{"public_access_rules":[],"public_access_rules_enabled":false,"html_title":"Business vision statement and mission statement: guide and examples","enable_google_amp_output_override":false,"generate_json_ld_enabled":true,"composition_id":0,"is_crawlable_by_bots":false,"use_featured_image":true,"post_summary":"

When you’re stuck in the trenches of urgent work, spending time to create a vision statement or mission statement could seem lofty and somewhat impractical, disconnected from your reality of endless tasks and projects. But if you don’t have a clear vision for your business, running after tasks and projects puts you on more of a treadmill than a true journey toward growth.

\n","post_body":"

When you’re stuck in the trenches of urgent work, spending time to create a vision statement or mission statement could seem lofty and somewhat impractical, disconnected from your reality of endless tasks and projects. But if you don’t have a clear vision for your business, running after tasks and projects puts you on more of a treadmill than a true journey toward growth.

\n

In most business operating systems, creating a vision and mission is a crucial component. If you want to get your team moving in the same direction, dive into how to create a mission statement and vision statement.

\n

Mission vs vision

\n

First, let’s clarify the differences between mission statement vs vision statement in business planning, as they often get muddied together in big-picture business thinking.

\n

Your mission is your why. This is the reason your company exists — what you make, who you serve, and why you’re uniquely suited to offer your product or services. Typically, your mission is shared both externally and internally.

\n

Your vision is what achieving your mission looks like. When your mission is achieved, how will your company be positioned in the minds of customers, peers, and the world? This is your vision statement, which is usually only shared internally to your team.

\n

Why create a vision and mission statement for your business

\n

Companies that are highly aligned under a common cause grow revenue 58% faster and are 72% more profitable.  Investing time in a vision statement and mission statement can help your company grow in the following ways:

\n

Rallying point for employees and customers

\n

In most businesses, you don’t just want employees and customers: you want evangelists. You want to overhear your employees bragging about how much they love their work, and your customers referring their friends and family to you. 

\n

A vision statement is the perfect internal rallying cry that gives your employees a sense of how their work contributes to something bigger than themselves. A well-crafted mission statement will help make your customers feel good about your business, and better about recommending it to others.

\n

Help you set better goals

\n

Your vision statement is your big, hairy, audacious goal — one that may not come to fruition for a decade. In the meantime, you can create company goals that naturally lead up to your vision becoming reality. 

\n

For example, if your vision is to be the dominant provider of IT services in the Minneapolis metro area, and right now you have 12% of the market share, a yearly goal could be to increase your market share to 16%. It’s a bold but specific achievable yearly goal that gets you closer to your vision, much better than the vague goal of “increase market share.”

\n

Guide decision-making

\n

When you have a good, clear mission statement and vision, you have a North star that helps make bigger decisions easier. Anytime a big decision comes up, you can use your vision and mission statement as a litmus test: how does this initiative support our vision and align with our mission? If the answer is unclear, get back to the drawing board until you’re sure your decision aligns with your larger cause and goals.

\n

How to write a mission statement

\n

Now that you have a handle on mission vs vision and why they’re both important, let’s dive into crafting your mission statement!

\n

Start with the following questions:

\n

Why do you exist? If you’re a saltwater taffy shop, your “why” is serving delicious saltwater taffy to people. We recommend staying grounded and specific here so your mission statement feels true to you — while the saltwater taffy shop could say that their “why” is “bringing joy to people’s lives,” that’s not specific or relevant enough to be memorable. 

\n

Who are your target customers? Again, this is a good place to be specific, unless you’re already a huge global brand. If you’re a recruiting agency, your target customers should be a specific niche. This way you have the depth of expertise needed to offer the most relevant candidates and roles.

\n

What makes us stand out? What’s your secret sauce? You could use a SWOT analysis to uncover your strengths, and decide which ones differentiate you in the marketplace. 

\n

Answering all three questions for our saltwater taffy shop could look like this:

\n

Why do you exist? To serve delicious saltwater taffy.

\n

Who are your target customers? People visiting San Diego’s bayfront.

\n

What makes us stand out? Our old-world customer service and charm.

\n

When writing your mission statement, you can mix and match the variables until you come up with a mission statement that feels good and memorable.

\n

Mission statement example

\n

We serve an exceptional and unforgettable old-world saltwater taffy experience to San Diego’s bayfront visitors.

\n

How to write a vision statement

\n

Now that you have a mission, it’s time to create a vision statement. Your vision should be what it looks like when your mission is accomplished. Some tips for when you’re crafting your business vision:

\n

Use your company’s core values and mission statement to guide your vision.

\n

Make sure your vision stays aligned with the other important guiding business documents you’ve generated. If you’re a CPG company and one of your core values is supporting organic farmers and heirloom agriculture, you’ll have to be realistic about the scale you’ll be able to achieve in your business; you won’t be able to become Nabisco unless you deviate from a core value. It’s better to stick to your core values to create your vision to stay aligned with what drew your customers and employees to you in the first place.

\n

Brainstorm on what your company vision coming true looks like.

\n

Don’t try to just nail your vision statement in one sentence. Brainstorm every aspect of what achieving your vision actually looks like, for you, your customers, and your employees. If you’re a software company and you want to build to go public, be specific about how many employees that would require, how much year over year growth you’d need, and how much of a market presence you’d need to have. 

\n

You should even brainstorm the finer details — are you and your cofounders retiring to live a billionaire’s life on a private island, bunker included? Or are you remaining with the company long-term and investing back into even further growth after your IPO? Every little detail might not make it into your vision statement, but it will help you develop a deeper connection to your vision.

\n

Err on the side of incaution.

\n

Your vision is not the place to hedge your bets— it’s where you can imagine your biggest, boldest goals. Maybe our bayfront saltwater taffy shop does so well in its mission that the owners are able to export their business model to other locations and grow a world-dominating franchise. If that’s what we want, we should include it in our company vision — “world domination through superior saltwater taffy” has a nice ring to it!

\n

Questions to guide vision statement creation

\n

Here are a few questions to ask to help you craft your vision statement:

\n

What is your business’ position in the marketplace, your customer’s minds, the world? 

\n

\n
• What impact will our company have on our industry, our customers, the world?
\n
• Are you the number one provider of your services? 
\n
• Do you have the highest customer retention? 
\n
• Are you known worldwide or esteemed within a specific community? 
\n

\n

Who works here and what kind of lifestyle do we have?

\n

\n
• Have we grown to a huge team, stayed small, or are we somewhere in between? 
\n
• Is everyone on the team working full throttle at all times or are we prioritizing work-life balance?
\n
• How does our team change and still align to our core values?
\n
• What does our employee retention look like?
\n
• What kinds of benefits do people love about working here? (E.g. awesome health insurance, stock, above-average pay, PTO, cool off-site trips, etc.)
\n

\n

Why are customers drawn to us over all their other options?

\n

\n
• What are we doing that makes us irresistible to customers?
\n
• What are the core values that we carry through to our biggest achievements?
\n
• What kinds of customers do we have? Are we still in a specific target market or are we going global?
\n
• What do our customers say about us? What does our customer retention look like?
\n

\n

What does success look like by the numbers?

\n

\n
• What’s your annual revenue and profit?
\n
• How many customers do you have?
\n
• What percentage of your total addressable market do you serve?
\n
• How many languages or countries is your offering in?
\n
• How much money are you taking home?
\n

\n

Clarify and summarize your vision statement

\n

After you answer the questions above and really dream big about how your company will look when you accomplish your mission (and beyond), it’s time to distill your loftiest dreams into an aspirational statement your internal stakeholders can rally behind.

\n

This is where you may choose to keep some parts of your vision private: if you plan on generating wild profits and a large take-home for yourself so you can create a billion-dollar Bond villain’s lair while minimizing pay and perks for your employees, you probably won’t want to include those aspects in your company vision. Choose instead the things that can inspire a wide variety of team members, like creating the best product or bringing a great service to people around the world.

\n

When creating your final vision statement, keep these tips in mind:

\n

\n
• Be aspirational: make your vision statement as inspiring and motivating as possible
\n
• Make it short and memorable: it should be easy enough for everyone in the company to know
\n
• Use present tense: communicate your vision into existence
\n

\n

Vision statement example:

\n

We’re a globally renowned saltwater taffy brand with brick and mortar locations from San Diego to Paris to Tokyo where our old-world charm and delicious taffy delights millions of people every year.

\n

Make your vision and mission a part of your strategy

\n

You’ve created a compelling, exciting mission statement and vision statement that your business can rally behind. Now what? Don’t let your mission and vision wither in the darkness — it’s time to make them both a part of your business strategy.

\n

In Strety, our business vision tool gives you a place for your mission, vision, and large goals, as well as your core values and go-to-market strategy. We recommend working on your vision and goals and revisiting them during annual planning meetings. Then, store them in Strety’s business vision tool so the rest of your business operating system is tied to your highest aspirations.

\n

Try Strety for free, or book a meeting with one of our product and business operating system experts for a tour.

","rss_summary":"

When you’re stuck in the trenches of urgent work, spending time to create a vision statement or mission statement could seem lofty and somewhat impractical, disconnected from your reality of endless tasks and projects. But if you don’t have a clear vision for your business, running after tasks and projects puts you on more of a treadmill than a true journey toward growth.

\n","rss_body":"

When you’re stuck in the trenches of urgent work, spending time to create a vision statement or mission statement could seem lofty and somewhat impractical, disconnected from your reality of endless tasks and projects. But if you don’t have a clear vision for your business, running after tasks and projects puts you on more of a treadmill than a true journey toward growth.

\n

In most business operating systems, creating a vision and mission is a crucial component. If you want to get your team moving in the same direction, dive into how to create a mission statement and vision statement.

\n

Mission vs vision

\n

First, let’s clarify the differences between mission statement vs vision statement in business planning, as they often get muddied together in big-picture business thinking.

\n

Your mission is your why. This is the reason your company exists — what you make, who you serve, and why you’re uniquely suited to offer your product or services. Typically, your mission is shared both externally and internally.

\n

Your vision is what achieving your mission looks like. When your mission is achieved, how will your company be positioned in the minds of customers, peers, and the world? This is your vision statement, which is usually only shared internally to your team.

\n

Why create a vision and mission statement for your business

\n

Companies that are highly aligned under a common cause grow revenue 58% faster and are 72% more profitable.  Investing time in a vision statement and mission statement can help your company grow in the following ways:

\n

Rallying point for employees and customers

\n

In most businesses, you don’t just want employees and customers: you want evangelists. You want to overhear your employees bragging about how much they love their work, and your customers referring their friends and family to you. 

\n

A vision statement is the perfect internal rallying cry that gives your employees a sense of how their work contributes to something bigger than themselves. A well-crafted mission statement will help make your customers feel good about your business, and better about recommending it to others.

\n

Help you set better goals

\n

Your vision statement is your big, hairy, audacious goal — one that may not come to fruition for a decade. In the meantime, you can create company goals that naturally lead up to your vision becoming reality. 

\n

For example, if your vision is to be the dominant provider of IT services in the Minneapolis metro area, and right now you have 12% of the market share, a yearly goal could be to increase your market share to 16%. It’s a bold but specific achievable yearly goal that gets you closer to your vision, much better than the vague goal of “increase market share.”

\n

Guide decision-making

\n

When you have a good, clear mission statement and vision, you have a North star that helps make bigger decisions easier. Anytime a big decision comes up, you can use your vision and mission statement as a litmus test: how does this initiative support our vision and align with our mission? If the answer is unclear, get back to the drawing board until you’re sure your decision aligns with your larger cause and goals.

\n

How to write a mission statement

\n

Now that you have a handle on mission vs vision and why they’re both important, let’s dive into crafting your mission statement!

\n

Start with the following questions:

\n

Why do you exist? If you’re a saltwater taffy shop, your “why” is serving delicious saltwater taffy to people. We recommend staying grounded and specific here so your mission statement feels true to you — while the saltwater taffy shop could say that their “why” is “bringing joy to people’s lives,” that’s not specific or relevant enough to be memorable. 

\n

Who are your target customers? Again, this is a good place to be specific, unless you’re already a huge global brand. If you’re a recruiting agency, your target customers should be a specific niche. This way you have the depth of expertise needed to offer the most relevant candidates and roles.

\n

What makes us stand out? What’s your secret sauce? You could use a SWOT analysis to uncover your strengths, and decide which ones differentiate you in the marketplace. 

\n

Answering all three questions for our saltwater taffy shop could look like this:

\n

Why do you exist? To serve delicious saltwater taffy.

\n

Who are your target customers? People visiting San Diego’s bayfront.

\n

What makes us stand out? Our old-world customer service and charm.

\n

When writing your mission statement, you can mix and match the variables until you come up with a mission statement that feels good and memorable.

\n

Mission statement example

\n

We serve an exceptional and unforgettable old-world saltwater taffy experience to San Diego’s bayfront visitors.

\n

How to write a vision statement

\n

Now that you have a mission, it’s time to create a vision statement. Your vision should be what it looks like when your mission is accomplished. Some tips for when you’re crafting your business vision:

\n

Use your company’s core values and mission statement to guide your vision.

\n

Make sure your vision stays aligned with the other important guiding business documents you’ve generated. If you’re a CPG company and one of your core values is supporting organic farmers and heirloom agriculture, you’ll have to be realistic about the scale you’ll be able to achieve in your business; you won’t be able to become Nabisco unless you deviate from a core value. It’s better to stick to your core values to create your vision to stay aligned with what drew your customers and employees to you in the first place.

\n

Brainstorm on what your company vision coming true looks like.

\n

Don’t try to just nail your vision statement in one sentence. Brainstorm every aspect of what achieving your vision actually looks like, for you, your customers, and your employees. If you’re a software company and you want to build to go public, be specific about how many employees that would require, how much year over year growth you’d need, and how much of a market presence you’d need to have. 

\n

You should even brainstorm the finer details — are you and your cofounders retiring to live a billionaire’s life on a private island, bunker included? Or are you remaining with the company long-term and investing back into even further growth after your IPO? Every little detail might not make it into your vision statement, but it will help you develop a deeper connection to your vision.

\n

Err on the side of incaution.

\n

Your vision is not the place to hedge your bets— it’s where you can imagine your biggest, boldest goals. Maybe our bayfront saltwater taffy shop does so well in its mission that the owners are able to export their business model to other locations and grow a world-dominating franchise. If that’s what we want, we should include it in our company vision — “world domination through superior saltwater taffy” has a nice ring to it!

\n

Questions to guide vision statement creation

\n

Here are a few questions to ask to help you craft your vision statement:

\n

What is your business’ position in the marketplace, your customer’s minds, the world? 

\n

\n
• What impact will our company have on our industry, our customers, the world?
\n
• Are you the number one provider of your services? 
\n
• Do you have the highest customer retention? 
\n
• Are you known worldwide or esteemed within a specific community? 
\n

\n

Who works here and what kind of lifestyle do we have?

