Johnson-Woodford Announces Six Point Tune-up

Johnson-Woodford, management consultants to the deathcare industry, has announced a new service to help clients quickly achieve profit increases and assess their foundation for growth. Fees for the "Tune-up" depend on the size of your organization and will likely range from $5,000 to $15,000. However, Johnson-Woodford guarantees profit improvement of 300% of their fees.

This fresh-look review for immediate improvement opportunities answers the following questions:

• Vision, mission, and strategies - are these clear and aligned?
• Core values and beliefs - is everyone on the same page?
• Product line - is the depth and breadth meeting market and business needs?
• Communicating your value - is your message clear, getting return on your efforts, and making an impact?
• Sales and promotion - are sales opportunities being missed?
• Profitability - where are your blind spots?

Johnson-Woodford, management consultants to the deathcare industry

Postscript

This post and others on the Johnson-Woodford Blog will be compiled into a Free, downloadable E-book, which will also be available in hard copy. A final thought. We can all learn from one another. Your thoughts, ideas, and sharing are important to us and others. Please send your notes and comments to blogger@johnson-woodford.com or log on to www.johnson-woodford.com.

Guiding Principals ─ The Soul of the Organization

Every organization has a soul, which is made up of each employee’s character, the behavioral guidelines developed by leadership, and the integration of these two. Hopefully, we hire employees with these character traits in order that they quickly internalize the company mission and mores, and are easily integrated with fellow employees. The reason for putting the Guiding Principles in writing is to assure alignment of everyone in the organization.

Later in the process of developing your company task lists, objectives, and initiatives, the list of Guiding Principles serves as one of the company performance benchmarks. Shortcomings in behavior compared to principals likely will foster a new initiative for correction.

A process for developing your Guiding Principles might include:

• Gather input from employees, managers, and stakeholders; useing brainstorming
• Rank all statements of principle ─ high, medium, low ─ based on importance to your success and cultural goals
• Select fewer than twenty items and publish them
• Hold discussions among all employees to sharpen everyone’s understanding

Here’s a Starter List of 41 Core Values.

Add to it, take things away, rank your values, and communicate to everyone, including your customers and suppliers.

1. Be carbon neutral and be an environment steward
2. Be entrepreneurial; build the business
3. Answer phones and greet visitors cordially - like guests in your home
4. Be honest, open and act with integrity
5. Be strategic: steer and invest in actions that optimize use and creation of resources
6. Be willing to do any job, regardless of what it takes to accomplish the vision
7. Believe the whole is greater than the sum of the parts – collaborate, cooperate, share, support
8. Budgeting review focuses equally on excess and shortfall
9. Communicate--provide relevant information and take time to engage stakeholders; ensure all stakeholders become aware of changes and progress
10. Compare ourselves to best in class standards; seek excellence in hiring, training, organizing and developing human resources
11. Continuously improve in every aspect of the business
12. Create a culture of engagement: recognize the impact each individual makes; listen to and share ideas at all levels
13. Customers ─ focus on customer
14. Decide once; repeat successful action until conditions change
15. Do not repeat failure
16. Employee families come first ─ when there are issues at home, they are a priority
17. Emulate, duplicate, replicate success
18. Fix things ─ no one cares for excuses
19. Focus on funding output not input, and measure everything
20. Improve the work environment
21. Innovate — set guidelines, allow experimentation, manage risk and allow new processes and technology to develop new levels of performance
22. Issues and disagreements are resolved and forgotten; there is no room for anything but candor
23. Keep your promise
24. Lead by behavioral example
25. Lead or follow, but don’t get in the way
26. Leaders serve subordinates and go to bat for them
27. Leaders set goals and boundaries, and encourage subordinates to achieve mutual objectives
28. Leaders teach others what they know.
29. Listen; never punish the messenger
30. Mom Rule – if your mom could easily understand and agree with your action, it’s likely to be appropriate
31. No one is mistreated or disrespected
32. Our own families first, our customers and community next, fellow employees next, suppliers next, when a hierarchy is needed for deciding
33. Prevent and avoid rather than cure; act when things show up, not after they blow up
34. Recognition and rewards reinforce and make appropriate behavior visible
35. Seek consensus; do not settle for a majority rule
36. Acknowledge and learn from mistakes
37. Set, communicate, and enforce rules of behavior
38. Thrive on innovation and beating competitors to the next level of service
39. Treat suppliers like partners
40. Understand and adapt to the external environment
41. When everyone shares in the vision, this will be a great place to work

Johnson-Woodford, management consultants to the deathcare industry Postscript This post and others on the Johnson-Woodford Blog will be compiled into a Free downloadable E-book, which will also be available in hard copy. A final thought. We all can learn from each other. Your thoughts, ideas, and sharing are important to us and others. Please send your notes and comments to blogger@johnson-woodford.com or log on to www.johnson-woodford.com.

Starter list for planning. What do you do?

Elementary, but a good exercise at the start of developing your business plan is to make an exhaustive list all the things your organization does. These activities will be examined later in the process during the step where we answer the question, "Are we dong the right things?" A starter list is below. Think of distinct activities that can be separated from one another. After you decide on the right things to be doing and, important as well, not doing, we will work on the assessment answering the question, "Are we doing things right?" Look over the list. What can you add to the list? What don't you do? What might you want to do in the future? Print your list and keep it for future planning. Starter Checklist of Activities for Funeral Homes and Cemeteries o Cremate bodies o Bury bodies o Conduct events – offsite o Conduct events – onsite o Conduct graveside services o Conduct memorial services o Conduct facility tours o Console families o Grounds management – historic preservation o Grounds management – conservation o Grounds management – upkeep o Marketing and advertising o Prepare bodies for burial o Raise funds – endowments o Raise funds – endowments lot care o Raise funds – endowments other o Raise funds – conservation and restoration o Raise funds – other o Sell cemetery property o Sell funeral-related services o Sell funeral services o Sell funeral goods (e.g., caskets, vaults) o Sell monuments o Historic preservation o Educate/inform the public o Administration – Human Resources o Administration – Legal o Administration Accounting/Finance o Community relations o Government relations o Land planning o Investment management o Facilities management Johnson-Woodford, management consultants to the deathcare industry Postscript This post and others on the Johnson-Woodford Blog will be compiled into a Free, downloadable E-book, which will also be available in hard copy. A final thought. We can all learn from one another. Your thoughts, ideas, and sharing are important to us and others. Please send your notes and comments to blogger@johnson-woodford.com or log on to www.johnson-woodford.com.