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Can You Improve Your Marketing Without Hiring An Expert?

Strategy Driven

Use Focus Groups. One of the first things you can do to improve your marketing is run focus groups to find out what your customers want. Focus groups can be conducted in age ranges so you get a better understanding of what each group wants.

Marketing 104
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The Things That’ll Encourage Your Customers to Choose Your Products

Strategy Driven

Instead, focus on providing reasons why your products provide the solutions to the problems that your target customers might have. And that all starts with feedback from customers and relevant focus groups.

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Designing A Product That Doesn’t Suck

Strategy Driven

Ask your team, a focus group , and even ask people online via a social media poll. Innovation business management Focus Group Product Design strategydrivenProduct design as a small business owner has to be one of the most exciting parts of the entrepreneurial process.

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How to Turbo-Charge Your Leadership with Informal Feedback

The Practical Leader

These include external coaches, reverse performance appraisals, facilitated focus groups, meeting reflections, project reviews, external assessments, informal networking, and so on. The post How to Turbo-Charge Your Leadership with Informal Feedback appeared first on The Clemmer Group.

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Your Process SUCKS! I am NOT a jerk & tell me the behaviors you want.

Mike Cardus

Tuesday, November 02nd, 2010 Posted by: mike Met some friends for a focus group at a local coffee place. My friends and I sat in the coffee shop for over an hour and a half, I saw; 5 people bring their dishes to the bus tub 8 groups just leave their dishes on the tables where they were sitting and 15 people leave their dishes on the COUNTER!

Process 149
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How Communication Strategies Can Really Engage Employees

First Friday Book Synopsis

determine significance of achieving the business objectives Employee engagement is a shared understanding of the issues that affect the business Focus group research How Communication Strategies Can Really Engage Employees identify the largest gap between what customers think and what employees think customers think Marcia Xenitelis measure the impact of the change in thinking MedfiaTec Talent Management magazine Chief Learning Officer magazine

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Top 11 Attributes of Leaders Who Excel at Communication and How We Define Them

leaderCommunicator

Through our quantitative research of more than 750,000 leaders and employees inside some of the world’s leading organizations, and in the many focus groups we conduct every year, we’ve identified 11 attributes that matter most. We’re often asked what qualities the most effective leaders have when it comes to communicating effectively.

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A Simple Employee Collaboration Tip You'll Flip Over

leaderCommunicator

It’s an informal focus group of sorts, where employees will periodically revisit the question and ideas, leading to great collaboration in real time (and without meeting!). Have something you want to get your employees’ input on? Post a question on a flip chart in your department or office, provide Post-its, and watch the ideas grow.

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Meet people where they are

Lead Change Blog

Over the last few months, the organization has done its due diligence—conducting focus groups and surveys; studying program participation; reviewing revenue, expenses, and donor history; checking out its competitors and assessing its differentiators; doing [.] Connect with Jane on her LeadBIG blog , Braithwaite Innovation Group or @thehrgoddess on Twitter.

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New eBook: 12 Tips for Employers to Navigate the Future World of Work

leaderCommunicator

Even in just two months, our team at The Grossman Group has learned a lot by listening to leaders and employers, surveying employees and conducting focus groups to really understand how various audiences are thinking about the workplace going forward.

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Change Management 101: Communication Skills That Help People Change

leaderCommunicator

I was moderating an employee focus group about change , and during the discussion an educator in the group shared this Buddhist quote: “When the student is ready the teacher will appear.”. It was a moment of brilliance. I could see the concept resonated with everyone. It was almost as if I was privy to a collective “ah-ha” moment.

Skills 141
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A Manager’s Guide to Better Decision Making

Let's Grow Leaders

can take many forms, but it’s always about your group’s goal, destination, or outcome. What competencies should we focus on? And then, someone else starts talking about the need for focus groups. A group makes the decision through a vote.

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How Leaders Make Business Metrics Meaningful

Let's Grow Leaders

In contrast, managers who haven’t learned this secret focus on the numbers and frantically swivel their team’s focus back and forth between twenty-seven different measurements – most of which don’t directly affect results. Sarah’s focus on the number ramped up pressure and stress.

Metrics 266
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5 Signs Diaper Drama Is Destroying Your Culture

Let's Grow Leaders

Encourage your team to focus on substance over form at least in their readouts to you. I’ve worked with companies where the employees tell me the unspoken rule… “Never ever bring up the the truth in a focus group.” ” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard about employees being coached (and in some cases even “bribed” with extra treats to paint a rosy picture on an employee survey or in a focus group.)

