Business acumen is such an important part of business and our everyday lives. I believe that many of us do not fully appreciate how much financial literacy impacts our daily business activities, as well as the activities in our personal lives. However, those who are fluent in the language of finance, accounting, economics, and strategy, regardless of whether or not these subject were part of their formal education, find themselves with an open seat at the decision making table in their organizations and are able to make smart financial decisions for themselves and their families.
Thomas Cooley, professor of economics and former dean of the NYU Stern School of Business, articulates the importance of having strong financial knowledge:
Many of the most important decisions consumers make in their lifetimes involve financial products: a mortgage to purchase a home, a loan to purchase an automobile, credit to make a large durable purchase, investments for retirement and insurance to keep one’s family secure. All of these financial products have become increasingly complex over time and there is a much wider range of product options offered by different providers, making decision-making more complicated. Consumers need to be financially literate in order to make well-informed choices about such complex products. A growing body of evidence suggests that many consumers lack the knowledge they need to evaluate and make decisions about financial instruments.
Fixing our financial illiteracy and understanding the fundamentals of business acumen (finance, economics, accounting, and strategy) will not only aid you in your personal, consumer-based life, as Professor Cooley mentioned above, but will open doors for you at work, allowing you to sit at the conference table and make decisions that ensure viability – the life blood of organizations, the ability to stay competitive, profitable, and relevant.
Playing the piano is generally done on an individual basis with the occasional duet. When I was 14 years old, I had the opportunity to learn a lot about teamwork from a piano playing experience. I was invited to play in Pianorama, a concert put on in Nashville where piano players are invited and to perform and divided into groups based on their level of skill. I happened to be put in the advanced group with 23 other participants. We were then paired with another individual who we would play a duet with while sitting at the same piano. In my group, there were twelve pairs playing the duet on twelve pianos simultaneously. At one point, the duet splits into two parts, becoming a duet with six pianos (twelve participants) playing one part and six pianos (twelve participants) playing the other part.
When I look back at everything that had to come together for that concert to be a success, there is a lot that can be learned about teamwork. We all came from different parts of the state and had different piano playing styles. Because we came from all over the state, we could only practice together once a week for six weeks. We did a lot of work as individuals to learn our parts and then as we met as a group put it all together. We had to rely on and trust not only our partners to learn their parts, but everyone in the group. In the end, we had the chance to play in front of 5,000 people and our performance was a huge success.
Here at CMOE we define teamwork as a group of people who:
• Combine their energy and efforts to achieve common goals.
• Are committed to achieving the team’s goals.
• Fulfill their roles and responsibilities.
• Have defined processes, procedures, and mechanisms that enable them to function at peak performance.
With Pianorama, our goal was defined and each of us knew exactly what we individually needed to do in order to accomplish the goal. The more specific the goal and the assignments at the individual level are, the better the chance that everything will come together in the end. As we become members of different teams, we need to understand that everyone will have different skills and personalities and that in order to work together as a team, we must learn how to capitalize on those differences.
After all the individual preparation was one and we put all the pieces together, the end result was a beautiful, harmonious song. No one stood out any more than anyone else. Cohesive teamwork occurs when each person recognizes that individual recognition and achievement is less rewarding than achieving the team’s overall goal.
The bottom line is, good teamwork makes beautiful music.
With the first half of the New Year comes the opportunity to set New Year’s resolutions, new goals for self-improvement. As a leader within your organization (current or future), you can improve your leadership skills and make an even greater impact on the organization’s bottom line as we move forward into the year by taking note of some of the elements discussed below:
Within most organizations there is a management / leadership track – take advantage of this track by further refining and developing the leadership and management skills you already possess.
1. Improve your Peer-Leadership Skills Build a reputation as a leader among your peers. Actions speak louder than words. At various meetings, listen and speak only when you have something important to say that will help the group to move forward. Do not focus on negative issues. Identifying problems is one of the easiest things to do; there is no great demand for problem identifiers, but there is a great demand for problem solvers. Be Solution Oriented: if you address a problem, be sure that you have a potential solution to discuss as well. Share information and communicate often with your peers. This helps you and others to grow and develop.
2. Improve your Administrative Skills
Develop an administrative competence in every form of communication and logistical follow up you perform in your job. Cultivate a reputation as someone who produces high-quality work no matter what your endeavor, no matter who your audience.
