Advertising Your Small Business on a Limited Budget

The best advertising, whether for a small business or large, is advertising that works. The price a small business owner pays for advertising would not be an issue if the outcome of the ad was known. If a business owner had a choice of paying $1000 a month for advertising that brought in a guarantee of at least $2000 a month profit or paying $500 a month for advertising that brought in $750 worth of profit a month, there would be no hesitation. That savvy small business owner would gladly shell out $1000 each month for that purpose.

Small business advertising has no such guarantees however. It's not like buying a refrigerator that is guaranteed to keep the milk and eggs cold. $1000 of advertising might bring $8000 of profit or it might bring in zero. So, what's a small business owner to do, especially if faced with a limited budget?

The best answer is to use the kind of advertising that only charges the owner when and if it works. There are several ways of doing this.

The primary method is called pay per click. This Internet option is available with numerous online merchant sites as well as hundreds of newspapers across the country and the globe. Simply put, the business owner agrees to pay a specified amount to the publisher or the merchant site for each ad that entices a consumer to come to the his site. The price paid is generally an amount that he agrees to bid on. More and more newspapers are offering this option as they struggle to maintain competitive online with eBay, Craigslist and other pure pay classified and marketplace sites.

Another option for pay per click and inexpensive advertising for a business owner that wants to concentrate on local customers is with regional publications on some of the larger metropolitan newspapers and groups that are introducing citizen media sites. These zoned products offer a much less expensive buy because the business advertiser is buying the local neighborhood instead of the total metropolitan population.

Companies such as YourHub, a product of the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News are licensing these citizen media sites to other newspapers in other areas and thus welcome the small business advertiser at a discounted price. They also encourage citizen journalism. The business owner can contribute articles, photos and local stories, although the paper will undoubtedly edit something too unabashedly self-serving. This is still a great way for a local entrepreneur to introduce himself or herself to the neighbors in a friendly, casual and soft sell way.

To Your Success

10 Items or Less: How to Use the Customer's Demand for Fast Service and Convenience

I remember it like it was yesterday. My friends Jack, Bert and I (we all owned small businesses) were having lunch at the Steak House across from the new, first combination gas station / mini mart to come to the area. It was the first day the Quick Fill was open.

I think I was the first to say, "They will never make it." After all who is going to pump their own gas? I felt I was an expert on the subject of customers getting out of their automobiles and pumping their own gas, as I owned and operated a gas station. It was all we could do to get the people to roll their windows down when it was raining to tell us how much gas they wanted us to pump into their vehicles. There was no way they would get out and pump it themselves even though they would save a few cents. And there was no way people would pay twenty cents more for a half gallon of milk and thirty cents more for a loaf of bread. By the end of our lunch we all agreed the Quick Fill would be out of business in 3 to 6 months.

It is no secret we were wrong. Totally wrong! But why do people who will drive twenty five miles to use a coupon to get a free four dollar appetizer constantly overpay at these type of stores????

You know the answer as well as I do. Convenience! And when I figured it out in the mid 70's my businesses soared in sales and profits. I saw my customers, who beat me up for a discount on everything they purchased, parading in and out the mini marts and thinking nothing of over paying. I figured out that I needed to be the one providing convenience. I figured out what every customer is demanding:

1. MAKE IT QUICK. I do not have time to waste.
Business names with words like "Quick," "Jiffy," "Instant," "One-hour," and "Speedy" are common. Jiffy Lube International, which offers a ten-minute oil change, has grown to over one thousand outlets. Even overnight mail is not fast enough for the buying public. Facsimile machines and email are now widely used to transmit documents across the country in seconds. Your customers constantly patronize fast food restaurants, drive through banks, and drive through car washes.

2. MAKE IT EASY FOR ME TO UNDERSTAND THE BENEFITS
Listen to me. Listen to what I want the product to do. Listen to my problems I want solved. Tell me the benefits I will obtain from buying your product or service. Tell me why I cannot live without your product or service.

3. MAKE IT EASY FOR ME TO BUY
Be flexible with options for me to pay by cash, financing, using charge cards or lay-a-way. Have flexible delivery schedules to accommodate my schedule.

