Business Group

In a challenging economy, or economic recession, many business owners tend to panic with respect to decisions that need to be made about the business. Instead of planning, thinking through and making the best decisions, they tend to make decisions as though they are chopping away at a piece of wood. Instead of strategically looking at the business, they tend to react to the environment.

Instead of reacting haphazardly to disruptions in the marketplace, looking at your business as the system that it is will afford you the opportunity to make good, proactive decisions about your business that may help your business not only survive, but thrive.

For our purposes, we'll define a system as am organized group of things that work together to form a single entity. If you think about your family as a system, they are a group of people that started off, at some point in the past, as two people. Their goal was survive. They required inputs in order to do so, such as food, water, clothing and shelter. They also had to think about each other's safety - how they would continue to survive.

Eventually, this couple would procreate. However, the primary needs still had to be addressed - they would not go away. They learned, quickly, that the younger generation could not care for itself, and thus, their basic needs expanded. Eventually, through procreation, this small family became a group, and by combining with other families, the group become some sort of village or community that worked together to provide food, clothing, shelter, safety, education and growth for themselves. They depended on each other to bring their gifts, talents and abilities to provide certain inputs for the continuation of the community or system. When there was something lacking - food, water, shelter, safety, etc., the community suffered. When there were excesses, the community grew.

Your business probably started the same way: you started off as a single operator, or with a partner or two, with some vision of growing the organization. You found a name, a market, products or services, resources, etc. in order to grow the business. Your inputs include a market, customers, cash, talent, etc.. Just as the village, when there is a shortage of one or some of your basic needs, the business suffers. When there is an excess, the business prospers. It is a system

What happens with many businesses and business owners is that the system is not functioning the way that it could because the system is not organized. It is like a wooden wheel with one flat side: while it will continue to role, it will not be as effective as a wheel that is completely round. Like a cart with a broken wheel, while that broken wheel is a problem by itself, continual avoidance of its repair will lead to other problems, such as destroying the structural integrity of the whole cart. The cart is a system.

One of the toughest parts of organizing is prioritizing - keeping first things, first. If you clean and polish the car, but don't manage the failing engine, while you might look good, you won't go anywhere. You must prioritize the needs of the business, and address each in a very deliberate manner. Like a car, different parts of the business will need to be monitored at different frequencies - some things, you'll want to monitor every day. Other will be less frequently. Ensuring that all parts of the system are working together, from its core level, outward, is another key to business longevity.

The benefit of operating and observing your business like this is that, like the community we discussed, you can begin to predict when environmental dangers are approaching. The community had to exist in a much larger system - nature. Your business also exists in other, larger systems, as well, including the market, the environment, the community it serves, etc. You need to see the signs of an approaching economic storm, or a change in the market or even internal disruptions, such as technological obsolescence, training issues or staff changes. Monitoring these approaching storms will allow you to think and be proactive in all of the decisions around your business. Your business will be agile in the marketplace and more often than not, be ahead of the curve when changes occur.

So, in a nutshell:

1. Realize that your business is a system: all parts of your business work together

2. Define and prioritize your business's needs - keep first things first

3. Be aware of the key items that you need to monitor and with what frequency you need to monitor them. These will include your key inputs

4. Watch the external systems- look out for signs of approaching internal or external disruptions to your business

5. Be proactive. Make good, informed decisions that will ensure the likelihood of the continuance of your business

Your business is a system. It requires ongoing observation, adjustments and inputs in order to continue for any length of time. Ignoring the signs around you will ultimately lead to its failure.

Team Building - Not just another fad. Team Building" is another catchall phrase that we as leaders continually hear and in some measure try to respond to. Too often though, a team building event is decided on, planned and executed without any consideration being made to what the team building exercise is supposed to accomplish. A team building exercise or event will not fix or even put a Bandaid on any of the following:

The purpose of a team building event is to expose your staff to opportunities to learn new skills or discuss new ideas and ways of dealing with common issues in a non-threatening environment. The event is not meant to be an extended training session for skills that staff already possess, or are, learning on the job. Neither is the purpose to lecture staff and employees on what they "should" be doing to do their jobs better.

Rather, the event should provide alternatives to current behaviors in a positive and inspiring way that encourages and supports your staff to try new things, think in new ways, and step out of the "box" to see if they may have a skillset they have never thought about using in their current role within your organization.

It is unfortunate that team building activities are usually thrown together as a reactionary act in a moment of desperation. We hire individuals who are not involved with our business, product or service to facilitate activities, plan the event, etc., "hoping" that what the staff need are what the facilitators will provide.

It is important that prior to deciding on a team building activity that you, as leader assess the need for the activity and what your expectations for the activity are. To do that you must first define what a Team Building Activity is and what your expectations of the activity are.

I have seen excellent team building events and have been honored to participate as a speaker at some. So, I would like to spend some time discussing a few of the items that made these team building events so memorable, well attended and well received by staff, leaders and visitors.

