Quantum Leap to Grow Your Business (Part One)

For a business to grow successfully and realise its full potential, it needs to take ‘quantum leaps’ throughout its life cycle.

A business often starts with a great idea and the first quantum leap is realising that idea by starting up a company.

Let’s look at an example of a small business, in the start-up phase, with a minimal workforce, a few key customers and basic finance and administration support.

How To Succeed In The Retail Industry

This is the third in a four part series that looks at four of Australia’s core industries – Mining Services, Transport, Retail and Manufacturing.

Retail is one of Australia’s more sensitive industry sectors, which is not surprising when you consider that sales are driven by consumer sentiment, interest rates, employment and disposable income.

As a result, retailers benefited from the highs of the economic boom during the early to mid 2000s, but they were also hit hard during the GFC with revenue contracting more than $1.3 billion (or 1%).

Post-GFC trading has been particularly volatile, with the government’s $10.4 billion stimulus package providing only short term benefits against continuing consumer uncertainty.

Anyone who regularly watches the news or reads the newspaper will be familiar with statistics such as CPI, employment, GDP, household expenditure, and the impact these have on our macro-economic environment.

But what about the micro-economy?

Lessons in Leadership: Share the Rewards

Natural disasters, global recession, investment banks in the doghouse, financial pressure on businesses and individuals: the financial and business worlds have trudged through the last couple of years, dragging their employees with them.

Employees have been asked to “dig deep and work to get through this”, bearing the brunt of pay cuts, increased workloads and reduced working conditions.

Employees have mucked in when it counted so shareholders could sleep at night and the company could live to see another day.

These employees are not just your management team either. They are anyone with a point of contact in your business including cleaners, secretarial staff, support staff and suppliers.

How you treat people directly affects your standing in the market place, your employee value proposition and your shareholder value.
Last December Clive Palmer, a leading figure in Australian business, shared the rewards. He gave all 750 long term workers at his Yabulu nickel refinery in North Queensland a…

Refresh Your KPIs – 8 Tips For Getting Your KPIs (Or Scorecard) Into Better Shape

I have used Scorecards and KPIs with turnaround clients and on performance optimisation projects for nearly 20 years and I’d like to share with you what works and what doesn’t when it comes to key performance indicators. Whether you are formulating your first KPIs, or wanting to refresh your existing ones, these plain English pointers [...]

Change Management For Small Business – Turnaround Isn’t Rocket Science

Performance improvement is the same in principal for all business – it’s just less complicated for SMEs. Selling a loss-making business to a competitor, changing the channel to market, acquiring a competitor or moving into a foreign market are all types of strategic decisions that large business has to make. Performance improvement in the SME [...]

Getting The Profit And Care Mix Right In The Aged Care Industry

What’s stopping Australia’s aged care providers from generating higher profits and quality resident care? According to Mr Rod Young, CEO of the Aged Care Association of Australia, the aged care industry will need to invest $21 billion in additional capacity over the next ten years to cater for Australia’s ageing population. Yet a 2010 study [...]

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