4. DON'T LET ME DOWN
Do what you say you will do. Deliver on time. Make the paperwork easy. Be easy to get in touch with. Give me the good service you promise.

5. BE 100 % CUSTOMER-CENTERED
Make it all about me. Give me your full attention when I am trying to buy your products and service. Don't answer your phone, talk to others or even look away. If I am not important enough for you to disregard everyone and everything else going on around you, I will take my business elsewhere.

Here is what you can do.
1. Shop your competition. Not just the businesses that sell what you sell, but everywhere your customers buy. Every business is your competition. You are competing for the dollars your customers spend. Your customers only have a limited amount of money to spend. If they spend it at other businesses they cannot spend it at yours. Shop your competition to see what they are doing to meet the customer's demands

2. Shop your business. Walk into your business, call your business on the telephone and shop it like you are seeing it for the first time. Are your people providing the customers with what they demand? Watch your customers. Ask them if they are satisfied with your products and services. Of course the best way to get the answers you need to know and not the ones you want to hear is to have an independent person or persons survey your customers and people who do not buy from you. All they have to ask is one question, "What do you think of (your business)?"

Grocery stores figured it out in the 60s when they put in the '10 Items or Less' line. Just go and look at those lines. You will find honest people cheating. I have seen people in the '10 Items or Less' line with as many as 50 items in their carts.

And now you can even check yourself out. Scan your items' pay in cash or credit. Why does it work? Because you want it quick and easy. They figured out how to give you want you want and lower their operating cost at the same time. Figure out how to create your own '10 Items or Less' convenience for your customers. Your sales and profits will increase.

Scientific Management

The theory of scientific management is the “brainchild” of Frederick Winslow Taylor. In its simplest form the theory is the belief that there is “one best way” to do a job and scientific methods can be used to determine that “one best way”.

Taylor developed his theory through observations and experience as a mechanical engineer. As a mechanical engineer Taylor noticed that the environment lacked work standards, bred inefficient workers and jobs were allocated to people without matching the job to the worker’s skill and ability. In addition to this the relationship of the workers with the managers included many confrontations.

Over a 20 year period Taylor devised the “one best way” to do each of the jobs on the shop floor. He then concluded that prosperity and harmony for both workers and managers could be achieved by following the 4 guidelines below:

1. Develop a science for each element of an individual’s work, which will replace the old rule of thumb method.
   Scientifically select and then train, teach and develop the worker.
2. Heartily cooperate with the workers so as to ensure that all work is done in accordance with the principles of the science that has been developed.
3. Divide work and responsibility almost equally between management and workers.
4. Management takes over all the work for which it is better fitted than the workers (rather than most of the work and responsibility being assigned to the workers).

A well known example of the scientific management theory is the pig iron experiment. Iron was loaded onto rail cars by workers each lot weighing 92 pounds and known as a “pig”. On average 12.5 tons were loaded onto the rail cars but Taylor believed that scientific management could be used to increase this to 47/48 tons per day. Through experimenting with various procedures and tools Taylor achieved this. This is how he did it:

• Taylor ensured that he matched each of the jobs to each of the workers skills and abilities.
• Taylor ensured that he provided the workers with the correct tools.
• Taylor ensured that he provided workers with clear instructions about how to do each job. Taylor ensured that the workers understood the instructions and then Taylor ensured that the workers followed the instructions exactly as he had explained.
• Taylor then created worker motivation by providing a significantly higher daily wage.

It is believed that through the use of scientific management Taylor increased productivity on the shop floor by 200 percent. Taylor’s ideas and thoughts were adopted throughout the world including in France, Russia and Japan. In today’s world scientific management has been merged with other ideas and is used by managers in the form of time and motion studies to eradicate wasted motions, incentive schemes based on performance and hiring the best qualified workers for each job.

Educational leadership article

The concept of ethics in leadership centers on not only the moral character of the leader, but also on the ethical values inscribed in the leader’s personal portfolio of goals, perceptions, expressions and actions. A superior leader, in the end, is not only able to maintain integrity within himself, but is adept at influencing others to act ethically as well. Furthermore, the more ethical a leader is, the more likely he is to exhibit superior job performance, exhibit a high level of concern for the students and set a positive example.

