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John Pearson Associates
 
Issue No. 4 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting reminds you that knowing the strengths of your team members is central to knowing your customers. At your staff meeting this week, assure your people that their weaknesses are almost irrelevant.

“Find out what you don’t like doing,” says Marcus Buckingham, “and stop doing it!” More than one million people have discovered their strengths. Have you?

   

 

Gallup Discovered 34 Strengths—Yet Only 17% Play to Their Strengths" Every Day
I’m amazed at how many leaders and managers have not read Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton. The big idea: focus on enhancing your team members’ strengths rather than eliminating their weaknesses. The book describes 34 positive personality themes such as Achiever, Developer, Learner and Maximizer.

You’ll learn how to build a "strengths-based organization" by capitalizing on the fact that such traits are already present among those within it. The book directs you to a Web-based interactive questionnaire developed by the Gallup Organization and you’ll instantly discover you own top five strengths.

My top five are Focus, Responsibility, Significance, Belief and Maximizer (in that order). Amazingly, the authors say that less than a dozen people in North America have the same top five in the same order.

More on Marcus Buckingham




Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:

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1. Recent polls reveal that less than two out of ten people – the actual figure is 17% – say they spend the majority of their day "playing to their strengths.”  Wow! Is that true in our organization?

2. What would happen here if we turned that around—and all of us invested the majority of our day in “playing to our strengths?”

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Insights from the Management Buckets Workshop Experience

Peter Drucker had five questions all nonprofit organizations must answer.  Question #2: Who is the customer? Question #3: What does the customer value?

Your customer (member, donor, volunteer, client, seeker, etc.) knows when he or she is being herded versus heralded. Here’s a good exercise.  Take your top ten communication tools (website, newsletter, brochure, DVD, etc.) and determine where each fits in the six stages of moving the customer from “ignorance to purchase.”

•  Stage 1: Ignorance
•  Stage 1: Awareness
•  Stage 1: Interest
•  Stage 1: Trial or Consideration
•  Stage 1: Preference
•  Stage 1: Purchase

One size doesn’t fit all—and if you’re not delineating and segmenting your market, you’re missing a rich harvest. Marketing Guru Jim Engle has much to say on this subject with his “Engle Scale of Evangelism.” Google that phrase or read it online, What’s Gone Wrong With the Harvest.

In our Management Buckets Workshop Experience, we integrate The Customer Bucket with the other 19 buckets—so marketing does not become a Sacred Silo.

   
Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:

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1. Who is our primary customer?
2. What does our primary customer value?
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Download the Management Buckets brochure

 
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