Posts Tagged ‘ROI’

This is part of the the book BLOGTASTIC! Growing and Making a Difference Through Blogging. You can read the table of contents and follow the book on this page:

See the table of contents for the book here: BLOGTASTIC project

Previous article: Your blog’s name matters.

BLOGTASTIC: Timeless content produces disproportionate returns

You want your blog to have a long, healthy life. After all, who wouldn’t?

Let’s perform a thought experiment. If you stop blogging today, how long do you think your blog will survive in the blogosphere?

• A few days?
• A few weeks?
• A few months?
• A few years?

Most unattended blogs will die within a few days or weeks, because the content on the blog becomes irrelevant very quickly. If you want your blog to last longer than a newspaper, your writing must stand the test of time.

Creating timeless content is hard. That’s why most people don’t bother. You can distinguish yourself from other bloggers by focusing on timeless content.

You’ll stand out from the crowd today, and more importantly, you’ll increase the longevity of your blog.

Some of your posts will be about fleeting events. That’s a natural part of blogging. Yet, even in these cases, think about what is the underlying “message” or “theme” inside the post. If you spend time to uncover the insight, you’ll be well on your way to creating timeless content.

Remember that there will be a temptation to write about things that are “hot” right now. If you do that, you might instantly get a burst of traffic – providing you a bigger incentive to continue to write on what’s “hot” right now. Try to avoid that trap else it will be like running on a treadmill all the time.

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Blogging Tip: Creating something that stands the test of time gives you multiple rewards

Thoughtful, relevant and timeless content will increase the quality of your blog and your brand. It also provides numerous ways for you to “re-use” the content. You can create e-books, wrap them into published books, create speaking topics, etc.

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Rajesh Setty is an entrepreneur, author and speaker based in Silicon Valley. He maintains another blog called Life Beyond Code and tweets as @UpbeatNow

Tagged as: BLOGTASTIC!, Rajesh Setty, ROI, timeless content

This is part of the the book BLOGTASTIC! Growing and Making a Difference Through Blogging. You can read the table of contents and follow the book on this page:

See the table of contents for the book here: BLOGTASTIC project

Previous article: Your blog can change who you are.

BLOGTASTIC: Your blog can change your readers.

If you consistently produce high-value posts for your blog, you will be certain to introduce some positive change in your long-term readers. I have been fortunate to follow the blogs of my heroes and mentors. They have transformed me. I owe it to them, and they know that. I have told them so!

I have been blogging since early 2005. At the time of this book’s publication, there were more than 1,000 articles on my blog. Whenever I get an email or phone call about what my blog means to someone, it re-energizes me to blog more.

Blogging can be time-consuming and sometimes tiring. Over the past year, I have even sometimes thought about quitting my blog. However, I never seem to stop. Whenever I was about to pull the plug, I would receive feedback from a fan. Someone would send an e-mail, make a phone call, or comment somewhere about my blog. The person would tell me how my blog has made an impact. And with that contact, I instantly became re-energized about my blog.

For example, this was a comment by Stephen Hopson (who is an inspirational blogger himself) for my blog post on the importance of “thanking” someone

Rajesh:

Every so often I feel compelled to write in even though I’ve enjoyed almost every post you’ve written. Today is one of those days where I want to reach out to you.

You’re absolutely right to remind everyone how important it is to send a “thank you” note to someone. In fact, I’m a big proponent of this gesture – I keep a stack of thank you cards next to my printer, reminding me to think of someone to thank. One time I was in a huge gratitude mood, I ended up sending almost 40 thank you cards! Imagine how tired my hand was that day – wink, wink.

I heard back from several who were surprised but one in particular cried when she got mine. She is suffering from cancer and the note made it all the more touching for her. I was touched that she was touched. But I didn’t send it because of her cancer. I didn’t even know she had it!

The universe is exact, isn’t it? Thanks for the important reminder.