Ethics is an essentially communicative action that progresses through an intricate methodology arbitrated through a deliberate dissemination of ethical values Educational leadership is especially concerned with the integrity of the processes of ethical decision-making and achievement that leaders and followers collectively put into practice. Such ethical dimensions of leadership have been broadly examined in educational capacities relating to the positions of school administrators, but many experts, such as American Association of School Administrators (AASA) director, Paul D. Houston, are still not satisfied with the results. Houston recently offered the following statement in the School Administrator journal: “Character education and the teaching of values has been an ongoing discussion for some time. We have seen school introduce programs to teach it, school boards veer sharply away from dealing with it, acrimonious debates around it, and politicians on both sides demand it. Yet it always has been central to what we are about, and we have hurt ourselves by losing sight of the centrality of character in our work”.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to find any evidence that conclusively tells us whether the American educational system is effective at promoting ethical behavior or not. While the meaning of education has broadened due to Americans’ increasing access to an expanding world of information, the methods necessary towards helping students succeed in contemporary society with well-developed academic skills as well as the capacity for adequate ethical decision-making, has not evolved according to modern needs. This is of great concern in many respects, especially considering the expanding need in contemporary society for increasingly serious moral instruction.

The ethical issues that school leaders must deal with on a daily basis vary considerably with the times. Yet schools have consistently been viewed throughout history as a “moral institution” designed to propagate and endorse issues of high morality and appropriate ethical decision-making. Educational leaders are frequently forced to make decisions that place more value on some morals than on others. Because of this, and because of the limited power of the student voice in the overall conduct of educational leaders, the leader's conduct must be consciously moral and ethical. Hence to truly maintain status as an ethical educational leader, the responsibility to promote ethical conduct must be rooted not so much in technical expertise, but in basic human understanding.

Communities continually claim to want stronger school leaders with visions for change that do not rest comfortably amid the status quo. They want leaders who are not afraid of change and who understand that the ethical dilemmas today’s youth are far more extreme than in the past. The educational leader’s personal ethical standards are therefore paramount in facilitating the creation of a thriving, well-adjusted and morally

Transformational Leadership

Description: This digest examines transformational leadership, which focuses on the importance of teamwork and comprehensive school improvement, as an alternative to other modes of leadership. Transformational leadership is contrasted with: (1) instructional leadership, which encompasses hierarchies and leader supervision and usually excludes teacher development; and (2) transactional leadership, which is based on an exchange of services for various kinds of rewards that the leader controls, at least in part.

Views of school leadership are changing largely because of current restructuring initiatives and the demands of the 90s. Advocates for school reform also usually advocate altering power relationships.

The problem, explain Douglas Mitchell and Sharon Tucker (1992), is that we have tended to think of leadership as the capacity to take charge and get things done. This view keeps us from focusing on the importance of teamwork and comprehensive school improvement. Perhaps it is time, they say, to stop thinking of leadership as aggressive action and more as a way of thinking--about ourselves, our jobs, and the nature of the educational process. Thus, "instructional leadership" is "out" and "transformational leadership" is "in."

HOW HAS THE TERM "TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP" EVOLVED AND WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

The idea of transformational leadership was first developed by James McGregor Burns in 1978 and later extended by Bernard Bass as well as others. Neither Burns nor Bass studied schools but rather based their work on political leaders, Army officers, or business executives.

For example, there has been a shift in businesses away from Type A to Type Z organizations. Type Z organizations reduce differences in status between workers and managers, emphasize participative decision-making, and are based on a form of "consensual" or "facilitative" power that is manifested through other people instead of over other people (Kenneth Leithwood 1992).

Although there have been few studies of such leadership in schools and the definition of transformational leadership is still vague, evidence shows that there are similarities in transformational leadership whether it is in a school setting or a business environment (Nancy Hoover and others 1991, Kenneth Leithwood and Doris Jantzi 1990, Leithwood).

