Eric Jacobson

Archive for the ‘Management’ Category

USAA’s 10 Guiding Business Principles

In Company Culture, Corporate Culture, Customer Service, General Leadership Skills, Guiding Business Principles, Leadership, Management on May 14, 2013 at 5:48 am

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I really like these 10 guiding business principles that San Antonio, TX headquartered insurance company USAA lives by:

  • Exceed customer expectations
  • Live the Golden Rule (treat others with courtesy and respect)
  • Be a leader
  • Participate and contribute
  • Pursue excellence
  • Work as a team
  • Share knowledge
  • Keep it simple (make it easy for customers to do business with us and for us to work together)
  • Listen and communicate
  • Have fun

Too many companies don’t make it simple for their customers to do business with them.  Is it easy for your customers to:

  • Buy from you?
  • Make returns?
  • Get pricing and terms?
  • Receive timely responses to their e-mails?
  • Quickly get answers when phoning your company?

You can find more examples of companies with impressive guiding principles in the book, 1001 Ways To Energize Employees.

10 Ways To Maximize Employee Involvement

In Employee Engagement, Eric Jacobson On Corporate Culture, Eric Jacobson On Leadership, General Leadership Skills, Leadership, Management, Motivating Employees on May 4, 2013 at 7:09 am

Eric Jacobson Leadership

Here are 10 tips for how to maximize employee involvement:

  1. Have active ways to listen to your employees.
  2. Check often with employees to see if the information you are sharing with them is what they need and what they want.
  3. Share information about customer satisfaction with employees.
  4. Discuss financial performance with your employees and be sure everyone understands the importance of profitability and how they can contribute to profitability.
  5. Allow ad hoc teams among employees to form to address organizational problems and work with those teams to tackle the identified issues.
  6. Encourage employees to make suggestions for improvement whether those ideas are large or small.
  7. Take an idea from one employee and share it with other employees and teams and let everyone make a contribution to build upon that idea.
  8. Train!
  9. For long-term employees, find ways to keep their jobs interesting through new assignments and challenges.
  10. Conduct meetings around specific issues and brainstorm solutions.

“Involving people in the business is the most effective way to produce an organization in which people know more, care more, and do the right things,” said Edward Lawler III, Professor, University of Southern California, as quoted in the book, 1001 Ways To Energize Employees, by author Bob Nelson.

National Volunteer Week — Encourage Your Employees To Volunteer

In Employee Retention, Employee Satisfaction, Engaging Employees, Eric Jacobson On Corporate Culture, Eric Jacobson On Leadership, General Leadership Skills, Leadership, Management, Motivating Employees, Volunteering on April 23, 2013 at 5:56 am

National Volunteer Week is April 21-27.  The week when nonprofit organizations throughout the U.S. will celebrate and honor their volunteers.

If you are not already volunteering, what a great time to start.

And, if you are a workplace leader who supports a volunteer program at your business, you already know that by encouraging employees to give back to your community you are:

  • building teamwork
  • motivating employees
  • attracting new hires

In fact, job seekers much prefer companies that have a strong volunteer program. And, a growing number of businesses are rewarding employees who volunteer by giving them extra vacation time and other incentives.

Fortunately, throughout the U.S. there are hundreds of volunteer opportunities where employees can contribute individually, or where leaders can organize teams of employees to volunteer together on a routine and scheduled basis.

To find organizations in need of volunteers, go to Volunteer Match and type in your zip code.  You’ll be presented a list of nearby volunteer opportunities.  Also, you can find opportunities on iParticipate.

How To Identify A Leader During An Interview

In Eric Jacobson On Corporate Culture, Eric Jacobson On Leadership, General Leadership Skills, Hiring Great People, Interviewing, Interviewing Leaders, Leadership, Management on April 17, 2013 at 5:39 pm

Eric Jacobson Leadership

The next time you are interviewing a candidate and you want to access  their leadership skills, consider asking the candidate these questions:

  1. What personal qualities define you as a leader?  Describe a situation when these qualities helped you lead others.
  2. Give an example of when you demonstrated good leadership.
  3. What is the toughest group from which you’ve had to get cooperation?
  4. Have you ever had difficulty getting others to accept your ideas?  What was your approach?  Did it work?
  5. Describe a situation in which you had to change your leadership style to achieve the goal?
  6. One leadership skill is the ability to accommodate different views  in the workplace, regardless of what they are.  What have you done to  foster a wide number of views in your work environment?

