The Lakeview Blog

Many employers believe that delivering a paycheque is all they have to do to ensure that their employees are doing all the things the employer has hired them to do. But is it? There's a big difference between those employees who show up to work, sleepwalk through their shifts and leave the second the clock tells them it's time to go home, and those who are enthusiastic about their work, deliver great customer service and think about improvements or innovations to your business. Studies over decades have shown that engaged employees -- those who give the extra 10 per cent, who are committed to their workplace -- deliver better results, take fewer sick days and stay with companies longer. Don't believe me? Here are 32 studies that show just that. Communication is an important piece of employee engagement. HR Review cites it as being a top-five contributor to employee engagement. Great communication reduces the need for the rumour mill and the negative envi...

As the new year gets underway, it's an opportunity to have a look at how your brand is showing itself to the world and whether you may have let things slide just a little. 1. Social media: Are your accounts active? If not, should you scale back, perhaps cutting a platform or two, or should you be planning and scheduling your content? Are you following good social media practices such as sharing and commenting on others' posts? 2. Blog: If you have a blog, when was the last time you posted new content? Sharing your knowledge can be valuable to your clients as well as provide you with original content for your other platforms. Focus information on what you offer and create a publication schedule for the first quarter. Block off  time to in your calendar. 3. Customer service: Are your employees trained in great customer service? Are they engaged with company goals? Both of these things need attention if you've hired new staff, heard complaints or seen interactions t...

Watching a presentation the other day (and hoping my loss of consciousness didn't show on my face) I was reminded of the need for people to know what makes a great presentation. It all starts with a great slide. Why do we use slides? Basically, because we humans have poor memories and even worse concentration. Slides are to used to engage another sense (vision) in addition to hearing to increase the audience's attention and retention. Although there are a lot of different numbers out there, experts seem to agree that you will remember a very small percentage of what you hear (about 10 per cent), about 20 per cent of what you read and about 80 per cent of what you see. That's why a visually arresting slide makes you and your presentation much more effective. How to create a great slide Unless someone gives you a set amount of slides (a completely inane practice), don't worry about the number of slides in your deck. The number of slides has absolutely ...

This is our third post as part of our strategy series. You can find the first, Strategy vs Tactics here and the second on Audiences here . ------------------------------------------------------------------- Lewis Carroll said, "if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there." Where "there" is would be anyone's guess. This might be fun, if you're up for an adventure, but if you're trying to run a successful business or organization, it's a recipe for chasing down a lot of dead ends - or running off the road entirely. That's why knowing what you want to achieve is so important. A goal is a long-term proposition. It's a step in achieving your vision - that aspirational dream of success. Examples of vision are: Microsoft: A computer on every desk and in every home.  Wikipedia: A world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. Oxfam: A world without poverty....

In the last blog post , I talked about "audience" as being one of the critical factors in figuring out your business/organizational strategy. Understanding your audience is so important that it's worth spending time on the difference between primary and secondary (or tertiary, etc.) audiences.  To begin, can we agree to get rid of the term "general public?" It's a lazy short form that we often use when we think we want market to everyone , hoping that it will resonate with someone . The problem with this approach is that when we think of the general public, we're really thinking about a faceless blur of people. What we're really saying is that we don't know our produce or service well enough to know who can benefit from it. We're really saying that we haven't done our homework. Let's consider an example, pretending for a moment that we run a daycare service and have space for a few more children. (A silly example. Who's e...

From: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/strategy How often have you walked into a meeting to discuss strategy only to find your team debating the value of brochures over radio ads or pop-up displays and website content? The team whips together products that they believe will achieve their (usually unarticulated) goals only to deplete the budget without getting results. "Is this really what strategy is all about?" you might well ask. We're going to spend a few weeks talking about strategy in a way that we hope will help you get really comfortable staying away from tactics and helping your team members grasp big-picture thinking. Let's start with defining what strategy is -- and what it isn't. First, from the Oxford Dictionary, strategy is a plan to achieve a long-term goal. It is not the detail, which would be set out later in an operational plan. It is high-level. It is the "how" or approach you'll take to achieve that goal...