Stephen Hopson

Remember that you may be transforming the lives of strangers. You may never meet these people in your lifetime. If you’re lucky, a small percentage of the people who benefit from your blog will reach out to you. These people will give you a precious gift. They’ll remind you that it’s all worthwhile. Treasure them!

You don’t have to expect that your blog will change the world and improve lives. Just know that you may be transforming people through your blog. That itself is a good thing. Of course, you can only change others’ lives through strong blog content and a powerful personal brand.

If someone’s blog transforms you, please take the time to reach out and let them know. Those notes are good for you, for the blogger, as well as the blogosphere as a whole. All bloggers thrive on this type of positive feedback.

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Blogging Tip: The larger your influence, larger the responsibility

As your influence grows, so does your responsibility. People who you may never meet in your life are right now reading your blog. Some of these people are making changes to their work or their lives based on what they are reading. These small changes can cause ripple effects leading to bigger changes. In other words, you have a tool that provides you an opportunity to make a difference in the world. Take that opportunity seriously!

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Rajesh Setty is an entrepreneur, author and speaker based in Silicon Valley. He maintains another blog called Life Beyond Code and tweets as @UpbeatNow

Tagged as: blog impact, BLOGTASTIC!, Rajesh Setty, ROI

This is part of the the book BLOGTASTIC! Growing and Making a Difference Through Blogging. You can read the table of contents and follow the book on this page:

See the table of contents for the book here: BLOGTASTIC project

Previous article: Traffic is NOT the only metric for successful blogging

BLOGTASTIC: Your blog can change who you are.

If you ask any serious blogger about the impact their blog has had on them, you will be positively surprised. It is nothing short of transformational.

Here are just a few ways your blog can change you:

1. Make you more observant: When you know that you need to be writing, you start observing more and thinking more.

2. Increase your responsibility: You’ve made a commitment to share ideas regularly to an audience. That’s different than discussing ideas one-on-one with your friend.

3. Encourage you to choose your identity: When you start getting serious traffic, you start worrying (in a good way) about your identity and start doing something about it.

4. Elevate your personal brand: Your blog can amplify who you are.

5. Extend your reach: You can reach people and places that you would have never imagined.

6. Open new opportunities: With a bigger personal brand and an extended reach, new doors open easily for you.

If you are serious about blogging, get ready to be transformed!

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Blogging Tip:  Choose the factors that will influence who you become

Right now, there are factors that will shape the person you will become. Only you would know what those components are and their level of influence. These can be as simple as your current network, the books you read, your current job, or your recent accomplishments.

You could go through your life passively and let others choose what factors will influence you. Or, you can take time to consciously shape your diet of reading and conversations. Choose your course wisely!

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Rajesh Setty is an entrepreneur, author and speaker based in Silicon Valley. He maintains another blog called Life Beyond Code and tweets as @UpbeatNow

Tagged as: BLOGTASTIC!, Rajesh Setty, ROI

This is part of the the book BLOGTASTIC! Growing and Making a Difference Through Blogging. You can read the table of contents and follow the book on this page:

See the table of contents for the book here: BLOGTASTIC project

Previous article: You can’t get rich just by blogging…

BLOGTASTIC: There are few short-term benefits

Most people have to pay their dues before they see significant results from their blogging initiatives. Chances are that you will likely make a significant time investment in blogging before you see any reasonable return.

If you are just starting your blog, think about these questions (actually ask these questions even if you have existing blog):

1.  Can you imagine your blog having at least 1,000 high-quality posts?

2. How long do you think it would take to reach that goal?
[ For a quick calculation, if you write five blog posts every week day, it will take you five years to get to 1,000 blog posts]

3. Would you be willing to wait that long to receive serious returns from your blogging initiative?

Celebrity bloggers (actors, athletes, politicians, and other public figures) can instantly achieve a positive return from their blog.

Why?

Simple. These notable individuals have already paid their price through their offline careers.

Your blog can be a great amplifier of what you do outside the blog.

1. Do you care about a non-profit? You can use your blog to spread the word about it.

2. Do you care about environment? You can use your blog to increase awareness about this cause.

3. Are you a consultant helping people with their sales and marketing? You can use your blog to educate your customers and prospects.

