Steve Huey’s Blog

What are the top ten lessons learned in 2009 that will be useful in 2010?  I think the following:

1. Establishing TRUST is the #1 biggest thing in business.  Without trust no business can take place.  Work hard to earn it and guard it like the gold it is.
2. Building a fluid culture will do more for your business’s survival than any other corporate value.  Building an Adaptive Culture that is unafraid of change means that you can be more responsive to changes in the market place – 2009 has been that if nothing else.
3. APIE is the answer.  What is APIE it is in essence Six Sigma, Continual Improvement, etc.  APIE stands for Assess, Plan, Implement and Evaluate.  Constantly striving to be better makes you better and builds on an Adaptive Culture.
4. Training and Cross Training helps the people in your business get better.  Better people = better service = Happy Clients.  They taught me about the importance of Cross Training at Wendy’s and I have only recently (2009) remembered the principle.
5. Repetition of core concepts helps people digest the message.  I view repetition as the key to communication.  It is not effectively communicated if you only say it once.  Think about this – when a fire breaks out in a crowded theater does the person only say it once?
6. What worked yesterday (yesterday’s value) does not not work today or in 2010.  If you rely on the methods of the past you will not deliver on the promises of tomorrow.  In order to add value a business has to add more value than yesterday.  Ask GM if it is OK to sell a car today that does not have air or power windows.  Better yet ask GM if they can even sell a car where that costs extra. (You may be asking if they can sell any car which is also a good question).
7. Look Back every once in the while.  Remember what worked and where you came from to appreciate your efforts; to remember success and failure.  It is good to remember the past but not to focus on it.
8. Excellent Failures beat Mediocre Successes – to borrow from Tom Peters who no doubt borrowed from someone else.  It is only in excellent failures that ground breaking opportunities are born.  A mediocre success is just that mediocre.
9. Build Raving Fans – You can interrupt people and tell them what you have to sell (Classic Marketing), you can beg (or pay) someone to tell your story (PR), or you can build Raving Fans by offering a unique or unexpected service that wins Raving Fans or Promoters and they – your clients – can sell for you.
10. Create more VALUE than you take.  I call this the secret of life – give more love =get more love, create more value = get more value.

These ten things are what I am going to remember in the new year.  I hope your New Year will be more successful and happy than 2009.

Tags: value creation

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 31st, 2009 at 3:41 pm and is filed under Start up Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.