Month: January 2018

Why are companies buying Internet of Things (IoT) solutions and how is it impacting them?

To begin to answer let’s think about 2 other questions:
1. Why do businesses buy anything?
2. Why do businesses exist?
In reverse order; the main reason that businesses exist is to generate profit, and the main reason businesses buy things is to help to generate that profit by increasing revenue, decreasing costs or both.
Companies are buying IoT solutions for the same reasons.
Now to the following questions:
How do businesses increase revenue?
1. Increase the number of customers.
2. Increase the average transaction value.
3. Increase the frequency of transactions per customer.
4. Increase the prices.
How do business decrease cost?
1. Reduce the fix cost
2. Reduce the variable cost
There is also an emotional factor which seems less important when making business decisions but it still exists. For example, it is much easier to sell to a business if you are liked and trusted by the decision maker.
Based on the Gartner research the primary value generated from IoT activities is covering both areas:
• Increasing revenue and customer satisfaction – 45% of responses
• Decreasing costs and optimising assets – 47% of responses

IoT value Gartner

The graph above shows clearly that IoT solutions are delivering according to expectations and are addressing the two basic reasons that businesses buy.
However, there is one more interesting aspect of an IoT solution implementation: its impact on company’s enterprise business applications (ERP, manufacturing execution system, CRM and asset management).
It is well documented that the implementation of an IoT solution will impact how the company operates, but in my opinion, the impact is much greater than had been anticipated.
The IoT is becoming the driving factor in optimising business processes and maximising business

How to speed up People Development

Following the previous topic about performance, I would like to dive deeper into the subject of People Development; leadership in building effective organisation is one of my favourite areas.
I will explain how to get your employees from “unconscious incompetence” through “conscious incompetence” on to “conscious competence” and finally to “unconscious competence” and, importantly, keep them there.
The process is called Situational Leadership and has been developed by Kenneth Blanchard and Paul Hersey.
The concept is simple.
There are 4 development stages:
1. Low competence and low commitment
2. Low competence and high commitment
3. High competence and low/variable commitment
4. High competence and high commitment
Development stages are described based on the level of competency and commitment. Competency is moving from low to high, in line with intuition. However, the level of commitment is moving from high through low and back to high.
An employee could be at any one of these stages for a given task. As managers we need to recognise, not only at which stage the employee is currently sitting, but also how to apply the right leadership style to improve their performance; importantly we need to be able to adjust our management style to suit each unique circumstance.
The leadership stages are as follows:
1. Directing – the manager defines the role and communicates the what, how, why, when and where to do the task
2. Coaching – the manager is still providing direction and providing the socio-emotional support that employee needs to move through the low commitment
3. Supporting – shared decision-making how to accomplish the task; the manager is there to answer question when needed and motivate
4. Delegating – the manager’s involvement in decisions is decreasing, staying only to monitor the progress; the process and responsibility have been passed to the individual.

Situational Leadership

 

Using the theory from my previous post about flow and this Situational Leadership one you have a good recipe to help your employees to reach high competence and operate in flow state achieving excellent results and satisfaction.