Rather than thinking that “blog” is THE thing (a mouthpiece), consider your blog as an extension of your offline world (amplifier.)

Your approach has to be to “give first” (it can be through your blog or elsewhere) than to “get first.”

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Blogging Tip: To get the prize, you have to pay the price

This is true within the blogging world, and it’s also true within your career and life in general. In reality, you have to pay the price. You can do that now, or you can pay the price later. It’s your choice.

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Rajesh Setty is an entrepreneur, author and speaker based in Silicon Valley. He maintains another blog called Life Beyond Code and tweets as @UpbeatNow

Tagged as: BLOGTASTIC!, ROI

Now, admittedly, the title might have confused you a bit as just about 3 weeks ago, Himanshu posted an article titled It is the ROI, not the ROC, stupid! The simplest explanation for this seemingly contradictory titled post is… the ‘C’ in Himanshu’s post was Cost whereas in my post, the ‘C’ in the ‘ROC’ stands for Communication.

While talking to my father on the phone the other day, I had a breakthrough. Not the kind my therapist would like to see, alas, but one that answered a major business question: “Why do so many managers treat communication tools like they’re made of gold and not use them every day?”  It all comes down to how we measure the ROI (Return on Investment). Maybe we sometimes need to measure the ROC (Return on the Communication) instead.

I was trying to ask some pretty serious questions about his health and Dad kept trying to avoid the conversation and wrap it up. Finally, he said “Look, this is costing you money, so we should talk about this another time…”. Now you, I and just about everyone you know has an unlimited calling plan. Talk for two minutes or twenty, it doesn’t really matter- it’s just not a concern for most of us any more. But because all he could hear was the meter running, my dad didn’t want to get into a long drawn out conversation. Remember this is a guy who taught us to call person-to-person collect for ourselves so he’d know we got to our destination safely and we wouldn’t have to pay for a long distance telephone call from a payphone- he’s a bit frugal to say the least.

That kind of thinking affects managers and organizations as well, and has a direct impact on how they use communication tools with their remote teams. Here are some common examples:

• “We pay per minute and per connection, so we’ll save webmeetings for when it’s really important” I have numerous clients who have invested in webmeeting platforms, and then refused to let people practice with them, or need to get budget approval to hold a meeting in order to keep costs down. Then they are surprised that people don’t utilize the tool or use it poorly. No one will ever practice or get proficient with a tool that they can’t use at will without the accountants watching. By the way, if you’re still paying per minute per connection it’s time to have a serious talk with your provider…they’re treating you like you’re my dad.
• “We don’t waste time on chit-chat. Keep it business” In this age of Agile, virtual, matrixed and under-resourced projects – time is money.  The myth is that the less time you spend talking the more time and money you’ll save and people can get on with the “real” work. This is a perfect example of measuring something that doesn’t indicate real results. You can’t easily measure the amount of risk-management, proactivity and trouble-shooting that good, frequent and rich communication gets you. Of course, if you really want hard metrics, measure the amount of rework, lost productivity and project overruns from not staying in constant contact with your team. Take the time to find out what’s really going on with them and who else is sucking up their time.
• “We didn’t cut the travel budget just to spend it on IT”. Okay, we all agree that the reason we need these tools is our travel budgets were slashed and they are NOT coming back anytime soon (at least not in the foreseeable future). That doesn’t mean we don’t need to communicate effectively and that there is no cost of doing business. Just because people work from home doesn’t mean (magically) it doesn’t cost anything to have them on the payroll. By the way, if you look up from the “telecommunications” line item in the budget you’ll see that you can pay for a lot of bandwidth, webmeetings and telephone calls just with the money you used to spend on drinks for the team when they could get together or put more subtelly … Psssst… “It’s really not that expensive.”

