Conference delegates shown culture secrets

Conference delegates shown culture secrets

Australian sales, marketing and management expert Jonar Nader challenged delegates at the Local Government New Zealand conference in Hamilton today with his ideas about improving organisational performance.

Mr Nader, whose past experience includes 25 years in sales and marketing, IBM’s E business Software Manager, and author of several successful books including How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People, asked the question “what is this thing called culture?”

Mr Nader’s approach is back to basics. “Technology will not make us efficient, if we are now inefficient. It will not make us faster, if we are now slow. It will not enable us to deliver better customer-service, if we currently deliver none,” Mr Nader said.

“Similarly, advertising and PR will not change people's perception, because the proof is always in the pudding.”

Jonar challenged the senior managers in the audience to keep their diaries free. He explains that back-to-back meetings every day is not going to cut it. Senior managers need to be available. They need to listen, to talk and to interact with their staff at their own level.

“There cannot be a disconnect between what is promised and what is delivered,” Jonar says.

“We need to think from the client’s perspective. We need to park where they park, fill in the forms they fill in and phone the numbers they phone in order to really understand what they want. If we don’t know exactly what they want, we cannot deliver to their expectations. If you want to do anything to change the perceptions of your clients, you think to step in to their shoes.”

Jonar’s take home message for delegates was, “Do not go in search of excellence because excellence is too far away and it’s too difficult. You need to come down to one step at a time with something I like to call Opex - One Per Cent Excellence. Whatever we do, let’s try to do it one per cent better today than yesterday.”

ENDS

© Scoop Media