Distributing Ideas, The NAW Blog
Why Respect Matters at Work – Developing Your Workforce #15
These days, incivility is spreading like an epidemic in the workplace. Research shows that during the past 18 years, tens of thousands of workers worldwide have reported being treated rudely at work at least once a month. And, the number of "victims" has been steadily increasing from 49% in 1998 to 55% in 2011 and to 62% in 2016 (Porath, 2016). How about you? As a member of your organization, [...]
3 Steps to Help You Brainstorm for Breakthrough Innovations – Distributors in the Digital Era #62
Innovating the distributor business model requires identifying and considering options that are a break with the past, and a move toward offering new and different customer experiences, reinvented supplier partnerships or breakthrough operational productivity. Brainstorming is a useful tool for generating new ideas, but one that is poorly understood and often misused. Rather than aiding the [...]
Why Manufacturing-as-a-Service Is an Opportunity for Distributors – Distributors in the Digital Era #61
A primary goal for the next Facing the Forces of Change® report, which will be published in November (sign up here to be notified when you can preorder it), is to help distributors get out in front of market trends with innovations that help customers transform their business for the digital age. Just as every distributor is considering how they will do business in the digital age, so is [...]
Do What You Love and Love What You Do – Developing Your Workforce #14
Perhaps one of the most frequently given bits of career advice is this: Do what you love and love what you do. In an ideal world, we all want this to be our work life. However, in the real world, most people don’t get to do what they love, or they don't always love what they do. The truth is: These goals are easier to verbalize than to achieve, because one must subsist in the process. It [...]
Your Channel Partners Are Talking. Are You Listening? – Value Creation Strategy #5
They may never share a romantic candlelight dinner, but distributors and manufacturers who are united in a supply chain are certainly in a relationship. And in channel relationships, as with any other kind, the key to success can be summed up in one word: communication. Sounds simple. But, as in any relationship, communication between distributors and manufacturers can be fraught [...]
Pay Attention to the Social Context of Your Performance Reviews – Developing Your Workforce #13
“Performance review” is the formal process of evaluating your employees by using a set of pre-developed criteria. To be effective, performance reviews must provide an honest, accurate, complete and fair evaluation of each employee’s performance, benefiting both the individual and the organization. To accomplish this goal, organizations have heavily focused on improving the technical aspects [...]
What Performance Are You Measuring? – Developing Your Workforce #12
Do you have employees who are hardworking but not productive, or who are your star performers but difficult to manage? Do you struggle to encourage your employees to take initiative in their existing role or go beyond their job description? What about those who demonstrate neither expected productivity nor pleasant citizenship behavior? How do you measure the performance of each group? As a [...]
Try Crafting Meaningful Jobs with Your Employees . . . Especially Millennials – Developing Your Workforce #11
Wholesale distribution is perceived by some as not such a sexy industry. What then can you do to engage your employees in tasks that are not interesting or may seem insignificant in nature? What can you do to prevent them from leaving your company simply because they don’t feel excited about their jobs? What can you do to help them make the most of their current jobs? These questions are [...]
Are You Innovating on Genius Knowledge? – Distributors in the Digital Era #60
To survive and thrive in the digital age, every distributor must act on its genius knowledge — that is, knowledge that already exists as well as new knowledge collected from customers. Disruptors, like Amazon, do not have a monopoly on ideas, nor do they have unbeatable competitive advantages. Winning is about having good ideas that resonate with customers, and relentlessly iterating new [...]
Employees . . . Our Greatest Asset
On October 10, 1972, I unloaded my first truckload of material at my first job at Parksite. Fast forward (a very quick) 47 years and I’m happy to say that I’m still at Parksite, the company that gave me a start, believed in me from the beginning and provided thousands of opportunities for me. Parksite is an employee-owned wholesaler-distributor of Specialty Building Products and [...]