"The issue is more than simply who makes which decisions," says Richard Sagor (1992). "Rather it is finding a way to be successful in collaboratively defining the essential purpose of teaching and learning and then empowering the entire school community to become energized and focused. In schools where such a focus has been achieved, we found that teaching and learning became transformative for everyone."

HOW DOES THIS DIFFER FROM OTHER SCHOOL LEADERSHIP STYLES?

• Instructional leadership
  
  Instructional leadership encompasses hierarchies and top-down leadership, where the leader is supposed to know the best form of instruction and closely monitors teachers' and students' work. One of the problems with this, says Mary Poplin (1992), is that great administrators aren't always great classroom leaders and vice versa. Another difficulty is that this form of leadership concentrates on the growth of students but rarely looks at the growth of teachers. Since she believes that education now calls on administrators to be "the servants of collective vision," as well as "editors, cheerleaders, problem solvers, and resource finders," instructional leadership, she declares, has outlived its usefulness.
  
  
• Transactional leadership
  
  Transactional leadership is sometimes called bartering. It is based on an exchange of services (from a teacher, for instance) for various kinds of rewards (such as a salary) that the leader controls, at least in part.
  
  Transactional leadership is often viewed as being complementary with transformational leadership. Thomas Sergiovanni (1990) considers transformational leadership a first stage and central to getting day-to-day routines carried out. However, Leithwood says it doesn't stimulate improvement. Mitchell and Tucker add that transactional leadership works only when both leaders and followers understand and are in agreement about which tasks are important.

WHAT ARE THE GOALS OF TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP?

Leithwood finds that transformational leaders pursue three fundamental goals:

1. Helping staff develop and maintain a collaborative, professional school culture
   
   This means staff members often talk, observe, critique, and plan together. Norms of collective responsibility and continuous improvement encourage them to teach each other how to teach better. Transformational leaders involve staff in collaborative goal setting, reduce teacher isolation, use bureaucratic mechanisms to support cultural changes, share leadership with others by delegating power, and actively communicate the school's norms and beliefs.
   
   
2. Fostering teacher development
   
   One of Leithwood's studies suggests that teachers' motivation for development is enhanced when they internalize goals for professional growth. This process, Leithwood found, is facilitated when they are strongly committed to a school mission. When leaders give staff a role in solving nonroutine school improvement problems, they should make sure goals are explicit and ambitious but not unrealistic.
   
   
3. Helping teachers solve problems more effectively
   
   Transformational leadership is valued by some, says Leithwood, because it stimulates teachers to engage in new activities and put forth that "extra effort" (see also Hoover and others, Sergiovanni, Sagor). Leithwood found that transformational leaders use practices primarily to help staff members work smarter, not harder. "These leaders shared a genuine belief that their staff members as a group could develop better solutions than the principal could alone," concludes Leithwood.

WHAT STRATEGIES DO TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERS USE?

Here are specific ideas, culled from several sources on transformational leadership (Sagor, Leithwood, Leithwood and Jantzi, Poplin):

• Visit each classroom every day; assist in classrooms; encourage teachers to visit one another's classes.
  
  
• Involve the whole staff in deliberating on school goals, beliefs, and visions at the beginning of the year.
  
  
• Help teachers work smarter by actively seeking different interpretations and checking out assumptions; place individual problems in the larger perspective of the whole school; avoid commitment to preconceived solutions; clarify and summarize at key points during meetings; and keep the group on task but do not impose your own perspective.
  
  
• Use action research teams or school improvement teams as a way of sharing power. Give everyone responsibilities and involve staff in governance functions. For those not participating, ask them to be in charge of a committee.
  
  
• Find the good things that are happening and publicly recognize the work of staff and students who have contributed to school improvement. Write private notes to teachers expressing appreciation for special efforts.
  
  
• Survey the staff often about their wants and needs. Be receptive to teachers' attitudes and philosophies. Use active listening and show people you truly care about them.
  
  
• Let teachers experiment with new ideas. Share and discuss research with them. Propose questions for people to think about.
  
  
• Bring workshops to your school where it's comfortable for staff to participate. Get teachers to share their talents with one another. Give a workshop yourself and share information with staff on conferences that you attend.
  
