The following is an excerpt from the Testimonial received from ErgonomicsDirect (Pty) Ltd: “… The dedication and commitment demonstrated by OptiGrowth consultants have consistently exceeded our expectations. Their approachable yet informative manner has steered our company towards greater autonomy and efficiency. Their professionalism, efficiency, and transparent communication have been instrumental in our journey towards becoming a more streamlined and scalable enterprise…”

See the details of the full Testimonial here: ErgonomicsDirect Acknowledgement of OptiGrowth

Ergonomicsdirect offers a comprehensive range of specialist ergonomic equipment for office and home working environments and is constantly seeking creative ways to change the way that people look at office ergonomics. It sources its ergonomic products from several recognised and leading global suppliers. When it comes to their products, they:

1. Strive to offer an extensive range of products and brands to offer solutions that fit both your workspace requirements as well as your budget.
2. Only stock products that have passed critical analysis by their experts and met their strict product quality standards.
3. Also, offer Ergonomic Office Workstation Assessments as well as talk and information sessions on Ergonomics.

Discover more about this great company here:  https://ergonomicsdirect.co.za

The technological trend, Internet of Things (IoT), is finally making a move on the industrial sector, promising a fourth industrial revolution with the collective force behind many products and services that are fast becoming indispensable to modern life.

But what does the creation of next-level intelligence mean for us today and in the near future ?

The number of connected devices is growing, and businesses are collecting more data. Artificial intelligence (AI) integrated with the Internet of Things (IoT) gives organisations a leg-up by resolving their data issues. By providing data value solutions, AIoT helps organisations become more competitive, nimble, and productive. AIoT is now being used by enterprises to improve their operations and competitive advantages.

Simply put, artificial intelligence refers to the ability of machines to learn and make decisions based on data and analytics. . . and you probably interact with artificial intelligence (AI) on a daily basis and don’t even realise it !

The latest hype around ChatGPT, Microsoft’s massive investment of $10Billion to this product from Open AI, but also the recent effort by Google to fight back, are signs that we have now entered an era that will transform our modern lives.

At OptiGrowth we keep an eye on the fast moving, big guns of business and their strategies (and solutions) to outplay each other and to be the next best thing. With some success, we have used ChatGPT, Bard + some other ChahBots and Bing vs Google, in our customer and industry engagements.

The road forward is surely exciting, but will require from business owners & executive decision-makers to get out of their comfort zones – if they want to remain competitive in the future market-place.

Where are you positioned and to what extent will you absorb what works for you in this fast-growing revolution ?

Reach and connect with our team at OptiGrowth and see how we can take on your business ambitions with you and see you to success!

The first way to consider is that you can’t service or sell your product to everyone. It’s just not good business and takes away focus from creating a service/product focused on market that truly values your business.

Consider this, never undercharge for what you do. Not only is it not financially sustainable, but also drives down the value (in this sense is defined as value perceived by your market) of what you are delivering.

When it comes to running a feasible business, your asking price is one of the drivers driving your profitability. To be profitable you need to consider both the costs of making the sale and the costs delivering your offering. Be that rent, license fees, salaries, and marketing as examples. Many business owners try and under charge with the intention of generating more sales by appealing to a broader market. What this tends to do in drive down the perception of value/ quality and instead push away the market you’re targeting. By trying to please a broader market you risk not focusing on you target market and therefore not reaching them.

The second way of this hard learnt lesson is to consider the people you employ. Many business owners fall into the trapped of hiring friends, family, or people in need to help them at a particular moment in their lives. While commendable, this could be detrimental to your business – read more about our hard learnt lesson on loyalty – especially when clear roles and KPIs are not defined to drive performance and delivery of expected functions within your business. This again could lead to your business becoming unsustainable and not shifting your or your teams focus on growth and progress to correctly and guiding employees unfit for a particular position.

Consider this, if you don’t trust your people at some point, your business is going to struggle. As important as it is to be as involved in the beginning of launching a small business and building your processes and value propositions, once things are up and running it’ll be important to take a step back, especially when it comes to the more menial stuff. If the people appointed to delivery on these are performing and therefore can’t be trusted, you’ll be needed to jump back in and take control of this. The result, you’ll get stuck fixing rather than building and growing.

As a final thought, many lessons are best learnt through experience and sometime multiple occurrences. That doesn’t always have to be case. From our experience, we found many business owners don’t ask for help and rather muscle and power through obstacles. This can result in years of minimal growth, frustration and ultimately the feeling of being stuck in your business.

Why not let an objective Business Confidant help you avoid or find your way through the complexities business will certainly bring about? Why not give yourself the best chance of scaling and finding Freedom in your business?

Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can do this on your own.

Reach and connect with our team at OptiGrowth and see how we can take on your business ambitions with you and see you too success

For most of us, we will have our business financial year starting 01 March 2021 and ending 28 February 2022. Therefore, this should be a time to plan, assess, and reflect on our previous year and build our strategies for the next year. 

Not an easy thought or task when we, as business owners, have very little confidence or insight into how 2021/2022 will pan out. This, considering global and local economies are battling to recover from the 1st, 2nd and potentially even a 3rd wave of COVID-19 infections. 

So what do we do and how do we look forward during times of uncertainty? 

As the leaders in our businesses, it falls on us to guide our businesses, set targets and motivate our teams to achieve them. While we all want to see growth and improvement in this new calendar year, we may need to be a little realistic. Look at the stats –  43% of businesses deregistered from CIPC last year – the number of South Africans earning R 22’500.00 per month and more has decreased from ± 4’500’000 to ±2’500’000.  These are just indications of how tough 2020 has been and that, for 2021, we still have a mountain to climb this year. 

