The Real Cost Of Meetings!

Just back from my holidays and ready and raring to go! Having ’time off’  does get you reflecting on the ‘value of time’ (well, it does me anyway!) and particularly the time I see people spending in meetings’.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with meetings per se, but this ‘gadget’ (kindly pointed out to me by Eammon Hunt of TDC) looks like a great ‘tool’ to manage the effectiveness of all the time spent in meetings! It’s available from The Dilbert Store.

Seriously though, it is an issue in many businesses. I was once asked to sit on a client’s ‘Senior Management Strategic Meeting’  to help them out. Senior people from all over the country turned up and I watched them discuss ‘tactics and trivial stuff’ for some time. I asked them to stop for a minute and posed the question ‘Could you just write down what’s the purpose of this meeting?’ There was a silence and they looked at me stunned. The answers included ‘Well, it’s the first Tuesday in the month – we always meet at this time’ , ‘He told me I had to come!’ and ‘I had to come – I was scared of missing something!’

So, a couple of things worth asking before a meeting:

• What’s the purpose of this meeting?
• What do we want to have achieved by the end of it?
• What do I need to do to contribute to the above two things?

If you can’t answer these questions, consider not going!

Anybody get any other tips and ideas to maximise meeting effectiveness?

Customer Delight By The Beach!

We had a fabulous meal at one of our favourite holiday spots yesterday – no don’t worry, I’m not going all Judith Chalmers on you! The restaurant at Ingrina Beach on the Portuguese Algarve is a wonderful spot.

After a wonderful lunch by the beach, we came to pay the bill. I went up to the bar and produced my card, only to find that they don’t take cards, and I didn’t have enough cash!

‘Don’t worry’ said the restuarant owner, ‘pay next time…. but don’t come tomorrow, we’re closed!’

Now, THAT is customer delight!

Of course we’ll be back to pay….. and probably have another delicious meal too!

3D Thoughts 23rd August

Welcome to this week’s 3D Thoughts: 3 ideas to help you be Dramatically and Demonstrably Different in less than 3 minutes:

Simply click below to get started, (and click here if you want to hear any of the previous episodes):

Lucy’s Correspondence      Dealing With Disappointment   Seth Godin on Social Networking    Seth’s Blog

Are You ‘Plugged In’ To Your Customers?

Apparently we’re spending almost half of our waking hours ‘plugged in’ to our  TVs, radios, telephones and the internet! A new report from Ofcom highlights that on average, people in the UK spend 45% of their time ‘tuned in’!

On reflection, I don’t think that those figures are that surprising (hey, I’m on holiday, and I’m still ‘at it’!), but some of the key issues to consider might be:

• What media are your customers (and prospective customers) paying most attention to?
• How can you ‘stand out’ in these incredibly crowded markets? 
• How are you ‘maximising’ your own time and efforts when your doing this stuff?

In other words, are you ‘plugged in’ to what your customers are ‘plugging in’ to? The really customer focused businesses understand and maximise this.

Finally, it’s also worth pointing out that, even with all this ‘modern technology’,  sometimes the ‘old fashioned’ ways of communicating are still a great way of making contact with people and differentiating yourself!

If you want any tips on how, have a look at this article I wrote for Management Issues called ‘Don’t write off those old fashioned ways’.

That’s iProgress!

How much would an iPod have cost in 1976? According to a little snippet I read in the great Wired magazine it would have been $1 Billion! That’s because of the cost of transistors back then! It would also be the size of a building, so not too handy when you’re out jogging!

So what? Well, I think it’s a fantastic illustration of the impact of progress on our lives and of course on business and the way we do it. Massively reduced costs, technological advances, ever increasing ease of use and a need for total flexibility are all things we face – they pose both opportunities and threats.

Are you embracing ‘progress’ to your advantage?

Your 3D Thoughts For 16th August – No Complaints Please!

Here’s this week’s 3D Thoughts in 3 minutes! Enjoy:

Click below on the links:

Institute Of Customer Service report           ABTA customer complaints      Previous 3D Thoughts

Hear how Asda handled this complaint:

Think Social ‘We’dia, Not Social ‘Me’dia!

What’s the best way for businesses to maximise social media? Sorry, I can’t give you the magic answer for that, but can perhaps share an idea. I think the best business users of social media focus on the ‘we’, not the ‘me’ in media!

 It’s not about what you had for breakfast, how brilliant your business is, and why people should only buy from you, it’s about ‘adding value’ and contributing!  Here are 10 things they do well.

They:

1. Share ideas

2. ‘Engage’ with others

3. Add value and don’t ‘push’ their products and services

4. Link people together 

5. Collaborate with others, and help others collaborate

6. Create communities of like-minded people

7. Contribute to those communities

8. Create ‘dialogue’, not ‘diatribes’!

9. Generate conversations with others

10. Seek opinions and ideas

Any more for any more? Would love to hear your ideas!

Shaking Up The Burger World!

Imaging queueing for hours for a burger because they are that good? Well that’s what’s happening in New York! Shake Shack is a great chain of burger restaurants in the US who are completely 3D!

They are without doubt Dramatically and Demonstrably Different in everything that they do! But, that’s not been done by chance. It’s clearly a very proactive approach that they’ve taken, and it seems to be working with huge queues outside their Madison Park store! 

If you get chance, have a look at this video of CEO Randy Garutti explaining their approach. There are some great lessons for any business, whether you’re in burgers or not!

Randy Garutti (Shake Shack) at Gel 2010 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.

I particularly like their approach to questioning every ‘rule’ by asking ‘whoever wrote that rule?’ and then working out how they could break it! They took a proactive approach to ‘breaking all those rules’ and seem to have hit the spot! Here’s just one of them: rather than the  ’no dog’s allowed’ sign that you see in most places – they have the ‘pooch-ini’, a treat specifically for dogs made out of frozen custard, peanut butter and a dog biscuit! Guess where the burger lovers with dogs go?

It’s a great example of someone entering a market and using all the ‘norms’ and ‘rules’ to creating a business that’s ‘dramatically different’ by breaking them!   What ‘rules’ should you break?

Looking forward to my next trip to New York!

Winning Customers Via Social Media? It’s Small Businesses Who Get It!

A new report by Regus suggests that it’s small businesses who are getting the best out of social media when it comes to customer acquisition. According to the report, nearly half of the world’s small businesses have acquired a customer through social networks. That compares to only 28% for larger organisations.

It was a worldwide study, and the figure for the UK small businesses was 33% compared to 52% inIndia!

It’s clear that many businesses ‘get it’, but it’s also true that many obviously don’t! Clearly, there’s no ‘one thing’ to ‘get’, but if you are one of those who hasn’t yet, perhaps you need to start looking!

Amazingly and totally coincidentally, as I was writing this blog post an email popped in my inbox from Smarta which featured a video by Doug Richards talking all about this. Even more coincidentally (and a bit spookily!) he explained that he’s running a 2 day workshop all about it…..on my own doorstep, here in Sheffield! 

Made In Sheffield looks great! Think I might be booking to help me ‘get more of it’!

3D Thoughts In 3 Minutes – August 9th!

Here’s this week’s 3D Thoughts, and the relevant links are below. If you’re new to these and want to listen to previous ‘episodes’, simply click here.

So, here goes… remember, you don’t have to download anything, simply ‘click and listen’… oh yes, and DO something!

Global Customer Service Report            Stanford University e Corner

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