\n

\n
• Have we grown to a huge team, stayed small, or are we somewhere in between? 
\n
• Is everyone on the team working full throttle at all times or are we prioritizing work-life balance?
\n
• How does our team change and still align to our core values?
\n
• What does our employee retention look like?
\n
• What kinds of benefits do people love about working here? (E.g. awesome health insurance, stock, above-average pay, PTO, cool off-site trips, etc.)
\n

\n

Why are customers drawn to us over all their other options?

\n

\n
• What are we doing that makes us irresistible to customers?
\n
• What are the core values that we carry through to our biggest achievements?
\n
• What kinds of customers do we have? Are we still in a specific target market or are we going global?
\n
• What do our customers say about us? What does our customer retention look like?
\n

\n

What does success look like by the numbers?

\n

\n
• What’s your annual revenue and profit?
\n
• How many customers do you have?
\n
• What percentage of your total addressable market do you serve?
\n
• How many languages or countries is your offering in?
\n
• How much money are you taking home?
\n

\n

Clarify and summarize your vision statement

\n

After you answer the questions above and really dream big about how your company will look when you accomplish your mission (and beyond), it’s time to distill your loftiest dreams into an aspirational statement your internal stakeholders can rally behind.

\n

This is where you may choose to keep some parts of your vision private: if you plan on generating wild profits and a large take-home for yourself so you can create a billion-dollar Bond villain’s lair while minimizing pay and perks for your employees, you probably won’t want to include those aspects in your company vision. Choose instead the things that can inspire a wide variety of team members, like creating the best product or bringing a great service to people around the world.

\n

When creating your final vision statement, keep these tips in mind:

\n

\n
• Be aspirational: make your vision statement as inspiring and motivating as possible
\n
• Make it short and memorable: it should be easy enough for everyone in the company to know
\n
• Use present tense: communicate your vision into existence
\n

\n

Vision statement example:

\n

We’re a globally renowned saltwater taffy brand with brick and mortar locations from San Diego to Paris to Tokyo where our old-world charm and delicious taffy delights millions of people every year.

\n

Make your vision and mission a part of your strategy

\n

You’ve created a compelling, exciting mission statement and vision statement that your business can rally behind. Now what? Don’t let your mission and vision wither in the darkness — it’s time to make them both a part of your business strategy.

\n

In Strety, our business vision tool gives you a place for your mission, vision, and large goals, as well as your core values and go-to-market strategy. We recommend working on your vision and goals and revisiting them during annual planning meetings. Then, store them in Strety’s business vision tool so the rest of your business operating system is tied to your highest aspirations.

\n

Try Strety for free, or book a meeting with one of our product and business operating system experts for a tour.

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{"public_access_rules":[],"public_access_rules_enabled":false,"html_title":"How to Manage Client Relationships for Long-Term Mutual Success","enable_google_amp_output_override":false,"generate_json_ld_enabled":true,"composition_id":0,"is_crawlable_by_bots":false,"use_featured_image":true,"post_summary":"

This may sound obvious but not everyone really gets it…. 

\n","post_body":"

This may sound obvious but not everyone really gets it…. 

\n\n

Developing and maintaining client relationships is essential to growing and retaining your customer base.

\n

Yes, you’re in the Managed Services/IT business and keeping their technology humming is priority #1... but you’re also very much in the business of customer service, and the foundation of any successful customer service effort is an honest understanding and genuine interest in the customer’s business and their success.

\n

Are you genuinely interested in your customer’s success???

\n

When was the last time you talked to your customer about their business and not just their tech? Some MSPs rely on QBRs or renewals to prompt these conversations, but you need to establish a more continuous conversation around this topic. Leverage every interaction with your client as an opportunity to build and strengthen your relationship, from the first touch with sales, to their implementation, and at every onsite visit to ask a simple question: How’s business treating you?

\n

Priorities can change in an instant, and they’re often different from stakeholder to stakeholder, so unless you’re regularly asking what people are focused on, you’ll always be reacting to needs rather than getting out in front of them.

\n

A quick conversation onsite can uncover an upcoming project or a knot of new hires that could have been hurled into the service desk, unannounced, with high priority leaving your team in react/panic-mode.

\n

Once you’ve embraced the importance of the customer service mindset, it’ll set off a chain reaction of positive outcomes for your business. 

\n

A customer service mindset requires you to identify how you can add real value for the customer. Adding real value builds trust with the client. Once a degree of trust has been established, the client is more likely to see you as a strategic partner - not outsourced IT. At that point, clients become advocates, and in an industry where new business is still very much reliant on word-of-mouth, that trust you’ve built from operating with a customer service mindset will have a direct impact on your business’s growth.

\n

Relationship building is more of an art than a science, and it all starts with how you communicate and educate your clients on working with you. There’s no one way to turn clients into advocates, but there are some best practices you can follow to ensure your doing your part:

\n

 

\n

Develop Relationships Early

\n

Immerse yourself! Get to know the client inside and out. Dedicate time to know their culture and what they feel makes them unique. If you’re not sure how to bring the latter out, take time to share things about yourself and your team to open the communication beyond the confines of their tech and your offerings.

\n

You can also stay current by following them and their industry leaders on social media & subscribing to their blogs. Give yourself every opportunity to understand what internal and external forces are influencing their business. Not only will this show the client you care about their success, but it will help you to cater your offerings around their needs.

\n

 

\n

Nail the Sales/Implementation Handoff

\n

Client onboarding is the most critical phase of relationship building. To really nail onboarding, you must have an internal process in place that identifies the following:

\n

\n
• What does the client really want? What is their Job to be Done?
\n
• Who are the decision makers, implementers, and key stakeholders?
\n

\n

Your implementation team needs this information before they begin working with the client so make sure your sales team (over)shares this information with the onboarding specialists.

\n

And if you really want to execute, introduce the implementation team during the sales process. This will make for a smooth & effective transition for all parties. 

\n

 

\n

Set Clear Expectations

\n

Set clear expectations from the onset and not only will you be in a better position to serve your client, you'll also teach them how to work best with you. 

\n

Schedule out when and detail why you’ll be connecting with them during onboarding. Set timelines for how and when they’re going to get started with new products. Detail how to access and use company & product info. Be clear with how & who they should communicate with so when they need something, they’re not being passed around and feeling like your team is disorganized. 

\n

Establishing expectations early will go a long way in reducing any sort of miscommunication that could derail the relationship-building process during this critical period.

\n

 

\n

Establish Multiple Communication Channels

\n

It’s important to keep lines of communication open as well as providing multiple options for the client, as preferred methods of communication may differ from company to company and even person to person.

\n

Make sure your clients know all the ways they can reach you. Combine email, phone, communication software (MS Teams & Slack), support tickets, etc to make it as easy as possible for them while making it effective and efficient for you.

\n

 

\n

Be Proactive, Stay Proactive

\n

Inform clients of occurrences of tech problems. Get out in front, control the message, and assure them that you’re doing everything you can to resolve the issue in a timely manner. Customers will appreciate the transparency, and it will help continue building trust.

\n

Looking at the bigger picture, your customers decide to work with you because of your knowledge and expertise. This goes beyond providing IT/MS support. If there are emerging strategies, technologies, or tactics that would benefit your customers, it’s your responsibility to be aware of them and advise them on how they should be leveraged. If a client starts to bring these types of ideas to you, they will lose faith in your expertise and your relationship will take a hit.

\n

 

\n

Respond Promptly

\n

Replying quickly shows respect. If a client reaches out, acknowledge it as quickly as possible, even if you can’t yet resolve their issue. Let them you’re looking into their inquiry and, if possible, give a timeline. 

\n

 

\n

Use Every Interaction to Deliver Value

\n

It’s your job to help them achieve their desired outcomes with your offerings. Speak to and think of their needs, not yours with every interaction. You want your client to see you as an extension of their team, not a vendor.

\n

Use your tools to see where there’s room to expand then make a clear case why it will help their business. You can do this in lighter ways too, by sharing relevant resources such as blog posts or insights that could help them resolve problems and improve their processes.

\n

To summarize, manage your client relationships like you run your own teams. Have regular conversations through onsites, emails, phone calls, and QBRs. Help educate your clients on how you intend to work together. In return you’ll have clearer, more effective communication and, most importantly, the foundation for a mutually beneficial relationship that will serve you both for years to come.

\n

 

","rss_summary":"

This may sound obvious but not everyone really gets it…. 

\n","rss_body":"

This may sound obvious but not everyone really gets it…. 

\n\n

Developing and maintaining client relationships is essential to growing and retaining your customer base.

\n

Yes, you’re in the Managed Services/IT business and keeping their technology humming is priority #1... but you’re also very much in the business of customer service, and the foundation of any successful customer service effort is an honest understanding and genuine interest in the customer’s business and their success.

\n

Are you genuinely interested in your customer’s success???

\n

When was the last time you talked to your customer about their business and not just their tech? Some MSPs rely on QBRs or renewals to prompt these conversations, but you need to establish a more continuous conversation around this topic. Leverage every interaction with your client as an opportunity to build and strengthen your relationship, from the first touch with sales, to their implementation, and at every onsite visit to ask a simple question: How’s business treating you?

\n

Priorities can change in an instant, and they’re often different from stakeholder to stakeholder, so unless you’re regularly asking what people are focused on, you’ll always be reacting to needs rather than getting out in front of them.

\n

A quick conversation onsite can uncover an upcoming project or a knot of new hires that could have been hurled into the service desk, unannounced, with high priority leaving your team in react/panic-mode.

\n

Once you’ve embraced the importance of the customer service mindset, it’ll set off a chain reaction of positive outcomes for your business. 

\n

A customer service mindset requires you to identify how you can add real value for the customer. Adding real value builds trust with the client. Once a degree of trust has been established, the client is more likely to see you as a strategic partner - not outsourced IT. At that point, clients become advocates, and in an industry where new business is still very much reliant on word-of-mouth, that trust you’ve built from operating with a customer service mindset will have a direct impact on your business’s growth.

\n

Relationship building is more of an art than a science, and it all starts with how you communicate and educate your clients on working with you. There’s no one way to turn clients into advocates, but there are some best practices you can follow to ensure your doing your part:

\n

 

\n

Develop Relationships Early

\n

Immerse yourself! Get to know the client inside and out. Dedicate time to know their culture and what they feel makes them unique. If you’re not sure how to bring the latter out, take time to share things about yourself and your team to open the communication beyond the confines of their tech and your offerings.

\n

You can also stay current by following them and their industry leaders on social media & subscribing to their blogs. Give yourself every opportunity to understand what internal and external forces are influencing their business. Not only will this show the client you care about their success, but it will help you to cater your offerings around their needs.

\n

 

\n

Nail the Sales/Implementation Handoff

\n

Client onboarding is the most critical phase of relationship building. To really nail onboarding, you must have an internal process in place that identifies the following:

\n

\n
• What does the client really want? What is their Job to be Done?
\n
• Who are the decision makers, implementers, and key stakeholders?
\n

\n

Your implementation team needs this information before they begin working with the client so make sure your sales team (over)shares this information with the onboarding specialists.

\n

And if you really want to execute, introduce the implementation team during the sales process. This will make for a smooth & effective transition for all parties. 

\n

 

\n

Set Clear Expectations

\n

Set clear expectations from the onset and not only will you be in a better position to serve your client, you'll also teach them how to work best with you. 

\n

Schedule out when and detail why you’ll be connecting with them during onboarding. Set timelines for how and when they’re going to get started with new products. Detail how to access and use company & product info. Be clear with how & who they should communicate with so when they need something, they’re not being passed around and feeling like your team is disorganized. 

\n

Establishing expectations early will go a long way in reducing any sort of miscommunication that could derail the relationship-building process during this critical period.

\n

 

\n

Establish Multiple Communication Channels

\n

It’s important to keep lines of communication open as well as providing multiple options for the client, as preferred methods of communication may differ from company to company and even person to person.

\n

Make sure your clients know all the ways they can reach you. Combine email, phone, communication software (MS Teams & Slack), support tickets, etc to make it as easy as possible for them while making it effective and efficient for you.

\n

 

\n

Be Proactive, Stay Proactive

\n

Inform clients of occurrences of tech problems. Get out in front, control the message, and assure them that you’re doing everything you can to resolve the issue in a timely manner. Customers will appreciate the transparency, and it will help continue building trust.

\n

Looking at the bigger picture, your customers decide to work with you because of your knowledge and expertise. This goes beyond providing IT/MS support. If there are emerging strategies, technologies, or tactics that would benefit your customers, it’s your responsibility to be aware of them and advise them on how they should be leveraged. If a client starts to bring these types of ideas to you, they will lose faith in your expertise and your relationship will take a hit.

\n

 

\n

Respond Promptly

\n

Replying quickly shows respect. If a client reaches out, acknowledge it as quickly as possible, even if you can’t yet resolve their issue. Let them you’re looking into their inquiry and, if possible, give a timeline. 

\n

 

\n

Use Every Interaction to Deliver Value

\n

It’s your job to help them achieve their desired outcomes with your offerings. Speak to and think of their needs, not yours with every interaction. You want your client to see you as an extension of their team, not a vendor.

\n

Use your tools to see where there’s room to expand then make a clear case why it will help their business. You can do this in lighter ways too, by sharing relevant resources such as blog posts or insights that could help them resolve problems and improve their processes.

\n

To summarize, manage your client relationships like you run your own teams. Have regular conversations through onsites, emails, phone calls, and QBRs. Help educate your clients on how you intend to work together. In return you’ll have clearer, more effective communication and, most importantly, the foundation for a mutually beneficial relationship that will serve you both for years to come.

\n

 

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{"public_access_rules":[],"public_access_rules_enabled":false,"html_title":"Having goals that move the needle for your business","enable_google_amp_output_override":false,"generate_json_ld_enabled":true,"composition_id":0,"is_crawlable_by_bots":false,"use_featured_image":true,"post_summary":"

We’ve talked to a lot of business owners who feel like goal-setting is a daunting task. Can’t the goal just be… growth?

\n","post_body":"

We’ve talked to a lot of business owners who feel like goal-setting is a daunting task. Can’t the goal just be… growth?

\n

While it’s tempting to avoid the bigger conversations and focus on the urgent day-to-day needs of a business, having goals for work is a critical part of getting your business where you want it to be.

\n

Goals don’t just help you as an owner or operator. They benefit your whole team. A great set of goals will help you:

\n

\n
1. Give direction
\n
2. Maintain motivation
\n
3. Clarify priorities
\n
4. Stay on a growth trajectory
\n

\n

And building out great goals doesn’t have to be a chore. Once you know what you’re looking for, it can be an energizing and rewarding process — not to mention an integral part of any business operating system!