Therefor, your targets could be:

• sustain current revenue streams;
• increase current customer lifetime values (the average total spend of each customer);
• review and structure your current business model to adapt to current and predicted working environments;
• target cost-cutting mechanisms to work towards greater profitability and longevity;
• have a more controlling hand on cashflow.

For each of these, its essential put down a clear and measurable metric (a measurable unit that indicates if you have achieved or not reached your target).

The problem is that for most business owners, the task of just getting your business through the day, week and month already feels like a mammoth one. In that case, you’ll be wondering: How do I influence and inspire my team to work more and reach more when I’m not confident? 

As a leader, it will fall to you to take the steps required to set these metrics. I am reminded of the following quote: “If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time” – Zig Ziglar.

Sometimes, just putting a target down no matter how big, audacious and hairy it is or even seemingly small, will help you aim your business and teams in a single direction. Secondly, pulling your team together to put these targets down in writing will help define the strategies you need to focus on and help build that motivation. 

Should you or your business need help with this or just want to find out about the benefits of having a business confidant, don’t hesitate to reach out to the OptiGrowth Team.

Employee development is beneficial for a company’s success as well as for individual employee’s career.

Developing employees is a strategic way to

• grow the organisation, 
• improve productivity and
• decrease employee turnover.

Many organisations fail to provide employees’ development, and in the end it costs them their reputation, ruins their employer brand and leads to stagnation in business success

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5 Steps to create an employee development plan

1. Think about the business strategy and it short-medium goals.
2. Create an action plan.
3. Consider the skills and training needed.
4. Check-in regularly to review and track progress.
5. Keep looking for growth opportunities.

Every company has its own set of priorities to help take it to the next level, and knowing which initiatives will make the greatest impact can be tough. But what makes a business prosperous and truly differentiates one organisation from the rest is not the product it sells or the service it offers, it’s the people within it.

Taking care of your employees doesn’t simply mean offering fun happy hours or paying for lunch once a week. Each person, no matter their level or where they choose to work, wants to feel genuinely cared for. An impactful way to do this is through a commitment to support their professional advancement and personal growth.

Employee development is a long-term initiative, but it also leads to short-term benefits like increased loyalty and improved performance and engagement. Here are five ways you can begin improving employee development at your company.

1. Offer professional training from the get-go

Setting your employees up for success in their role starts with giving them all the tools and resources they need to do their job well. This includes professional training. You can practice this from an employee’s first day and beyond by creating a knowledge base of critical information and best practices for new hires as you grow your team. For remote employees, they may not get the same opportunities to ask one-off questions at your desk, so creating a thorough training plan is especially important for getting them ramped up.

2. Help your managers become better coaches

Part of becoming an effective coach is learning about your direct report; their unique strengths, what drains them, and what motivates them so you can help guide them on their path to success. One way to accomplish this is by asking the right questions at the right cadence.

Here are 5 questions you can start asking your people every week during check ins and 1-on-1s:

• What’s going well in your role? Any wins this week?
  • What challenges are you facing?
  • How are you feeling? What’s the morale around you?
  • On a scale of 1-10, how fulfilled are you? Why?
  • How can I become a better leader?

Having intentional conversations on a regular basis will help you form deeper connections with your people. These discussions will also contribute to building a more psychologically safe environment for employees to be open and honest.

3. Enhance cross-departmental collaboration

A truly cohesive workforce that excels atcross-departmental training can help bridge the gap between cultures, give employees the opportunity to learn more about other parts of the business, and encourage more empathy across the board. But the truth is, most teams aren’t natural collaborators.

Without the right structures in place to help your people to connect, some initiatives could run the risk of falling flat. For example, your marketing department is aiming to enhance the company’s brand with new content but doesn’t consult with the sales or customer service teams. If the marketing team isn’t fully aware of the unique pain points of their customers, the message most likely won’t resonate. Although this is just one instance, a collaboration problem could lead to more detrimental results.

4. Emphasize soft skills

Unfortunately, these vital competencies are often de-emphasized in corporate environments. Even the name “soft skills” makes them seem relatively unnecessary, but according to industry analyst, Josh Bersin, “These skills are not ‘soft’ – they’re highly complex, take years to learn, and are always changing in their scope.”

Businesses are a collection of human beings working together, so building core relationship skills, like the ability to collaborate and communicate, is one of the most important things that a company can encourage.

5. Invest in personal development

Your employees don’t just exist in a professional capacity to serve your organisation. They are whole human beings comprised of physical, intellectual, and emotional experiences. For them to evolve both personally and professionally, employee development must be holistic. This includes:

• Emotional balance
  Ask questions like, “How do you feel about your work lately? Are you struggling with anything?” This meets our basic needs to be seen, heard, acknowledged, and validated—needs that often go unmet in many work environments.
• Intellectual growth
  Books and seminars don’t just have to be about business. You can provide continuing education around personal finance or fostering healthy relationships.
• Physical health
  Encouraging your people to step away from their desks when the workday is complete and allowing them to practice more self care shows that you don’t just depend on the skills on their job description, but you care about them as people.

When employees are given the tools to do their jobs well and train to advance in their careers, they are more likely to feel inspired to do their best work. And your reputation for stellar employee development might just encourage the best and brightest candidates to join your team.

Put these six tips into practice to help employees grow:

1. Encourage professional development. High-potential employees are not satisfied with the status quo. …
2. Create a development plan. …
3. Pair employees with mentors. …
4. Help them build their networks. …
5. Challenge employees with assignments. …
6. Show employees you trust them.

Examples of personal development goals for work

• Improve your time management.
• Develop emotional intelligence.
• Cultivate resilience.
• Listen actively.
• Develop a growth mindset.
• Develop a reading habit.
• Learn new things.
• Improve your public speaking skills.