… [A]nd now for something different (to Social Media)

The end of the week, and I have managed to post something ever day. Not quite at the same time, admittedly, but I haven’t researched the science of blogging sufficiently to understand when is the best time to post things.

When do you like to read things? Me, I like to get my reading, via Google Reader, out of the way first thing. I usually set aside the first hour of the day.

How was your week?

Did you manage to hit a few Sweetspots?

I watched a stupendous video on Tom Peters’ website. The link is here [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvKIYOd0MDI]. It is taken from his latest book The Little Big Things, 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence. I think you will find it repeated twice in the book but it is principally to be found at number 95.

Tom’s deals with the main goal of any business. To quote:

“Tom shares Dave Liniger of RE/MAX’s philosophy: your goal should be to make the people who work for you successful. That increases the odds of your own success.” [My emphasis added]

Perhaps to skew things a little: Do you make your company’s number ONE priority to make the people who work for you as successful as humanly possible?

Think about it.

……………………….!

Of course the bottom line is important – damn important – but shouldn’t your priority be on making sure that your people achieve their maximum potential and ipso facto the **rest** will take care of itself:

• Employee engagement;
• Employee retention;
• Reducing absenteeism;
• Increased sales;
• Increased customer satisfaction;
• Increased referral rate;
• The likelihood of being the employer of choice in your niche;
• Winning the War on talent.

… and so on.

Now I know things are difficult and training budgets will have been in the line of fire and taken more than a few rounds, but people development, harnessing potential, staff engagement and ensuring that more people hit their KPIs doesn’t have to mean spending oodles of cash on external or internal training.

In fact it can probably be summed up in one word:

COMMUNICATION!!!!

Now I don’t want to take this post off into a general rant, but so many businesses nowadays could be doing so much more than the annual appraisal process to understand and fully appreciate what makes people tick and what really would float their boat. And more than that to understand, appreciate and devise a workable strategy to exploit their *full* potential.

Ask yourself this (simple) question:

“Is everyone in your organisation working to their full potential?”

Surely a motivated workforce = a productive company = great customer service = well whatever you want but it is going to impact and improve the bottom line.