\n

How to approach goal-setting

\n

One of the most well-known frameworks for goal setting is the SMART framework. The SMART framework says goals should be:

\n

Specific: Gone are goals like “grow more” or “modernize operations.” A goal needs to be specific, like “grow revenue by 10%” or “migrate from paper agendas to digital meetings.”

\n

Measurable: You need to have a yes or no answer to the following question: “Is this goal on track?” 

\n

Actionable: You need to be able to take steps to achieve the goal — winning the lottery may be a nice dream, but not a good goal.

\n

Relevant: Your goal should be relevant to where your business is now. If you’re a service-based business, goals should be around your services or revenue goals.

\n

Time-bound: We’ve all seen how tasks can fill the time you set aside for them, whether they require the whole time or not. Be efficient and ground your goals in reality by giving them a deadline.

\n

With this framework in mind, let’s dive into goal setting for your business, setting goals for teams, how to set individual goals, and goals examples. Pretty soon, you’ll be a goal-setting (and goal crushing!) machine.

\n

How to set business goals 

\n

Goals for your business should cascade directly from your large or long-term business objectives. Even if you don’t have specific objectives yet, you can start from a general business objective of “growth” and work your way toward goals that support that objective.

\n

Even better would be creating goals from specific objectives. Maybe you want to double sales in the next three years, or expand your service offerings to capture more customers. 

\n

Either way, when you’re creating goals for your business, think about how they set you up in the long term and make sure they’re SMART. If you’re just beginning to tackle goal-setting, try setting just a few to be completed this quarter and see how they go. It’ll help you get some practice and get you set up for even more ambitious goals the next time around!

\n

Examples of goals for work

\n

Revenue/profit goals: increase your revenue or profit by $X this quarter. A good way to set this goal is to look at the increase you experienced in the last quarter, and make your goal stretch a bit beyond what you’d done then. For example, if your profits increased by $8k last quarter, set a goal for a $10k profit increase this quarter.

\n

Service/product offerings: enhance or expand your service offerings. Maybe you’re running an organic dog food business and you notice that a lot of your customers struggle with finding high quality food for your cats, so you create an objective to bring organic cat food into your business model. Maybe your goal this quarter is to complete R&D on a cat food recipe and costing.

\n

Customer growth: focus on the lifeblood of your business — your customers. Let’s say you’re running a pizza shop and you have decent ratings, but you’re not really sticking out from the crowd in terms of customer happiness. You want people to be obsessed with your pizza and bringing their friends, so you set a goal of increasing monthly visits per customer from 1.6 to 2.3.

\n

Organizational goals: dial into your business itself. For example, are there any processes in your business that are especially onerous? Take the tie to troubleshoot and create work goals about changing processes. It’s tough to work on your business when there’s always so much to get done, but achieving your goals as they relate to efficiency will always be worth it in the end. 

\n

How to set team goals

\n

Team goals are goals that are specific to a team or department, and they should generally roll up to a business’ goals, though sometimes they may be distinct.

\n

Team goals are awesome for helping your team see how their work is a part of the business’ big picture. They also help your team communicate and collaborate more.

\n

Let’s look at the pizza shop example for a team goal. If the goal is to increase repeat visits, maybe the marketing team comes up with a punch card promotion — after 10 qualifying visits, a customer will get something special for free. There are a lot of moving pieces in a project like that, so it would be a good goal for the marketing team to complete this quarter.

\n

When you’re setting a goal for a team, it’s important to stay SMART, and take a couple of extra steps to make sure you get buy-in from the whole team.

\n

First we recommend sharing with your team the larger business goal their goal will be contributing to. Then, outline your plan for accomplishing your goal and solicit feedback from your team members; they have day-to-day knowledge and insights that could help. Finally, assign milestones and action items for each team member to accomplish, with clarity around deadlines and dependencies. 

\n

For the punch card promotion campaign, the outline could look like this:

\n

\n
1. Determine giveaway for free item. (Work with the finance team to ensure it’s the right value.)
\n
2. Mock up designs for the punch card.
\n
3. Finalize punch card designs.
\n
4. Print 100 cards as a test.
\n
5. If successful, print 500 more.
\n

\n

You can assign tasks and milestones to your team around their areas of expertise and with respect to their bandwidth. If this project should now be their number one priority, make sure you let them know!

\n

How to set individual goals

\n

Last, but certainly not least, everyone in your company should have some goals of their own. Setting and tracking goals for team members helps remove the guesswork from individual performance. Goals can also improve employee engagement by giving them something to work toward, especially if a goal revolves around professional development.

\n

Professional goals examples could include things like completing a training or certification. From our blog all about employee goals, here are some performance goals and objectives examples for annual review:

\n

Performance Goal Examples for Employees

\n

\n
1. Deliver five completed project designs to each client in March.
\n
2. Get together for a coffee date with a coworker from a different department each month to better understand how they contribute to the overall goals of the organization and brainstorm ideas to improve cross-departmental efficiency.
\n
3. Reduce negative customer satisfaction rate by 50%.
\n

\n

When setting individual goals, don’t forget your managers and leaders! They should also have individual goals related to their development and the development of their team.

\n

Here are a couple of examples:

\n

\n
1. Dedicate time to once a month to recognize the work of a top performer on your team by taking them to get a coffee or sending them an encouraging email.
\n
2. Keep attrition on your team under 10% year-over-year.
\n

\n

Staying accountable to the business goals you set

\n

Unlike crockpot cooking, goals are not a “set it and forget it” type of situation! They need to be tracked and guided to come to fruition. 

\n

Document your goals

\n

The first step of tracking a goal — documenting it. Depending on the goal, decide whether it should be shared company-wide, or be restricted to a team or individual. 

\n

Wherever your goal is shared, make sure it’s visible and easily accessible to those who need to track it.

\n

Track your goals

\n

Remember the M from SMART goals? Once you get the goal set, it’s time to start measuring.

\n

If your goal is numerical (i.e. a certain number of new subscribers this quarter), you should set weekly KPIs or metrics that will keep you on track. 

\n

If the quarterly goal is 300 new subscribers, divide it by the 13 weeks in a quarter to come up with a weekly number that will let you see whether you’re on track. So if you see that you’re consistently hitting less than 23 new subscribers a week, you know that something’s gotta give with your goal. Either you need to change your goal, or change the tactics you’re using to hit it.

\n

Maintain momentum with milestones and tasks

\n

Goals should be big and audacious — use milestones and tasks to break them down into manageable bites for you and your team to tackle. 

\n

If you’re goal-setting in Strety (and why wouldn’t you be!), you can create Rocks (aka goals) at the company, team, and individual level. Each Rock can be broken up into milestones and tasks. Plus, you can create scorecards that will help you stay on top of the relevant metrics.

\n

Want your next goal-setting session to produce results that actually get you closer to your biggest business objectives? Dive into a free trial of Strety to see how our tools for goals and metrics can help you. Or schedule a meeting with someone on our team to walk you through a product tour.

","rss_summary":"

We’ve talked to a lot of business owners who feel like goal-setting is a daunting task. Can’t the goal just be… growth?

\n","rss_body":"

We’ve talked to a lot of business owners who feel like goal-setting is a daunting task. Can’t the goal just be… growth?

\n

While it’s tempting to avoid the bigger conversations and focus on the urgent day-to-day needs of a business, having goals for work is a critical part of getting your business where you want it to be.

\n

Goals don’t just help you as an owner or operator. They benefit your whole team. A great set of goals will help you:

\n

\n
1. Give direction
\n
2. Maintain motivation
\n
3. Clarify priorities
\n
4. Stay on a growth trajectory
\n

\n

And building out great goals doesn’t have to be a chore. Once you know what you’re looking for, it can be an energizing and rewarding process — not to mention an integral part of any business operating system!

\n

How to approach goal-setting

\n

One of the most well-known frameworks for goal setting is the SMART framework. The SMART framework says goals should be:

\n

Specific: Gone are goals like “grow more” or “modernize operations.” A goal needs to be specific, like “grow revenue by 10%” or “migrate from paper agendas to digital meetings.”

\n

Measurable: You need to have a yes or no answer to the following question: “Is this goal on track?” 

\n

Actionable: You need to be able to take steps to achieve the goal — winning the lottery may be a nice dream, but not a good goal.

\n

Relevant: Your goal should be relevant to where your business is now. If you’re a service-based business, goals should be around your services or revenue goals.

\n

Time-bound: We’ve all seen how tasks can fill the time you set aside for them, whether they require the whole time or not. Be efficient and ground your goals in reality by giving them a deadline.

\n

With this framework in mind, let’s dive into goal setting for your business, setting goals for teams, how to set individual goals, and goals examples. Pretty soon, you’ll be a goal-setting (and goal crushing!) machine.

\n

How to set business goals 

\n

Goals for your business should cascade directly from your large or long-term business objectives. Even if you don’t have specific objectives yet, you can start from a general business objective of “growth” and work your way toward goals that support that objective.

\n

Even better would be creating goals from specific objectives. Maybe you want to double sales in the next three years, or expand your service offerings to capture more customers. 

\n

Either way, when you’re creating goals for your business, think about how they set you up in the long term and make sure they’re SMART. If you’re just beginning to tackle goal-setting, try setting just a few to be completed this quarter and see how they go. It’ll help you get some practice and get you set up for even more ambitious goals the next time around!

\n

Examples of goals for work

\n

Revenue/profit goals: increase your revenue or profit by $X this quarter. A good way to set this goal is to look at the increase you experienced in the last quarter, and make your goal stretch a bit beyond what you’d done then. For example, if your profits increased by $8k last quarter, set a goal for a $10k profit increase this quarter.

\n

Service/product offerings: enhance or expand your service offerings. Maybe you’re running an organic dog food business and you notice that a lot of your customers struggle with finding high quality food for your cats, so you create an objective to bring organic cat food into your business model. Maybe your goal this quarter is to complete R&D on a cat food recipe and costing.

\n

Customer growth: focus on the lifeblood of your business — your customers. Let’s say you’re running a pizza shop and you have decent ratings, but you’re not really sticking out from the crowd in terms of customer happiness. You want people to be obsessed with your pizza and bringing their friends, so you set a goal of increasing monthly visits per customer from 1.6 to 2.3.

\n

Organizational goals: dial into your business itself. For example, are there any processes in your business that are especially onerous? Take the tie to troubleshoot and create work goals about changing processes. It’s tough to work on your business when there’s always so much to get done, but achieving your goals as they relate to efficiency will always be worth it in the end. 

\n

How to set team goals

\n

Team goals are goals that are specific to a team or department, and they should generally roll up to a business’ goals, though sometimes they may be distinct.

\n

Team goals are awesome for helping your team see how their work is a part of the business’ big picture. They also help your team communicate and collaborate more.

\n

Let’s look at the pizza shop example for a team goal. If the goal is to increase repeat visits, maybe the marketing team comes up with a punch card promotion — after 10 qualifying visits, a customer will get something special for free. There are a lot of moving pieces in a project like that, so it would be a good goal for the marketing team to complete this quarter.

\n

When you’re setting a goal for a team, it’s important to stay SMART, and take a couple of extra steps to make sure you get buy-in from the whole team.

\n

First we recommend sharing with your team the larger business goal their goal will be contributing to. Then, outline your plan for accomplishing your goal and solicit feedback from your team members; they have day-to-day knowledge and insights that could help. Finally, assign milestones and action items for each team member to accomplish, with clarity around deadlines and dependencies. 

\n

For the punch card promotion campaign, the outline could look like this:

\n

\n
1. Determine giveaway for free item. (Work with the finance team to ensure it’s the right value.)
\n
2. Mock up designs for the punch card.
\n
3. Finalize punch card designs.
\n
4. Print 100 cards as a test.
\n
5. If successful, print 500 more.
\n

\n

You can assign tasks and milestones to your team around their areas of expertise and with respect to their bandwidth. If this project should now be their number one priority, make sure you let them know!

\n

How to set individual goals

\n

Last, but certainly not least, everyone in your company should have some goals of their own. Setting and tracking goals for team members helps remove the guesswork from individual performance. Goals can also improve employee engagement by giving them something to work toward, especially if a goal revolves around professional development.

\n

Professional goals examples could include things like completing a training or certification. From our blog all about employee goals, here are some performance goals and objectives examples for annual review:

\n

Performance Goal Examples for Employees

\n

\n
1. Deliver five completed project designs to each client in March.
\n
2. Get together for a coffee date with a coworker from a different department each month to better understand how they contribute to the overall goals of the organization and brainstorm ideas to improve cross-departmental efficiency.
\n
3. Reduce negative customer satisfaction rate by 50%.
\n

\n

When setting individual goals, don’t forget your managers and leaders! They should also have individual goals related to their development and the development of their team.

\n

Here are a couple of examples:

\n

\n
1. Dedicate time to once a month to recognize the work of a top performer on your team by taking them to get a coffee or sending them an encouraging email.
\n
2. Keep attrition on your team under 10% year-over-year.
\n

\n

Staying accountable to the business goals you set

\n

Unlike crockpot cooking, goals are not a “set it and forget it” type of situation! They need to be tracked and guided to come to fruition. 

\n

Document your goals

\n

The first step of tracking a goal — documenting it. Depending on the goal, decide whether it should be shared company-wide, or be restricted to a team or individual. 

\n

Wherever your goal is shared, make sure it’s visible and easily accessible to those who need to track it.

\n

Track your goals

\n

Remember the M from SMART goals? Once you get the goal set, it’s time to start measuring.

\n

If your goal is numerical (i.e. a certain number of new subscribers this quarter), you should set weekly KPIs or metrics that will keep you on track. 

\n

If the quarterly goal is 300 new subscribers, divide it by the 13 weeks in a quarter to come up with a weekly number that will let you see whether you’re on track. So if you see that you’re consistently hitting less than 23 new subscribers a week, you know that something’s gotta give with your goal. Either you need to change your goal, or change the tactics you’re using to hit it.

\n

Maintain momentum with milestones and tasks

\n

Goals should be big and audacious — use milestones and tasks to break them down into manageable bites for you and your team to tackle. 

\n

If you’re goal-setting in Strety (and why wouldn’t you be!), you can create Rocks (aka goals) at the company, team, and individual level. Each Rock can be broken up into milestones and tasks. Plus, you can create scorecards that will help you stay on top of the relevant metrics.

\n

Want your next goal-setting session to produce results that actually get you closer to your biggest business objectives? Dive into a free trial of Strety to see how our tools for goals and metrics can help you. Or schedule a meeting with someone on our team to walk you through a product tour.

