The U.S. Census Bureau tells us that there are just under 30 million businesses operating in the United States. A frequently cited U.S. Commerce Department survey noted that eight out of ten new businesses close up shop within their first five years. Avoid roadblocks to growing your business and make it a point to put together a solid business plan – it can literally be the difference between success and failure.
Strategic planning is a great way to identify which initiatives can add the most value to your organization. The next step is to prioritize initiatives with a systematic method. Use our downloadable Priority Index Tool to guide you through the prioritization process, and help you drill down on the value added for each proposed initiative.
Considering how important the interview process is for scrutinizing potential employees, it is surprising that most organizations do not have a formal set of interview questions. Don't misread another hire because you didn't take the time to plan for the interview accordingly. Use Demand Metric's Interview Questions Tool to create a list of standardized interview questions from your perspective.
Developing leaders is a top organizational development priority for every company. Effectively managing knowledge capital is especially important in highly competitive industries. Understanding and deploying a succession management strategy is an excellent way to manage your department, groom future leaders, and mitigate risk. Use Demand Metric's downloadable Succession Management Matrix tool to identify and develop the future leaders of your organization.
Leaders of marketing departments are charged with increasing the knowledge and skills of their team, but many do not have a plan for educating and developing their staff. Use this summary to identify which skills you have, and what strategies you can deploy to engage your team and expand their strategic & tactical skills.
From an organizational perspective, leadership can be defined as: the ability to influence, motivate, and enable people to attain goals and contribute toward improving the effectiveness and efficiency of an organization. Use our Management & Leadership Maturity Assessment to evaluate your organization’s Management & Leadership Program Maturity.
Over the past 10 years there has been a distinctive shift in Marketing activities; budgets are only being allocated to investments that can produce measurable returns, such as sales support and lead generation. In a time of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, repeatable controls, processes, and policy & procedures, have been implemented to ensure accountability.
Organizational change provides the opportunity for organizations to build more focused, disciplined, and mature businesses. This opportunity comes with significant financial risk if changes are not planned and managed proactively.
Many low performers stay under the radar for months before it becomes apparent that they are not actually doing any work of real substance. Be proactive with managing results and implement a weekly or monthly activity reporting process. Use Demand Metric's Activity Reporting Tool as a starting point for this initiative.
Recently, Best Buy's corporate office implemented a Results-Only Work Environment, following focus group sessions which revealed that employees most wanted TRUST from their leadership team. Best Buy has benefited so far from reduced voluntary staff turnover, a 35% increase in productivity, and immense improvements in employee satisfaction. Use our Employee Satisfaction Survey to get started on this path.
