Writer’s Checklist

When writing a technical report ask yourself following questions:

• What is reader’s name and job title?
• What are reader’s chief responsibilities on the job?
• What is reader’s educational background?
• What is your reader’s professional background (previous positions or work experience)?
• What is reader’s attitude toward the subject of the document?
• What will the reader do with the document: file it, skim it, read only a portion of it, study it carefully, modify it and submit it to another reader, attempt to implement recommendations?
• What are the reader’s likes and dislikes that might affect his/her reaction to the document?
• How will your reader’s physical environment affect how you write and package the document?
• What is your purpose in writing?
• What is the document intended to accomplish?
• Is your purpose consistent with your audience’s needs?
• How does your understanding of your audience and of your purpose determine your strategy: the scope, structure, organization, tone, and vocabulary of the document?
• Are there any organizational constraints that you have to accommodate?
• Are there any informational constraints that you have to accommodate?
• Are there any time constraints?
• Have you checked with your primary reader to see if he or she approves of your strategy for the document?

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Marketing Plan

A marketing plan embodies the strategic marketing management process. It is a formal written document that describes the context and scope of an organization’s marketing effort to achieve defined goals or objectives within a specific future time period. A formal written marketing plan represents a distillation of and the attention and interrelated analytical processes. It is the tangible result of an intellectual effort.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Closing the Customer Gap

The gaps model says that a service marketer must first close the customer gap between customer perceptions and expectations. To do so, the provider must close the four provider gaps, or discrepancies within the organization that inhibit delivery of quality service. The gaps model focuses on strategies and processes that firms can employ to drive service excellence.

Customer perceptions are subjective assessment of actual service experiences. Customer expectations are the standards or reference points for performance against which service experiences are compared and are often formulated in terms of what a customer believes will or should happen.

The sources of customer expectations consist of marketer-controlled factor (such as pricing, advertising, and sales promises) as well as factors that the marketer has limited ability to affect (innate personal needs, word-of-mouth communications, and competitive offerings). In a perfect world, expectations and perceptions would be identical: customers would perceive that they receive what they thought they would and should. In practice these concepts are often separated by some distance. Broadly, it is the goal of service marketing to bridge this distance.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Channel Management, & Physical Distribution Management

Channel management and physical distribution management together comprise the place variable of the marketing mix. Channel management and physical distribution management, though closely related, are quite distinct from each other. While physical distribution deals with logistics, warehousing, and inventory management channel management is much broader and is concerned with the entire process of setting up and operating the channel for meeting the company’s objectives. Channel management must be well underway before the physical distribution management can even be considered.

Under channel management, the company deals with external organizations. The company uses these external organizations. The company uses these external organizations also known as intermediaries, to achieve its objectives of profitability and customer satisfaction, and in turn ensure that the channel members’ objectives are also satisfied.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures

Home Office – Emerging Possibilities

Advances in technology and the downsizing of organizations offer opportunities for micro enterprises particularly for extending professional services, apparel design, crafts manufacturing and sales, catering, computer programming, copy editing, financial planning, graphic art & design, insurance agency, interior decoration, interior design, event management, realting, research, tailoring, travel agency, tutoring, and data entry/typing. You can also offer home/office cleaning services, or an errand service. The more you know about the business that you may undertake, the better.

 Subcontracting is another option. Procure orders and sublet to experts.

 My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Marketing Audit

Marketing audit is a comprehensive, systematic, independent, and periodic examination of company’s marketing environment, objectives, strategies and activities with a view of determining problem areas and opportunities and recommending a plan of action to improve the company’s marketing performance.

 The audit process directs the manager’s attention to both the strategic fit of the organization with its environment and the operational aspects of marketing program. Strategic aspects of the marketing audit address the synoptic question: “Are we doing the right things?” Operational aspects address an equality synoptic question: “Are we doing the things right?”

 My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Focusing Organization

This focus begins when someone at top identifies a set of concerns that require correction. These concerns are of significant importance to the organization, rather than passing operational concerns. They are persistent, undesirable situations that have grown over time and have never been adequately addressed. It is clear that a major effort is required to solve them and that new skill and approaches have to be developed if the effort is to be successful.

 The entire project is planned as a taskforce attack on identified situations; objectives—analysis and correction of the target situations, objectives are defined. This planning cannot be delegated. It is done by top management, since responsibility for the project must reside with those who initiate it. By actively directing the project, top management makes its support of the ideas evident to everyone. By participating in the project throughout its life, top management returns control and ensures success.

 The management works out a comprehensive plan and schedule. The population of individuals who can contribute in solving the target situations is identified by name and position. Workshops are scheduled. It is in the workshops that the participants learn. They apply their skills to analysis of their assigned concerns.

 My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Leadership and Symbols

Person-centered leadership is about helping people get real at work. What you do does not usually have to be right the first time, but it always has to be real. When you remove posturing, pretension, and false communication, people are free to be themselves—to use their good ideas and energies to give themselves and their organization a lift.

The leadership is responsible for the atmosphere and morale in any organization. Executives and managers are not responsible for knowing the solutions to all the organization’s problems. That’s what the experts are for—and the experts are always the people who actually do the job for you on a daily basis. The most effective leaders are not the ones who know how to give good orders. Most effective leaders know that good communication is a two-way street and they are skillful at using symbols to convey truth. Every leader needs a metaphor that defines his leadership style.

The door is just a symbol of commitment to person-centered attitudes and actions. Symbols are exquisitely important, but they have to be your own symbols—a genuine extension of yourself. Just like all other aspects of this approach, the leadership symbols you choose have to be real

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

The Newness

One critical property of the knowledge that underpins an activity is how new it is to the function or organization performing the activity. If it is very different from existing knowledge, it is said to be radical or competence destroying. If it builds on existing knowledge, it is said to be incremental or competence enhancing. The newer the knowledge, the more difficult it is for firms to perform the activities.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Audience-Centered Approach to Communication

Beside other things, effective organizational communication is audience-centered approach. Keep your audience in mind at all time during the process of communication. Empathizing with, being sensitive to, and generally considering your audience’s feelings is the best approach for effective communication. The audience-centered approach is more than an approach to business communication; it’s actually the modern approach to business in general, behind such concepts as total quality management and total customer satisfaction.

 Because you care about your audience, you take every step possible to get your message across in a way that is meaningful to your audience. You might actually create lively individual portraits of readers and listeners to predict how they will react. You might simply try to put yourself in your audience’s position. You might try adhering strictly to guidelines about courtesy, or you might be able to gather information about the needs and wants of your audience. Whatever your tactic, the point is to write and speak from your audience’s point of view.

 My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.