|
|
Like this article? PLEASE +1 it! |  |
|
productivity Tagged Articles
|
Tips for Improving Motivation
| |
| The concept of motivation is one of the most misunderstood terms in the leadership lexicon. Reason: Most leaders either never learned or have forgotten the nature of motivation, so they try to achieve it using ineffective tools. This white paper focuses on the learning from Herzberg’s Two Factor theory and why those concepts can be translated into helpful guidelines that create the opportunity for higher levels of motivation. |
|
|
3 Proven Ways to Completely Mess Up Your Outsourcing
| |
| Have you ever tried to do all of the right things to delegate and outsource, only to find that you still spend WAY too much time managing your team? |
|
|
E-Mail Tip #11 - Create a Set of Rules for Your Organization
| |
| It is amazing how some organizations live in a perpetual state of e-mail overload when there is a very simple way out? This article suggests each group create a set of rules to use. My experience is that doing this can cut the volume of notes from 30% to 50% very quickly. Wouldn't your group benefit from all that extra time? |
|
|
Green Productivity
| |
| Going green has to be more than 'doing good' ... it has to make good business sense ... and it can. Go green before the 'green police' force you to! |
|
|
Benchmarking (Part 1)
| |
| To know how well we are doing, we need to compare ourselves to somebody else. Benchmarking is the process of comparing our performance to some kind of standard or to the competition - and using that comparison to drive improvement. |
|
|
Benchmarking (Part 3)
| |
| Though benchmarking can be a complex process in practice, in principle it is quite simple. This article sets out a simple, straightforward strategy for establishing a benchmarking process. |
|
|
Conscious Connections: Are you FULLY Connected?
| |
| When activity is high, it can be easy to lose connection with what is most important. We may diminish the big and little successes occurring along the way. We may not stop and fully connect with those we love - enough or at all. We may set goals and objectives haphazardly, not owning or connecting to them at the core of our being. We may avoid connecting to the underlying feelings that haven't been expressed. We may lose connection with ourselves.
Whether you fit the "busy" description, or are just casually pacing through life - STOPPING and taking the time to "consciously connect" is essential to maximizing fulfillment AND productivity. |
|
|
4 Time Management Tips for Home-Based Business Opportunities
| |
| As a promoter of home-based business opportunities, it can be difficult reaching your goals. One of the biggest reasons why many people struggle is because of lack of effective time management. |
|
|
Survival Without Computers
| |
| I was ‘hindered’ when my computer crashed and I had no data, no address book and not even my passwords to get back online. I didn’t think I was doing anything remarkable by bouncing back to productivity even with this handicap for a week. But from the feedback I’ve had from more than a few people, it seems paralysis would have been the acceptable common option. |
|
|
Help! There Are Not Enough Hours in the Day
| |
| How many times do you hear yourself say, “I wish I had more hours in the day,” or “I don’t have enough time.” When you include sleep, can you honestly say that you’ve had a productive day and maximized all 1440 minutes allotted? Perhaps a quick glance at the evening news might turn into an hour. Maybe you planned on checking out one website, but find an interesting link and click on it, and then you continue clicking more links. Soon enough, you spent nearly two hours checking out travel deals and reading all the gossip news, and haven’t accomplished anything. Where did all the minutes go? |
|
|
Small Business Strategy- A Framework for Change
| |
| The business environment keeps changing. Are you standing still? Take a new look at your positioning, productivity, partnering, and personal goals |
|
|
Extreme Productivity Tools - mind blowing tips
| |
| All leaders know that capturing their day in the most productive way is the only way they will reach their goals. They are extremely focused, and have a strategy to their madness. Here are 5 tips and how we apply these extreme techniques to our life.
|
|
|
Pay-For-Performance
| |
| Still facing the realities of this recession? Contemplating laying-off employees while knowing that doing so will further hurt the business? Using pay-for-performance plans may just save your employees and better position your business for the recovery when it finally arrives. |
|
|
How Layout Affects Productivity
| |
| If you truly want your productivity efforts to be enhanced, you must plan ahead. This includes properly understanding and laying out your companies objectives in plain sight. It also means having a realistic implementation plan. |
|
|
FUN in the workplace...
| |
| Is FUN as waste of time or is it a necessity to increase productivity?
If you and your employees are not having fun it is costing you money in all sorts of ways that you would likely prefer not to think about. Having fun is a necessity. Fun creates a good feeling inside of us a sense of euphoria. When we smile and laugh our brains produce a chemical serotonin that gives us this feeling of well being. Exuding this kind of energy is highly attractive for others; they may want to start hanging out with you.
|
|
|
Managing smart or fire-fighting?
| |
| So many managers at all levels are principally fire-fighting and simply not planning, strategic and thinking deeply enough to provide the best solutions for their own productivity and for the sustainability of their organizations. |
|
|
Motivation and Productivity During Recession
| |
| Should we invest in our staff when shedding other contractors, temporary staff and full-employees? |
|
|
Lower Stress At Work Is Just Good Business Manners
| |
| Few things within a business are guaranteed to raise tensions, shorten fuses and lower productivity as are simple bad manners and yet, when times get tough and stress rises, good manners are often an early victim.
