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By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  Image by rawpixels.com on Freepik Many companies' big ideas are often lost in a sea of competitive offerings that outperform them in the market. If that's you, here are seven tips to help your organization become more innovative. 1. Choose and Commit to an Innovation Path There are three types of innovation: Product, Process, and Business Model. Process is the least sexy of the three but is the easiest to tackle first and can reap great dividends. It can range from updating a cumbersome sales process to revamping your assembly line. Such improvements can immediately capture benefits in speed-to-market and increased profitability. Here's a great article that explains these concepts in greater detail. 2. Plan for Innovation As we all know, unless you plan to do something, it most likely won't happen. Think about including targets for new products and services in your business plan. Make innovation a part of everyone's yearly goals. It's well-known that if you don't measure it, it most likely won't happen. 3. Mobilize Your Employees Try the following ideas to spark innovation with your most valued resource! Be Approachable & Accessible For your employees to be genuinely innovative, senior leaders and managers must regularly interact with their teams. Being approachable and accessible makes all the difference in the world. Inspire your Employees to Dream What does innovation look like to your employees? Inspire a culture of openness to new ideas. Make Innovation the Norm Take it one step further—let workers know how much you value their ideas. Make innovation a part of your company values. Talk it up during staff get-togethers. Hold regular ideation sessions. Reward Innovative Ideas Take it up one more notch--reward, not just recognize, employees for innovative ideas. Allow for More Margin One great way to reward employees that deserves its own category is by allowing more time for creative thinking. 4. Gather Feedback from Your Customers There are many ways to do this: listen to customer complaints, interview/survey them, run a contest for new product ideas, or monitor social media posts. Then consolidate feedback as a basis for your innovation efforts. Most importantly, act on what you discover! 5. Collaborate Is there another company you can collaborate with that provides excellent synergy? You can go where you can't go alone through such a partnership. It's essential, however, to have a similar philosophy to go along with different skills. 6. Minimize or Maximize If something is a standard in the industry, try minimizing or maximizing it. Starbucks maximized price and customer experience. Southwest minimized standard offerings, like serving meals. At the same time, they maximized customer service. It is better to be different than to be better. 7. Bring in Outside Help If your company needs increased bandwidth, contract with someone for identified projects, or if you need help to determine where to start, think about bringing someone in who is skilled in innovation consulting. What innovation efforts have worked for you? I'd love to hear what has helped your company to be more innovative! Or, if you're currently experiencing problems in this area, I'd love to brainstorm some ideas of where you could improve your profitability and increase innovation. Click the button below to schedule a time, and we'll get something on the calendar!
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By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  Image by jcomp on Freepik With all the leadership books that exist, sometimes it can be challenging to know which book to read next! For that reason, it can be helpful to up your leadership game through reading bite-size chunks of information. If you’re in this boat, here are six things you can do to increase your leadership influence: 1. Expand Your Knowledge Base It’s easy to get lackadaisical when it comes to learning. Some leaders may feel complacent and don't feel the need to grow anymore. This scenario can be the case if leaders have been in their roles for a long time. If this is the case, the best thing to do is decide to keep learning, push through the resistance, and get growing! 2. Take a Genuine Interest in Others Great leaders show care for others and their needs, which builds emotional equity amongst their peers and those they lead. Who doesn’t love to follow leaders who genuinely care about them? 3. Be Generous People remember leaders for their generosity, especially when their giving isn't required. And it doesn't even have to be money--gifts of time are invaluable as well. 4. Be Authentic People can spot a fake a mile away, yet so many are afraid to be themselves, thinking people won’t accept them if they show their true selves. They’d rather put on a mask instead. The best thing we can do is be ourselves, and if the true-you has rough edges, that’s okay. We all have them. To be imperfect is perfectly human. 5. Thrive During Tough Times We do have a choice on how we deal with hardship. It comes down to two things: either we choose to face challenges head-on, or by default, we allow adversity to eat away at our resilience and our ability to overcome. My advice? Choose wisely! 6. Embrace Servant Leadership Have the mindset that life isn't about us. It's about serving others, bringing value to everyone we meet, and leaving a legacy. In the end, if we can embrace these six qualities such that they become a part of who we are, our influence as a leader will grow, and who doesn’t want that? Speaking of influence, does your organization have the resources to grow your impact in the market, but you're not sure where to start? Often, the best way to do that is through improving the way your business runs. If that's you, I'm offering a FREE 30-minute consultation. This will be a great opportunity for us to brainstorm some ideas and then identify what areas to target for improvement. Click the button below to get started! By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions  Image by Roy Harryman As a business leader, have you encountered situations where you weren’t sure how to encourage a good employee after a major failure to get them back on track? If so, I’d love to share with you some tips inspired by the Kansas City Chiefs' recent victory in the AFC Championship game. Their third trip to the Super Bowl in four years would not be possible without a handful of players who struggled for much of the season by turning it around in this game. 1. Don’t Give Up on Your Employees Rookie Skyy Moore started off the season returning kicks with little success. They pulled him from return duty yet kept working with him behind the scenes to improve. With multiple punt returners unavailable due to injuries, the coaches brought Skyy into a tie game to return a punt with less than a minute to go. Not only did he catch the ball, he ran it back for a big gain to put the Chiefs in great field position for the eventual game-winning field goal. Tip #1: After big failures, let your employees know you still believe in them. Give them guidance, or training if needed, in areas of weakness that can help prevent them from making similar mistakes again. 2. Continue to Cast a Vision for Their Future Kansas City's defense is loaded with rookies this season. KC’s coaches threw them into the fire, telling them they were going to be a big part of the team. Not surprisingly, these rookies made plenty of mistakes that resulted in numerous penalties and opponent touchdowns. But the coaches kept them in the fire, trusting they would eventually succeed. In the biggest game of the season, they did turn things around and came up with HUGE plays that directly contributed to the Chiefs winning the game. Tip #2: Continue to cast a vision of where you see your employees going despite any mistakes they make. And after big miscues, let them know you still want to help them on the growth journey you’ve started together. 3. Express Confidence in Their Ability to Succeed Harrison Butker is one of best kickers in the game; however, he’s had his worst season to date. Due to a sprained ankle, he missed three games, and when he returned, he missed a lot of field goals and extra points. With the game tied and a few seconds left on the clock, the Chiefs confidently sent Butker into the game to kick the game-winning field goal, and the rest is history. Tip #3: Let your employees know that any past failures they’ve had are in the past and that you have complete confidence in their ability to succeed. Speaking of overcoming failure, how many of you have had projects go south because of poor project management? That’s where I love to help! I excel in quickly organizing projects and rallying your teams to accomplish them in quick order with tremendous success. If you’re interested in learning more, I’d love to schedule a chat with you! Click the button below to get started. |
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