LEADERSHIP Growing
and Sustaining A
Smaller Organization
by Robert Follett
This
book is packed with useful tools, ideas, and helps for leaders, It presents
a structured sequence of thinking tasks; then doing tasks – tasks that
have been proven to help leaders build long-term-success for their
organization, in good times and bad times.
When you have worked your way through this short but
dense book, you will have stronger leadership skills and you will have more
tools for leadership success.
Perhaps you lead a smaller for-profit company. Perhaps you lead a
smaller not-for-profit. If you lead a smaller organization, then this book is
directly aimed at you!
You can order this book today and quickly start making
your smaller organization more successful. There is a paperback edition and a
Kindle edition. Both are available from Amazon.com
Paperback book – 156 pages 6 x 9
– List Price $14.95 / Kindle Edition $9.95
Click on this link to order now: www.Amazon.com
LEADERSHIP: Growing and Sustaining A Smaller Organization
Here is a brief
overview of the contents:
THINKING TASKS
Defining your organization’s products or services, its customers or clients, and the value that the
customers or clients want from the organization. Then defining what you want.
Creating a mission statement that attracts both money and people.
Establishing values to guide the way the organization’s staff operate.
A vision for the future. What do you want the organization to look like in five years?
The potential barriers to success.
How will the vision be achieved – a five-year strategic plan.
The annual budget – the first year of the strategic plan.
DOING TASKS
Staffing – including job descriptions, recruiting, interviewing, and more.
Getting new employees trained for the job and making them a part of the organization’s culture.
Directing the staff . And delegating.
Controlling so that results meet planned objectives.
Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. A valuable analysis tool.
Cost-benefit Analysis. Avoiding costly mistakes.
Building a winning team.
Working with a board, as almost all leaders must do.
Axioms and principles for every organization leader.
Summary.
over a long career. He headed a small book publishing company
that grew large. He has led three start-ups. He became chairman
of a large multi-divisional corporation.
Follett has also been leader of a number of smaller not-for-profit
organizations. These include a land conservancy, a civic action group,
and an arts-focused organization. He has served on the boards of
many not-for-profits.
Follett has had long and varied leadership experience. He has observed
many leaders in action, those who have been successful as well as\those
that have not succeeded.
Out of these experiences have come the practical advice, the tools,
the helps, and the ideas that form the basis for this book.
The author believes that good leadership is the essential element
of the success of every organization, large or small. Good leadership
is especially critical to smaller organizations.
He wrote this book to help you become an even more effective\
leader of a successful smaller organization.
This is Follett’s ninth published book. He teaches about business at a nearby university and has often led seminars and workshops. When not writing or teaching, he is an avid skier and mountain hiker.
(An
excerpt from LEADERSHIP: Growing and
Sustaining A Smaller Organization)
So What?
I need to ask “So what?” You have the definitions but where will they take your organization? Any organization can only be successful if customers or clients actually purchase products or services. It is the money flowing from the purchases that makes it possible to sustain and grow the organization.
There are three key factors: customer or client awareness, customer or client ability to pay, customer or client access.
How do the customers or clients know about your product or service? If you haven’t informed them about what you offer how can you expect them to make a purchase? Knowledge of your product or service must be conveyed to potential customers. Sometimes, this is difficult or impossible. If they don’t know about your product or service, nothing will happen. Are there affordable and effective ways of creating awareness?
Can the customers or clients you have identified afford to purchase what your organization offers? Even if they know about your product or service, even if they want it, if they cannot afford to purchase it, nothing will happen. Do your customers or clients have the ability to pay?
Do your potential customers or clients have a convenient way to obtain your products or services? They may want it. They may be able to afford it. But if they have no reasonable way to obtain the product or service, nothing can happen.
Sometimes, potential customers or clients are too far away. Sometimes getting to where you provide the product or service is too difficult or too time-consuming. Sellers who use the Internet must have customers who have devices and access to the Internet.
If your product must be physically delivered, can this be done conveniently and economically for your customers? If clients must come to your site for service, can they do so conveniently and economically?
Do your customers or clients have access?
If you are uncertain about any of these items, you have work to do.
Informing customers or clients about your product or service is a major aspect of marketing. There are a great many books, articles, courses, and other ways to learn more about marketing. This book is not a marketing text.
But figuring out the most effective and economically feasible ways of informing customers or clients about your product or service is a critical task for any organization.
As a book publisher, bookstores were a primary channel for distributing my product. But if a book is placed on a back shelf of a large store, spine out, among thousands of other titles − with the hope that a customer will wander in, find that shelf, pull the book out, peruse it, and then be energized to take out the wallet and buy the book, that is a very unsatisfactory way to sell a book.
So just getting a book on the shelves of a bookstore was not likely to be very productive. We had to find a way to inform potential customers that the book existed and give them reasons to want to go to their local bookstore and ask for the title by name.
The same situation exists when a book is one among the millions listed by Amazon or Barnes & Noble on their web sites. A way must be found to get potential customers to search for the specific book in order for there to be a reasonable chance of a sale.
Of course, it would be nice to have commercials on the hot TV shows to promote the book. But TV commercials (like much other mass market advertising) are not affordable for most books. Other means had to be found to inform potential customers. That is likely to be the case with the product or service you offer.
Most marketing experts agree that word-of-mouth is the most powerful sales tool. “I just read this great book, you ought to read it…”
“We just had a great meal at the new restaurant downtown. You ought to try it…”
“The counselor at the center on First Street has really helped me. You ought to think about making a visit…”
And so on. Such recommendations from friends are the most powerful sales motivators. The task for an organization is to find ways to get favorable word-of-mouth recommendations going.
Almost all of the pre-publication promotion work that book publishers do is aimed at getting those first movers to buy the book. If those first customers like the book, then the word-of-mouth will get started.
When the first edition of the first Harry Potter book came out, the publisher only printed 10,000 copies. No one could predict what the word-of-mouth would be. No one could predict how large the potential audience might be. So the publisher was very cautious.
For the last Harry Potter book, the first printing was 8,500,000 copies. Word-of-mouth was already very active as readers breathlessly awaited the last book. The audience had been identified. The publisher could print a huge number of copies with confidence.
Every organization needs to find ways to create a buzz among potential customers or clients that will lead to success. Perhaps one of Apple’s greatest assets is the core of fans who eagerly await the company’s new products and then are very active in spreading their enthusiasm to their friends, face-to-face or over various social media.
How can your organization build that kind of unpaid but vital support for your product or service?
Do you have the kind of product or service that can generate vocal “fans”?
Have you clearly identified your potential customers or clients so that you can find and use the most effective and economical means of informing them and then getting them to be your enthusiastic and unpaid “sales force”?
Does your product or service effectively target the actual wants of the customers or clients? Do you provide them with real value, value that will turn them into effective supporters?
Keep in mind the three factors: awareness, ability to pay, and access. For potential customers or clients to become actual customers or clients, they must be aware of what you offer. They must be able to pay for it. And they must have access.
So when I asked “So what?” I hope you answered with a clear picture in your mind of how your organization turns the definitions you have outlined into sales that will make your organization financially successful.
LEADERSHIP:
Growing and Sustaining A Smaller Organization
Order this valuable book today
and quickly get new tools and new ideas that will help you make your
organization more successful.
Paperback Edition 156
pages, 6x9 - List Price $14.95
or Kindle e-book edition $9.95
Order either edition
now from Amazon.com
Click on this link to
go directly to www.amazon.com
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