Effective questioning, timely feedback and sharing information have value to an organization and a team. We need to focus less on the dollars spent and more on the value created by those interactions. Sometimes we need to focus on the Return on Communication

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This article is contributed by Wayne Turmel, the founder and president of GreatWebMeetings and the host of The Cranky Middle Manager Show podcast. You can follow him on twitter at @greatwebmeeting

Tagged as: active garage, budget, Communication, Greatwebmeetings, investment, online communication tools, Return on Communicaiton, Return on Investment, ROC, ROI, telecommunication, Wayne Turmel, web meetings

As an entrepreneur, whatever product or service that you sell, it is critical to look at not only how it helps your customers; but also to look at how it might hurt your customers. Most of the offers that exist in the marketplace end up being ordinary and have little value associated with them, because they end up “hurting” customers at places which have serious consequences for them. The “hurt” can be of different types (and depending on what the level is, it hurts the marketability of the product or service) and you want to stay as far away as possible from the one that comes with the serious consequences for your customers.

Here’s a little personal story of mine: I recently bought a new bed frame from one of the discounted retail stores. It was a beautiful wooden (brownish) frame; both my wife and I loved it. While my wife strolled around to the other parts of the store, I walked around the bed inspecting it and marveled to myself how it’d look in the room we were thinking of putting it in. While I was mentally playing taking this beautiful piece of furniture home, I heard my wife call me from the other aisle. As I started walking towards her casually; I felt a sharp pain under my kneecap and immediately sat down. That’s when I noticed that the bed had a protruding part on the corners of it (the corners where the legs would go) which could easily go unnoticed (Hello?) and “hurt” people. Suddenly, the beauty, the wooden frame and the comfort vanished from my mind and all I could remember was the “hurt” that I felt from my little accident with the bed frame and how “dangerous” it could be for people in the house. The product (or service) called “The bed” immediately lost its marketability with me, its customer.

While you are designing your product or service for providing the fantastic help that it’ll provide your customer, be sure you give a thought to how it might “hurt” your customers. While one can argue that it’s impossible to come up with a product/service that is “Perfect” in all aspects and causes no “hurt”, one can surely design it in a way so that the “hurt” is kept to a minimum. Here are a couple of levels of hurt to consider while you think of the design of your offer:
1. Fundamental Hurt – This is what I call the “Deal Breaker”. This is the hurt that will instantly kill any marketability of your product or service. It wouldn’t matter how aesthetically tasteful your product is; it wouldn’t matter how practical it is or how valuable it is. If your product or service hurts a fundamental concern; it will, in all likelihood, not be very marketable. My example, above fits the bill for “fundamental hurt”. The bed, regardless of how comfortable and elegant it was, was dangerous to the fundamental concern of my body. The moment that dawned upon me; the offer was outta-the-door for me.

2. Derivative Hurt – This is something that the customer sees as not impacting his or her core concerns and thus, is open to a cost-benefit analysis of whatever product or service it is that he or she is considering buying. It’s like your offer gets a Second-chance-at-least kind of hurt. This is where most of the “good” products or services fall in. They all “Cost” something (which obviously hurts the customer in a way since it eats into his or her resources) but if the Return is good, the Cost is viewed as more of an investment and the conversation suddenly centralizes around the ROI, and not just the “Hurt”. As an example, offers such as entertainment magazines and Television fall in this category. They provide customers with a sensation called “Relaxation” and “Fun” in return for the money and time they cost the customers.

When you are designing your products and services; look closely for what kind of “Hurt” they might cause your customers… and stay away from the “Fundamental Hurt” as much as possible!

This article was contributed by Himanshu Jhamb, co-founder of Active Garage and co-author of the upcoming book "ProjectManagementTweets". You can follow Himanshu on Twitter at himjhamb.

Tagged as: active garage, business, cost, derivative, design, entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, fundamental, help, himanshu jhamb, hurt, investment, offer, offering, product, Return on Investment, ROI, sales, service

Everyone does not view social media with the same lens. Different people have different stands about social media. For some people it’s a nuisance and for others it’s their life.

I have grouped the kinds of relationships people have to social media in seven categories. You may be able to identify yourself in one of them or somewhere in between. You will notice that the investment you make and the returns you get are directly influenced by the approach you take.