","tag_ids":[23667170488,23934667295,28407422581,168761834356,180734301464],"topic_ids":[23667170488,23934667295,28407422581,168761834356,180734301464],"blog_post_schedule_task_uid":null,"blog_publish_to_social_media_task":"DONE_NOT_SENT","blog_publish_instant_email_task_uid":"DONE","blog_publish_instant_email_campaign_id":null,"blog_publish_instant_email_retry_count":null,"keywords":[],"meta_description":"Learn how to set individual employee goals, team goals, and business goals that take your business to the next level!","meta_keywords":null,"layout_sections":{},"past_mab_experiment_ids":[],"deleted_by":null,"featured_image_alt_text":"","enable_layout_stylesheets":null,"tweet":null,"tweet_at":null,"campaign_name":null,"campaign_utm":null,"tweet_immediately":false,"publish_immediately":false,"security_state":"NONE","scheduled_update_date":0,"placement_guids":[],"property_for_dynamic_page_title":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_slug":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_meta_description":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_featured_image":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_canonical_url":null,"preview_image_src":null,"legacy_blog_tabid":null,"legacy_post_guid":null,"performable_variation_letter":null,"style_override_id":null,"has_user_changes":true,"css":{},"css_text":"","unpublished_at":0,"published_by_id":64389572,"allowed_slug_conflict":false,"ai_features":"[ERROR: (com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.exc.InvalidDefinitionException) Java 8 optional type `java.util.Optional` not supported by default: add Module \"com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype:jackson-datatype-jdk8\" to enable handling]","link_rel_canonical_url":"","page_redirected":false,"page_expiry_enabled":null,"page_expiry_date":null,"page_expiry_redirect_id":null,"page_expiry_redirect_url":null,"deleted_by_id":null,"state_when_deleted":null,"cloned_from":null,"staged_from":null,"personas":[],"compose_body":null,"featured_image":"https://5256430.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/5256430/Having%20goals%20blog%20hero.png","featured_image_width":1600,"featured_image_height":1100,"publish_timezone_offset":null,"theme_settings_values":null,"head_html":null,"footer_html":null,"attached_stylesheets":[],"enable_domain_stylesheets":null,"include_default_custom_css":null,"password":null,"header":null,"published_at":1735746300409,"last_edit_session_id":null,"last_edit_update_id":null,"created_by_agent":"[ERROR: (com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.exc.InvalidDefinitionException) Java 8 optional type `java.util.Optional` not supported by default: add Module \"com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype:jackson-datatype-jdk8\" to enable handling]"}

{"public_access_rules":[],"public_access_rules_enabled":false,"html_title":"Tool and App Fatigue is Real: 5 Steps to Combat Technology Adoption Issues","enable_google_amp_output_override":false,"generate_json_ld_enabled":true,"composition_id":0,"is_crawlable_by_bots":false,"use_featured_image":true,"post_summary":"

The average IT worker uses 10.4 apps at work. What’s the harm in introducing one more, right? Wrong. If you’re using too many apps and SaaS tools, it’s more exhausting than productive.

\n","post_body":"

The average IT worker uses 10.4 apps at work. What’s the harm in introducing one more, right? Wrong. If you’re using too many apps and SaaS tools, it’s more exhausting than productive.

\n\n

That doesn’t mean you should stop searching for new tools to help your business grow. It means finding the RIGHT tools -- not MORE tools. You need implementation strategies that minimize tool fatigue and accelerate adoption of new technology so you can get more done.

\n

Adoption is what delivers results from SaaS solutions. If a new technology isn’t used, it isn’t going to make a difference. I’m sure you can easily envision a more efficient and more effective version of your company. You know the changes that need to be made to realize your vision, that’s why you’re testing out new SaaS apps in the first place. The largest obstacles in actualizing that vision are communicating through change and getting buy-in from key parties to enhance your new tech adoption curve.

\n

Buy-in is mandatory if you want to accurately assess whether a SaaS solution is right for you. You do not want to be the business leader who's unable to harvest the advantages of being an early adopter of new technology because you can't get your team onboard.

\n

Thankfully, there are plenty of things you can do to facilitate technology adoption from your team. Before you can overcome adoption issues, it’s best to understand where barriers to adoption of new technology are rooted. 

\n

 

\n\n

Obstacles to Adoption

\n

Tool Fatigue

\n

Tool fatigue is real, it’s discouraging, and it isn’t going away. I’d be shocked if you’re a modern SMB (small- to medium-sized business) and not dealing with tool fatigue in some capacity right now. The benefits of new technology are constantly being weighed against the pain of adoption.

\n

Tool fatigue is when you have:

\n

\n
• Too many tools
\n
• Too much overlap between tools
\n
• Too much jumping between tools
\n

\n

As software management becomes increasingly decentralized, it’s common to find numerous SaaS tools with overlapping features. For example, most organizations use a combination of Google Docs, Slack/Teams bots, email, and employee surveys to collect feedback. What they choose is dependent on the team or use case, and in some instances, arbitrarily, without any thought to organizational cohesion. This can quickly spiral and create more trouble when trying to filter through threads to pull relevant feedback for 1:1 meetings or performance reviews.

\n

As the work your team is doing spreads out across more and more apps, your team will struggle to find the data they need when they need it, adding complexity to their workflow. At that point, can you blame their reluctance in adding another tool to their stack?

\n

Change in Mindset

\n

No one looks forward to changing a well-worn workflow, not to mention the stress and the time commitment that comes with it. But adopting new software isn’t just about creating better, more user friendly processes. It’s also a mechanism to transition towards a new way of thinking: it's the adoption of an innovation. 

\n

For example, continuous feedback cultures require a totally different mindset. If your team isn’t prepared to receive feedback about themselves, feedback will come across as a top-down initiative rather than a company-wide culture shift. Instead, leaders must empathize, communicate, and lead by example, demonstrating feedback and more regular conversations around performance are necessary to reach company objectives and a healthier work environment.

\n

Be understanding that any approach intended to foster long term buy-in will likely take time to take hold.

\n

Poor Communication

\n

Deloitte reports that up to 70% of change initiatives fail because key stakeholders struggle to adapt. That struggle can begin before anyone even begins to use the product.

\n

It’s one thing for you to see the value in a new tool, it’s another to effectively communicate that value of a new technology adoption to your team. Think of it like offering a new service to customers: they're not going to buy in because of how it benefits your business; they'll buy in if you can explain how it will benefit their business.

\n

Failure to frame your messaging towards your team could easily lead to misaligned expectations, and sets up your new SaaS tool for an uphill battle towards team-wide adoption.

\n

Improper Training

\n

Even if you perfectly prepare your team for a new SaaS tool, it won’t make a difference if they are unable to derive value from it early-on.

\n

First impressions are huge and whatever early impression your SaaS tool makes will drive the motivation towards buy-in going forward. So, what are your options when you need every employee onboard with a new SaaS tool? How can you work with leadership and your vendor to accelerate the spread of a SaaS tool within your company? Most importantly, what’s the right approach when you’re faced with employees struggling with change?

\n

The wrong answers to these questions could deliver a death blow for fast adoption, leaving you flat footed with a discouraged team and without a solution.

\n

 

\n\n

How to Drive Widespread Adoption

\n

Choose the Right Tools

\n

For any problem you’re trying to solve with SaaS, there are probably multiple solutions for you to choose from. When comparing similar solutions, keep two things top of mind:

\n

\n
• Is the tool integrated with your other tools?
\n
• How quickly can your team use it?
\n

\n

First, be proactive in countering tool fatigue through integrated solutions.

\n

Much of the software you truly need already exists in your tech stack: Office 365, GSuite, Teams, Slack. This is where users are already spending time. Therefore, you should look for tools with integrations into your existing tools. 

\n

Tools that embed or layer into your existing processes and systems will make it easy for people to adapt.

\n

Second, weigh a new tool's UX (user experience).

\n

If a tool does exactly what you need it to do but it feels clunky and poorly designed, you won’t see efficiency or effective deployment when your team ultimately hates working with it. Probably rings a bell, doesn’t it?

\n

New technologies, especially in 2024, ought to be easy to use, intuitive, and (we think) fun. If they aren't all three, they'll have a harder time getting adopted by your team.

\n

Third, how much time will it take to onboard the average employee?

\n

If the tool has extensive training programs and a lot of digital resources/tutorials, for getting started, it will likely take more time and effort to learn the tool, making the tool susceptible to pushback. Additionally, look at what sort of support is available from the vendor. Will it be easy for your team to get help when, where, and how they need it? 

\n

Communicate Change Management

\n

The role of management in any situation is that of motivation. It’s your duty to help your team cross new bridges despite their tendency to look back. Best way to get them moving forward? Ready them for the other side. Communicate how to get there and why it’s going to be better.

\n

For technology adoption to spread you need an effective internal marketing plan that will help ingrain these habits into people’s workflows. This is where you address the how and why:

\n

\n
• Why will using this product benefit them?
\n
• How can they be successful using this tool?
\n
• How is this going to make their job easier/better?
\n
• Why is this better than the old way?
\n
• What do they need to do to start using it?
\n

\n

Think about what triggered the need for the tool in the first place. Are you struggling to train new or inexperienced managers? Are you growing too fast and need more effective systems in place to scale? Are you experiencing low engagement levels? Be genuine in what you expect the new tool to do for the organization and for them, and don’t focus solely on the practical uses, find fun ways to get your people excited about using the tool and your adoption rate will increase.

\n

For example, even if you know introducing continuous feedback will help solve several overarching problems, culture change is a long-term benefit that will take time to implement and be felt by the team. Instead of selling the idealized result, start by focusing on a couple more immediate and specific pain points and explain why it’s critical to address it now.

\n

Encourage Participation

\n

One of the most important factors in getting widespread adoption is widespread participation. If the vendor allows it, encourage your team to participate in the demo/trial period. Collect their feedback and let them know their input will be a part of the evaluation process. Early ownership can go a long way towards adoption. 

\n

Once you have your team using the product, lean on your superstars to crank up usage. Contrary to logical opinion, don’t look to early adopters (more on them in a minute) to help usage spread, look to your company’s key influencers. Focus on your team members who get it, you know the ones, and encourage them to be more active within the tool to set an example for the rest of the team. Even the most reluctant employees are much more likely to adapt if a coworker they trust is supporting new software and processes.

\n

Your team is also likely to adopt new tools more quickly with rewards in place. Reward early adopters with positive reinforcement; It's far more effective than enforcing penalties or discipline over a lack of adoption. 

\n

Though you have your team’s best helping you out, you’ll need to lead by example. It’s critical that you show enthusiasm for the tool. A leader’s level of usage and promotion is a great indication of the success a product will have across an organization. 

\n

Reinforce Usage

\n

Once a tool is in place and you know you’re moving forward, force change away from existing tools or old behaviors. According to Charles Duhigg’s research on habit formation, “to change a habit, you must keep the old cue and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine”. 

\n

For example some employees just don’t feel as comfortable providing feedback or expressing themselves in written form.  Changing to a more documented approach presents an extra barrier for them to adopt. 

\n

Help them through the transition by tailoring new processes to their individual needs. One size fits all will not apply. Be patient and flexible, but make sure incremental progress is being made; do not settle for a complete absence of participation or reverting back to old processes

\n

You must encourage and reinforce usage until it becomes habitual. If there’s always the option of returning to the old way, you’ll continue to fight tool fatigue and fall short of actualizing full value from your new solution. 

\n

Set Milestones

\n

Set SMART goals and milestones to measure success at each implementation phase for key stakeholders in your company. Be clear what you want to accomplish, for example, at 1 month, after 3, and in 12. Goals will vary depending on the pain you need to solve, so work with your CSM to help you come up with goals you can track with the tool.

\n

Once you hit those goals, draw attention to the quick wins that come through early adopters. Celebrate any example of the product improving specifics; i.e “Jessica’s team has knocked 15 minutes from their daily stand-up as a result of enacting new processes”. It’s vital for the team to know how the new software is making an impact across the organization.

\n

Finding new tools to unlock your business’s potential is hard work. Once you’ve found the right solution, it can be a real challenge to take those tools and implement them company-wide, especially when you’re working with teams of varying personalities and preferences.

\n

In order to receive the full benefit of your new tool, an intentional, strategic adoption approach is a must. Be mindful of the technology you select and the way in which you implement it and make sure adoption is top of mind when deciding on new tools, and you’ll see ROI much more quickly.

\n

Strety is a tool to support your business operating system, and it integrates with your existing systems, whether it's Microsoft or Google, HubSpot or a PSA. Learn more about Strety on a quick meeting with our team or give it a test drive in a free 30-day trial.

","rss_summary":"

The average IT worker uses 10.4 apps at work. What’s the harm in introducing one more, right? Wrong. If you’re using too many apps and SaaS tools, it’s more exhausting than productive.

\n","rss_body":"

The average IT worker uses 10.4 apps at work. What’s the harm in introducing one more, right? Wrong. If you’re using too many apps and SaaS tools, it’s more exhausting than productive.

\n\n

That doesn’t mean you should stop searching for new tools to help your business grow. It means finding the RIGHT tools -- not MORE tools. You need implementation strategies that minimize tool fatigue and accelerate adoption of new technology so you can get more done.

\n

Adoption is what delivers results from SaaS solutions. If a new technology isn’t used, it isn’t going to make a difference. I’m sure you can easily envision a more efficient and more effective version of your company. You know the changes that need to be made to realize your vision, that’s why you’re testing out new SaaS apps in the first place. The largest obstacles in actualizing that vision are communicating through change and getting buy-in from key parties to enhance your new tech adoption curve.

\n

Buy-in is mandatory if you want to accurately assess whether a SaaS solution is right for you. You do not want to be the business leader who's unable to harvest the advantages of being an early adopter of new technology because you can't get your team onboard.

\n

Thankfully, there are plenty of things you can do to facilitate technology adoption from your team. Before you can overcome adoption issues, it’s best to understand where barriers to adoption of new technology are rooted. 

\n

 

\n\n

Obstacles to Adoption

\n

Tool Fatigue

\n

Tool fatigue is real, it’s discouraging, and it isn’t going away. I’d be shocked if you’re a modern SMB (small- to medium-sized business) and not dealing with tool fatigue in some capacity right now. The benefits of new technology are constantly being weighed against the pain of adoption.

\n

Tool fatigue is when you have:

\n

\n
• Too many tools
\n
• Too much overlap between tools
\n
• Too much jumping between tools
\n

\n

As software management becomes increasingly decentralized, it’s common to find numerous SaaS tools with overlapping features. For example, most organizations use a combination of Google Docs, Slack/Teams bots, email, and employee surveys to collect feedback. What they choose is dependent on the team or use case, and in some instances, arbitrarily, without any thought to organizational cohesion. This can quickly spiral and create more trouble when trying to filter through threads to pull relevant feedback for 1:1 meetings or performance reviews.

\n

As the work your team is doing spreads out across more and more apps, your team will struggle to find the data they need when they need it, adding complexity to their workflow. At that point, can you blame their reluctance in adding another tool to their stack?