3. Develop your General Leadership Skills
Leadership is a learned skill. Constantly seek to learn from those successful leaders within and outside your organization. What pearl or pearls of wisdom can you pick up and use to help you become a leader? Pick and choose from their leadership styles, yet make it your own as you continue to develop your personal style. Whatever style you choose, keep these “pearls of wisdom” in the forefront of your mind and think about how to apply them as you move forward in two key areas – achieving bottom line results for your organization and developing your people.
Here are some key ideas to consider as you move along this path of continuous leadership improvement during the first half of the New Year:
• Know yourself and seek self-improvement opportunities
• Be technically proficient and know how to apply your knowledge
• Seek out responsibility and take responsibility for your actions
• Make sound and timely decisions
• Set a good example for others
• Know your people and look out for their wellbeing
• Keep your people well informed
• Help your people develop a sense of responsibility
• Ensure that task job tasks you delegate are understood, supervised, and accomplished
• Train your people as a team
• Develop plans of action that are in accordance with your team’s capabilities
Welcome to the March 31, 2010 edition of Business Lessons. In this edition of Business Lessons the topics that will be covered are: Leadership, Strategic Thinking, and Teamwork.
That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of business lessons using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.
While conducting a workshop on driving bottom line performance a few years ago for department managers in a chain of supermarkets, I had an interesting experience. One of the participants was a rather elderly and somewhat crusty Bakery Manager. His name was Lynn and at the first session he introduced himself as having been a bakery manager for longer than most of the other attendees had been alive. I took his unusual statement to mean that because of his experience he was unlikely to learn any new tricks or techniques about performance at any workshop, especially one facilitated by me.
You Can’t Teach A Old Dog New Tricks
Over the course of a couple of sessions, Lynn participated just enough to stay out of trouble with his boss, but not enough to gain much advantage as a manager. After the second session he told me privately that with his considerable experience as a manager he didn’t need to attend the sessions, but that he was being forced to attend. He told me, “You know old dogs can’t be taught new tricks. Well, I’m that old dog.” I thought at the time that he was trying to put me on notice that I should back off in trying to change his managerial style.
Lynn’s statement motivated me to look for a way to get his attention so he could benefit from the workshop experience. That’s when I concocted an experiment that not only taught him and his fellow managers a valuable lesson, but also me as well.
In the workshop I asked Lynn if he would help me conduct a “psychological experiment.” Before he could say no, two of his bosses were nodding affirmatively. Truthfully, I had set that reaction up in advance. Shame on me!
With Lynn obviously very reluctant to hear my proposal, I nonetheless pushed on. I told him that the experiment was to test the power of a graph, or scorecard, to motivate hourly employees to change their behavior. I explained that I would help him create a separate scorecard for each of his employees who worked the bakery counter on Saturdays. The scorecards would have the person’s name at the top, and across the bottom x-axis of the graph would be the dates of the next six Saturdays. Up the vertical y-axis would be numbers from 1 to 20.
Driving Results To Increase Profits
His employees would be instructed that each time they mentioned the words “chocolate chip cookie” to any customer in any way on Saturday they could put a mark or dot for that date progressing up from 1 mention of chocolate chip cookie to as many as 20 mentions. The measurement would be voluntary, because about one person in five typically doesn’t like to participate in such exercises that require competition. We would be happy to deal with the four out of five employees who find such exercises fun and exciting. The scorecards would be posted in the bakery back room and employees would be encouraged to keep their scorecard up to date as often as they could during the day. The experiment would use an honor system, where marking scorecards accurately would be up to the employees. Lynn’s responsibility would be to explain the exercise to the employees, have a positive attitude toward the exercise, and, of course, lead by example, because he needed a scorecard too.
At the next two workshop sessions Lynn gave brief progress reports on the project, but didn’t elaborate very much. I became worried that the experiment wouldn’t work and that Lynn might miss the point of it. But those fears were forgotten when Lynn returned to the last session and exclaimed, “Did you know that it’s possible to sell too many chocolate chip cookies?”
Lynn explained that by the second Saturday most of his employees really got into the exercise. It became a Badge of Honor to be recognized as the employee with the highest number of chocolate chip cookie mentions each week. Lynn’s assistant manager had a badge made at a local mall that said, “Chocolate Chip Cookie Champion.” The person with the highest mentions each Saturday got to wear the Champion badge during the following week, which further intensified the competition. Isn’t it interesting how a simple badge can create so much excitement? During the week his employees plotted what they were going to do and how they were going to get the most mentions. Lynn said that he had to adjust the rules because people “were taking unfair advantage.” One employee got on the store PA and mentioned chocolate chip cookies, then walked around the store counting how many customers must have heard her announcement, trying to claim those mentions. Another employee stopped in the middle of taking a cake decorating order and said, “Oh, by the way we sell chocolate chip cookies. Now how do you spell your son’s name?”
