Just Got Back!
Morning, everybody! Welcome to the new Dave Ratner blog! Thanks for coming by.
I’ve been meaning to create a blog for a while now. Blogging’s a great way to connect with people, and I’m hoping to use this platform to find people who are interested in the same things I am: independent retailing, marketing, running a small business, and doing everything I can to make my life — and the lives of my employees! — better every day.
A little background. Not too much, I don’t want you to get sick of me right off the bat! Anyway, I’m the owner of Dave’s Soda and Pet City , a mini-chain of pet & soda stores. We’re located in Western Massachusetts, and I’m thrilled to say we manage to hold our own each and every day in a world of huge chains and deep discounters. We’ve been doing it for close to 30 years, and if I’ve got anything to say about it, we’ll be doing it for 30 more!
Right now I’m fired up because I just got back from The Global Retail Marketing Association Conference I learned a ton of great stuff when I was there, real hands on immediately applicable stuff we can all start using right away to improve our businesses. Throughout this week, I’m going to be sharing some tips I learned there. I hope you find them helpful, and I’d love to talk to you about them further, so comment away!
Gary Hamel, who Fortune magazine calls the world’s leader on business strategy, presented. One of the things he talked about, and I personally think this was great, is how to get employee suggestions.
Now, I’ve asked my employees for suggestions over the years. Let me tell you, opening up that suggestion box is a sure fire way to get 8,000,000 suggestions. However, how many of the suggestions are any good? How many are great suggestions but impossible to use? How many are guaranteed to put you right out of business within a year?
If you’re a business owner, you know what I’m talking about. You also know that there’s only so many hours in the day, and finding time to sort through 8,000,000 suggestions in the hopes of finding one or two good ones is not an easy thing to do.
Hamel’s suggestion is this: Before any employee submits a suggestion, they first have to run it by and get approval of the suggestion — from another employee! There’s a format for suggestions:
Here’s what we should do
Here’s why we should do it
Here’s what it will cost
Here’s how it will improve the business
This just resonates with me as a practical, useful way to handle employee suggestions. I’d love to hear what you think of the idea!
I’ll be back to share more. Thanks for stopping by!
Tags: conferences, employee suggestions, employees, Gary Hamel, independent retailing, introduction
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