Business Change Management

What if each of your employees felt really appreciated, an integral part of the team? And what if these positive feelings then translated into better performance, higher output, more idea generation and greater company profit? Wouldn't that be great!

We all want that, right? But these things don't just happen on their own—they're nurtured by a positive culture, one that values and champions every staff member, no matter their position. Many companies already have this kind of culture in place. Do you? If not, do you know how to get it?

For a little guidance, a recent article in Inc.com offers four strategies, all focusing on storytelling, and one of them even comes from me. (You can read the full article here.)

Storytelling is a great way to change your company culture

Thanks to the digital revolution, people are not buying things the way they used to—they just aren't. The old sales funnel we knew for decades is long gone. 

As entrepreneurs, this means that you now need to build your business growth strategies differently in order to capture buyers on their journey, not yours. Since the buyer’s journey is an essential framework for any marketing strategy, you must start to think like your buyer and understand the steps he or she is taking to make a purchase decision. 

This new mindset is crucial if you are going build your sales volume fast enough to succeed. 

How Has the Buying Game Changed?

If you are an emerging entrepreneur searching for a big idea or a budding business owner building your new enterprise, you are probably great at seeing things with fresh eyes. You know that people are waiting for new solutions to their recurring problems.

Maybe they are struggling with a problem for which they have still not found the right answer. Maybe your partners and suppliers have pain points dealing with your processes and systems. Or, maybe your own employees might be struggling with company practices that aren’t working. 

Whatever the situation, people need some great entrepreneur to see things with fresh eyes—and bring them the help they need! 

It isn't more of the same, cheaper.

Whether it is the needs of a new customer you want to serve, or the challenges of your staff with your business model design, or the irritated supplier who wants you to get it right, you have some work to do.

But before you can solve your customers' and employees' issues and improve the situation, you need to know how they really “feel.” What are their thoughts? Their opinions? What changes do they hope to see? Which of your products or services do they wish were different? How do they solve their problems now? Do they decide to use competitors' products?

To answer all these questions, you need to go to the source. Please don't just ask them! Go Exploring!

As you already know if you've read any of my blogs, I am a corporate anthropologist who launchedSimon Associates Management Consultants almost two decades ago to help organizations change using the theory, methods, and tools of anthropology. Before that, I was a tenured professor and then an executive in banking and healthcare—always focused on change.

My husband, Andrew Simon (Andy), joined SAMC several years ago after many decades as a successful entrepreneur. Since he was not an anthropologist, our positioning was not going to be an easy one to fit him into. And yet, the more we thought about it, he fit the modus operandi perfectly, as I describe in a recent article I wrote for Home Business Magazine, which you can read here.

The challenge for us was: How could Andy take his expertise and apply it in ways that worked within our company’s market positioning? We knew he was a great innovator and knew how to grow businesses at all stages of their development — from start-ups and early-stage companies to mid-market companies ready to expand their scope and shape. And when you think about it, growing is all about change.

SAMC is all about helping businesses change but we realized we had to change, too.

Can you continue to be a valuable contributor to society after you've passed your 50th (or 60th or even 70th) birthday? Can you still be a startup entrepreneur? Yes! Because guess what? I'm doing it.

In a recent article I wrote for Home Business Magazine, I talk about the exhilaration as well as the pitfalls of re-entering the marketplace after you have retired, or if you never left it in the first place. Below are highlights from the article. To read it in full, click here.

The value of being “over 50”

1. Experience counts

Don’t discount your experiences. While you might not have skills associated with fast-moving new technologies, you do know how to deal with people. These make you very valuable. You just need to know how to sell what you know.

Entrepreneurship isn’t reserved for the 20-something-year-old who quit college to write code in their parent’s garage. In fact, according to Shopify, the highest rate of entrepreneurship in the U.S. has been among 55 to 64 years old with people over 55 twice as likely to launch successful new companies than those in the 20-34 age group.

Fifty years is far from old. It’s a good decade and a half away from retirement age. Did you know that celebrities such as Naomi Watts, Will Smith, Lucy Liu, Ashley Judd, LL Cool J, and Rachel Ray are turning 50 years old this 2018? And when you realize that, you can appreciate that 50 and up may be the ideal age to leave the rat race, start a business, and be your own boss.

Read more: A Powerful Checklist for Entrepreneurial Success

Here are some of the best business ideas for the over 50 aspiring entrepreneur:

Whether you’ve been in business a long time or are an aspiring business owner, you’ll discover how powerful and empowering it is to be supported by your fellow female entrepreneurs as you navigate your way through the complexities of entrepreneurship as a woman in today’s world.

We’ve put together a list of incredible websites with the mission to empower women entrepreneurs on their journey to success. You may be ready to grow an innovative business to reach your pinnacle of success.

The list below shows you the wide range of missions for these leaders. From the stories you will see on She Owns It to the EveryGirl that might just be you looking for the inspiration to live that great life. Take it from two life-long entrepreneurs. It is a great journey. One we love to share.

Have you ever gotten an email which says something like, “We are the best at SEO…first page guaranteed”? Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? But I have learned that it is perhaps not as good as it appears.

Why do I say that?

Let’s start with the buyer’s journey and why firms that only deal in SEO ranking can only get you part of the way to achieving your goals. Getting to the first page of Google is not all that inbound marketing is about! Helping a buyer through their decision process so they can make the right choice among many options is really a bigger objective -- and one that needs you to think about more than just SEO. Search marketing is more than just the right content on the website.

SEO is critically important -- agree, but...

As we see the healthcare world continue to consolidate, mergers and acquisitions are becoming the lay of the land. But although the process of merging two different (sometimes very different) cultures is becoming more common, it's not getting any easier. In fact, for several of our current and former healthcare clients, it's very, very challenging. 

As I said in my recent article for Hospital Impact, even though mergers may make good business sense, they tend to create a “flight or fight” response in the people in the organization being merged or acquired. Why? Because people just hate change.

Staff members (medical or not) usually are not happy in the new, merged world—they liked the one they had before. They're not sure how well they fit into the new organization's culture so they tend to assume the worst. 

Mergers are really hard on physicians and staff

From a series of interviews we conducted with doctors, nurses and support staff, we learned that people who have gone through a merger or acquisition are angry and irritated. While they are making more money in many cases, and their offices may be running more efficiently, they are unhappy. There are many reasons for this, namely: