Hey, everybody.
It's Andy back for another week to help you build a career you love.
Today we're going to talk about four simple ways to generate great ideas at work.
Actually, happy Sunday to you.
Today's really a continuation of something I talked about last week when I talked about
11 different strategies that I use from a journaling standpoint to run my business,
to run my self-improvement, to come up with great ideas and projects, and things for me
to build for you, improve my community, and I want to take a deeper dive today on one
of those areas that I talked about and that I alluded to my excellence planning.
And I want to talk a little bit more about that and how you can apply the same techniques
that I use to come up with great ideas at work, and we're talking about the kind of
ideas that help employs move through the corporate ranks that much faster because you're coming
up with ideas that move the needle.
So, let's talk about this.
Every day for about 15 minutes or 20 minutes in the morning ... I do it in the morning.
You could do it whenever you have time, or you could do it once a week if that's all
your schedule allows.
But, every morning I think for about 15 or 20 minutes.
I literally I get away from the computer, I set my little timer on my watch, and I ask
myself five questions.
I'm going to share four of those with you.
I'll give you the bonus one too, and I want to tell you the questions that I ask myself,
as well as what I would ask if I was you, if I was a corporate citizen or a corporate
employee what you might be able to do for your organization, but if you're a business
owner, you can certainly ask these questions of yourself to figure out how to run your
business better.
So, let's talk about what these questions are.
The first question that I ask myself because I'm always thinking about my customers first
is, what can I do to improve my service for my existing customers?
So, my existing customers, for example, are members of the MileWalk Academy and people
who take my training, or my coaching services or are involved in some of those types of
programs.
For you it might be ... you might have customers that ... you might work in a customer service
capacity in your company so what can you do to improve the level of service for your customers?
But your customers might be internal teams, could be your teammates, could be other partners
that you and your organization are working with, it could be a variety of different types
of groups or individuals, but think in terms of who you service and what could you do to
improve your level of service for them?
So, that's the first question.
The second question I ask myself is, what can I do to improve my level of service to
my community?
My community is you, anybody who's watching this, all the people on my Tips for Working
Life email subscription list, all my followers on my social platform, on LinkedIn, Facebook,
Twitter, or any of the places that I reside where I always love to have the conversation
with you.
That's part of my community, but if you think about you as a corporate employee and what
you can do to improve the level of service for your community ... your community might
be your team, it might be your company, it could be people in your market or your industry,
it could be partners that you work with, it could be people who are in your networking
groups where you might brainstorm together and get connected with those people to come
up with ideas as a group.
But really, anybody could be part of your community, but think in terms of who that
might be.
What could you do to improve your level of service and engagement with your community?
So, that's the second question.
So, the third question that I ask myself is, what can I do to better market my products
and my services?
Now, my products and my services are my training courses and my coaching services that I offer
through the MileWalk Academy, but for you, you might think in terms of what can I do
to better market my company's products and services, anything that you can do?
Now, if you're in the marketing department or you're in the sales department, that might
be fairly obvious, but anything that you can do to help your company increase its brand
awareness or attract recognition, gather more leads or generate more leads is a way of helping
them market their services.
Maybe you are a subject matter expert who could write a white paper.
They could circulate it off your company's website or social media that brings awareness
to people who might not otherwise see it.
Maybe you're a technologist that can better optimize your company's website from a search
engine optimization standpoint so that when people are searching for your products and
services, they are becoming more easily found.
Anything along those lines that you can do to make your companies increase its brand
awareness.
That's the third great question you can ask yourself.
The fourth question I ask myself is, what can I do to improve my internal systems?
So, as a business owner, I'm always looking for ways to do things more efficiently, optimize
processes, reduce costs in any way that I can, but you as an employee can ask yourself,
what can I do to improve my internal systems, whether they are your personal systems, the
way you do your day-to-day exercises and activities.
It could be your team's processes, it could be your company's processes, it could be your
company's integration with its outside systems and partners and others that it communicates,
maybe even its customers.
So, think in terms of ways in which you can improve it.
Are you the accountant who can help your organization reduce its closing process from 15 days to
10 days because you have better, more efficient ways of doing things, systems you can build,
things you can replicate.
Think of anything that improves processes.
All of these four questions are all aimed at either increasing revenue or decreasing
costs, and these kinds of questions come up with ideas that move the needle.
If you are coming up with ideas ... now you don't have to implement all these ideas by
yourself, but the fact that you are spending some time each day trying to think outside
of the day in and day out grind and all the things that you go through to try to rush
through your day, to hurry up and finish your activities, this will give you a chance to
step back for a few minutes with an uncluttered mind and come up with great ideas that will
ultimately help you and your organization move forward.
And I mentioned that I have five questions that I ask myself every day.
You just heard the first four.
The bonus one is, what should I stop doing?
So, I always think about what is it that I do that I should no longer do, or what it
is that I'm doing that if I would've known then when I started this activity and what
I know now, would I have started this activity?
Maybe it's time to stop.
You get the picture, but stopping certain things or delegating certain things free up
time for you to work on these new projects for these ideas that you're going to generate.
So, I hope you enjoyed those four questions.
If you're loving this, give me the thumbs up.
If you are watching this anywhere other than the Tips for Working Life blog or my YouTube
channel, hop over to those sites for much more and make sure you care subscribed to
this YouTube channel because I've got new videos every Sunday and Tuesday, and I have
live office hours every Thursday.
You can ask me anything you want.
It'll help me get to know you better and help me be a better coach to you.
Until next week, have a great one.