How To 395
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Three Simple Secrets to Running a Remarkable Meeting

Let's Grow Leaders

I’ve heard these words so frequently, in focus groups, in one-on-ones, and even behind closed doors with seasoned managers. “This is so stupid–they asked for my opinion and then ignored it. I don’t know why I even bother! From now on, I’m going to just shut my mouth and do my work.” ” “Arghhh. We keep rehashing the same conversations. Why can’t we make a simple @#%*&% decision?”

Consensus 412
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Defeating Work-From-Home Burnout and Zoom Fatigue

Lead Change Blog

Run surveys and do focus groups and one-on-one interviews to get quantitative and qualitative data on the virtual work issues in your organization. As we transition from the pandemic into post-pandemic life, many companies have adapted hybrid models, with many workers coming in part-time only, while others remain fully remote. When the COVID pandemic swept through the country last year, companies rapidly transitioned employees to working from home.

Bond 356
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7 Strategic Questions Your Team Should Be Able to Answer

Let's Grow Leaders

I just wish they would focus on the day-to-day work.” I ask this question every time I go into a focus group. I’ve never met an executive who said, “my team’s just too strategic. ” Nope in fact it’s quite the opposite concern. “How do I get my team to think more strategically?”

Team 476
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How well do you maintain long-term professional relationships with those in your network?

thoughtLEADERS, LLC

Our reader poll today asks: How well do you maintain long-term professional relationships with those in your network?

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Reality Check: Are Your Values Hot Air and Gas?

The Practical Leader

Run focus groups using a cross-section of people in your organization. Periodically, do group assessments of your meeting effectiveness. Get an assessment from external consultants based on some combination of surveys, reviews, focus groups, and customer feedback.

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3 Ways to Avoid the Slippery Slope of Inconsistency

Let's Grow Leaders

In every company I work with I hear a consistent theme in focus groups: “I wish our managers had tougher and more consistent standards. Kendra is late because she was at the hospital with her sick child and barely got home to take a shower… got it. Every now and then managers must make exceptions, no doubt. But now, John is late too, and you feel bad saying something to him, since you just let Kendra off the hook.

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3 Consequences of Promoting the Smart, Successful Jerk (with video)

Let's Grow Leaders

I’ve been in enough focus groups across enough companies to tell you–when you promote the jerk, people assume it’s the jerk behavior that sealed the deal. Oh he’s good. Very good. He gets sh__ done. It’s hard to argue with the results. So what if he’s ruffling a few feathers… with his team, with his peers, with HR, with IT? The better he does, the better you look.

Video 322
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RESISTANCE TO CHANGE RECONSIDERED

Lead Change Blog

When effective change management is not implemented early and consistently throughout a major change, whether focused on new technology, business models, regulations, merger, and acquisitions, or other drivers, without thoughtful attention to the people side of change, resistance inevitably will grow and harden, leading to unnecessary confusion, delays in adoption and lost productivity. Change is a permanent feature of organizations; resistance is an expected part of the journey.

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“People Matter,” and that’s what matters! – (insight from Mike Muhney, VIPorbit)

First Friday Book Synopsis

Mike Muhney, CEO, VIPorbit But in the end, for something this complicated, it’s really hard to design products by focus groups. I’m going to start a company so I can have what I need. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them. Steve Jobs ———————– Look, it’s… Read More “People Matter,” and that’s what matters! – (insight from Mike Muhney, VIPorbit).

Books 79
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Leadership Team Dynamics: Culture Change Begins Here

The Practical Leader

We did a series of focus groups, interviews, and surveys within a division of a large company to help Chris, the division manager, determine why their culture wasn’t performing at the level he wanted.

Team 98
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How to Get Employees to Care About Your Company

Let's Grow Leaders

Nothing is more disconcerting that watching employees share relentless feedback in focus groups and having execs finally pay attention when the consultant comes in and says the same thing. Great commercials, strong PR, a brilliant social media strategy all warrant effort when building your company’s reputation. But there’s no better PR than an army of loyal employees living and breathing your brand.

Company 492
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Bit by Innocent Bit, Are You Becoming a Sincere Hypocrite?

The Practical Leader

Run focus groups using a cross-section of people in your organization. Periodically do group assessments of your meeting effectiveness. Get an assessment from external consultants based on some combination of surveys, reviews, focus groups, and customer feedback.

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Are You Ready for Recovery?

Leading Blog

This same approach can enable a group to be assembled to look at preparedness for the post-crisis recovery. Thus, the transpersonal leader can set the ‘future-focusedgroup up with the autonomy to use their fully conscious decision-making processes to create a myriad of ‘what if’ options.

