by Steve Livingston on June 10, 2010
Successful businesses used to protect their No.1 position by keeping their guard up at all times. Investing huge sums in protecting their winning ideas, strategies and practises. Keeping their key employees under lock and key (with lips sealed). In a nutshell, doing everything possible to keep their secret sauce bottled and firmly corked.
However, there is a new breed of business emerging that does the complete opposite – and they are reaping the rewards as a result.
Think about businesses like Zappos , Southwest Airlines, Innocent Drinks, Starbucks. What is it that they all have in common (aside from becoming hugely successful businesses over the past decade)?
It is that they are not afraid to share their secret sauce – in fact they’ve turned sharing their secret sauce with the world into a game-changing competitive advantage. Whilst their laggard competitors invest huge sums in a vain attempt to defend their fleeting advantage, these new businesses are open and transparent in providing access to their culture, working practises, what makes them tick and even show-casing their key employees’ thoughts and strategies.
Identifying and then sharing your business’s secret sauce with your customers, your competitors and the world might seem counter-intuitive to most business owners, yet time and again in recent years, it proves to be that elusive missing ingredient that can be attributed to the success of that new kid on the block.
Isn’t it time for you to find and start sharing your firm’s secret sauce with the world?
[Post script: if you've yet to find your secret sauce, there's never been a better time to start experimenting with some new recipes and ingredients]
by Steve Livingston on May 27, 2010
Most companies pay bonuses to reward high performing employees – I recently had the pleasure of discussing more interesting ways of engaging employees with a fast growth tech company client.
Beforehand, we’d discussed the tricky financial difficulties that may lie in-store for the majority of folk over the next 5 years given our perilous financial deficit in the UK. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the company has spare cash earning disappointing rates of interest on deposit. Given the potential economic uncertainty ahead, the management team was keen that any employees laden with existing expensive personal debt could clear it as soon as possible given the stress that this can cause. So they wanted to discuss ways of helping employees reduce any personal debt e.g. credit card, store cards etc with available spare cash available in the company.
We discussed the possibility of setting up a company hardship fund especially for company employees to crack this problem. The thinking is that the company would lend money to employees who apply for financial assistance and pay a relatively low interest rate (compared to the rate suffered on credit cards yet more than the company can receive on deposit). The loan could be repaid either by repayment or by salary sacrifice. We are currently working with the management team to consider ways of helping the company achieve this without triggering any unexpected tax charges e.g. for the salary sacrifice option.
How refreshing to see a company that puts its employees’ welfare on a pedestal like this – there are others that have shown that this works to build successful profitable businesses.