\n

Change in Mindset

\n

No one looks forward to changing a well-worn workflow, not to mention the stress and the time commitment that comes with it. But adopting new software isn’t just about creating better, more user friendly processes. It’s also a mechanism to transition towards a new way of thinking: it's the adoption of an innovation. 

\n

For example, continuous feedback cultures require a totally different mindset. If your team isn’t prepared to receive feedback about themselves, feedback will come across as a top-down initiative rather than a company-wide culture shift. Instead, leaders must empathize, communicate, and lead by example, demonstrating feedback and more regular conversations around performance are necessary to reach company objectives and a healthier work environment.

\n

Be understanding that any approach intended to foster long term buy-in will likely take time to take hold.

\n

Poor Communication

\n

Deloitte reports that up to 70% of change initiatives fail because key stakeholders struggle to adapt. That struggle can begin before anyone even begins to use the product.

\n

It’s one thing for you to see the value in a new tool, it’s another to effectively communicate that value of a new technology adoption to your team. Think of it like offering a new service to customers: they're not going to buy in because of how it benefits your business; they'll buy in if you can explain how it will benefit their business.

\n

Failure to frame your messaging towards your team could easily lead to misaligned expectations, and sets up your new SaaS tool for an uphill battle towards team-wide adoption.

\n

Improper Training

\n

Even if you perfectly prepare your team for a new SaaS tool, it won’t make a difference if they are unable to derive value from it early-on.

\n

First impressions are huge and whatever early impression your SaaS tool makes will drive the motivation towards buy-in going forward. So, what are your options when you need every employee onboard with a new SaaS tool? How can you work with leadership and your vendor to accelerate the spread of a SaaS tool within your company? Most importantly, what’s the right approach when you’re faced with employees struggling with change?

\n

The wrong answers to these questions could deliver a death blow for fast adoption, leaving you flat footed with a discouraged team and without a solution.

\n

 

\n\n

How to Drive Widespread Adoption

\n

Choose the Right Tools

\n

For any problem you’re trying to solve with SaaS, there are probably multiple solutions for you to choose from. When comparing similar solutions, keep two things top of mind:

\n

\n
• Is the tool integrated with your other tools?
\n
• How quickly can your team use it?
\n

\n

First, be proactive in countering tool fatigue through integrated solutions.

\n

Much of the software you truly need already exists in your tech stack: Office 365, GSuite, Teams, Slack. This is where users are already spending time. Therefore, you should look for tools with integrations into your existing tools. 

\n

Tools that embed or layer into your existing processes and systems will make it easy for people to adapt.

\n

Second, weigh a new tool's UX (user experience).

\n

If a tool does exactly what you need it to do but it feels clunky and poorly designed, you won’t see efficiency or effective deployment when your team ultimately hates working with it. Probably rings a bell, doesn’t it?

\n

New technologies, especially in 2024, ought to be easy to use, intuitive, and (we think) fun. If they aren't all three, they'll have a harder time getting adopted by your team.

\n

Third, how much time will it take to onboard the average employee?

\n

If the tool has extensive training programs and a lot of digital resources/tutorials, for getting started, it will likely take more time and effort to learn the tool, making the tool susceptible to pushback. Additionally, look at what sort of support is available from the vendor. Will it be easy for your team to get help when, where, and how they need it? 

\n

Communicate Change Management

\n

The role of management in any situation is that of motivation. It’s your duty to help your team cross new bridges despite their tendency to look back. Best way to get them moving forward? Ready them for the other side. Communicate how to get there and why it’s going to be better.

\n

For technology adoption to spread you need an effective internal marketing plan that will help ingrain these habits into people’s workflows. This is where you address the how and why:

\n

\n
• Why will using this product benefit them?
\n
• How can they be successful using this tool?
\n
• How is this going to make their job easier/better?
\n
• Why is this better than the old way?
\n
• What do they need to do to start using it?
\n

\n

Think about what triggered the need for the tool in the first place. Are you struggling to train new or inexperienced managers? Are you growing too fast and need more effective systems in place to scale? Are you experiencing low engagement levels? Be genuine in what you expect the new tool to do for the organization and for them, and don’t focus solely on the practical uses, find fun ways to get your people excited about using the tool and your adoption rate will increase.

\n

For example, even if you know introducing continuous feedback will help solve several overarching problems, culture change is a long-term benefit that will take time to implement and be felt by the team. Instead of selling the idealized result, start by focusing on a couple more immediate and specific pain points and explain why it’s critical to address it now.

\n

Encourage Participation

\n

One of the most important factors in getting widespread adoption is widespread participation. If the vendor allows it, encourage your team to participate in the demo/trial period. Collect their feedback and let them know their input will be a part of the evaluation process. Early ownership can go a long way towards adoption. 

\n

Once you have your team using the product, lean on your superstars to crank up usage. Contrary to logical opinion, don’t look to early adopters (more on them in a minute) to help usage spread, look to your company’s key influencers. Focus on your team members who get it, you know the ones, and encourage them to be more active within the tool to set an example for the rest of the team. Even the most reluctant employees are much more likely to adapt if a coworker they trust is supporting new software and processes.

\n

Your team is also likely to adopt new tools more quickly with rewards in place. Reward early adopters with positive reinforcement; It's far more effective than enforcing penalties or discipline over a lack of adoption. 

\n

Though you have your team’s best helping you out, you’ll need to lead by example. It’s critical that you show enthusiasm for the tool. A leader’s level of usage and promotion is a great indication of the success a product will have across an organization. 

\n

Reinforce Usage

\n

Once a tool is in place and you know you’re moving forward, force change away from existing tools or old behaviors. According to Charles Duhigg’s research on habit formation, “to change a habit, you must keep the old cue and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine”. 

\n

For example some employees just don’t feel as comfortable providing feedback or expressing themselves in written form.  Changing to a more documented approach presents an extra barrier for them to adopt. 

\n

Help them through the transition by tailoring new processes to their individual needs. One size fits all will not apply. Be patient and flexible, but make sure incremental progress is being made; do not settle for a complete absence of participation or reverting back to old processes

\n

You must encourage and reinforce usage until it becomes habitual. If there’s always the option of returning to the old way, you’ll continue to fight tool fatigue and fall short of actualizing full value from your new solution. 

\n

Set Milestones

\n

Set SMART goals and milestones to measure success at each implementation phase for key stakeholders in your company. Be clear what you want to accomplish, for example, at 1 month, after 3, and in 12. Goals will vary depending on the pain you need to solve, so work with your CSM to help you come up with goals you can track with the tool.

\n

Once you hit those goals, draw attention to the quick wins that come through early adopters. Celebrate any example of the product improving specifics; i.e “Jessica’s team has knocked 15 minutes from their daily stand-up as a result of enacting new processes”. It’s vital for the team to know how the new software is making an impact across the organization.

\n

Finding new tools to unlock your business’s potential is hard work. Once you’ve found the right solution, it can be a real challenge to take those tools and implement them company-wide, especially when you’re working with teams of varying personalities and preferences.

\n

In order to receive the full benefit of your new tool, an intentional, strategic adoption approach is a must. Be mindful of the technology you select and the way in which you implement it and make sure adoption is top of mind when deciding on new tools, and you’ll see ROI much more quickly.

\n

Strety is a tool to support your business operating system, and it integrates with your existing systems, whether it's Microsoft or Google, HubSpot or a PSA. Learn more about Strety on a quick meeting with our team or give it a test drive in a free 30-day trial.

","tag_ids":[23667170488],"topic_ids":[23667170488],"blog_post_schedule_task_uid":null,"blog_publish_to_social_media_task":"DONE","blog_publish_instant_email_task_uid":"DONE","blog_publish_instant_email_campaign_id":null,"blog_publish_instant_email_retry_count":null,"keywords":[],"meta_description":"If you're using too many apps and tools, you can lose hours of your day. Here's how to mitigate tool fatigue and combat issues in technology adoption.","meta_keywords":null,"layout_sections":{},"past_mab_experiment_ids":[],"deleted_by":null,"featured_image_alt_text":"Tool fatigued man","enable_layout_stylesheets":null,"tweet":null,"tweet_at":null,"campaign_name":"Management Tips & Skills","campaign_utm":"Management%20Tips%20%26%20Skills","tweet_immediately":false,"publish_immediately":false,"security_state":"NONE","scheduled_update_date":0,"placement_guids":[],"property_for_dynamic_page_title":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_slug":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_meta_description":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_featured_image":null,"property_for_dynamic_page_canonical_url":null,"preview_image_src":null,"legacy_blog_tabid":null,"legacy_post_guid":null,"performable_variation_letter":null,"style_override_id":null,"has_user_changes":true,"css":{},"css_text":"","unpublished_at":0,"published_by_id":64389572,"allowed_slug_conflict":false,"ai_features":"[ERROR: (com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.exc.InvalidDefinitionException) Java 8 optional type `java.util.Optional` not supported by default: add Module \"com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype:jackson-datatype-jdk8\" to enable handling]","link_rel_canonical_url":"","page_redirected":false,"page_expiry_enabled":null,"page_expiry_date":null,"page_expiry_redirect_id":null,"page_expiry_redirect_url":null,"deleted_by_id":null,"state_when_deleted":null,"cloned_from":null,"staged_from":null,"personas":[],"compose_body":null,"featured_image":"https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/5256430/15b.png","featured_image_width":0,"featured_image_height":0,"publish_timezone_offset":null,"theme_settings_values":null,"head_html":null,"footer_html":null,"attached_stylesheets":[],"enable_domain_stylesheets":null,"include_default_custom_css":null,"password":null,"header":null,"published_at":1735137001508,"last_edit_session_id":null,"last_edit_update_id":null,"created_by_agent":"[ERROR: (com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.exc.InvalidDefinitionException) Java 8 optional type `java.util.Optional` not supported by default: add Module \"com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype:jackson-datatype-jdk8\" to enable handling]"}

{"public_access_rules":[],"public_access_rules_enabled":false,"html_title":"A Guide to Constructive Employee Feedback for Managers: Examples & Tips","enable_google_amp_output_override":false,"generate_json_ld_enabled":true,"composition_id":0,"is_crawlable_by_bots":false,"use_featured_image":true,"post_summary":"

Giving feedback to employees and receiving manager feedback are two core responsibilities of your role as a manager. If you’re looking for ideas on how to give and receive feedback in more efficient, engaging, and effective ways, as well as job feedback examples and management feedback examples, then we’ve got you covered! Let’s dive in… 🏊

\n","post_body":"

Giving feedback to employees and receiving manager feedback are two core responsibilities of your role as a manager. If you’re looking for ideas on how to give and receive feedback in more efficient, engaging, and effective ways, as well as job feedback examples and management feedback examples, then we’ve got you covered! Let’s dive in… 🏊

\n\n

Why Employee Feedback is Important

\n

Employee feedback is the process of managers, supervisors, and peers giving constructive criticism and suggestions for improvement to an employee. Employee feedback is a two-way street—it also includes an employee giving feedback to his/her manager, peers, or the organization as a whole.

\n

Giving feedback to employees (both when things are going well and when they aren’t) is one of the most crucial responsibilities of a manager. It can help them identify areas of opportunity to develop new skills, improve job performance, and promote their personal and professional growth.

\n

Receiving feedback from your employees can help you improve as a manager while simultaneously bettering the organization as a whole. The result? Happier, higher performing employees and more effective leadership—all working together to meet the goals of the business 😍!

\n\n

How to Get Feedback From Your Employees

\n

One of the primary roles of a manager is giving employee feedback—but what’s often overlooked is getting employee feedback for managers. Many businesses rely on exit interviews to gain insight into a manager’s effectiveness, but what good does it do to uncover how an employee feels about you as their manager when they’re leaving the company?

\n

If you have a way for your leadership team to receive frequent employee feedback, you could get ahead of the issue and improve employee retention. Seeing as a Gallup study found 50% of Americans have left a job to “get away from their manager at some point in their career,” having these insights sooner can help your organization reduce costly employee turnover 💰.

\n

So, you want to be sure you’re regularly asking for constructive feedback for managers while your employees are still your employees and you can actually make changes to benefit them! This may involve asking for feedback during regular check-ins, team meetings, or 1:1 meetings, or sending out monthly or quarterly surveys 📝.

\n

No matter how you get the feedback, here are a few major things you should always do when asking for manager feedback from your employees:

\n

\n
1. \n

   Make it clear you value manager feedback 🤗.

   \nWhen you’re the boss, it can be awkward to ask your direct reports to tell you what they think of your performance—and it can be even more awkward and intimidating for the employee. So, make sure your employees know you actually value their feedback so they feel more comfortable giving it. You're not perfect, and letting your team members know you’re always looking to improve makes you a more transparent, approachable boss.
   
   
\n
2. \n

   Ask specific employee feedback questions ❓.

   \nAsking “do you have any feedback for me?” is simply too vague. Instead, ask specific yet open-ended questions to help your direct reports come up with more relevant, helpful answers. For example, instead of asking, “Do you like our team meetings,” you could ask questions like, “What’s something I could change about the way I lead our meetings to make them more engaging,” or, “Do you think our team meetings are well organized? If not, how do you think we could make them more efficient?”
   
   
\n
3. \n

   Lead by example 🚶‍♂️.

   \nIf you want your direct reports to listen to and apply your employee feedback, then you need to be able to do the same. Accept manager feedback with a positive attitude and work to actually implement the changes and improvements your team is asking for. This shows you’re invested in being a better manager and willing to work on your weaknesses—which will make it easier for them to accept your feedback on their own areas for improvements.
\n

\n\n

How to Learn From Employee Feedback

\n

In order to be an effective manager, you need to be able to show your employees that you’re actually learning from their feedback. However, learning from feedback, especially negative or redirecting feedback, can be a challenge 🤯.

\n

Here are a few simple tips for learning from employee feedback so you can actually turn insight into action.

\n

\n
• Look for patterns. Try to find patterns or commonalities in your manager feedback. Did a lot of your employees bring up the same concerns or problems in a recent employee feedback survey? For example, let’s say 8 out of 10 of your team members made a comment about your team meetings being unorganized. This is a pattern you should definitely pay attention to, and good motivation for learning how to run better meetings!
  
\n

\n

\n
• Address priorities first. As a manager, you won’t be able to address every concern or make every change your employees are asking for overnight. So how can you prioritize? If you do identify patterns or recurring issues, address those problems first. If the majority of your team seems to have the same problem, you’ll want to get it handled as quickly as possible to avoid negative impact on team morale and performance.
  
\n

\n

\n
• Be transparent about changes. When your employees are being vocal about manager feedback, you want to make sure you’re being vocal about how you’re handling it, too. Don’t just quietly make changes and assume your employees will notice—be open, honest, and upfront about the improvements you’re making and why. It always pays to have a policy of authentic leadership.
\n

\n\n

How to Give Feedback to Your Employees

\n

Now that you know the ins and outs of getting manager feedback, the next part is being able to effectively give it to your employees.