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Executive Managerial Leadership Coaching: Case Study

Mike Cardus

Creating a renewed focus for each person to be working for shared values and commitment to the organization, teams, the community, stake holders, and each other. Within these coaching times focused development, feedback and field work assignments were discussed and explored to develop the defined objectives. Executive Coaching and peer coaching groups were established to highlight and sharpen existing great behaviors and actions.

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Why Employee Engagement Is About More Than Just Metrics

HR Digest

Focus Groups. Focus groups that are composed of employees across all levels and departments of your organization can be used to dive deeper into feedback you’ve collected from employee engagement surveys.

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The Three Pillars Of Executive Presence

Eric Jacobson

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Useful Brand Communication Strategy Tips

Strategy Driven

Segment your market into distinct groups that share attributes. When a market is segmented during the research phase, it is far easier to work out which groups to prioritize with a Public Relations campaign. Good brand communication strategy is key to the success of a modern business.

Brand 104
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Daring To Serve

Lead Change Blog

It occurred to me that our Leading Voices , Instigators , and Lead Change Group Members have touched on these principles in many of their writings. The original focus group of leaders who she asked about what needed to change all answered that they wanted to be leaders different from them. Those first meetings led to a focus from Cheryl on leadership characterized by bravery and humility. Cheryl emphasizes that our results focus is not once a year, it is every day.

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The Three Pillars Of Executive Presence

Eric Jacobson

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An Army of One

General Leadership

All are intentionally designed to reinforce that every individual is simply one part of a larger group at work. The result of numerous focus groups and interviews with soldiers, it is designed to convey the idea that joining the Army will help someone gain not only physical and emotional strength, but strength of character and purpose as well.

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What Causes Promotions to Fail?

Lead Change Blog

After conducting focus group discussions and assessments of current supervisors, we were able to identify eight core skills needed for the supervisory role compared to their former roles, along with some relevant knowledge. It is unfortunately common for employees in organizations to climb up the ladder to their “level of incompetence,” a concept in management known as the Peter Principle.

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Customer Experience: The New Battlefield for Business

Joseph Lalonde

In a world where customers can easily take their business elsewhere, it’s more important than ever to focus on providing excellent customer experiences. That’s why it’s so important to focus on providing excellent customer experiences.

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Closed Loop - How to make a Quality Product

CEO Blog

4 - Customer feedback and focus groups. I am coaching a newer company on how to produce high quality products. I figured it was easier to write this blog entry where it might have use to other people than just send it in an email to them. One lesson I learned years ago by going through ISO9000 certification is closed loop. Every failure needs to be analyzed and the root cause solved. Simply fixing the problem for one customer is not enough.

Quality 100
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What Should You Do If Your Business Is Spinning Its Wheels?

Strategy Driven

In this post, we’ll try to help you avoid catastrophising and instead focus on the hard facts, using them to boost your approach and get your engines fuelled again. Focus groups, online surveys, and reading reviews can make a big difference.

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Powerful Leaders Go Beyond Empowerment to Empartnerment

The Practical Leader

The consulting firm usually interviews people, runs focus groups, and gathers input from a variety of sources. The post Powerful Leaders Go Beyond Empowerment to Empartnerment appeared first on The Clemmer Group.

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How To Ask Remarkably Better Questions To Encourage Great Ideas

Great Leadership By Dan

You ask in ways that draw out people’s best thinking, new ideas, and customer-focused solutions. Three qualities distinguish how leaders ask questions in a Courageous Culture: they are intentional, vulnerable, and action-focused.

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Knowledge Is Power. Data Isn’t.

In the CEO Afterlife

At Apple, Steve Jobs never wanted research from focus groups or quantitative usage and attitude studies. How many times have you heard that “knowledge is power?” I’m guessing that without much thought, you readily nod your head in agreement. In every vocation, from academics to business to politics, the knowledge theorem and its power corollary is seemingly undeniable. . Knowledge Theorem: Information + Knowledge = Better Decision-Making. .

Power 201
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On The Leading Edge to Cut Wasteful Employee Engagement Efforts

The Practical Leader

During a focus group with frontline team members to assess their current culture, participants weren’t participating. The post On The Leading Edge to Cut Wasteful Employee Engagement Efforts appeared first on The Clemmer Group.

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To Keep You Growing: How to Avoid Being Stuck in the Muck

The Practical Leader

You can get Informal feedback through external coaches, reverse performance appraisals, facilitated focus groups, meeting reflections, project reviews, anonymous online surveys, external assessments, informal networking, moose hunting , and so on.