Welcome back to regular blogs from me and welcome to the new financial year.
It has been a crazy and eventful first half to 2008 with a turnover 3 times the same period in 2007, new team roles at Tribe Research and new products being developed and enhanced.
Small business owners often forget to celebrate their successes or say they don’t have time to celebrate. It is a big mistake, as the celebrations can carry you through the lows or hectic times and raises the energy of your team (whether they are staff, family or friends). Plus they are fun!
At Tribe Research we celebrate the end of the year at our annual dinner, every 6 months at our Planning Expeditions, weekly in our Explorer Update and Friday 4pm meeting.
We also send small business owners birthday cards for the birthday of their business and remind them to celebrate.
I have spent the weekend preparing our next Planning Expedition for our team. It will be starting with the following celebratiions:
We just started our 7th year as an incorporated company
We will be having our 6th Planning Expedition
The first half of 2008 had turnover 3 times the same period last year
The last financial year had turnover 1.6 times the previous financial year
We introduced having a Mapper to the Tribe Research team
In a previous post I mentioned a departing staff member recently suggested we started a group for previous staff who haven’t been fired and don’t work for competitors, to stay in touch.
Her reasoning was that because I involve staff in the business development of Tribe Research and they love working for the company, they weren’t leaving because they didn’t like it, they just wanted different experiences. Therefore they’re likely to be interested in staying in touch and making small contributions to the business where possible. Also, they’re in a great position to provide independent and informed feedback on the business. When it comes to new products, previous staff may even become raving fans if they are kept up to date on what is going on and have the opportunity to stay in touch with each other.
This is how TRX was born. A group of previous employees who keep in touch through a newsletter and social events. So far we’ve sent an email newsletter to all previous and current staff who qualify to be a TRX member and we’ve received positive feedback from the members – they seem particularly grateful for the opportunity to stay in touch with each other. We’re also planning our inaugural annual event for TRX members to be held later in the year.
I will let you know about the progress of TRX in case you’re interested in establishing your own club for previous staff.
One of the biggest problems for small businesses is managing time and cash flow. You can see the need for getting a consultant for developing your business in a specific direction, but you don’t put the time aside later to use the information you have gained from the consultant. As a result, you don’t realise the benefits of their advice and your longer term perception of the consultants’ value for money is decreased.
But that isn’t their fault.
The reasoning is that most consultants are advisors not doers. They will investigate the current situation in your business within their specialty (marketing, finance, business development, research etc) and then provide you with a report of what you should do to rectify or improve the current situation. If you have chosen the right consultant then it is all good stuff, but it doesn’t happen without your participation so the good stuff ends up collecting dust or taking up valuable disk space.
So next time, before you invest in a consultant, make sure you have the time available to digest and act on the information you receive. This will mean that the outcome has real value for you and your business.
Sorry for the long silence. I was first wrapped up in the tribal group of my family, and then the tribal group of cricket fans and what a summer it has been for cricket fans.
I was at every day of the Sydney test that caused so much distraction for the remaining tests. It was clearly poor umpiring and the Indians got more of them. The Australian players were overly smug and by Day 3 the crowd were cheering on the Indian’s more than the Aussies. Well, until the last hour when it looked like the Aussies would win, then they reverted to their native colours.
What was interesting more than anything was the divisions it created at that the actions of a few in a cricket team caused a response from India that we as a nation had slandered all Indians, while if you read much of the commentary in Australia the general public was more favourable of the Indian teams response and critical of the Australians.
So, I dig myself out of my cricket headspace and back into a more balanced world – both because the Australian and Indian cricket teams are back to playing cricket, and time and headspace wise for me. You will be hearing from me more frequently again.
The BRW November 22- December 8 reports that in March 2007 there were 14.8 million motor vehicles registered (an increase of 12.2 percent from 2003 to 2007).
This means that there is a car for every 1.4 people in Australia, or a car for every person aged 15-89. See Note.
In the current concerns about climate change, and the relationship of cars contributing to this environmental issue, what does this figure say about our continued reliance on motor vehicles?
Note: These figures were calculated using Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian Demographic Statistics for the 2007 March quarter (Cat No. 3101.0)
We had a stand at the Australian Businesswomen’s Network Expo last weekend.
In the planning for it we talked about ways we could simply communicate with everyone there. We already had bright red bags with our logo on it and I remembered that at previous ABN Expos a bag wasn’t handed out until the end. So people walk around uncomfortably carrying lots of brochures, notebooks and samples.
We made a book filled with articles we have written and put it with other information into 100 bags. People were coming to our stand and asking for a bag so they could free up their arms and it gave us an opportunity to talk about what we do.
There were about 230 people at the Expo, so by the end of the day almost every second person was walking around with our bags. You can see the impact in our photos.
I was talking to my mentorees as part of the Australian Businesswomen’s Network program MentorNet about the benefit of using a wiki for your company’s policies and procedures. It has a few main benefits over the traditional word document.
Firstly, it can easily grow as your business grows. It isn’t up to the business owner to build the procedures, everyone can discover new ways of doing things and add their own content. You can add RSS feeds to your wiki and subscribe yourself so you know when content has been added. This way you can quality control the content.
Secondly, you have the added security that staff can’t easily email the contents to themselves when they leave and this protects your intellectual property of your business.