\n

It can be hard and awkward to have tough conversations about professional performance 😖—especially with someone you like personally. But as a manager, giving employee feedback is a crucial part of your job role. So how can you do it effectively?

\n

A study quoted in the book First, Break All The Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham says that the world’s best managers share three characteristics. They all tend to:

\n

\n
1. Exchange feedback continuously 🔄. If you only give employee feedback during annual performance reviews, you may give your team members the impression that you’re giving them feedback because “it’s that time of year and you have to.” On the other hand, when you provide more regular feedback or constructive comments as soon as you notice something your direct reports can improve upon, it makes it possible to nip issues in the bud right as they occur. If left unsaid, issues will only get worse, and by the time the annual performance review rolls around, you’ll have to deal with a whole slew of issues that could have been avoided if resolved earlier.
   
   
\n
2. Focus on employee strengths 💪. As we mentioned earlier, it’s important to stay positive while giving employee feedback. Make sure to give reinforcing feedback and highlight an employee’s accomplishments when they’re doing something well! This boosts morale and shows your employees you appreciate them. When you do have to give negative feedback, use the redirection method to spin it in a more positive light. Don’t just focus on the employee’s actions, but figure out next steps and talk through ways in which you could help. Always try to balance positive and negative feedback—if you have to discuss an employee’s weakness, make sure you also highlight one of their strengths.
   
   
\n
3. Praise in public and provide criticism in private 🤫. If you need to give a team member constructive feedback, make sure to give it in private and ideally in person during a 1:1 meeting. You don’t want to send performance feedback in an instant message or email—this feels impersonal and shows your employee you don’t care about taking the time to meet face to face. You also don’t want to call out an individual in a team meeting or in front of their coworkers. This can make an employee feel incredibly uncomfortable and create a competitive nature amongst your team. Instead, find a quiet space to offer your feedback and advice face-to-face. On the other hand, employee praise or positive recognition can be shared publicly (as long as your report is comfortable with it).
\n

\n\n

6 Manager Feedback Examples to Follow

\n

Here are some examples of how you can effectively give both positive and negative employee feedback.

\n

Positive Employee Feedback Examples

\n

\n
1. “Something I really appreciate about you is your ability to effectively brainstorm and collaborate with your team.”
   
   
\n
2. “I think you did a really great job presenting the latest project to our client. It showed that you have excellent communication and public speaking skills, and the client was very happy with what you came up with. Great work! Let’s keep this momentum going as we start actually executing the campaign.”
   
   
\n
3. “I can see your positive attitude is having an impact on our team morale. Thank you for coming into work everyday with a positive, go-getter attitude and setting a great example for your team members.”
\n

\n

Negative Employee Feedback Examples

\n

\n
1. When an employee didn’t meet a deadline: “This project wasn’t delivered on time. Was there anything I could have done as your manager to help you meet that deadline? For the next project, let’s make sure you have more time and resources to finish as planned. We can sync up every couple of days to make sure you’re on track and not feeling rushed. Going forward, maybe we can schedule your work in advance to make sure that you’re not overwhelmed towards the end.”
   
   
\n
2. When an employee didn’t achieve a performance goal: “Great job setting your goals this quarter! You accomplished quite a bit, and it’s okay that you didn’t hit every single goal. But, I can see how that might feel discouraging. Do you have any ideas why you didn’t hit particular goals? Let’s meet more regularly throughout the next quarter to track and discuss your progress towards your next set of goals.”
   
   
\n
3. When an employee made a mistake: “I know you feel badly about what happened, but let’s not dwell on it. Instead, let’s focus on how we can make changes to do better in the future! What do you think could have been done to prevent that outcome? Was there something I could have done as a manager to help you? Let’s find a way to learn from this and make sure you have the right support and resources so it doesn’t happen next time.”
\n

\n

The bottom line here? Employee feedback is a valuable tool that can be used to help each and every team member learn, grow, and get better at their job. It also plays an important role in helping organizations achieve their big-picture goals—while developing a better workplace culture along the way. So, when given and received effectively, employee feedback can make all the difference in your organization 👏!

\n\n

Give and Get More Effective Feedback with Strety!

\n

Strety, an all-in-one business operating system platform, has the features you need to go beyond your B.O.S. for performance management and people management. Our simple tools make being a better manager and giving more effective feedback easier than ever before by holding you accountable while remaining flexible to company and individual needs.

\n

In Strety, you can:

\n

\n
• Set up employee feedback questions, send them to your whole team at once, and gain insight into how your employees really feel
\n
• Automate scheduling and following up on 1:1 meetings
\n
• Track an individual employee's performance
\n
• Track key team and organizational goals
\n
• Document employee coaching sessions
\n
• And much more!
\n

\n

Are you ready to learn how to give and receive feedback in more engaging, effective ways 🙌? Reach out to a Strety team member today 📲! Or dive into our intuitive platform in a free 30 day trial.

","rss_summary":"

Giving feedback to employees and receiving manager feedback are two core responsibilities of your role as a manager. If you’re looking for ideas on how to give and receive feedback in more efficient, engaging, and effective ways, as well as job feedback examples and management feedback examples, then we’ve got you covered! Let’s dive in… 🏊

\n","rss_body":"

Giving feedback to employees and receiving manager feedback are two core responsibilities of your role as a manager. If you’re looking for ideas on how to give and receive feedback in more efficient, engaging, and effective ways, as well as job feedback examples and management feedback examples, then we’ve got you covered! Let’s dive in… 🏊

\n\n

Why Employee Feedback is Important

\n

Employee feedback is the process of managers, supervisors, and peers giving constructive criticism and suggestions for improvement to an employee. Employee feedback is a two-way street—it also includes an employee giving feedback to his/her manager, peers, or the organization as a whole.

\n

Giving feedback to employees (both when things are going well and when they aren’t) is one of the most crucial responsibilities of a manager. It can help them identify areas of opportunity to develop new skills, improve job performance, and promote their personal and professional growth.

\n

Receiving feedback from your employees can help you improve as a manager while simultaneously bettering the organization as a whole. The result? Happier, higher performing employees and more effective leadership—all working together to meet the goals of the business 😍!

\n\n

How to Get Feedback From Your Employees

\n

One of the primary roles of a manager is giving employee feedback—but what’s often overlooked is getting employee feedback for managers. Many businesses rely on exit interviews to gain insight into a manager’s effectiveness, but what good does it do to uncover how an employee feels about you as their manager when they’re leaving the company?

\n

If you have a way for your leadership team to receive frequent employee feedback, you could get ahead of the issue and improve employee retention. Seeing as a Gallup study found 50% of Americans have left a job to “get away from their manager at some point in their career,” having these insights sooner can help your organization reduce costly employee turnover 💰.

\n

So, you want to be sure you’re regularly asking for constructive feedback for managers while your employees are still your employees and you can actually make changes to benefit them! This may involve asking for feedback during regular check-ins, team meetings, or 1:1 meetings, or sending out monthly or quarterly surveys 📝.

\n

No matter how you get the feedback, here are a few major things you should always do when asking for manager feedback from your employees:

\n

\n
1. \n

   Make it clear you value manager feedback 🤗.

   \nWhen you’re the boss, it can be awkward to ask your direct reports to tell you what they think of your performance—and it can be even more awkward and intimidating for the employee. So, make sure your employees know you actually value their feedback so they feel more comfortable giving it. You're not perfect, and letting your team members know you’re always looking to improve makes you a more transparent, approachable boss.
   
   
\n
2. \n

   Ask specific employee feedback questions ❓.

   \nAsking “do you have any feedback for me?” is simply too vague. Instead, ask specific yet open-ended questions to help your direct reports come up with more relevant, helpful answers. For example, instead of asking, “Do you like our team meetings,” you could ask questions like, “What’s something I could change about the way I lead our meetings to make them more engaging,” or, “Do you think our team meetings are well organized? If not, how do you think we could make them more efficient?”
   
   
\n
3. \n

   Lead by example 🚶‍♂️.

   \nIf you want your direct reports to listen to and apply your employee feedback, then you need to be able to do the same. Accept manager feedback with a positive attitude and work to actually implement the changes and improvements your team is asking for. This shows you’re invested in being a better manager and willing to work on your weaknesses—which will make it easier for them to accept your feedback on their own areas for improvements.
\n

\n\n

How to Learn From Employee Feedback

\n

In order to be an effective manager, you need to be able to show your employees that you’re actually learning from their feedback. However, learning from feedback, especially negative or redirecting feedback, can be a challenge 🤯.

\n

Here are a few simple tips for learning from employee feedback so you can actually turn insight into action.

\n

\n
• Look for patterns. Try to find patterns or commonalities in your manager feedback. Did a lot of your employees bring up the same concerns or problems in a recent employee feedback survey? For example, let’s say 8 out of 10 of your team members made a comment about your team meetings being unorganized. This is a pattern you should definitely pay attention to, and good motivation for learning how to run better meetings!
  
\n

\n

\n
• Address priorities first. As a manager, you won’t be able to address every concern or make every change your employees are asking for overnight. So how can you prioritize? If you do identify patterns or recurring issues, address those problems first. If the majority of your team seems to have the same problem, you’ll want to get it handled as quickly as possible to avoid negative impact on team morale and performance.
  
\n

\n

\n
• Be transparent about changes. When your employees are being vocal about manager feedback, you want to make sure you’re being vocal about how you’re handling it, too. Don’t just quietly make changes and assume your employees will notice—be open, honest, and upfront about the improvements you’re making and why. It always pays to have a policy of authentic leadership.
\n

\n\n

How to Give Feedback to Your Employees

\n

Now that you know the ins and outs of getting manager feedback, the next part is being able to effectively give it to your employees.

\n

It can be hard and awkward to have tough conversations about professional performance 😖—especially with someone you like personally. But as a manager, giving employee feedback is a crucial part of your job role. So how can you do it effectively?

\n

A study quoted in the book First, Break All The Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham says that the world’s best managers share three characteristics. They all tend to:

\n

\n
1. Exchange feedback continuously 🔄. If you only give employee feedback during annual performance reviews, you may give your team members the impression that you’re giving them feedback because “it’s that time of year and you have to.” On the other hand, when you provide more regular feedback or constructive comments as soon as you notice something your direct reports can improve upon, it makes it possible to nip issues in the bud right as they occur. If left unsaid, issues will only get worse, and by the time the annual performance review rolls around, you’ll have to deal with a whole slew of issues that could have been avoided if resolved earlier.
   
   
\n
2. Focus on employee strengths 💪. As we mentioned earlier, it’s important to stay positive while giving employee feedback. Make sure to give reinforcing feedback and highlight an employee’s accomplishments when they’re doing something well! This boosts morale and shows your employees you appreciate them. When you do have to give negative feedback, use the redirection method to spin it in a more positive light. Don’t just focus on the employee’s actions, but figure out next steps and talk through ways in which you could help. Always try to balance positive and negative feedback—if you have to discuss an employee’s weakness, make sure you also highlight one of their strengths.
   
   
\n
3. Praise in public and provide criticism in private 🤫. If you need to give a team member constructive feedback, make sure to give it in private and ideally in person during a 1:1 meeting. You don’t want to send performance feedback in an instant message or email—this feels impersonal and shows your employee you don’t care about taking the time to meet face to face. You also don’t want to call out an individual in a team meeting or in front of their coworkers. This can make an employee feel incredibly uncomfortable and create a competitive nature amongst your team. Instead, find a quiet space to offer your feedback and advice face-to-face. On the other hand, employee praise or positive recognition can be shared publicly (as long as your report is comfortable with it).
\n

\n\n

6 Manager Feedback Examples to Follow

\n

Here are some examples of how you can effectively give both positive and negative employee feedback.

\n

Positive Employee Feedback Examples

\n

\n
1. “Something I really appreciate about you is your ability to effectively brainstorm and collaborate with your team.”
   
   
\n
2. “I think you did a really great job presenting the latest project to our client. It showed that you have excellent communication and public speaking skills, and the client was very happy with what you came up with. Great work! Let’s keep this momentum going as we start actually executing the campaign.”
   
   
\n
3. “I can see your positive attitude is having an impact on our team morale. Thank you for coming into work everyday with a positive, go-getter attitude and setting a great example for your team members.”
\n

\n

Negative Employee Feedback Examples

\n

\n
1. When an employee didn’t meet a deadline: “This project wasn’t delivered on time. Was there anything I could have done as your manager to help you meet that deadline? For the next project, let’s make sure you have more time and resources to finish as planned. We can sync up every couple of days to make sure you’re on track and not feeling rushed. Going forward, maybe we can schedule your work in advance to make sure that you’re not overwhelmed towards the end.”
   
   
\n
2. When an employee didn’t achieve a performance goal: “Great job setting your goals this quarter! You accomplished quite a bit, and it’s okay that you didn’t hit every single goal. But, I can see how that might feel discouraging. Do you have any ideas why you didn’t hit particular goals? Let’s meet more regularly throughout the next quarter to track and discuss your progress towards your next set of goals.”
   
   
\n
3. When an employee made a mistake: “I know you feel badly about what happened, but let’s not dwell on it. Instead, let’s focus on how we can make changes to do better in the future! What do you think could have been done to prevent that outcome? Was there something I could have done as a manager to help you? Let’s find a way to learn from this and make sure you have the right support and resources so it doesn’t happen next time.”
\n

\n

The bottom line here? Employee feedback is a valuable tool that can be used to help each and every team member learn, grow, and get better at their job. It also plays an important role in helping organizations achieve their big-picture goals—while developing a better workplace culture along the way. So, when given and received effectively, employee feedback can make all the difference in your organization 👏!

\n\n

Give and Get More Effective Feedback with Strety!

\n

Strety, an all-in-one business operating system platform, has the features you need to go beyond your B.O.S. for performance management and people management. Our simple tools make being a better manager and giving more effective feedback easier than ever before by holding you accountable while remaining flexible to company and individual needs.

\n

In Strety, you can:

\n

\n
• Set up employee feedback questions, send them to your whole team at once, and gain insight into how your employees really feel
\n
• Automate scheduling and following up on 1:1 meetings
\n
• Track an individual employee's performance
\n
• Track key team and organizational goals
\n
• Document employee coaching sessions
\n
• And much more!
\n

\n

Are you ready to learn how to give and receive feedback in more engaging, effective ways 🙌? Reach out to a Strety team member today 📲! Or dive into our intuitive platform in a free 30 day trial.

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When you have a big decision to make in your business, the last thing you want to do is wing it. A SWOT analysis is a simple but powerful tool to provide structure to your decision-making and help guide you in the right direction. 