Thanks to Sharon Armstrong, author of The Essential HR Handbook, for these helpful questions!

5 Open-Ended Questions To Ask Your Customers

In Customer Engagement, Customer Service, Feedback, General Leadership Skills, Leadership, Management, Sales Management on April 9, 2013 at 5:11 pm

Effective Listening

Eager to ask your customers questions they aren’t used to hearing?  Consider this advice from author Paul R. Timm. He recommends a different twist on asking your customers questions:

  • stop asking your customers the “typical” questions and instead ask them open-ended questions.

Here’s specifically what Timm recommends:

Don’t Ask:

  • How was everything?
  • Can I get you something else?
  • Did you find everything you need?
  • Will that be all?
  • Was everything satisfactory?

Instead Ask:

  • What else can I do for you?
  • What else can I get for you?
  • What else can I help you with?
  • What else could we do to better serve you?
  • How else can we be of help?

These open-ended questions will let your customers really express their ideas, opinions and needs. Timm is the author of, 50 Powerful Ideas You Can Use To Keep Your Customers.

Leadership, Motivational And Life Quotes That Inspire Me

In General Leadership Skills, Management, Leadership, Leadership Quotes, Guiding Business Principles, Eric Jacobson On Leadership, Eric Jacobson On Corporate Culture, Quotes That Inspire on March 24, 2013 at 12:34 pm

LeadershipJacobson

These quotes truly inspire me:

“The three common characteristics of best companies — they care, they have fun, they have high performance expectations.” — Brad Hams

“The one thing that’s common to all successful people: They make a habit of doing things that unsuccessful people don’t like to do.” — Michael Phelps

“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” — Harry S. Truman

“The leader of the past was a person who knew how to tell. The leader of the future will be a person who knows how to ask.” — Peter Drucker

“Leadership: The art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.” — Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Good leadership isn’t about advancing yourself. It’s about advancing your team.” — John C. Maxwell

“People buy into the leader, then the vision.” — John C. Maxwell

“Great leaders have courage, tenacity and patience.” — Bill McBean

“People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves.” — Paulo Coelho

“We live in a time where brands are people and people are brands.” — Brian Solis

“In real life, the most practical advice for leaders is not to treat pawns like pawns, nor princes like princes, but all persons like persons.” — James MacGregor Burns

“The only source of knowledge is experience.” — Albert Einstein

“Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.” — Auguste Rodin

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” — Maria Robinson

“A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.” — Arnold H. Glasgow

“I praise loudly, I blame softly.” — Catherine II of Russia

“Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.” — Mohandas Gandhi

“A long dispute means that both parties are wrong.” — Voltaire

“The least questioned assumptions are often the most questionable.” — Paul Broca

“One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.” — Arnold Glasow

“Managers assert drive and control to get things done; leaders pause to discover new ways of being and achieving .”– Kevin Cashman

“It doesn’t matter where you’re coming from. All that matters is where you are going to.” — Stephen Covey

“Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.” — Samuel Johnson

“Strength doesn’t come from what we can do. It comes from overcoming what we once thought we couldn’t.” — Rikki Roberts

“The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.” — Alfred North Whitehead

“The most powerful predictable people builders are praise and encouragement.” — Brian Tracy

“Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon them and to let them know that and trust them.” — Booker T. Washington

“Ask because you want to know. Listen because you want to grow.” — Mark Scharenbroich

“If you want execution, hail only success. If you want creativity, hail risk, and remain neutral about success.” — Marcus Buckingham

“To get the best coaching outcomes, always have your 1-on-1′s on your employee’s turf not yours. In your office the truth hides.” — Marcus Buckingham

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” — Alan Kay

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” — Winston Churchill

“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” — Bill Cosby

“The greatest accomplishment is not in never failing, but in rising again after you fall.” — Vince Lombardi

Seven Ways To Define Meaningful Work

In Company Culture, Corporate Culture, Employee Engagement, Employee Retention, Employee Satisfaction, Engaging Employees, Eric Jacobson On Leadership, General Leadership Skills, Leadership, Leadership Books, Leadership Skills, Management, Meaningful Work, Motivating Employees on March 23, 2013 at 4:31 pm

Eric Jacobson Leadership

There are so many good things to learn in the book, Helping People Win At Work, by Ken Blanchard and Garry Ridge. Among those is the section about how to define meaningful work.

