Front - AZ Teambuilding sro

PUSHING TO THE FRONT
Kentucky Derby and The Grammys that everyone wants to be a part
of. Integrating high profile, fun and even glamorous events with your
business adds an extra enjoyment factor that can’t be beat – and creates
another unique and high-powered reason to work with you.
Secret #2:
create neW MetHodS oF operation
In 2005, Amazon.com, the biggest online retailer, introduced Amazon
Prime – now, for a flat yearly fee, Amazon shoppers would get unlimited
and no-cost two-day shipping when buying Amazon products.
Regular Amazon customers loved the idea.
Wall Street, however, hated it.
The program was instantly deemed an unprofitable disaster by most financial
analysts; it would be costly and drag down profits. And, as a
matter of fact, both the stock and profits were negatively affected at first.
But Jeff Bezos, the Amazon CEO, held firm and said the program would
end up paying off. Within a couple of years, it had. Amazon Prime upped
customer loyalty to Amazon, so that sales consistently rose – after all,
if you were guaranteed two day free shipping by one shopping site, that
would be the first place you’d go to buy something, right? Profits followed
along, jumping a whopping 257% from 2006 to 2007.
Even now, however, Amazon continues to be questioned by financial
analysts for focusing too much on infrastructure that will generate bigtime
future benefits. Bezos doesn’t care, because he wants Amazon to
be a very far-sighted company, continuing to risk short-term loss for
long-term gain. That vision accounts for a lot of its singular success
today; it’s also garnered them tremendous repeat business and locked
their customers in for the long run. It’s perceived as an exclusive business
like no other.
This is a strategy that can pay off with how you run your business internally
as well.
For example, Google has a program it calls “Innovation Time Off,”
where Google engineers are allowed to spend as much as 20% of their
company time pursuing projects that interest them, but aren’t official-
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