  
• When hiring new staff, let them know you want them actively involved in school decision-making; hire teachers with a commitment to collaboration. Give teachers the option to transfer if they can't wholly commit themselves to the school's purposes.
  
  
• Have high expectations for teachers and students, but don't expect 100 percent if you aren't also willing to give the same. Tell teachers you want them to be the best teachers they possibly can be.
  
  
• Use bureaucratic mechanisms to support teachers, such as finding money for a project or providing time for collaborative planning during the workday. Protect teachers from the problems of limited time, excessive paperwork, and demands from other agencies.
  
  
• Let teachers know they are responsible for all students, not just their own classes.

WHAT ARE THE RESULTS OF THIS KIND OF LEADERSHIP?

Evidence of the effects of transformational leadership, according to Leithwood, is "uniformly positive." He cites two findings from his own studies:

1. transformational leadership practices have a sizable influence on teacher collaboration, and
   
   
2. significant relationships exist between aspects of transformational leadership and teachers' own reports of changes in both attitudes toward school improvement and altered instructional behavior.

Sergiovanni suggests that student achievement can be "remarkably improved" by such leadership. Finally, Sagor found that schools where teachers and students reported a culture conducive to school success had a transformational leader as its principal.

However, Mitchell and Tucker conclude that transformational leadership should be seen as only one part of a balanced approach to creating high performance in schools. Leithwood agrees: "While most schools rely on both top-down and facilitative forms of power, finding the right balance is the problem. For schools that are restructuring, moving closer to the facilitative end of the power continuum will usually solve the problem."

The Strategies of a Leader

Geologists tell us that every few hundred thousand years or so the earth's magnetic field flips over; compasses that today point north will some day point south. Something similar happens in school leadership, though the cycles are measured in mere decades.

Ten years ago, principals were asked to become "instructional leaders," exercising firm control by setting goals, maintaining discipline, and evaluating results. Today they are encouraged to be "facilitative leaders" by building teams, creating networks, and "governing from the center."

Lynn Beck and Joseph Murphy (1993) observe that the metaphors of school leadership have changed frequently over the years; no sooner have school leaders assimilated one recommended approach than they are seemingly urged to move in a different direction.

WHAT STRATEGIES CAN LEADERS USE?

Such rapid shifts in philosophy can be frustrating for practitioners, especially if they are searching for the "one best way" to lead. However, a different perspective emerges when contrasting approaches are viewed as complementary strategies rather than competing paradigms.

As defined here, a strategy is a pattern of behavior designed to gain the cooperation of followers in accomplishing organizational goals. Each strategy views the school through a different lens, highlighting certain features and favoring certain actions.

At present, school leaders can choose from at least three broad strategies: hierarchical, transformational, and facilitative. Each has important advantages; each has significant limitations. Together, they offer a versatile set of options.

HOW DO LEADERS USE HIERARCHICAL STRATEGIES?

Historically, schools have been run as bureaucracies, emphasizing authority and accountability. Hierarchical strategies rely on a top-down approach in which leaders use rational analysis to determine the best course of action and then assert their formal authority to carry it out.

Terrence Deal and Kent Peterson (1994) refer to this as "technical leadership," in which the principal acts as planner, resource allocator, coordinator, supervisor, disseminator of information, and analyst.

Hierarchical strategies provide a straightforward, widely accepted way of managing organizations, offering the promise of efficiency, control, and predictable routines. However, Deal and Peterson also point out that hierarchy tends to diminish creativity and commitment, turning the employee-school relationship into a purely economic transaction.

Moreover, the act of teaching doesn't march to administrative drums. Joseph Shedd and Samuel Bacharach (1991) note that teachers' roles are extraordinarily complex, requiring instruction, counseling, and supervision of students who are highly variable in their needs and capacities. Teaching involves great unpredictability, calling for sensitive professional judgment by the person on the scene rather than top-down direction by a distant authority.

HOW DO LEADERS USE TRANSFORMATIONAL STRATEGIES?

