What Can Small Businesses Learn From Visionary Larger Businesses?

Are you running a small business and wanting to find new ways to increase sales?

What are savvy larger businesses doing during these tough economic times which smaller business owners like yourself can learn from?

I think it's an interesting period for businesses generally and the whole concept of increasing organisational effectiveness through innovative means is capturing my own and other's attention right now.

More than ever, intellectual philosophising management gurus are speaking about listening to staff and engaging them through getting them to consider, develop and then help to implement their ideas to improve the businesses and organisations they work for.

Yes - leadership is about having a vision and values that inspire your workers but it is also about interacting with them by listening to their ideas and putting some of their suggestions into practice.

If you don't know how to go about engaging with your staff then you might want to ask yourself the following questions which will help guide you through the process and benefit from their ideas:

• What do you really want from your staff and have you let them know?
• What communication channels exist for you as a leader in your businesses to truly maximise the capabilities and potential of your staff?
• How are you motivating staff and getting them involved in improving your business strategy, its delivery processes and operational action plans?
• When was the last time that you asked your staff what motivates them at work and what can be done to meet their needs for job fulfilment and enjoyment?

A simple way to open up the communications channel necessary to make staff engagement possible would be by introducing a 'Tell the MD' programme encouraging staff to share their ideas for improving the business -  especially focusing on the customer and improving the business to customer relationship.

You could also use this programme to ask staff what motivates them, what would be happening if they were optimally motivated and how they think that might be achieved.

One of our propositions right now is working with small businesses and teams within larger businesses to improve their performance - including building their business through introducing a 'High Performing Team' benchmark to measure themselves against and take steps to address any gaps in performance.

Please let us know how you get on with making positive changes in your business and if you would like to know more about the High Performing Team model we are using please get in touch in the usual way via our website at West of England Coaching and Counselling.