A team building event requires the same amount of pre-planning and preparation that you would spend on a conference or other sales event. This event should be more than a day spent listening or participating in the leaders favorite activity or, worse, listening to a speaker that does not know the subject matter and has obviously not done their homework.

When planning the event, depending on the size of your group there should be structured, planned workshops that are relevant to the needs of your team. The structure of the event should follow the same agenda as a well run conference or workshop. Save the dates and sign up forms should include all staff, as well as a comment section. The agenda would run roughly as follows:

These workshops are held simultaneously, when people sign up to attend one or the other workshop, they are committing to learning something new and be positively inspired to take those skills and learnings back to their work place. It is important that there be a minimum of two workshops held for each session so that your staff are empowered to make decisions that will enhance their growth.

As you can see by the above agenda - You can pretty much spend a totally productive day and completely enhance your business growth with a properly structured team building event. The event simply does not do as well when treated as an afterthought. Pre-planning is critical to the success of any opportunity that you, as a leader, create whether it is for your staff or your customer base.

The cost of a team building event can run the gamut from cost effective to expensive. A few examples of team building events I have facilitated or otherwise been involved in.

Whether or not you are on a limited budget it is important to remember that your staff are customers and are just as important as the customer base for whom you provide workshops, seminars and conferences. The investment, in the final analysis is minimal and the true purpose of the team building event is increased with added impact and employee investment to future goals.

Forex Signals are just simply the way of following every entry and exit of experienced Forex investors. The most often Forex signals are provided via payable webpages or other online services. The most important is that the information about an entry or exit must be delivered at once, without any delay because the situation on market changes very quickly. That's why sending e-mails or sms is not good enough and is quite risky. You should not get involved in any such service.

While many jobs for American MBA graduates are going overseas, those who have MFA’s will be in great demand. According to Gartner Inc, by 2008, 40 percent of IT jobs for MBA’s will be outsourced to workers overseas. The reason? A person can fill in a spreadsheet from India as easily as from Silicone Valley for one-tenth the cost.

However, corporations cannot outsource creative jobs as easily. The ability to go quickly from problem to problem, problem to solution, or from initial idea to unique product does not cross cultures well. The employee needs to be a part of the culture he or she is marketing to. As a result, American employees with Masters of Fine Arts degrees (MFA’s) are more in demand and earning more than those with MBA’s.

Why does someone who is trained in artistic abilities do well in business? It’s not the particular artistic talent, but the thought process that creates it. Fine artists have the ability to apply non-linear thought to problems, which is a valuable business skill. Companies are looking for those employees who can apply a non-linear thought process to business problems.

What’s the Difference?

Here is a simple exercise that will demonstrate the difference between a linear and non-linear thought process. Take out a sheet of paper. In the top left corner, write a letter “A.” In the center of the page, write a “B.” Halfway down the page on the right hand side, parallel to the “B,” write a “C.” In the bottom right corner, write a “D,” and in the bottom left corner write an “E.” Now draw a line from A to B to C to D to E. That is linear thought—arriving at the final answer by following a step-by-step process.

Now take your right thumb and forefinger and grab the left top corner of the page next to the A. With your other thumb and forefinger, grasp the lower left corner next to the “E.” Touch the A to the E. That’s non-linear thought—finding the solution without having to go from point to point to point.

Non-Linear Thinking is an Inherent Skill

From the moment you are born, you are an input device constantly making connections. In the first five years of life, your brain grows very rapidly and sets down patterns of recognition. For example, as a survival skill, infants smile at everyone. Next they learn to recognize mommy and daddy, then they develop a fear of strangers, and then they learn to reserve affinity for family and other trusted people. Finally, they choose their own friends.

Over time, people begin to lay down patterns of normal and non-normal. That’s why you can look at a situation and know something isn’t right. If you see someone in an airport who has recently had a stroke, you may not realize the individual had one, but you do know that something isn’t right. That is called non-linear thinking—moving quickly from an observation to an end-point. Depending on your experience, that endpoint might have an accuracy as low as 50-50. However, for people trained in creativity, the accuracy is about 99.7 percent. These quick, non-linear solutions, called snap judgments or instinct, are valuable in life and in business. Too often, though, these instincts are not used in the business world, but that’s about to change.

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Creative, Non-Linear People Benefit Business

Creative people get in touch with the emotion of what they’re creating in themselves and use that as a guide to produce the same emotion in another person from the same society. Businesses see the value of that skill—an employee making decisions based on the mindset of a person of the general society, not as an employee tied to a business. Your non-linear, or heuristic, thought processes are when you observe from the inside out, seeing how your own emotions mirror the ones you observe in others.

Can people only achieve this non-linear thinking ability by earning an MFA? Of course not. Not everyone is willing to go back to school for another two to three years to get their MFA. Fortunately, you can encourage the same type of non-linear thinking in yourself and your employees.

* Eliminate your framing bias.