Transformational strategies rely on persuasion, idealism, and intellectual excitement, motivating employees through values, symbols, and shared vision. Principals shape school culture by listening carefully for "the deeper dreams that the school community holds for the future." In the process, they play the roles of historian, poet, healer, and "anthropological detective" (Deal and Peterson).

Kenneth Leithwood (1993) adds that transformational leaders foster the acceptance of group goals; convey high performance expectations; create intellectual excitement; and offer appropriate models through their own behavior.

Transformational strategies have the capacity to motivate and inspire followers, especially when the organization faces major change. They provide a sense of purpose and meaning that can unite people in a common cause.

On the other hand, transformational strategies are difficult, since they require highly developed intellectual skills (Leithwood). Moreover, an exciting, emotionally satisfying workplace does not automatically result in the achievement of organizational goals (Deal and Peterson).

HOW DO LEADERS USE FACILITATIVE STRATEGIES?

David Conley and Paul Goldman (1994) define facilitative leadership as "the behaviors that enhance the collective ability of a school to adapt, solve problems, and improve performance." This is accomplished by actively engaging employees in the decision-making process; the leader's role is not to solve problems personally but to see that problems are solved. Like transformational leadership, facilitative strategies invite followers to commit effort and psychic energy to the common cause. But whereas transformational leaders sometimes operate in a top-down manner (Joseph Blase and colleagues 1995), facilitative strategies offer teachers a daily partnership in bringing the vision to life. The leader works in the background, not at the center of the stage.

Conley and Goldman say principals act facilitatively when they overcome resource constraints; build teams; provide feedback, coordination, and conflict management; create communication networks; practice collaborative politics; and model the school's vision. Facilitation creates a collaborative, change-oriented environment in which teachers can develop leadership skills by pursuing common goals, producing a democratic workplace that embodies the highest American ideals (Blase and colleagues).

However, facilitative strategies may create ambiguity and discomfort, blurring accountability and forcing employees to adopt new roles and relationships. Facilitation takes time, frustrating administrators who are constantly being pressured to act immediately. It may create great excitement and high expectations, unleashing multiple initiatives that stretch resources, drain energy, and fragment the collective vision (Conley and Goldman).

HOW SHOULD LEADERS CHOOSE STRATEGIES?

Although much of the current literature seems to advocate transformational and facilitative approaches, the limited research evidence does not permit strong conclusions about which strategy is "best" (Edward Miller 1995). Some researchers urge leaders to use multiple strategies. Deal and Peterson argue that effective principals must be well-organized managers and artistic, passionate leaders. Robert Starratt (1995) says principals must wear two hats--leader and administrator. As leaders, principals nurture the vision that expresses the school's core values; as administrators, they develop the structures and policies that institutionalize the vision.

We know relatively little about how principals make strategic choices, but some basic guidelines can be inferred from the literature.

1. Leaders should use strategies flexibly.
   
   Thomas Sergiovanni (1994) suggests that organizations, like people, exist at different developmental levels. A school that has traditionally operated with strong top-down decision-making may not be ready to jump into a full-blown facilitative environment.
   
   
2. Leaders should balance short-term and long-term needs.
   
   For example, Miller cites research suggesting that principals who act hierarchically can often implement major changes quickly but that shared decision-making, while time-consuming, is more likely to gain teacher acceptance. Conversely, he notes that teachers sometimes tire of shared decision-making and yearn for a responsive principal who will simply consult them and decide. The leader may have to choose between short-term teacher satisfaction and long-term organizational development.
   
   
3. Strategic choices must serve institutional values.
   
   At times, attractive ideas like empowerment must take a back seat to school goals. One usually democratic principal says, "My responsibility as a principal really is to the children, and if I see areas that are ineffective, I've got to say that we're not effective here and that we have got to change" (Blase and colleagues).
   
   
4. The same action can serve more than one strategy.
   
   
   Deal and Peterson urge principals to develop "bifocal vision" that imbues routine chores with transformational potential. Bus supervision, for example, serves an obvious hierarchical purpose, but it also presents an opportunity for greeting students, establishing visibility, assessing the social climate, and reinforcing key school values.

In short, running a school does not seem to require all-or-nothing strategic choices. Effective leadership is multidimensional.