As you can see, only in the last two kinds of relationships can you expect reasonable ROI from social media.

So, here are the seven kinds of relationship in detail:

1. Despise

You hate social media and social networking. You might even think it’s a nuisance. You think it’s artificial and you just keep thinking about the old days when people could really meet and talk. This new kind of building relationships seems so fake to you. Some of you may think that this is a fad that’s going to go away sooner than later. So why bother?

None of you in belonging to this category have any plans for participating in the social media. Some of you may question the intelligence of others who are participating in social media. Obviously, you can’t expect to see any returns from social media with this attitude.

2. Distant

You don’t hate social media but you don’t love it either. You are standing at a distance and watching all the action. You are sometimes amused, sometimes surprised and sometimes shocked with what’s happening there. When you read a success story you are encouraged to begin your journey but you stop yourself saying that you may not be ready to make that BIG commitment of time, energy and mindshare into this without being fully clear about the return on that investment.

Some of you in this category may be afraid that you might abandon the ship prematurely if you are not fully equipped before you start. Whatever be the reason to keep the distance, you can’t expect any returns from social media with this stand.

3. Dream

You are more open to participating in social media but the right time has not come in yet. You know what you will do when you finally start engaging in social media. In your mind, you have a grand plan but the time to execute has not come yet. Even here, your ROI from social media is not much for you as the marketplace rarely places a premium on people’s dreams. Dreams are important but action is even more important.

4. Deal

You are someone that had no choice but to jump into social media. Someone posted about you or your company on a blog. Someone tweeted about you or your company on Twitter. You are now forced to respond, especially if you feel the article or tweet was not backed with facts. You jump into the social media to set the record straight. This is a reactive approach rather than a proactive approach. However, you can still benefit from dealing with the situation on social media. People appreciate that there is human touch from the company. You might decide to engage proactively from now on or you might again go back to the sidelines and come back whenever there is a need.

5.  Dabble

You are definitely on the social media side of the fence. You are experimenting on various tools, techniques and tactics albeit without a clear strategy. You act as if the latest tools that surfaced were the missing piece in the puzzle. You embrace new tools with vigor but you don’t follow through with the same vigor as new tools in the marketplace continue to distract you.

While you may not get a long-term return using this approach you do see some benefit as you start making and building relationships on the web.

6. Dedicated

You are committed to participate and engage in social media. You are active on various networks, ask and answer questions and do everything to engage with community. People know you as not only competent in your domain but also as a “nice and helpful” person and probably will reciprocate back when you are in need. You are on the path to building long term relationships that matter.

This is where you start seeing serious returns from social media.

7. Dance

This is social media mastery at display. You know what it takes to “dance” in the social media. You not only help – you ensure that your help is “valuable.” You not only give away stuff but you ensure that what you are giving away is “SIGNFICANT.” Whether it is an article, eBook or a tweet, when you talk people listen and they are thankful that you are there in social media and you are accessible. You change lives via social media and make things happen.

Your returns from social media skyrocket with this stand.

If you are not engaged in social media, I urge you to start engaging with the view to “dance” someday. That’s where all the magic is.

Rajesh Setty is an entrepreneur, author and speaker based in Silicon Valley. He maintains another blog called Life Beyond Code and tweets as @UpbeatNow

Tagged as: active garage, engage, facebook, flickr, linkedin, Rajesh Setty, relationships, Return on Investment, ROI, significant help, Social Media, Twitter, youtube

Many different areas of business have been covered in the past several weeks on Activegarage.com from the dance of entrepreneurship , creating and protecting your intellectual property, to protecting your company’s data .  Our goal is to help people transform their world by coming up with uncommon offers in the marketplace. 

So, now you’ve come up with the next breakthrough and are ready to take your first step as an entrepreneur.  You’ve come up with a name for your company and have set up a corporation.  You’re excited.  Financial freedom is just around the corner.  You go to register your company’s domain name and you come to find out…someone already owns it.  Don’t give up. 

