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Business Management Information
The Boss Didn?t Understand Why His Staff Wasn?t Reading His Mind
Many people believe that everyone sees the world exactly the same way as they do. This is never true and was the source of much turmoil in Dr. Jacob?s office.
First Things First -- Process BEFORE Technology
Here's a brief story I encountered while leaving Newark International Airport following a recent business trip. Hard to believe, but true.
A Tricky Supervision Challenge
Many managers believe that treating their team members as responsible adults will assure excellent results. The truth is that while this usually is effective, some people need much firmer limits than others to perform their jobs.
Your Biggest Problem in Business? Work Ethic
US Work Ethic Issues
and Lack of service
Creativity and Innovation Management - Core Competencies and Competitive Advantage
Following is a brief definition of core competencies and competitive advantage and their fit with creativity and innovation management.
Creativity and Innovation Management ? Personality Testing
Whilst tests measuring the creative or innovative personality exist, there are a number of inherent flaws. Some are noted below:
10 Ways To Maintain Profits In A Slow Economy
1. Sell more back end products to your existing customer base. You already created rapport, trust and proved your credibility to them.
Managing Motivation
"Without the chance to meaningfully participate in steering one?s own destiny, without the opportunity to gain the sincere respect of one?s own peers, without an honest stake in making the community more successful through one?s own work and ideas, employability can quickly decay into generic training programs or bogus choices..." --"Beyond Empowerment: Building a Company of Citizens" by Brook Manville, Josiah Ober, page 52, Harvard Business Review January 2003.
Unravelling the Data Mining Mystery - The Key to Dramatically Higher Profits
Data mining is the art of extracting nuggets of gold from a set of seeminngly meaningless and random data. For the web, this data can be in the form of your server hit log, a database of visitors to your website or customers that have actually purchased from your web site at one time or another.
10 Fool Proof Ways To Intensify Your Profits
1. Create benefit intensifiers for your list of ad copy benefits. Example, The Benefit: "Save More Time", The Benefit's Intensifier: "Never Seen Before".
Dividing The Loot
It is when the going gets better, that the going gets tough. This enigmatic sentence bears explanation: when a firm is in dire straits, in the throes of a crisis, or is a loss maker ? conflicts between the shareholders (partners) are rare. When a company is in the start-up phase, conducting research and development and fighting for its continued, profitable survival in the midst of a massive investment cycle ? rarely will internal strife arise and threaten its existence. It is when the company turns a profit, when there is cash in the till ? that, typically, all manner of grievances, complaints and demands arise. The internecine conflicts are especially acute where the ownership is divided equally. It is more accentuated when one of the partners feels that he is contributing more to the business, either because of his unique talents or because of his professional experience, contacts or due to the size of his initial investments (and the other partner does not share his views).
The Inferno of the Finance Director
Sometimes, I harbour a suspicion that Dante was a Financial Director. His famous work, "The Inferno", is such an accurate description of the job that it cannot be otherwise. He is fervently hated by the workers. He is thoroughly despised by the other managers ("mean bastard" is his common nickname among them, mostly for scrutinizing their expense accounts). He is dreaded by the owners of the firm because the powers that he has often outweigh theirs. Shareholders hold him responsible in annual meetings. When the financial results are good ? they are attributed to the talented General Manager. When they are bad ? the Financial Director gets blamed for not enforcing budgetary discipline. It is a no-win, thankless job. Very few make it to the top and the rest retire, eroded and embittered.
Making Your Workers Your Partners
There is an inherent conflict between owners and managers of companies. The former want, for instance, to minimize costs - the latter to draw huge salaries as long as they are in power (who knows what will transpire tomorrow). For companies traded in the stock exchanges, the former wish to maximize the value of the stocks (short term), the latter might have a longer term view of things. In the USA, shareholders place emphasis on the appreciation of the stocks (the result of quarterly and annual profit figures). This leaves little room for technological innovation, investment in research and development and in infrastructure. The theory is that workers who are also own stocks will avoid these cancerous conflicts which, at times, bring companies to ruin and, in many cases, dilapidate them financially and technologically. Whether reality leaves up to theory, is an altogether different question to which we will dedicate a separate article.
Innovation Management ? IBM Opens Lid On Its Treasure Chest
IBM, which registered 3248 patents last year, has decided that sharing technology can sometimes be more profitable than jealously guarding its property rights on patents, copyrights and trade secrets (Herald Tribune, April 11 2005).
CRM ...The Emperors New Clothes
The story of the emperor's new clothes is a fairy tale about men who fooled the emperor into believing that they had made him a beautiful suit of clothes. In fact they had not made anything. The emperor went out in public wearing nothing but his underwear because he didn't want to appear stupid since they had told him only the wisest people could see the fine fabrics.When the emperor went out in public a little child yelled..."The emperor isn't wearing any clothes!" Today I am that child.
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When the stock market crashed in 1929, there were a lot of people who lost everything they had. You would think that the result of that event would be complete and utter despair. And, in fact, there were those who reacted that way. There were numerous cases of people who committed suicide because they lost their life savings on that fateful day. They simply went into a depression and just couldn't bring themselves to go on with life.
Does Your Management Style Remind People Of Something They Read In Dilbert?
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In Stephen Covey's great book, "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", he talks about the 'emotional bank account', where you have to build a credit in your relationship with the individuals who you work with (and everyone else as well!).
Creative and Innovative Culture, Change Management ? Three Easy Tests
Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation and innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation. From this simple definition, it is clear that certain cultural characteristics ought to be prevalent if creativity and innovation are to be maximised. And maximisation of these ought to be a priority for senior leaders, as those organisations that take them seriously, tend to be leaders in their field, tend to maintain their leadership position longer and are quicker to bounce back when competitors leap frog.
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Focus On the Prize
People talk to me about making personal and professional changes in their life. I hear comments about how hard they think it will be, concerns about their ability to be successful, pressure on themselves to produce results, etc. The anticipation (what you imagine or assume will happen) of the experience can be daunting enough to deter a person from taking the first step! How often does the anticipation match the reality of what happens? If your thoughts and emotions are getting in the way of what you want, read on for 10 tips to get going and stay moving.
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Okay, so you've figured out what kind of meeting is needed, you've planned well and you have all the right materials. How about the meeting itself? How can you be sure the meeting you've so carefully planned and prepared actually comes off as expected?
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