everyone has a different definition of success.

The other thing master motivators do is find and capitalize on local sources of pride. And they use multiple sources of pride. They might use company values. They might use family reactions. They might use customer feedback. They might use peer interaction. They might use several different sources of pride in the work because what they're trying to do is find something that is local and meaningful to a worker emotionally as well as rationally—and connect them to it in an individual way.

It's that individual connection with a local source of pride that master motivators are really good at. When you look more closely at what they do, there are only three or four things that really matter to their people—and anybody could do those things if they recognized its value. As a result, you can spread those three or four actions rather rapidly if you find ways to make exposures to those people more common. It's like spreading a virus—and it actually spreads the behaviors more rapidly than relying on formal methods alone.

How to Inspire Workers in Tough Times

(From Businessweek)