Here are some simple steps to help you to continue moving forward.

1.     Change Your Domain Suffix

If .com is not available, look to see if any of the other domains are available (.net, .biz, etc…).  Be careful though as you might be in violation of a possible trademark infringement if the other domain in use is a legitimate business.

2.     Change The Name Slightly

Work on finding variations of the name you want until you find one that is available.  Again, be careful with this option as well as you could also be in violation of a possible trademark infringement. 

3.     Buy The Domain Name

Domain names are bought and sold all the time at sites like GoDaddy.com or BuyDomains.com.  Having the right domain name online can help establish your company’s identity.  Determine what the value of building your brand without being able to use the company name and domain you desire and compare that to what it would cost to buy the domain you want.  If the latter is less, simply buy the domain and continue moving forward. 

4.     If You Already Own The Trademark

If you already own the trademark to your company’s name, you have some options.  If you are dealing with a cybersquatter, the first, and less expensive, option is to contact ICANN and file a dispute under the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy.  The cost to go this route varies as it depends on the number of domains filed in the dispute and the number of panelist required.  You can also send a cease and desist letter to the party that is “squatting” on your desired domain.  A sample letter can be found here .  While this process might be time consuming and cumbersome, it is considerably less expensive than the final option. 

5.     Seek Legal Advice

When you’ve exhausted all of your options, this might be the only one remaining.  Before going down this path, consider the time and money it might take if you try to resolve this matter with the “help” of an attorney.  If this goes to court and you win, you could have all or part of your legal expenses paid for by the other party, but be careful as you could very easily lose and incur legal expenses and still not have the name you wanted for your business. 

Unfortunately there is no one way to resolve this issue, but it is important to understand that you do have options should you encounter this problem.  It is just as important to determine how much time and money you are willing to invest before you go after the name you want.  Sometimes it’s just easier to come up with a new name.

This article was contributed by Robert Driscoll, co-founder of Active Garage. You can follow Robert on Twitter at rsdriscoll.

Tagged as: active garage, Branding, business, cease and desist, Copyrights, cost, data security, entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, http://activegarage.com, Identity, Intellectual Property, Leadership, legal, management, marketing, Return on Investment, Robert Driscoll, ROI, Sales and Marketing, trademark

“Every Successful enterprise requires three men:

a dreamer, a businessman, and a son of a bitch.”

Peter McArthur, Photographer

History has shown that whenever the Presidents’ approval rating drops under 50%, the markets rally and the growth averages 9%. Sounds strange?

Change isn’t always popular and as a young COO running the operations of a $25 Million manufacturing company, I found myself being disappointed if at the end of the week I did not find any graffiti about myself on the notice boards of the plant restroom. I could not understand why I felt disappointed until one day it came to me … I was not active enough and I needed to take more risks that introduced change into the idling system. CHANGE is what causes popularity loss. Not the talk about change, but the actual change/shakeup of someone’s perceived state of “unruffled” comfort.

Note this sequence:

Popularity DOWN when CEO demanded –

• higher efficiency
• more overtime
• more output
• more sales effort

Popularity UP when CEO increased –

• increased benefits
• increased commissions
• increased paid time off programs

You can continue this list, but you see the trend.

The formula for business is: Profitability = Revenue – Costs.  Simple and obvious yet very complex at the same time. Every CEO must (and CEO performance is based on) driving revenues UP and driving cost DOWN so that they do not grow in the same proportion as the revenue. That will assure growth in Profitability.  Now compare this objective of every CEO with issues related to His/Her Popularity. In most cases, when one strives for Popularity, this will increase the cost of running the business and will stagnate revenue growth.

For example, Steve Jobs, a dreamer, a businessman, and most unpopular CEO (to insiders) of Apple, created an unprecedented business success story for a company that was about to collapse.  While he strived to create a new type of industry and product lines for Apple, there were still stories about people trying to avoid at any cost getting in the same elevator with him. Today the results are outstanding and those who benefited on the share price growth are happy, but most of them still do not like the CEO who introduced the CHANGE, got them all to work hard and sacrifice a lot of personal comfort in the process.

