The Step Change Blog

The latest thinking on business, strategy, marketing and sales

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September 20, 2018

Every Leader’s Guide to Becoming a Lean Organisation

Business Strategy, Business Growth

Being a Lean organisation means being able to maximise the value customers are willing to pay for while eliminating waste. Leaders are finding more value in it as it’s all about doing more with less, focusing on continuous improvement, minimising waste, and training your staff to improve the work through problem-solving.

So if you aim to create more value for your customers with your limited resources, read on.

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September 14, 2018

How to Find Your Next Big Step Change [Podcast]

Business Strategy, Step Change, Marketing Strategy, Creativity, Digital, Culture & Leadership, Business Growth

Our CEO, Ashton Bishop, reveals what businesses can do to find their next step change, and how to implement the Big 6 Challenges for business growth in this 7-minute Marketing the Invisible podcast with Tom Poland.

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September 12, 2018

How to Develop a World-Class Business Strategy in the Age of Disruption [Ebook]

Business Strategy

In the age of disruption, businesses may find themselves questioning whether strategy matters in a world of constant change. But in a time where silos are crumbling to disruptive trends and industries are shifting to accommodate new technologies, strategy matters now more than ever.

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August 28, 2018

How to Know If Your Strategic Plan Is Really Strategic

Business Strategy

We see this happen in businesses: The senior team would go away for a two-day offsite retreat to develop a strategic plan. And when all is said and done, they would come back with a plan or a goal devoid of strategy.

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July 26, 2018

Life after the Merger: How Nine Entertainment and Fairfax Media Can Redefine Their Company Culture

Business Strategy, Culture & Leadership

A four-billion dollar merger is underway between two of the country’s media player giants, Nine Entertainment and Fairfax Media. The new company name after the merger is Nine, and it is set to become Australia’s formidable integrated media player.

With two giants combining forces to create one formidable integrated media player, there is one worthy question that begs an answer.

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July 19, 2018

8 Questions You Need to Ask to Develop a Solid Business Strategy

Business Strategy

In the language of strategy, we often say, “There’s a need for strategy because time, dollars, and focus are scarce and limited resources.” A strong business strategy is the application of these resources for maximum leverage.

But in developing a solid business strategy, you first need to check that you’re actually doing strategy and not something else entirely — like business planning.

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July 5, 2018

How to Build Your Marketing Plan for FY19: Marketing 2.0 Breakfast Session

Business Strategy, Step Change, Marketing Strategy

Today’s customers and prospects know exactly what they want and go online to find it. To market your business in this new age, you need more than just the right message to stand out and drive customer loyalty. You need to do more than just create the right offer.

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June 27, 2018

5 Disruptive Technologies that Will Transform Businesses

Business Strategy, Disruption, Digital

In the midst of constant discontinuity, only one thing is certain: technology will disrupt every aspect of our lives and drive how business is done in the coming years. For CMOs, it is crucial to know and understand what these technologies are and how they are disrupting the way we do business today.

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June 14, 2018

Expanding Your Business: Are You Ready to Enter a New Market?

Business Strategy, Marketing Strategy

If you have thought about venturing into a new market to expand your reach, promote brand awareness, or increase revenue, there are few key points you need to consider first. And it’s not as simple as you may think.

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June 4, 2018

3 Strategic Ways to Win in Financial Services

Business Strategy, Finance

In today’s crowded marketplace, the need to stand out from the competition is crucial. But more importantly, in order to win, Financial Services companies need to look into existing challenges that may be stopping them from achieving true differentiation in their industry.

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May 30, 2018

5 Powerful Business Strategy Tips to Fuel Your Growth [VIDEO]

Business Strategy

Every year, we work with a hundred clients everywhere and anywhere, from Wellington to Toronto, and in one of our strategic sessions, Step Change chief Ashton Bishop was given a challenge: Out of all the strategy work that the team has done at Step Change, how can we add the most value in 5 minutes? Here’s his response to the 5-minute challenge with his five tips on strategy.  

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May 28, 2018

Change Management Principles: How to Lead Change and Make It Stick

Business Strategy, Culture & Leadership

No matter how far-reaching a leader’s vision may be, the reality is that transforming organisations is a difficult and arduous task. Many businesses today are so deeply rooted in operational efficiency and stability that they continue to struggle with how to effectively manage and sustain change.

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May 22, 2018

Customer Engagement: How Would These Strategists Win More Customers?

Customer Journey, Business Strategy, History's Greatest Strategists, Customer Centricity

If great strategic thinkers like Anita Roddick, Jean Nidetch, and Mother Teresa would run your business, how would they transform your customers into raving fans?

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May 16, 2018

Unpaid Overtime and Its Impact on the Business and the People [SURVEY]

Business Strategy

Are you working unpaid overtime and struggling to see the value of this for yourself or for your organisation? We are interested to understand the positives and negatives of unpaid overtime, for individuals and organisations. Help us shed light into the matter by taking this survey. This is open to everyone working in Australia.

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May 14, 2018

How to Create an Internal Comms Strategy that Works (with Case Study from AGL Energy)

Business Strategy, Branding, Creativity

One of the many challenges businesses face today more than ever is connecting with their audiences, whether it's their customers or employees.

What may be a significant policy update that can lead to positive change, if delivered in the wrong tone or framed in the wrong way, could end up being received poorly by the team.

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April 4, 2018

How To Create A Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Business Strategy, History's Greatest Strategists

Sustainable competitive advantages are becoming harder to find and harder to maintain. There are really only 2 ways that you can define these. What are they?

