Business Game Time

In my last post, I celebrated the first anniversary of this blog and started to link to all 103 blog entries from the first year, based on the main business related message or topic of the post.

I will continue to do so today, and as always, any part of this post in blue color is a clickable link – so feel free to use them.

While in the first part I compiled all posts related to soccer, baseball or basketball, this time you’ll get the rest:

Management and Entrepreneurship

It all started one year ago with a post on entrepreneurship – which I thought would be the right topic to start something new off. I revisited it when coming up with three lessons for startups.

Things got pretty strategic in the post about Hidden Champions – companies in niche markets that are successful globally, before I got back to our day-to-day work – regular meetings, jour fixes and monthly reports – and how to make them unique and fresh.

Human Resources and Leadership

Let me tell an inside story: Most of the posts in here were written in the very late evening. Pretty obvious: I’m one of the evening people. Maybe you’re not. People are diverse.

It took companies quite a while until they started to appreciate the value they get from diversity and to have the openness to accept people the way they are and only look at their performance. Ultimately, companies also need the crazy people. On top of that they have to understand that top performers are looking for trust, a sense of purpose and an environment with a lot of freedom instead of defined targets.

It doesn’t make things a lot easier that the war for talent is heating up. The market has turned, today employees chose their employer, it’s not the other way around anymore. In some cases they even select multiple of them, it’s the end of exclusivity.

What choice do companies have? They can extend the range, focus more on experienced colleagues and create an atmosphere that makes it fun for them to work there. Also, they can commit to hiring and developing young talent. And once they’re in, the right training programs are required: based on needs, not tool focused.

Marketing

Marketing starts with you. Personal branding is a topic on the rise, but only very few take it seriously yet. There and anywhere else in marketing it is all about creating a connection. About making your selling proposition stick. With the rise of social networks this is more important than ever, so you better bring in the right people to have success in social media channels.

While the internet has become an important distribution channel for goods and ideas (“placement”), I also touched the other three of the “four P’s” of the marketing mix: On pricing side, I looked the social value of entertainment. Regarding products, making a product rare or even creating a shortage on purpose were considered. I looked at the promotion “P” when coming up with five rules for successful sponsorship and defining what a good bonus is.

And when speaking about marketing, looking at the competition can’t be missed. I did it from an unusual perspective when explaining why it can be good to have strong competitors.

Personal Behavior and Attitude

A couple of the posts in this area built on the notion of how important it will be in the future to have the ability to accept differences – for individuals and for companies. In turn this means that in order to make an impact, don’t be afraid to offer your own opinion. But keep in mind that provoking just for the sake of being provocative is pointless, it’s not about looking good but about taking care of problems.

In order to get there, supporting your own ideas is good, but supporting others is, too. Openness is key and any kind of discrimination is bad.

I also spent some words on peak performance: It’s not only about focus, but also about being smart. Just take behavior in assessment centers as an example.

It all starts with oneself. And don’t be afraid of imperfection, it doesn’t matter as long as you don’t look for a scapegoat every time things go wrong. Don’t be afraid. Work just isn’t worth it.

Creativity and Innovation

Not too long ago, someone asked me what my favorite book on innovation would be. I answered: “The Innovator’s Dilemma“, as the idea that sometimes it pays not to go for faster, higher, further but for the smarter product instead is one of the most helpful ever. Maybe if more people would have read and understood it, it wouldn’t be so hard to innovate – especially in successful companies.

That’s frightening, because I truly believe that if we don’t start to design and create instead of to just function we will become obsolete. To support this, I also wrote about creativity techniques and how to combine stuff that has never been combined.

Just like this blog does and will continue to do. So thank you for reading, interacting and supporting.

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One final note:

I received the feedback from many of you that they wouldn’t manage to keep up with all the posts, and my website stats prove the point. That’s a pity!

I thought about it and found two possible ways to tackle the problem: One is to cut down the length of the posts, the other is to reduce the number of posts.

I feel like shortening the posts would in many cases reduce the opportunity to analyze a topic or an analogy in sufficient depth, so I decided to give option two a try. Therefore, from next week on there will be only one post per week, probably on Mondays. After all, how can I write about “making a product rare or even creating a shortage on purpose” (see above) and not even give it a try?

If you don’t like the idea, please let me know about your complaints and views in the comments section of this post.

I’m looking forward to an interesting, great second year of businessgametime.com with you.

Filed under: misc by Johannes Musseleck
on December 2, 2010 at 8:00 am CET
Tagged with: anniversary • business game time • part 2 • recap