Leadership is tough on popularity and likability. Executives and managers who strive for popularity, friendship, and for “being liked” by their peers and employees will become less effective and as a result, often impede their progress to succeed in the marketplace.

Let’s take it to my favorite examples with our kids. There is always this dreadful moment when your 5 year old suddenly in frustration tells you: “I hate you …”. What just happened? Your popularity rating just dropped to the bottom … but most likely this was after you got him to do what you wanted as most of the time these words come after your insistence on doing something they do not want to do on their own. If you let them have their way and drop your demands … well, you know, you will get a smile and “I love you” and a kiss. It is hard to demand and insist … but it builds character and eventually respect; after recognizing that your demands were reasonable and fair and that after performing as requested, you gave them candy or something they wanted so much.

Lets just substitute the striving for “love and popularity” with striving for respect and you may hit the perfect balance.

So here are two magic life rules for a better balance that will lead to respect and efficiency:

• Always demand performance, but be reasonable and fair and adjust these demands to the person you are asking to perform these requests.
• Always acknowledge the effort of the implementation even if the result is not 100% to your expectation, but do not hesitate to ask and insist on another solution if the result is unacceptable.

General Patton was known to demand performance and would not take any excuses, for that many called him “the most respected SOB” in the forces.

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Yakov Soloveychik is a business advisor, mentor and a personal coach to CEO’s and business owners. Yakov’s professional and entrepreneurial career includes VP,  COO, CEO positions and service on board of directors with a number of technology based companies in Los Angeles and Silicon Valley

Tagged as: active garage, business, Business Management, CEO, Change, Entrepreneurship, Identity, leaders, Leadership, management, Patton, respect, Return on Investment, ROI, SOB, Strategy, www.activegarage.com

Description of Help (v):  to give or provide what is necessary to accomplish a task or satisfy a need; contribute strength or means to; render assistance to; cooperate effectively with; aid; assist:

Help is surely something that you would like to have in abundance in your personal and your business endeavors. Have you reflected on how much help is around us, and what it is to us?

Last week I led a value workshop for, hopefully, a future client. Our sales lady has been in communication with this organization for over a year now and in an effort to offer them help to facilitate moving forward with a deal a one day Value Workshop was suggested to help them identify their solution needs. We used a method called Pain Chains^TM developed by Keith M. Eades. This organizational assessment method enables you to evaluate the impact and value of an organizations pains. The concept is that pains in an organization are felt by individuals within the organization. These pains are often as a consequence of some other interdependent individual’s pain within the organizational process chain.

As an outcome of the value assessment, one of the pain chains the participants estimated, increased the costs at around 7% of payroll and another contributed to the loss of revenue in the order of 8-10% of revenue in a primary division. This accumulated cost, in a single year, far outweighs the solution costs and to think that they have lost a year already in indecision and likely another year between making a decision and realizing the benefits of which ever solution they choose. Ironically this organization helps their clients through their product and services offering in a very similar way.

At the end of the value workshop we asked for feedback and all responded very favorably to the exercise and how it had opened their mind to the impact of their problems and the urgency with which they needed to address the situation. However one particular individual’s feedback really stood out – while very enthusiastic about the outcome of the workshop and what had been revealed to him he concluded that “ …there was nothing in the session that we couldn’t have done ourselves!”

That assessment is 100% correct, but what it doesn’t take into consideration is at what cost to you and your organization. Yes anyone can do just about anything given enough time, but time is the one thing we have no control over which makes it scarce and expensive. That is why we need help and that is why when we get help acknowledge it and realize how much it is contributing to your Return On Investment (ROI)!

This article was contributed by Guy Ralfe, co-founder of Active Garage and co-author of the upcoming book "ProjectManagementTweets". You can follow Guy on Twitter at gralfe.

Tagged as: ability, business, capacity, cost, effective business, results, Return on Investment, ROI, Strategy, time