Apparently the competition got so intense and the bakery was selling so many cookies that the ovens were consumed with baking cookies, at the expense of the other products that needed oven time. That’s why Lynn exclaimed, “It’s possible to sell too many chocolate chip cookies.”
As a facilitator it was fascinating to see the change in Lynn’s attitude over the six session series of workshops. The crusty Bakery Manager became a champion of measuring, providing instant feedback, and healthy competition. He even told me in the last session that he had “learned a ton of new stuff.”
So how did Lynn’s cookie sales go? In his final report he explained that for as long as he could remember his bakery had sold about 15 dozen chocolate chip cookies on an average Saturday. (Actually, for a bakery the size he managed, 15 dozen is at best only a fair result, so I’m told.) The first Saturday of the project the bakery sold 27 dozen. The second Saturday they sold 36 dozen. The third Saturday they sold 67 dozen. The fourth Saturday they sold 117 dozen. And on the fifth Saturday they broke the bank, or perhaps the ovens, with 157 dozen chocolate chip cookies!
Increasing Profits 10X
The improvement over a month was a ten times increase. How did this happen? Providing frequent feedback to people who otherwise had not much incentive to suggestive sell cookies caused the incredible results. The personalized scorecards each employee had in the back room provided a method to measure performance. Thomas S. Monson once said, “When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported back, the rate of improvement accelerates.”
As Lynn was leaving the last workshop session I asked him, “Well, was this experience worth it?”
With a slight smile on his face Lynn replied, “Maybe it’s possible to teach an old dog a thing or two. Thanks for a great class.”
We have just been though one of the greatest financial crisis in the history of the world. The world goes further into debt. Companies struggle to be profitable. We continue to see the bickering of politicians and watch the business-as-usual with our governments. The wars in foreign countries continue. We continue to watch the further disintegration of the family system and family values. And through all of this, one asks “Where are the leaders?” What is leadership? Who is a leader?
Regardless of our position in life, all of us can and should be leaders. So what is leadership? “Leadership is the ability to decide what is to be done, and then get others to want to do it.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower
Leaders accomplish things by leading. That is, by guiding and helping other people. Dictators issue orders, using fear and punishment to command compliance. Leaders shape people’s opinions and win their enthusiasm, using every available opportunity to send out their message (VISION) and win supporters (Noel Tichy, The Leadership Engine). Dictators break people down to feel inadequate, incapable, and don’t know much about the value people and their power.
What makes a leader? A leader has VISION about what needs to be done. He/she makes changes and helps others to make changes in order to see the VISION through completion.
What is your VISION about leadership? What is the vision that you have about leading your family, in your community, in your employment, in your religious organization, or in your own personal development? As we talk about vision and change, there are a number of tools that can be used to help lead others towards change:
·Situational Leadership by Paul Hersey & Ken Blanchard(1984)
oDirecting
oCoaching
oSupporting
oDelegating
·The Coach by Steven Stowell & Matt Starcevich(1987)
oBe Supportive
oDefine the Topic and Needs
oEstablish Impact
oInitiate a Plan
oGet a Commitment
oConfront Excuses / Resistance
oClarify Consequences
oDon’t Give Up
·The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey(1989)
oBe Proactive
oBegin with the End in Mind
oPut First Things First
oThink Win/Win
oSeek First to Understand, then to be Understood
oSynergize
oSharpen the Saw
·Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman(1995)
oSelf-awareness
oSelf-regulation
oMotivation
oEmpathy
oSocial Skill/Team Builders
·E’s of Excellence by Curtis Reese (2000)
oEthic (Work hard and Smart)
oEgo (Strong Ambition to Win)
oEmpathy (Meet their needs)
oEmpower (Help them to Help Themselves)
oEnthusiasm (Full of Energy)
oEducation (Continue to Learn)
oExercise (Stay Healthy)
oExecute (Put your Plan into Action)
Let’s take a closer look at Curtis Reese’s E’s of Excellence and what theymeans. What can you take away from one or more of these areas so that you can be a better leader as you travel down the path of continuous improvement.
·ETHIC
oHow committed are we to the task or job at hand when we are at work?
oDo we go beyond company demands?
oWhy doour services provide value to our customers?
oDo we work beyond the mark, within the norm or outside the box?