\n","post_body":"

When you have a big decision to make in your business, the last thing you want to do is wing it. A SWOT analysis is a simple but powerful tool to provide structure to your decision-making and help guide you in the right direction. 

\n

What is a SWOT analysis?

\n

What does SWOT stand for? Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. A SWOT analysis is a matrix-like tool that outlines each. Most times, a SWOT analysis is formatted in a table, like this:

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\n Strengths \n	\n Weaknesses \n
\n Opportunities \n	\n Threats \n

\n

SWOT matrix template

\n

The SWOT matrix is grouped into two sorts of factors: internal and external.

\n

Internal factors: Strengths and Weaknesses

\n

Your strengths and weaknesses are already there inside of your business. This is the place to be clear-eyed about what you have and what you lack. These can include: 

\n

\n
• Financial resources
\n
• Physical resources
\n
• Human resources
\n
• Other assets
\n
• Processes and programs
\n

\n

External factors: Opportunities and Threats

\n

External factors are what help you drive a decision forward, by identifying opportunities to seize and threats to avoid. External factors include:

\n

\n
• Market trends
\n
• Economic trends
\n
• Funding
\n
• Demographics
\n
• Relationships and network
\n
• Regulations
\n

\n

SWOT: Strengths

\n

Opportunities are favorable internal factors you should take advantage of, including: 

\n

\n
• Differentiators
\n
• What it excels at
\n
• Unique resources/assets
\n
• Good things others say about you
\n
• Unique selling proposition
\n
• Values that drive you
\n

\n

SWOT strength examples: customer-first culture, features your competitors don’t have, strong cash flow, innovations

\n

SWOT: Weaknesses

\n

Weaknesses are unfavorable internal factors  you should mitigate, including: 

\n

\n
• People, resources, systems, procedures that are lacking
\n
• Things competitors have that you don’t
\n
• What you could improve upon
\n
• Complaints from customers/stakeholders
\n

\n

SWOT weakness examples: limited cash flow, small team, reliance on old/obsolete technologies

\n

SWOT: Opportunities

\n

Opportunities in a SWOT analysis are favorable external factors you could take advantage of, including: 

\n

\n
• Trends that favor you
\n
• Changes in technology, social patterns, legislation
\n
• Underserved markets that could be a fit for your business
\n
• Emerging need
\n
• Media coverage around your area of expertise
\n

\n

SWOT opportunity examples: your industry trending, stronger economy for investments, a new generation of consumers connecting to your offering

\n

SWOT: Threats

\n

Opportunities are unfavorable external factors you should mitigate, including: 

\n

\n
• Where the competition comes outshines you
\n
• Where weaknesses leave you more exposed to shifting tides
\n
• Shifts in market requirements
\n
• Evolving technology
\n
• Changing customer attitudes toward your offer
\n

\n

SWOT threat examples: more well-funded competitors, downturn in market, upcoming regulation that negatively impacts operations

\n

Benefits of doing a SWOT analysis

\n

There’s a few reasons people love using the SWOT structure for decision-making analysis.

\n

First of all, it’s a flexible framework. You can apply a SWOT analysis to an initiative, a person, a team, a product, a strategy, or a company as a whole. You can even SWOT one of your competitors as part of a competitive analysis.

\n

A SWOT analysis also encourages you to take a step back to look at the bigger picture and be objective in your approach. Often we can get stuck in a rut when it comes to our strategic thinking — i.e. “we’ve been doing it this way for years” or “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” Performing a SWOT analysis invites you to rethink the external and external factors that should be weighing on your decision.

\n

Putting together a SWOT table also helps you notice connections and patterns between the different parts of your analysis subject. For example, you might not often think of your internal resources as they relate to social trends, and a SWOT analysis could expose interesting connections between the two.

\n

SWOT analyses are forward-looking, while remaining grounded in where you are today. By drawing connections across internal and external factors, as well as positives and negatives, you’re able to make better predictions about the outcomes of your decisions.

\n

When should you do a SWOT analysis?

\n

You might do a version of SWOT analysis with smaller decisions, but that’s likely impromptu and minimal; you don’t need to call a meeting to do a SWOT analysis on whether to stock Cool Ranch or Nacho Cheese Doritos in your snack room. (Obviously, the answer is Cool Ranch.)

\n

For the most part, you should save your SWOTs for the bigger things in your business, like

\n

\n
• Before you commit to strategic action
\n
• When you’re evaluating your competitive position
\n
• Guide strategic planning and goal-setting
\n

\n

How to do a SWOT analysis

\n

If you’ve decided something is worth a SWOT analysis, it’s worth taking the time to do it right! Just like in your business operating system, investing time in organization up front will help you get much better results down the line.

\n

Stay organized and accountable.

\n

Designate people to lead and record the SWOT analysis. This may be two separate people, or one person if the group is small and it’s manageable. Choose the decision makers who can condense the big picture of the SWOT analysis into a strategy and action plan.

\n

Determine your objective.

\n

It may sound fun, but don’t SWOT just to SWOT! Decide ahead of time what your objective is. It’s easier if you’re using a SWOT analysis to answer yes or no to moving forward with something, like if you’re deciding whether or not to hire someone. 

\n

Oftentimes, however, your objective will be more complicated. Imagine you’re using a SWOT analysis to decide on a marketing plan for the upcoming quarter. Decide on a clear objective and tangible outcomes, like: once we finish our SWOT analysis, we will decide which marketing channels to invest in, which products we will feature, and which customer segments we’re targeting. That doesn’t bring you to a full-blown marketing strategy, but it will get you the big picture and guidance on how to design the rest.

\n

Gather data and people.

\n

Before you SWOT, consider the information you need. Get what you can from good internal data and human resources. Identify subject matter experts who may have great insights, even if they won’t be a part of the endgame decision-making process. 

\n

Start brainstorming.

\n

Once you have your plan for your SWOT analysis, start brainstorming. It’s a good idea to start getting every idea out there at first, and worry about refining them later. 

\n

Focus on the biggest change-makers.

\n

After you’ve gotten a good list for each quadrant of your SWOT matrix, identify the things that are most important to your objective. For example, while Tik Tok has been a growing advertising channel for many businesses, it’s less proven for B2B marketing, so if you're developing a B2B marketing plan, you may omit it from your final analysis.

\n

Develop strategy that plays to strengths and mitigates weaknesses.

\n

Once you have your streamlined SWOT analysis, it’s time for your decision-makers to develop their strategy. While they may be unpleasant to consider, naming your weaknesses is a huge help in coming up with stronger strategies. Make sure you’re accounting for them in your final decision.

\n

After SWOT analysis, what next?

\n

Strategy time!

\n

There’s a couple of different ways to work with the information you’ve gathered. 

\n

Mitigate the negatives. Your internal weaknesses and external threats give you the most urgent courses of action. How can your strengths or opportunities mitigate them? Can you turn any weaknesses into opportunities? For example, if one threat is that there’s something you’re not doing that your competitors are, you also have an opportunity to start it.

\n

Harness the positives. How can your strengths be applied to cover your weaknesses? Do more of what you’re good at. Seize opportunities. How do your strengths match up with your opportunities? 

\n

In Strety, you can complete a SWOT analysis on the company, team, and even individual level for a personal SWOT analysis. The SWOT analysis sits alongside the other business vision tools we offer, so they intuitively help guide your strategy.

\n

By making your company SWOT analysis available to your team in Strety, you give your employees and stakeholders something to think about whenever they come up with a new strategy or need to make a big decision. You should always seek to overcome weaknesses and strengthen your position, and a company SWOT analysis helps you stay on top of it.

\n

You can get a SWOT analysis going right away with a free trial in Strety — and check out our other business operating system tools while you’re at it! For a product tour that will help you see how your business can be even more organized, book time with a Strety team member.

","rss_summary":"

When you have a big decision to make in your business, the last thing you want to do is wing it. A SWOT analysis is a simple but powerful tool to provide structure to your decision-making and help guide you in the right direction. 

\n","rss_body":"

When you have a big decision to make in your business, the last thing you want to do is wing it. A SWOT analysis is a simple but powerful tool to provide structure to your decision-making and help guide you in the right direction. 

\n

What is a SWOT analysis?

\n

What does SWOT stand for? Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. A SWOT analysis is a matrix-like tool that outlines each. Most times, a SWOT analysis is formatted in a table, like this:

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\n Strengths \n	\n Weaknesses \n
\n Opportunities \n	\n Threats \n

\n

SWOT matrix template

\n

The SWOT matrix is grouped into two sorts of factors: internal and external.

\n

Internal factors: Strengths and Weaknesses

\n

Your strengths and weaknesses are already there inside of your business. This is the place to be clear-eyed about what you have and what you lack. These can include: 

\n

\n
• Financial resources
\n
• Physical resources
\n
• Human resources
\n
• Other assets
\n
• Processes and programs
\n

\n

External factors: Opportunities and Threats

\n

External factors are what help you drive a decision forward, by identifying opportunities to seize and threats to avoid. External factors include:

\n

\n
• Market trends
\n
• Economic trends
\n
• Funding
\n
• Demographics
\n
• Relationships and network
\n
• Regulations
\n

\n

SWOT: Strengths

\n

Opportunities are favorable internal factors you should take advantage of, including: 

\n

\n
• Differentiators
\n
• What it excels at
\n
• Unique resources/assets
\n
• Good things others say about you
\n
• Unique selling proposition
\n
• Values that drive you
\n

\n

SWOT strength examples: customer-first culture, features your competitors don’t have, strong cash flow, innovations

\n

SWOT: Weaknesses

\n

Weaknesses are unfavorable internal factors  you should mitigate, including: 

\n

\n
• People, resources, systems, procedures that are lacking
\n
• Things competitors have that you don’t
\n
• What you could improve upon
\n
• Complaints from customers/stakeholders
\n

\n

SWOT weakness examples: limited cash flow, small team, reliance on old/obsolete technologies

\n

SWOT: Opportunities

\n

Opportunities in a SWOT analysis are favorable external factors you could take advantage of, including: 

\n

\n
• Trends that favor you
\n
• Changes in technology, social patterns, legislation
\n
• Underserved markets that could be a fit for your business
\n
• Emerging need
\n
• Media coverage around your area of expertise
\n

\n

SWOT opportunity examples: your industry trending, stronger economy for investments, a new generation of consumers connecting to your offering

\n

SWOT: Threats

\n

Opportunities are unfavorable external factors you should mitigate, including: 

\n

\n
• Where the competition comes outshines you
\n
• Where weaknesses leave you more exposed to shifting tides
\n
• Shifts in market requirements
\n
• Evolving technology
\n
• Changing customer attitudes toward your offer
\n

\n

SWOT threat examples: more well-funded competitors, downturn in market, upcoming regulation that negatively impacts operations

\n

Benefits of doing a SWOT analysis

\n

There’s a few reasons people love using the SWOT structure for decision-making analysis.

\n

First of all, it’s a flexible framework. You can apply a SWOT analysis to an initiative, a person, a team, a product, a strategy, or a company as a whole. You can even SWOT one of your competitors as part of a competitive analysis.

\n

A SWOT analysis also encourages you to take a step back to look at the bigger picture and be objective in your approach. Often we can get stuck in a rut when it comes to our strategic thinking — i.e. “we’ve been doing it this way for years” or “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” Performing a SWOT analysis invites you to rethink the external and external factors that should be weighing on your decision.

\n

Putting together a SWOT table also helps you notice connections and patterns between the different parts of your analysis subject. For example, you might not often think of your internal resources as they relate to social trends, and a SWOT analysis could expose interesting connections between the two.

\n

SWOT analyses are forward-looking, while remaining grounded in where you are today. By drawing connections across internal and external factors, as well as positives and negatives, you’re able to make better predictions about the outcomes of your decisions.

\n

When should you do a SWOT analysis?

\n

You might do a version of SWOT analysis with smaller decisions, but that’s likely impromptu and minimal; you don’t need to call a meeting to do a SWOT analysis on whether to stock Cool Ranch or Nacho Cheese Doritos in your snack room. (Obviously, the answer is Cool Ranch.)

\n

For the most part, you should save your SWOTs for the bigger things in your business, like

\n

\n
• Before you commit to strategic action
\n
• When you’re evaluating your competitive position
\n
• Guide strategic planning and goal-setting
\n

\n

How to do a SWOT analysis

\n

If you’ve decided something is worth a SWOT analysis, it’s worth taking the time to do it right! Just like in your business operating system, investing time in organization up front will help you get much better results down the line.

\n

Stay organized and accountable.

\n

Designate people to lead and record the SWOT analysis. This may be two separate people, or one person if the group is small and it’s manageable. Choose the decision makers who can condense the big picture of the SWOT analysis into a strategy and action plan.

\n

Determine your objective.

\n

It may sound fun, but don’t SWOT just to SWOT! Decide ahead of time what your objective is. It’s easier if you’re using a SWOT analysis to answer yes or no to moving forward with something, like if you’re deciding whether or not to hire someone. 

\n

Oftentimes, however, your objective will be more complicated. Imagine you’re using a SWOT analysis to decide on a marketing plan for the upcoming quarter. Decide on a clear objective and tangible outcomes, like: once we finish our SWOT analysis, we will decide which marketing channels to invest in, which products we will feature, and which customer segments we’re targeting. That doesn’t bring you to a full-blown marketing strategy, but it will get you the big picture and guidance on how to design the rest.

\n

Gather data and people.

\n

Before you SWOT, consider the information you need. Get what you can from good internal data and human resources. Identify subject matter experts who may have great insights, even if they won’t be a part of the endgame decision-making process. 

\n

Start brainstorming.

\n

Once you have your plan for your SWOT analysis, start brainstorming. It’s a good idea to start getting every idea out there at first, and worry about refining them later. 

\n

Focus on the biggest change-makers.

\n

After you’ve gotten a good list for each quadrant of your SWOT matrix, identify the things that are most important to your objective. For example, while Tik Tok has been a growing advertising channel for many businesses, it’s less proven for B2B marketing, so if you're developing a B2B marketing plan, you may omit it from your final analysis.

\n

Develop strategy that plays to strengths and mitigates weaknesses.

\n

Once you have your streamlined SWOT analysis, it’s time for your decision-makers to develop their strategy. While they may be unpleasant to consider, naming your weaknesses is a huge help in coming up with stronger strategies. Make sure you’re accounting for them in your final decision.

\n

After SWOT analysis, what next?

\n

Strategy time!

\n

There’s a couple of different ways to work with the information you’ve gathered. 

\n

Mitigate the negatives. Your internal weaknesses and external threats give you the most urgent courses of action. How can your strengths or opportunities mitigate them? Can you turn any weaknesses into opportunities? For example, if one threat is that there’s something you’re not doing that your competitors are, you also have an opportunity to start it.