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March 15, 2018

5 Innovative Australian Companies You Should Know About

Business Strategy, Innovation, Business Growth

Many organisations today are under pressure in the relentless race of being ahead of the curve.

Whether it’s needing to enter new markets, achieve a sales breakthrough, expand margins, or deliver high-quality and low-cost products, businesses need to have an innovation imperative if they want to get ahead and stay relevant.

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February 22, 2018

Where Do CEOs Plan to Invest for Growth in 2018?

Business Strategy, Digital, Business Growth

We recently surveyed 133 CEOs, Directors of Marketing and Sales, and CMOs to find out where companies are likely to invest for growth. 

We found that most young executives are aiming to increase investment across the board more than older executives. We also found it interesting that smaller cities like Adelaide are more adventurous in terms of virtual reality or augmented reality than Sydney or Melbourne.

The highlight of our survey reveals the key areas where business leaders plan to invest to grow their businesses this year.

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February 21, 2018

Key Explainer Video Metrics Marketers Should Be Obsessing Over

Business Strategy

So you’ve produced a great video explainer that will help your target audience easily understand what it is that you do. You’ve thought about where to strategically embed it on your website to gain traction. You had it pinned on top of your social media account. You shared the link to your team.

Now all that’s left to do is track its success.

But how do you know your message is getting across? What key metrics should you be looking at?

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February 15, 2018

Why CFOs Play a Critical Role in Strategic Decision-Making

Business Strategy

The Chief Financial Officer is a key player in any organisation and is someone you need to successfully engage with if you want to create positive change in an organisation. A CFO can be your biggest ally — or your greatest nemesis.

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February 6, 2018

How Would Warren Buffett and Jack Welch Launch Your New Brand?

Business Strategy, History's Greatest Strategists

There are many different ways to launch a new brand, and any one of them can jumpstart your products from scratch. But it helps to take inspiration from some of the world’s greatest strategists because, after all, their success has been tried and tested.

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January 24, 2018

Grow a Business in a Recession: What Would Florence Nightingale or Che Guevara do?

Business Strategy, History's Greatest Strategists

Growing a business is hard in the best of times. However, in the worst of times, such as the conditions found during a recession, growing a business is next to impossible unless the right strategy is developed.

A prime example is the modern-day Great Recession where more than 170,000 small businesses closed their doors between 2008 and 2010, according to the US Census Bureau.

While the loss of over three million small-business jobs was catastrophic for many individuals, there is an opportunity to learn lessons in an effort to remain prepared should a future lengthy recession occur.

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January 1, 2018

How to Develop a Data-Driven Business Strategy - Agency

Business Strategy, Digital

Big data has been described as the “new oil” as far as business assets go. However, a better analogy might be the Wild West. It is fairly easy for any business to now leverage BI and data to make decisions; however, the “how” still isn’t clear, and neither is the application. 

According to KPMG, when the strategy is data-driven, it helps to make sense of structured and unstructured data and applies that knowledge to a wide range of business functions. The result is that there is no more guess work, and results can become more predictable. Far more predictable than conventional forecasting techniques based on static historical financial reports.

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November 28, 2017

Insights from Breakfast with the Futurist: Is Your Business Future-Proof?

Business Strategy

A month ago, we had the pleasure of hosting Business Technology Futurist and Innovation Expert Craig Rispin, who gave us a glimpse of what the future holds. For instance, did you know that in 2028…

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November 9, 2017

Developing a Complete Strategic Response to Disruption

Business Strategy, Disruption

Do you know when and how disruption is coming to you?

On the Admatic stage delivering his recent keynote titled “Disruption3”, Jeff Cooper, shares the top disruptive trends that may be affecting businesses and the strategies to deal with disruption. 

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November 7, 2017

10 Disruptive Trends You Need to Know to Inform Your Value Proposition

Business Strategy

Trends are emerging on our horizon, and they’re impacting businesses. In fact, some of them could be under your radar — and you just didn’t know it.

Technological advancements and societal shifts are influencing people’s buying behaviours, and ignoring this fact only means you’re giving your competitor the upper hand.

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October 20, 2017

History’s Greatest Strategists: Assemble Your Ultimate Advisory Board

Business Strategy, History's Greatest Strategists

With only the final few seats available, we want to give you the opportunity to tackle disruption head on by assembling your ultimate advisory board.

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September 15, 2017

How Genghis Khan and Mother Teresa Would Beat Amazon in Australia

Business Strategy, Power of Model Thinking, Decision Making, Popular Posts, History's Greatest Strategists

If you had to make a list of some of the most powerful brands in history, online retail giant Amazon would undoubtedly be right at the top. According to one recent study, the company saw $2.371 billion in net income in 2016 on the back of $136 billion in net sales — and that’s just in the United States. The company is also growing at a rate of about 27% year-over-year and currently employs more than 341,000 people. All of this is to say that the fact that Amazon has decided to make its long-awaited move into Australia should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody. 

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September 1, 2017

The Business Case for Creating a Purpose-Driven Organisation

Business Strategy

Why does your business exist? What are you out to do?

These questions seem easy to answer. But working with different businesses all over Australia for almost a decade now, we’ve observed that not all businesses are aligned with their organisations purpose.

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August 10, 2017

Interest Rates Increase: What That Means for Businesses in Australia

Business Strategy

When a country’s central bank increases interest rates, it creates a ripple effect that impacts the entire economy. Even with a 0.25% increase, you have to adjust your marketing strategy to respond to the drop in discretionary income as well as the currency’s relative increased strength. 

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