·EGO / AMBITION
oI want to provide the very best service because I want to drive results.
oI want to be a top performer because it is who I am.
oOur services are better because we value our cusomter
oI have quiet confidencebecause I believe that success is a journey, not a destination.
·EMPATHY
oWhat are my customers’ needs and how can I help them fulfill those needs?
oHow does my customer, family member, religious leader, community leader, view the situation.
oHow and in what way do our products/services satisfy our customers’ needs.
oI am aware that a statue has never been set-up to honor a critic and understand the metaphor.
·EMPOWER
oAllow others to help you accomplish your goals
oCompliment everyone around you; make them feel good about their contribution.
oRealize that the sole advantage of power is the ability to do more good.
oEmpower your people to make your organization’s services even better by sharing ideas.
·EDUCATION
oBe a general student and always learn.
oKnowledge is POWER!
oThe glory of God is intelligence.
oWhen you stop learning, you stop life itself.
oDon’t learn for the sake of learning, let your knowledge lead to action
oTeach and share your skills with someone else.
·ENTHUSIASM
oEnthusiasm, Energy, and Emotion can all have positive effects on what you do and on the people you come in contact with.
oEven your dog can feel your energy level; be aware of the effect you have on others.
oNo one wants to get a “Kick In The Pants,” but it will raise their level of focus and attention.
oClear your mind of the word “CAN’T.”
·EXERCISE
oYour most important asset is your health. What do you do to protect your health?
oYou buy insurance to cover all your material possessions
oYou need a healthy diet and exercise for both the body and the soul.
·EXECUTE
oLive your goals and make your dreams become reality.
oThere are three kinds of people: those who wonder what happened, those who watch what happens, and those who make things happen. What kind of person are you? What about the people you lead?
Each one of us has the ability to look like a leader and act like a leader just by making minor improvements in our leadership skills each day. James Michener, author of “The Tales of the South Pacific,” wrote; “The master of the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leading others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he’s always doing both.”
Many people associate conflict with negativity, but conflict doesn’t have to be unpleasant; it can even be enjoyable. Conflict when used in a constructive way, can bring forth great outcomes and ideas, often benefiting those who are involved by exposing them to alternative perspectives.
Yesterday, while watching the daily news, I saw a commercial that caught my attention. In order to win over new customers, this organization is using a strategy that I like very much. Their approach is creative, it’s innovative, and was sure their competitors would need to respond to this advertising campaign in some form or fashion to maintain market share.
However, after seeing this advertisement a second time, I came to the realization that this “new” approach is classic conflict avoidance. Take a look at this video clip. Can you see where I’m coming from?
Now, please correct me if I’m totally off base, (I’ll be confident and say I’m not), but don’t the fundamentals of business acumen tell us that competition is good? In a situation like this we should want to create a little constructive conflict, forcing these two companies to battle over our business. If we ask Allstate to “break up” with our existing insurance provider for us because we’re too uncomfortable to handle the situation ourselves, we’ll never know whether the current insurance provider would be able to match the offer, or offer a better deal, ultimately saving use the hassle of switching insurance providers. Come on people. Buck up! Step out of your comfort zone and grow a little! Given this type of situation, the customer has all the power. If you add a little conflict to the mix, these two companies will need to compete for your business, “sweetening the deal,” and offering you greater gains. One company claims that it can “save you serious cash,” but the other company wants to retain business and compete for your business. Keeping a customer is much easier than winning a new one. Two companies knowingly vying for our business puts us in a great position, but if your existing insurance company gets a call from Allstate, “saving you that uncomfortable break-up moment,” your opportunity for beneficial conflict has been lost, and so has your power as a consumer.
Confront conflict head on; avoidance never hurt anybody but you.
Sorry, there are no polls available at the moment.
What does trick-or-treating and a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) have in common? Think about it for a moment – maximizing your gains, equations for efficiency, and opportunity costs. Are you seeing the connection yet?
Maximizing Your Profitability
I was watching a report on CNN last week about the strategies of maximizing their acquisition of treats on Halloween. Instead of just taking a “dash and grab” approach, some people take a more economic approach to their quest for sweets. The people at Zillow.com have done some research on five major cities to identify the “best” neighborhoods for trick-or-treating. While there is a common belief that wealthy neighborhoods are the prime place for harvesting the most Halloween treats, it is only a part of the equation for efficiency. To provide a more holistic approach to Halloween trick-or-treating, the Zillow Trick-or-Treat Housing Index was calculated using four equally weighted data variables: Zillow Home Value Index, population density, WalkScore (point to point distances), and local crime data. Based on those variables, this Index represents neighborhoods that will provide the most candy, with the least amount of walking and safety risks.