Their definition consists of these seven attributes.  Work is meaningful when it:

  1. It is conducted in a manner that is “good and proper” in all respects.
  2. It positively affects our company and our communities, giving our work an impact that extends beyond ourselves.
  3. It provides learning and growth, offers challenges, requires creativity, pushes us to surpass limits, and creates exciting results.
  4. It provides recognition and rewards for our achievements.
  5. It allows us to succeed as a team while excelling as individuals.
  6. It allows us to enjoy the ride, bringing humor and fun into our work.
  7. It fuels passion!

Leadership Quotes For Today

In Customer Engagement, Customer Service, Engaging Customers, Eric Jacobson On Leadership, General Leadership Skills, Guiding Business Principles, Leadership, Leadership Books, Leadership Education, Leadership Quotes, Leadership Skills, Management on March 23, 2013 at 11:59 am

Eric Jacobson Leadership

In addition to learning a lot about the ways businesses are creating experiences for their customers in Brian Solis’ new book, What’s The Future of Business, you’ll be treated to dozens of compelling leadership, life and business quotes, such as these:

  • “People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves.” — Paulo Coelho

 

  •  ”We live in a time where brands are people and people are brands.” — Brian Solis

 

  • “In real life, the most practical advice for leaders is not to treat pawns like pawns, nor princes like princes, but all persons like persons.” — James MacGregor Burns

 

  •  ”The only source of knowledge is experience.” — Albert Einstein

 

  • “Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.” — Auguste Rodin

 

  • “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” — Maria Robinson

Open-ended Questions To Ask Your Customers

In Customer Service, Effective Communications, Eric Jacobson On Leadership, General Leadership Skills, Leadership, Management on March 12, 2013 at 6:35 am

Eric Jacobson Leadership

Consider this advice from author Paul R. Timm.  He recommends a different twist on asking your customers questions:

  • stop asking your customers the “typical” questions and instead ask them open-ended questions.

Here’s specifically what Timm recommends:

Don’t Ask:

  • How was everything?
  • Can I get you something else?
  • Did you find everything you need?
  • Will that be all?
  • Was everything satisfactory?

Instead Ask:

  • What else can I do for you?
  • What else can I get for you?
  • What else can I help you with?
  • What else could we do to better serve you?
  • How else can we be of help?

These open-ended questions will let your customers really express their ideas, opinions and needs.  Timm is the author of, 50 Powerful Ideas You Can Use To Keep Your Customers.

Questions You Must Ask Before Starting A Business

In Eric Jacobson On Leadership, General Leadership Skills, Leadership, Making Decisions, Management, Starting A Business, Strategic Planning on March 2, 2013 at 7:53 am

Eric Jacobson LeadershipAre you a leader contemplating starting a new business?  Or, has a budding entrepreneur turned to you because of your leadership skills to ask for your help?

Here are 11 questions you or that entrepreneur should ask before starting a business.

  1. Is there a true need for my product/service?
  2. What is the competitive environment and how will my product/service be unique, different or better?
  3. Will my location (or accessibility online) be convenient and easy to get to for my customers?
  4. Do I have adequate funding to support my business, particularly during the ramp-up period that could be a year or more?
  5. Do I have the stamina to start a new business and work hard even if it means months of extended work hours and perhaps even seven days a week?
  6. Will my family and social life withstand my commitment to my new business?
  7. Will the name of my business be easy to spell, suitable for print on online, and memorable?
  8. Am I a risk taker?
  9. Am I humble enough to ask for help, especially if I am not an expert in marketing or accounting?
  10. Do I hire well? Do I have the skills, ability and resources to hire people who will share my same vision, work ethic and commitment to the business?
  11. Do I have an exit plan? Do I know how to handle exiting from the business should it fail or, ideally, should it become so successful I’ll be able to sell it?

And, before you start your business, write a business plan even if you don’t have to present one to a bank, funders or lenders.  And, ask a handful of your peers to review your plan.  Be sure to select a few people who are your best critics.

Writing the plan, which could take two to six weeks of working on it nearly every day, will force you to think of all aspects of your business and will require you to address tough questions you will likely not ask without the discipline of writing a plan.

Perhaps most critical in your plan will be the sections on:

  • Competition
  • Marketing
  • Financial Projections
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