17 - What we learnt from using the Amazon 6 page memo meeting format.
Release Date: 07/16/2018
40 - I uploaded our P&L to ChatGPT - Is this the end for Accountants?
Sun Tzu 4 Small Business | Strategy and Tactics, Technology and Leadership, Management and Marketing for Small Business Owners
ChatGPT has been the biggest game changer for Small Business looking for productivity improvements. There has been a lot of talk about what AI can and can't do and what you should and shouldn't do with AI. Last week I uploaded our P&L and Balance Sheet because I wanted to get some advice on how our company is going. I think this will be something that ChatGPT should be really good at. This podcast discusses the results and what it will mean for the accounting industry in the short and medium term. Have a listen to the podcast to find out how what advice ChatGPT gave me when...
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39 - Top 20 Small Business productivity tips
Sun Tzu 4 Small Business | Strategy and Tactics, Technology and Leadership, Management and Marketing for Small Business Owners
This week we look at productivity tips for your Small Business. Inflation is running wild around the world and Governments are looking for the best solutions to bring it back under control. Increasing productivity is a great way to do this. It means higher profits, higher wages and businesses have more resources to reinvest and grow their businesses. We look at a range of tools and tips that we use at to grow our productivity. Some of these are cheap, even better many are free. Some are tools, many are techniques that can pay off big time as you look to increase...
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38 - Top 10 AI tools for your Small Business
Sun Tzu 4 Small Business | Strategy and Tactics, Technology and Leadership, Management and Marketing for Small Business Owners
Artificial Intelligence is going to be our Industrial Revolution. Already there are huge technical advances - and it is only really beginning. We detail the Top 10 AI tools that we are already using in our companies and how you can use them in your business. Have a listen to the podcast to find out how this will impact your small or medium-sized business. Check out the for more information on this podcast.
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37 - Using AI in your Small Business for Fun and Profit
Sun Tzu 4 Small Business | Strategy and Tactics, Technology and Leadership, Management and Marketing for Small Business Owners
What is AI? How will it affect your industry? How can you improve productivity? AI is going to be our generation's Industrial Revolution. The changes from this are going to be huge, so all small business owners need to understand the threats and more importantly the opportunities that come from AI. Have a listen to the podcast to find out how this will impact your small or medium-sized business. Check out the for more information on this podcast. For Small and Medium sized Business IT Support visit our IT Company, . For Small Business Strategy and Tactics,...
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36 - The importance of finding someone to take a message to Garcia in your Small Business
Sun Tzu 4 Small Business | Strategy and Tactics, Technology and Leadership, Management and Marketing for Small Business Owners
This week we look at the Message from Garcia, an article written in 1899. What was the message? Who carried it? Why him? Most importantly - how does this fit into your business? Finding someone who can take a message to Garcia, or more than one will make your life, as a business owner, a whole lot easier. We use the message to help us illustrate to our team what we are looking for. You can too. Check out the show notes to download a copy of the essay. For Small and Medium sized Business IT Support visit our IT Company, . For Small Business Strategy and Tactics, visit .
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35 - Managing inflation in your Small Business
Sun Tzu 4 Small Business | Strategy and Tactics, Technology and Leadership, Management and Marketing for Small Business Owners
How can small business owners manage the impacts of inflation? We look at the impact inflation will have and offer some tips on how to best manage running a business in a high inflation economy. For Small Business IT Support visit our IT Company, . For Small Business Strategy and Tactics, visit .
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34 - Small Business Hiring Tips to grow your team post COVID
Sun Tzu 4 Small Business | Strategy and Tactics, Technology and Leadership, Management and Marketing for Small Business Owners
Hiring today is a global issue for Small Businesses. We look at some of the strategies that successful small businesses are using to be able to hire the right people as well as getting the most out of the team you have. For Small Business IT Support visit our IT Company, . For Small Business Strategy and Tactics, visit .
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33 - How to manage the Great Resignation in your Small Business
Sun Tzu 4 Small Business | Strategy and Tactics, Technology and Leadership, Management and Marketing for Small Business Owners
What is the Great Resignation?
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32 - Lessons learnt from implementing the Rockefeller Habits
Sun Tzu 4 Small Business | Strategy and Tactics, Technology and Leadership, Management and Marketing for Small Business Owners
How can the Rockefeller Habits help your business grow? We discuss how we have gone implementing the Rockfeller Habits as we work towards scaling up. For Small Business IT Support visit our IT Company, . For Small Business Strategy and Tactics, visit .
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31 - Scaling up with the Rockefeller Habits
Sun Tzu 4 Small Business | Strategy and Tactics, Technology and Leadership, Management and Marketing for Small Business Owners
I am a huge fan of the Rockefeller Habits and Scaling Up books by Verne Harnish. We discuss how we are going on our journey of implementing them in Extreme Networks. For Small Business IT Support visit our IT Company, . For Small Business Strategy and Tactics, visit .
info_outlineMeeting effectiveness is a problem in businesses large and small so we tried a new approach to improve the productivity to come out of our meetings.
We look at Slack. This is an awesome communications tool, which has a free plan (that is the plan we use). It helps decrease our huddle meeting time, provides an easy way to get information quickly and bring the team closer. It is especially important when you are building teams in different locations.
We detailed in experience with the Amazon 6 pager memo before, and we included a sample of the memo that we've used in one of our meetings.
The big issue with the 6 pager memo is the creation of the memo. The amount of work in creating the memo is not a small task and a lot of work and skill is required in creating the memo. The memo was 2,700 words in length and a lot of time and effort, along with research was required to create the memo.
We found that the memo format was great from the point of view of getting input from everyone. All of the team members contributed and some of the insights and ideas came from team members who usually don't speak a lot in meetings. For a cross functional team point of view, this was really important.
We released the memo at the start of the meeting and gave everyone 30 minutes to read the memo. This meant that everyone read it all and understood what was required from them in the meeting.
We discovered some of team had differing levels of insight into the problem.
We had 13 people in the team and the meeting went for 2.5 hours.
We had a lot of insights that we normally don't have from our meetings and there was a lot of insights as well that were more useful than we normally get.
The challenge would be getting other people with the capabilities to write the memo. There is probably 8 hours or more involved in writing the memo. The number of people in the meeting was too many and that is why the meeting took so long.
We had a lot of great action items coming out of the meeting, so we started putting those action items into the
Our quote for the episode is from Carl von Clausewitz. "Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is very difficult." That sounds exactly like running a small business!