Jackpot
Some may find Zillow’s index to be an unnecessary approach to the trick-or-treating adventure, but for others it is just the kind of thing that makes the holiday even more enjoyable. After seeing the report on CNN, I saw this holiday as a great time to teach my kids about economics, finance, and getting the highest revenue with the least amount of input (revenue = candy). What makes this even more of an economical and financial teaching opportunity is that a local dentist is offering $1.00 for every pound of candy brought to their office during the week after Halloween. What made this offer even more interesting was that CNN also reported a statistic that the average child gathers 17.1 pounds of candy on Halloween. So, if my kids want to use Halloween as a chance to have fun and make money, there are strategies to do so.
If you ask parents today if they want their children to go through the higher education system, the answer is predominantly, “yes.” I believe preparing young people to be ready to receive a college education is as important as actually obtaining one. The same is true for anyone. There are opportunities for education and skill development all around us, just like this “trick-or-treating” example.
Education To Make A Difference
For those of us who are college age or older, but still have a desire for gaining more education, there are diverse opportunities available. There are accelerated masters programs, online degrees, and Mini-MBA Workshop. The Mini-MBA Workshop is a great way to learn the fundamental concepts taught in a traditional MBA program, but at much less costs and in a much shorter time frame. I attended this fantastic course offered by CMOE, developed and Columbia University, and taught by David L. Buckner. It helped me to understand the key concepts of economics, finance, and accounting, helping me to be more affluent in the language of business. Knowing more business acumen key terms and concepts has had a great impact on my contribution to our organization. While I didn’t earn a Masters degree, I have the ability to apply valuable concepts to my everyday efforts and decisions. As the writer and scientist, Carl Sagan wrote, “Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgment, the manner in which information is collected and used.”
Over the past few months, I have been serving as an assistant coach for my son’s Little League Football team. It has been a lot of work to teach the boys the techniques of the sport; blocking, tackling, and running. I have found that the best way to teach children is to have fun while learning. The other coaches and I use many different games and exercises that force the boys on the team to use their new found skills and the techniques. Aside from just skill practice, these games and exercises allow us, the coaching staff, to measure their progress.
Many people struggle in the work environment because what they do no longer seems enjoyable, and learning or development just means more work. When this happens, we become stagnant. Our personal satisfaction and happiness decreases and, in turn, our success and quality of work falters. From my perspective, not enough people are making a game out of work. Consider this quote from the world renowned physicist, Albert Einstein.
“How many people are trapped in their everyday habits, part numb, part frightened, part indifferent? To have a better life we must keep choosing how we are living.”
While this quote could have many applications, I would like to discuss how it applies to our daily work. If someone is feeling numb, frightened, or indifferent toward their everyday work activity, leaders or coaches can expect this person to also feel unaccountable to results and lacking desire to achieve greater levels of success.
Since it appears that many people in the working world are feeling numb, frightened, or indifferent toward their daily work, I propose that organizations strive harder to make a game out of work by challenging their employees to compete to win. Like the way I coach the football team, leaders can make work more fun and find ways to use metrics and scorecards to measure progress. With a little fun, leaders can create a winning team that really adds to bottom line results. Leaders themselves must also have a bottom line mentality as they go about setting exciting and stretch goals for themselves, their departments, and for their team members. This inner game of work can make a huge impact on what people accomplish.
So, whether you are coaching 20 eight and nine year old boys on a Little League Football team or leading a tenured staff of employees, the concept I’m suggesting is the same. Make a game out of work; make it fun, rewarding and competitive. I guarantee you will see improved results.
Interview with Ted Zimmerman on Bottom Line Leadership In 1981 I had the honor of interviewing Ted Zimmerman. You might have a similar reaction to hearing the name as I did when I first heard it, because I had never heard of Ted Zimmerman. As a teenager Ted had been a clerk in the first self-service grocery store in America. Although there has been an unresolved debate concerning when the first self-service store actually opened, and by whom, I will go with the Safeway claim of being first, with Ted Zimmerman working as a clerk in that store on grand opening day.
S.M. Skaggs opened the store in early June 1915 in American Falls, Idaho, and within months sold the store to M.B. Skaggs, one of his six sons. Neither Ted, nor any other witness can pinpoint the date any closer than, “early June.” Prior to the advent of self-service, clerks assembled product orders from a customer provided list. But everything changed on that grand opening day in June 1915 and I was given the privilege of interviewing an elderly gentleman who was a personal witness to that historical event.
