 November 2007 Successful Business StoriesWelcome to the November edition of our newsletter. We at HPS Behaviour Change want to provide you with a light read, on easy to use initiatives to immediately increase your teams' performance and profit. This Edition: An inspirational story from Hunter Dean, the founder and Director of HPS Behaviour Change
HPS Behaviour Change attended a couple of great functions in the past few months where we gained some valuable learnings we wanted to share with our clients. The stories we heard often mirrored the HPS journey and the learnings were close to the heart of the HPS team. The stories we heard often mirrored the HPS journey and the learnings were close to the heart of the HPS team. Book of the Month This month's book is Human Sigma Managing the Employee-Customer Encounter by John H. Fleming and Jim Asplund  Telstra Business Awards One of the interesting events one of the HPS directors attended was with Phil Burgess at Telstra and the Telstra Business Awards in Sydney. The great thing about many of the successful businesses that were represented that night were the numerous common themes that came out in their speeches about the journey they had made in order to get there. Have Respect Every person who stood on that stage now has many people that work for them in their businesses and almost everyone had gone through times that were extraordinarily tough. One of the things you noticed about these people is that no matter how tough it got, they placed a large emphasis on treating their people with the utmost respect. At times tough decisions would need to be made about whether people stayed or left and what was noticed was that in these companies, no matter what the decision, respect was always high for the team. This is something we notice also with many of our best clients. They treat everyone with respect, even when they have to have the tough conversations with their people, they spend time interviewing their people to find out about what they are thinking. Have the Courage to Share What we noticed with these business leaders is at times when things were going in the wrong direction, they tended to think things through, then put it out to their team and seek the guidance from the people and mentors who were experienced in the areas they were dealing with. Many of the clients that struggle take the issues on their own shoulders or hold on to information and decide on the best way to make the decisions themselves. Spend time getting to know your team and share company and department information with them. Be Flexible The stories told at the business awards were very clear with regards to flexibility. Often an organisation will need to change and change quickly in order to keep pace with industry, projects or technology and if they are not nimble enough then the result may be that their performance is decreased significantly. We see this with the way our successful clients manage their people. Those who are always improving are flexible not only with their product offer but also with regards to their people. When leaders take responsibility and change their own approach to managing people, results change and fast. Get the Timing Right! Another area that comes up for these businesses is that when something needs to happen it generally needs to happen now not in 3 months. There is a sense of urgency unparalleled in companies that are successful which is not often found in others. Listening to several of the presenters at the awards had me think back to a quote from Bill Gates at Microsoft "Unless you're running scared all the time, you're gone." The above example may seem a little intense but the fact is if you don't have a handle on time and its effect you are not going to be around for long. Ten years ago in telecommunications we spoke through copper wires and if we were lucky we may have had a dial up connection to the internet. Today we can pretty much run our whole life from a laptop with no wires and speak to friends on the other side of the world for free. Times change and fast. Communicating and using every minute you have in the most effective manner ensures you stay in the game and become a lasting player. Telstra are one of the true leaders in this chase to keep up with the technology required. Our best clients have an aligned team attitude, an urgency about them and operate with an intensity unparalleled by others. Behaviour Change our Own and Others Another key for many of these successful people is that they had to change themselves and much of what they did in order to get to where they wanted to be. They acknowledged that this process was not always the easiest but that the rewards once the changes were made were more than they could ever have dreamed of. Our successful clients also realise that changing themselves for the better is a path they quickly move on to. Know What is Driving Your Own People Lunch With Ralph Norris  These things really matched another lunch we were at where one of our business partners had arranged a luncheon with Ralph Norris as the key speaker. We had the luxury of catching up with him and sat at his table to find out some more about his background and the lessons he learnt along the way. Lead from the front Have a vision of where you want to take the organisation High values of time and performance and you deliver what you say you are going to deliver then you can create fast change Change is a journey Ralph explained and getting the journey right every time may not be easy Interestingly without exception our best clients do this and they have found that it becomes quite simple to look at what their best people do in detail to enable their other team members to shine. You at times find there is more competition for recognition, resources and rivalry between a team, than a focus on business outcomes and this needs to be changed Ralph Explained :
With many of our clients there is a focus on getting people working together toward the same outcome. The way they tend to do this is by understanding their team's greatest strengths and being able to understand if and where they fall down on a continuous basis. If you don't do this its tough to even understand where the change is required and therefore it never occurs in the timeframe required.
Another interesting premise is that the right people will always focus on the right things if they are given the right strategies and tools. We trust you've gained valuably from this newsletter and have shared in the courage and inspiration required to build your successful business in today's market. We continue to encourage our clients to learn, share, change, succeed, profit and win in your market. HPS Behaviour Change thanks you for the opportunity to share this information with you, our clients, and we look forward to when we next speak. If you would like to learn some more about our unique modelling tools or understand iWAM in more depth give us a call to discuss. It's a pleasure as we continue to work with more and more leading organisations such as Shell Oil see the results being achieved. Some of these case studies have now been published on the web access via http://www.behaviourchange.com.au/articles/ Home | Business Performance Team Business Performance Partners | Business Performance Clients Contact a HPS Business Performance Consultant |  |
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