\n

Harness the positives. How can your strengths be applied to cover your weaknesses? Do more of what you’re good at. Seize opportunities. How do your strengths match up with your opportunities? 

\n

In Strety, you can complete a SWOT analysis on the company, team, and even individual level for a personal SWOT analysis. The SWOT analysis sits alongside the other business vision tools we offer, so they intuitively help guide your strategy.

\n

By making your company SWOT analysis available to your team in Strety, you give your employees and stakeholders something to think about whenever they come up with a new strategy or need to make a big decision. You should always seek to overcome weaknesses and strengthen your position, and a company SWOT analysis helps you stay on top of it.

\n

You can get a SWOT analysis going right away with a free trial in Strety — and check out our other business operating system tools while you’re at it! For a product tour that will help you see how your business can be even more organized, book time with a Strety team member.

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{"public_access_rules":[],"public_access_rules_enabled":false,"html_title":"What Makes a Good Manager?","enable_google_amp_output_override":false,"generate_json_ld_enabled":true,"composition_id":0,"is_crawlable_by_bots":false,"use_featured_image":true,"post_summary":"

How would you define the term \"manager?\" According to Google’s manager definition, it’s \"a person responsible for controlling or administering all or part of a company or similar organization.\" That sounds easy enough, right? 🤔

\n","post_body":"

How would you define the term \"manager?\" According to Google’s manager definition, it’s \"a person responsible for controlling or administering all or part of a company or similar organization.\" That sounds easy enough, right? 🤔

\n\n

In practice, it’s not always so simple and straightforward. Being a manager can be an incredibly demanding job that requires a lot of time, effort, and responsibility—but it’s an important one. So, the more important question here isn’t “what does a manager do?” but “what makes a good manager?”

\n\n

What Makes a Good Manager? 

\n

Effective management is an essential component of any thriving business. A good manager can make all the difference in how happy and productive their team is, which contributes to the overall success of the business! 👏 So, it’s important that you have the management skills and traits necessary to help each member of your team achieve their greatest potential. Here are some characteristics of a successful manager.

\n\n

8 Traits of a Good Manager

\n

There are some characteristics of a good manager that you can add to your repertoire if you want to become a better leader.

\n

So, if you're wondering how to be a good manager, here are just a few key manager qualities and traits that are essential for success:

\n

1. Patience ⏱️

\n

Learning how to control your emotions and being able to take a step back before deciding how to react to a situation are key traits of a good manager. Instead of pointing fingers or getting worked up when a mistake occurs, a good manager will take the time to determine what went wrong, why it happened, what to do about it, and how to prevent the same issue from occurring again. This approach will make it easier to solve problems and fix errors quickly and efficiently—without flustering the rest of the team.

\n

2. Strong decision-making skills 📈

\n

One of the most important qualities of a good manager is the ability to pull information from multiple sources, make a strategic decision, and put a plan in place to actually carry it out. Any manager will have to make multiple decisions on a daily basis, and also have to make quick choices (often while under pressure) when unique circumstances or a problem arises.

\n

3. Approachability 👋

\n

Being welcoming, accessible, and easy to talk to is a big part of what makes a good manager. If your team members don’t feel comfortable going to you with questions, comments, or concerns (or can never actually get a hold of you to do so), it will negatively affect both the success and morale of the team. Every good manager should have an open door policy and actually take a genuine interest in what their team has to say.

\n

4. Emotional intelligence ❤️

\n

Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and manage one’s own emotions, as well as the emotions of others. Why is this important for managers? How a manager behaves and interacts with their team in challenging circumstances, both throughout the day and in high pressure situations, can have a significant impact on their team members. A good manager should be emotionally resilient and cognizant of how their mood and attitude affects others, be able to cope well with change, and remain calm under pressure.

\n

5. Trustworthiness 🤝

\n

Every team member needs to be able to trust their manager’s words and actions. So, it’s vital that you openly and honestly communicate with your team with a high level of transparency. However, this is a two-way street—effective managers also need to be able to trust their team and not micromanage everything.

\n

6. Accountability 🔐

\n

It’s important that you don’t just talk the talk as a manager, but actually walk the walk, too. Avoid making promises you can’t keep. You should actually follow through on what you say you’re going to do. If you don’t, your team members will become skeptical of everything you tell them—and this fear of being manipulated or misinformed will negatively affect both their job performance and engagement.

\n

7. Positivity 😄

\n

Your employees will look to you as a manager to set the tone and attitude for the entire team. Positivity can be contagious, and it’s up to leaders to set the example and maintain a positive atmosphere in the office to keep team morale high. This will help keep people happy, engaged, and highly productive.

\n

8. Motivational skills 🏃‍♂️

\n

Success will mean something different to different employees, but a good manager should know exactly what this means for each of their team members. For example, some employees find recognition motivating, while others don’t need praise but are instead fueled by incentives or perks (such as a bonus or extra time off). So, a major key to being a good manager is knowing what it takes to get each team member to succeed as an individual—while also supporting the success of the team and the business as a whole.

\n\n

Effective Development for Managers 

\n

Where can you find the best new managers to lead your business to future success? Instead of hiring someone externally, promoting a current employee to a management position can be a great idea and is often done in small to medium sized businesses. But they (you) may not have all the expertise to be an effective manager right away. That’s why managers should be continuous learners, always striving to become better leaders, improve their skills, and take the time to grow both personally and professionally! 

\n

If you want to improve as a manager, it’s important to understand where you currently stand and where you feel you need more support or training. How can you find this information out? Feedback from your team members is a good start. You could consider sending out a manager effectiveness survey where your team members can provide anonymous feedback to help you understand what you’re doing right now and where improvements can be made.

\n

You could also consider attending local management seminars, taking an online training course, talking to other managers you know in different companies and industries to get ideas or insight you may not have thought about, or leveraging resources such as podcasts, blogs, and books!

\n\n

Our Recent Favorite Books to Get You Going as a Manager…

\n

At Strety, we’ve learned what makes a great manager based on 15+ years of experience managing teams and people. But, we also learned from others who have shared their knowledge in blogs and books—so we wanted to pass along some recent book gems that really gave us great perspective on how to be a great manager. We think you’ll enjoy them as much as we did...

\n

The Making of a Manager

\n

Written by Julie Zhuo, The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You is a Wall Street Journal bestseller is designed to help leaders understand that great managers are made, not born—then give them the tools and insights to grow into a truly successful manager. Whether you're new to the job, have been a team leader for years, or looking to be promoted to a management role in the future, this is the handbook you need to be the kind of manager that makes a true impact!

\n

Nine Lies About Work

\n

Written by bestselling author Marcus Buckingham, Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World challenges the status quo about “work” that we encounter every day when we show up to our jobs. It teaches how freethinking leaders recognize the power and beauty of the individual uniqueness of each member of their team, and how this contributes to the overall success of the team as a whole.

\n

Measure What Matters

\n

Written by legendary venture capitalist John Doerr, Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs, uncovers how the goal-setting system of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) has helped tech giants from Intel to Google achieve exponential growth—and how you can apply this system in your own organization to reach new levels of success!

\n

How to be a Great Boss

\n

Written by Rene Boer and Gino Wickman, the creator of the Entrepreneurial Operating System, How to be a Great Boss is an awesome guide with practical tools that help people become better leaders and managers. If you're running EOS® as your business operating system, you won't want to miss this one!

\n\n

Become a Better Manager with Strety

\n

Even with all these tips, tools, and resources, it isn’t always clear what you need to do to become a better manager for your teams, but don't worry—you don’t have to figure it all out on your own anymore. 😍 

\n

Strety offers practical features that team leaders can actually use throughout the week to get their jobs done and become a better manager by making it possible to:

\n

\n
• Conduct more effective team and 1:1 meetings
\n
• Set and track employee goals 
\n
• Send and store team announcements for improved communication and team building
\n
• Ask recurring questions and set automated reminders for more streamlined project management 
\n
• And much more! 
\n

\n

If you want to give our awesome 1:1s and business operating tools a test drive, you can try Strety free for 30 days. For more information about how Strety could help your team, book some time with one of our experts!

","rss_summary":"

How would you define the term \"manager?\" According to Google’s manager definition, it’s \"a person responsible for controlling or administering all or part of a company or similar organization.\" That sounds easy enough, right? 🤔

\n","rss_body":"

How would you define the term \"manager?\" According to Google’s manager definition, it’s \"a person responsible for controlling or administering all or part of a company or similar organization.\" That sounds easy enough, right? 🤔

\n\n

In practice, it’s not always so simple and straightforward. Being a manager can be an incredibly demanding job that requires a lot of time, effort, and responsibility—but it’s an important one. So, the more important question here isn’t “what does a manager do?” but “what makes a good manager?”

\n\n

What Makes a Good Manager? 

\n

Effective management is an essential component of any thriving business. A good manager can make all the difference in how happy and productive their team is, which contributes to the overall success of the business! 👏 So, it’s important that you have the management skills and traits necessary to help each member of your team achieve their greatest potential. Here are some characteristics of a successful manager.

\n\n

8 Traits of a Good Manager

\n

There are some characteristics of a good manager that you can add to your repertoire if you want to become a better leader.

\n

So, if you're wondering how to be a good manager, here are just a few key manager qualities and traits that are essential for success:

\n

1. Patience ⏱️

\n

Learning how to control your emotions and being able to take a step back before deciding how to react to a situation are key traits of a good manager. Instead of pointing fingers or getting worked up when a mistake occurs, a good manager will take the time to determine what went wrong, why it happened, what to do about it, and how to prevent the same issue from occurring again. This approach will make it easier to solve problems and fix errors quickly and efficiently—without flustering the rest of the team.

\n

2. Strong decision-making skills 📈

\n

One of the most important qualities of a good manager is the ability to pull information from multiple sources, make a strategic decision, and put a plan in place to actually carry it out. Any manager will have to make multiple decisions on a daily basis, and also have to make quick choices (often while under pressure) when unique circumstances or a problem arises.

\n

3. Approachability 👋

\n

Being welcoming, accessible, and easy to talk to is a big part of what makes a good manager. If your team members don’t feel comfortable going to you with questions, comments, or concerns (or can never actually get a hold of you to do so), it will negatively affect both the success and morale of the team. Every good manager should have an open door policy and actually take a genuine interest in what their team has to say.

\n

4. Emotional intelligence ❤️

\n

Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and manage one’s own emotions, as well as the emotions of others. Why is this important for managers? How a manager behaves and interacts with their team in challenging circumstances, both throughout the day and in high pressure situations, can have a significant impact on their team members. A good manager should be emotionally resilient and cognizant of how their mood and attitude affects others, be able to cope well with change, and remain calm under pressure.

\n

5. Trustworthiness 🤝

\n

Every team member needs to be able to trust their manager’s words and actions. So, it’s vital that you openly and honestly communicate with your team with a high level of transparency. However, this is a two-way street—effective managers also need to be able to trust their team and not micromanage everything.

\n

6. Accountability 🔐

\n

It’s important that you don’t just talk the talk as a manager, but actually walk the walk, too. Avoid making promises you can’t keep. You should actually follow through on what you say you’re going to do. If you don’t, your team members will become skeptical of everything you tell them—and this fear of being manipulated or misinformed will negatively affect both their job performance and engagement.

\n

7. Positivity 😄

\n

Your employees will look to you as a manager to set the tone and attitude for the entire team. Positivity can be contagious, and it’s up to leaders to set the example and maintain a positive atmosphere in the office to keep team morale high. This will help keep people happy, engaged, and highly productive.

\n

8. Motivational skills 🏃‍♂️

\n

Success will mean something different to different employees, but a good manager should know exactly what this means for each of their team members. For example, some employees find recognition motivating, while others don’t need praise but are instead fueled by incentives or perks (such as a bonus or extra time off). So, a major key to being a good manager is knowing what it takes to get each team member to succeed as an individual—while also supporting the success of the team and the business as a whole.

\n\n

Effective Development for Managers 

\n

Where can you find the best new managers to lead your business to future success? Instead of hiring someone externally, promoting a current employee to a management position can be a great idea and is often done in small to medium sized businesses. But they (you) may not have all the expertise to be an effective manager right away. That’s why managers should be continuous learners, always striving to become better leaders, improve their skills, and take the time to grow both personally and professionally! 

\n

If you want to improve as a manager, it’s important to understand where you currently stand and where you feel you need more support or training. How can you find this information out? Feedback from your team members is a good start. You could consider sending out a manager effectiveness survey where your team members can provide anonymous feedback to help you understand what you’re doing right now and where improvements can be made.

\n

You could also consider attending local management seminars, taking an online training course, talking to other managers you know in different companies and industries to get ideas or insight you may not have thought about, or leveraging resources such as podcasts, blogs, and books!

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Our Recent Favorite Books to Get You Going as a Manager…

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At Strety, we’ve learned what makes a great manager based on 15+ years of experience managing teams and people. But, we also learned from others who have shared their knowledge in blogs and books—so we wanted to pass along some recent book gems that really gave us great perspective on how to be a great manager. We think you’ll enjoy them as much as we did...

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The Making of a Manager

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Written by Julie Zhuo, The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You is a Wall Street Journal bestseller is designed to help leaders understand that great managers are made, not born—then give them the tools and insights to grow into a truly successful manager. Whether you're new to the job, have been a team leader for years, or looking to be promoted to a management role in the future, this is the handbook you need to be the kind of manager that makes a true impact!

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Nine Lies About Work

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Written by bestselling author Marcus Buckingham, Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World challenges the status quo about “work” that we encounter every day when we show up to our jobs. It teaches how freethinking leaders recognize the power and beauty of the individual uniqueness of each member of their team, and how this contributes to the overall success of the team as a whole.

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Measure What Matters

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Written by legendary venture capitalist John Doerr, Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs, uncovers how the goal-setting system of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) has helped tech giants from Intel to Google achieve exponential growth—and how you can apply this system in your own organization to reach new levels of success!

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How to be a Great Boss

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Written by Rene Boer and Gino Wickman, the creator of the Entrepreneurial Operating System, How to be a Great Boss is an awesome guide with practical tools that help people become better leaders and managers. If you're running EOS® as your business operating system, you won't want to miss this one!

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Become a Better Manager with Strety

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Even with all these tips, tools, and resources, it isn’t always clear what you need to do to become a better manager for your teams, but don't worry—you don’t have to figure it all out on your own anymore. 😍 

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Strety offers practical features that team leaders can actually use throughout the week to get their jobs done and become a better manager by making it possible to:

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• Conduct more effective team and 1:1 meetings
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• Set and track employee goals 
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• Send and store team announcements for improved communication and team building
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• Ask recurring questions and set automated reminders for more streamlined project management 
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• And much more! 
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If you want to give our awesome 1:1s and business operating tools a test drive, you can try Strety free for 30 days. For more information about how Strety could help your team, book some time with one of our experts!

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