The reason for the interview was that Ted Zimmerman was in declining health and it appeared that his story might go forgotten and untold if it wasn’t documented. On the day of the interview near Tacoma, Washington Ted was in good spirits and seemed eager to have his participation in history documented.
After a few cordial preliminaries, I asked, “Is it true that on the first day a cigar box was used as a cash register?” Smiling, Ted said, “Yes, we couldn’t afford a real register for some time. In those early days a cigar box was all we had and it worked just fine, even as we opened more stores.” So the rumor I had heard about a cigar box was true.
Measuring Success
Later in the interview I asked, “In the store’s early days how did the Skaggs brothers measure results or success?” Ted’s response was simple. He said, “At the end of each day we counted the cash in the cigar box and entered the total in a ledger we used to keep track of our sales. It was cash only in those days, because there were no checks or credit cards. That meant our sales for a day was the cash we had in the cigar box at closing time.”
Ted explained more about the ledger, “We kept track of daily sales in one column and added the days of the week into a weekly total in the next column. The weekly totals then added up to a monthly total, and so forth.”
I asked, “What other measurements were used in the early stores?” He said, “It didn’t take long to learn that when an owner isn’t managing the store that labor cost can get out of hand. So we divided the weekly labor cost in dollars, by the weekly sales dollars and called it Labor Percent. It was easy to know your labor dollars, because we paid the help in cash right out of the cigar box each Friday.”
I continued, “How was Labor Percent used to manage a store?”
He explained, “We figured out Labor Percent benchmarks so we could tell within a week or so if a manager was using too much labor. As you can suspect, there wasn’t much of a problem with a manager using too little labor. Figuring Labor Percent each week gave us an easy way to look at the biggest controllable expense we had.”
Overall Gross Margin Ted described another bottom line measurement used in those early stores. He continued, “At first we kind of stumbled onto things as we opened new stores. By knowing our sales for a period of time, what it cost to purchase the products we sold, and how much inventory we had on hand, we could figure out an overall gross margin percent for the store. That made it possible for us to help a manager whose gross might be lower than other stores. If a gross was low it meant that something was wrong. It gave us something to look at and work on.”
My next question was, “How long did it take for the company to develop a Profit and Loss Statement?”
Ted wasn’t sure about the answer, but clarified, “I know it wasn’t for a while, because none of us had much accounting background. But after a while I think it was a bookkeeper that started to make them. When we got used to them, they came out every few months. Then, when the company got bigger the P&Ls came out each month.”
Measurements for Success I summarized to Ted, “So what you are telling me is that the primary measurements for success in the early days of self-service grocery were:
1. Sales Per Week, 2. Labor Percent Per Week 3. Store Gross Profit Percent After An Inventory 4. A monthly Profit and Loss Statement.
Is that correct?” Thinking for a minute he said, “That’s about it and it worked pretty good for us in those days.”
Having heard this piece of history, consider this: “What has changed in measuring bottom line results or success in the grocery industry from 1915 until today?” The answer is: the cigar box, and not much else. That’s why, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” The sad truth is that almost all retail stores today function with the same four primary measurements that were used almost a century ago. With the unbelievably sophisticated POS systems, scanning, computers, and expensive software, can’t we do any better than what Ted and his colleagues did so long ago?
Consider the cost of an empty cigar box and ledger, compared to the cost of today’s highly computerized POS systems. If Ted and the Skaggs brothers could get four critical measurements out of a cigar box, how much valuable information should we get and use from a POS system that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars?
How well do you use the information supplied by your POS and accounting systems? Is your organization’s bottom line leadership and measurement strategies stuck in 1915, or have they progressed beyond the four standard measurements into more specific and motivational ways to measure results?
Pennies Lead To Profits, Dollars Lead To More Profits In an industry where dollars of sales only produce a few pennies of profit, do you honestly believe that measuring bottom line results on a weekly and monthly basis, and only in a manner that hasn’t been improved in almost a century, is adequate? I don’t think so! Give these ideas some thought and then consider how much information coming from your front-end and accounting systems are being used, and how much is going to waste. Remember, if we don’t actually use the information that comes out of the POS system, we might as well use a cigar box.
Since it appears that many people in the working world are feeling numb, frightened, or indifferent toward their daily work, I propose that organizations strive harder to make a game out of work by challenging their employees to compete to win. Like the way I coach the football team, leaders can make work more fun and find ways to use metrics and scorecards to measure progress. With a little fun, leaders can create a winning 