How you ask questions determines the answers you get. For example, if you manufacture candy bars and you’re ranked second in sales behind brand A, you may ask yourself, “How can we take market share away from brand A?” The obvious linear answer: make your product taste like Brand A. You have labs, testers, and linear thought people who can make Brand B taste like Brand A, or even better. Due to framing bias, they ask the focus group, “Which one tastes like Brand A? Which one do you like better?” Brand B wins, because now it tastes just a little better than Brand A.

But the problem with this scenario is that nobody ever went back and asked the basic question: Will our existing customers accept this change? The executives assume brand loyalty will drag customers along. But if they have a core group of fans who love the original taste of the product, in changing the flavor, they alienate them.

* Quantitate non-linear thought.

Learn to apply non-linear or heuristic research methods by taking a written inventory of your own feelings, prejudices, and thoughts on the subject at hand. Now you have the ability to walk into a situation and start observing how the situation itself affects you. That’s called “going with your gut.” If you are a representative of your culture, your environment, and your area of expertise, as well as in touch with your customers and what you experience and feel, then you have unframed your bias. If you are honest, you will be feeling the same reaction as your customers, and you have just gone from point A to point E without all the letters in between.

A business person needs to walk through the mental door to unframe his or her biases. For example, with the chocolate bar example, a good businessperson would go to the store, or go to the factory, or call his or her best distributors. The businessperson would evaluate whether the new product was flying off the shelf. If so, that’s good. But he or she would not let that framing bias affect the next time he or she goes through the door, as the opposite may be true then. Such an instantaneous response leads you to continue doing what you’re doing or more of it, depending on how well it’s going.

Learning Non-Linear Thinking and Dual Processing

A new intern fresh out of medical school is the ultimate linear thought machine. In medical school, students are taught that symptom equals possible disease. A equals B. They then run a test to confirm if B equals C. This process, however, is not conducive to all types of medicine. As soon as these new interns walk into an emergency room, they quickly learn non-linear thinking. After a few days of training, experience, and drilling, they become parallel processing machines. They still do their linear thought processes but they also tap back into the non-linear thinking they had before they got their higher education.

Most people who are now are drifting to an MFA degree already have their MBA. They’ve learned and honed their linear thought processes into a sharp edge; now they get their MFA to hone and reactivate their non-linear thought processes. At the end of all that education, they must learn to parallel process on their own, much like the emergency room interns.

In the future, people will pursue their MFA after getting their Bachelor’s in business. This way they will achieve both linear and non-linear thought processes and they’ll learn to parallel process. Five to seven years from now, we will see people start earning dual degrees, or universities may start offering a new degree that incorporates both.

In the meantime, businesses will need to find ways to encourage parallel processing in their employees. They can do this in a few days of intense training in a corporate retreat setting, or spread over several weeks in a coaching environment. Getting back in touch with non-linear thinking is not hard. Being able to parallel process takes some practice, but the payoff will be more success for businesses, a steady job outlook, and higher earnings for those who master this skill.

Self Management in Business

In today's competitive world, self-management in business is absolutely essential. There are many companies who have self-management teams. This team is a set of permanent employees, who are responsible for the production of a product or service, right from inception, to delivery, to after sales. Especially, the service industry needs this kind of team where there are innovator, influential, and organizer talent.

Basis of Forming Self Managed Teams

In such teams, grouping is done in such a way that workers are related to each other through task performance and task interdependence. Self management in business is achieved by way of creating these autonomous teams, where each member is motivated by himself/herself. For example, if you take a small IT company of less than 50 people serving IT solutions to giants industries, then this company cannot be categorized into levels. You cannot designate them as one HR, one director, one quality tester etc., instead, they are all multi-specialist who work together to find solutions to complicated problems.

In the practice of self management in business, a group of talents is given a specific task and basic guidelines on how to get it done. This motivates all the members of the team to present their own idea, get feedback and learn to appreciate other people's idea. They are all structured to manage and coordinate their own activities. They make many strategic decisions, day-to-day decisions on their own, what traditionally would have been done by their manager.

The people in these self managed teams are multi-talented and have a wider range of operative skills. They discuss it among themselves and then finalize the method of work, planning, scheduling and controlling of work. They tend to distribute task amongst themselves according to their individual skills. They improve their working method on their own.

Leading The Self Managed Teams

If you are in the process of leading self management in business at your workplace, then you need to follow some simple steps as follows:

1. You will have to move back and forth in the organization and the teams to build relationships

2. You must scout for the necessary information and provide it to the teams to build further plans

3. You now have to persuade the teams and outside constituents to support one another

4. Next, you have to empower the team members to make day-to-day as well as strategic decisions on their own. For this, they need to build trust amongst themselves and have self motivation to achieve goals.

Self management in business is a collective effort, which requires contribution of all those in the team. The team members must have the relevant information available, based on what they can evaluate their results. They are a multi-talented group, which is responsible for a certain task, right from beginning to end.

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