Coletta Hobbs, Christopher Tennant, Alan Rosen, Lesley Newton, Helen M Lapsley, Kate Tribe and Judith E Brown. Deinstitutionalisation for long-term mental illness: A 2-year clinical evaluation. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 2000; 34(3) 476-483
Objective: The closure of a long-stay psychiatric hospital in Sydney caused the transfer of an initial 40 very long-term patients to four community residences, each with 10 beds, for a continuing process of deinstitutionalisation. Community psychiatric service support and 24-hour supervision were provided. This paper describes the residents’ clinical progress which was assessed over a 2-year period.
Method: This study employed a quasi-experimental longitudinal design. Evaluation commenced prior to discharge and continued for 2 years following community relocation using the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale, Life Skills Profile, Social Behaviour Scale, Montgomery Asberg Depression Rating Scale and Quality of Life measures. Readmission, demographic, case history and medication data were also collected.
Results: Of the 40 patients initially transferred to the community, seven required longterm readmission to hospital (either prior to or after amalgamation) and one patient died of medical causes. Additional patients transferred from the hospital to the community following the readmissions. Three of these additional patients had achieved a 2-year community tenure during the study period and were included in the clinical evaluation. The 35 residents in total who remained in the community for 2 years, demonstrated a significant improvement in psychotic symptoms, without significant change in the level of neuroleptic medication. Importantly, the 2 years of community living resulted in a significant increase in the residents’ life satisfaction. There were no statistically significant changes in residents’ living skills, depressive symptoms or social behaviour problems over the 2 years, indicative of the need for supervision and community service support following deinstitutionalisation. Over the 2-year period, some 37% of the residents required temporary readmission.
Conclusion: This study demonstrates the clinical effectiveness of deinstitutionalisation, when planned within a mental health system with adequate community resources.
L Newton, A Rosen, C Tennant, C Hobbs, HM Lapsley and K Tribe. Deinstitutionalisation for long-term mental illness: An ethnographic study. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 2000: 34(3) 484-490
Objective: Deinstitutionalisation of seriously mentally ill people in the developed world, including Australia, has occurred since the middle of this century. Evaluation of the effects of this change on the lives of individuals is of paramount importance to ensure that policies are acceptable and effective . Increasingly, multifaceted studies are considered essential for comprehensive health research. The qualitative aspect of this study complements the clinical and economic components.
Method: An ethnographic approach enabled contextual, qualitative data to be gathered from within the social world of 47 hospital residents as they moved to the community. A social anthropologist acting explicitly as a participant observer undertook fieldwork over two and a half years both pre- and post- discharge. Qualitative data were collected, stored and analysed separately from quantitative and economic data.
Results: Ethnographic findings generally supported and, in many cases, mirrored clinical results. Of the total cohort of 47 patients transferred to the community, the 40 who continue to live outside of hospital all reported a preference for community living. The importance of freedom and simple liberties cannot be underestimated as factors that enabled this resilient group of people to work creatively through difficult periods.
Conclusion: Properly planned and resourced deinstitutionalisation not only maintains people with a prolonged mental illness outside of hospital, it also enhances their quality of life. Subjective descriptive material focusing on personal experiences adds meaning to quantitative research data allowing health professionals to more fully understand the implications of health policy on the lives of individuals.
M. J. Cross, L. M. March, H. M. Lapsley, K. L. Tribe, A. J. M. Brnabic, B. G. Courtenay and P. M. Brooks. Determinants of willingness to pay for hip and knee joint replacement surgery for osteoarthritis. Rheumatology, 2000;39:1242-1248
Objectives: To determine whether patients with osteoarthritis (OA) would be willing to pay for joint replacement and whether patient characteristics or health outcomes, including paid, physical function and health-related quality of life, were related to willingness to pay (WTP).
Methods: Patients who had undergone primary total hip replacement (THR) or total knee replacement (TKR) for OA completed a disease-specific questionnaire (Western Ontario and MsMaster: WOMAC index), a generic measure of health status (Medical Outcome Study Short Form-36: SF-36) and an Evaluation Questionnaire to measure WTP and satisfaction with the replacement.
Results: Responses were obtained from 109 (77%) THR patients and 129 (72%) TKR patients. Mean age of respondents was 67 yr for THR (47% female) and 73 yr for TKR (60% female). Overall, 85% of patients responded to the WTP question. Of the THR patients, 71% were willing to pay something, 11% were not willing to pay anything and 18% did not answer the question. For TKR patients these figures were 70, 16 and 14% respectively. However, of those who responded to the WTP question, only 25% of the THR patients and 18% of the TKR patients indicated they would be willing to pay the actual current average cost of the operation in Australia (≥A$15,000). A lower postoperative pain score (as measured by the WOMAC index) was a significant predictor of WTP for both THR and TKR patients. Income also significantly predicted WTP in THR patients but not in TKR patients. The other significant predictors for TKR patients were older age, having private health insurance and willingness to recommend joint replacement to others.
Conclusions: Willingness to pay was a measure that was understandable and acceptable to patients, most of whom were willing to pay something. There was a high correlation between WTP, good health outcomes and patient satisfaction, pain relief being the dominant determinant.