When the erosion of good manners then leaks from team relations into customer relations (as it inevitably must) that, in turn, costs sales - not just immediate sales, but all of the remaining sales you would have made to that client had you retained them for years to come, and the sales of all the other people whom they were miffed enough to discourage from dealing with you in future!
|
|
|
Tracking & Diagnosing Sales Performance
| |
| One of my clients was recently wrestling with a common business challenge - a contracted professional salesperson who was not delivering results. She was uncertain about the correctness of insisting on a report of his activities because her initial request had been met with, "I don't have time for that. I'm busy getting out there seeing people. What do you want: Sales or reports?"
Like most "half truths" this one caused her some angst: She did want sales; activities were not what she was paying for - but the arrangement wasn't working, and she could not see why.
|
|
|
5 Skills For Patching Broken Trust
| |
| The best way to patch broken trust is to reduce fear and restore employees' confidence in the reliability, integrity and fairness of leaders and the organization.
This article reviews five skills that serve leaders when diffusing employee distrust to mobilize productivity.
|
|
|
How To Restore Trust For Team Building Success
| |
| This article reviews five skills that serve leaders when diffusing employee distrust to mobilize productivity for team building success.
|
|
|
How to repair trust after workforce reduction
| |
| Workforce reduction and the way it is handled either reinforce congruency or breaks it along with perceived integrity, reliability and fairness. When this happens, team work success and trust is compromised. This article offers two suggestions for successful entrepreneurs on how to repair workforce trust and explains the productivity cost of not doing so.
|
|
|
How Downsizing Damages Trust
| |
| How you handle downsizing either reinforces corporate congruency or breaks it along with perceived integrity, reliability and fairness, which in turn damages trust. This article offers two suggestions on how to repair workforce trust and explains the productivity cost of not doing so. |
|
|
Competition VS Interdependence
| |
| Competition is essential for business success. At the same time, internal competition damages your group intelligence, retards your growth and disrupts team morale. In this article, we explore what interdependent processes and leadership practices can do for your team. |
|
|
How to Stay Motivated in your Home Based Business
| |
| A struggle in the life we live and more so in being an entrepreneur, because being an entrepreneur is a very performance and productivity and results driven vocation.It's demands do place a damper on your motivation at times in is article it is a preventitive measures that we can put into place to safeguard from our level on motivation taking a wrong turn along the way. Here are a number of things that you can put in place where you need to make improvements where needed. |
|
|
You need one, I need one: we all need a break
| |
| In the current economic climate the mantra is to work harder and harder. This is a global phenomenon and we are told it regularly. There is no time for a break; you just have to keep pushing yourself. Everyone else is doing it - so of course you must follow suit. It's expected that this behavior will impact on productivity in all the right ways and that the organisation will go from strength-to-strength. Those in leadership are not immune from this pressure. It is not only difficult to continue to work harder and harder, it is impossible because there comes a point when the bone has no more meat on it. While sustainable for awhile, over time issues start to emerge. Pressured, exhausted leaders can experience a loss of confidence, self esteem, lack of clarity and mental and/or physical health issues can appear... |
|
|
WHY WE SHOULD HOLD PEOPLE ACCOUNTABLE--AND WHY WE DON’T
| |
| When we fail to hold others accountable, we reap the consequences-some obvious, some not so obvious. A lack of productivity is one of the more obvious negatives that come to mind. So if accountability is critical to execution and individual and team performance, then why don’t we consistently hold people accountable for results? There are seven assumptions and misunderstanding-let’s call them “Tickets to Slide”-that contribute to this phenomenon. |
|
|
10 Time Management Mistakes
| |
| Where did the day go? Read here about 10 of the most common time management mistakes (and time wasters). Learn to recognize and eliminate them in order to gain more time for value-generating activities. |
|
|
All Work-No Life? Organize for Productivity, Profit and Peace-of-Mind (Part 1)
| |
| Pain, stress, burn-out, information fatigue and severely eroded work-life balance. These are just some of the syndromes caused by our technologically accelerated society. In this introductory part of a series of articles we ask whether there is any hope of ever restoring sanity to our “crazy” world. |
|
|
Clean Desk = Sick Mind? Organize For Productivity, Profit and Peace-of-Mind (Part2)
| |
| Is a clean desk a sign of a sick mind? Part 2 of this series describes the steps required to eliminate the accumulated paper clutter in your office. The goal is not to get organized! (Yes, you are reading it right) The goal is to create a system (and associated process), which let’s you STAY organized. |
|
|
How to Write Effective Emails? Tips and Best Practices
| |
| Email is a fantastic tool. Why is it then, that we curse it? Why is it that we have become slave to it? It fills our email inboxes. It drives our days. It saps our productivity. Could the problems be self-inflicted? Regrettably, often, they are. Let's look at a few emailing best practices, which should help in harnessing the email as a valuable tool, rather than a necessary Evil. |
|
|
Organized in 10 Minutes? You Must Be Kidding!
| |
| To be truthful, I’m not talking about getting organized. I’m talking about STAYING organized! In this brief article I give some tips on how to keep up (rather than catch up) with your paper and email. It's all about decision-making, effective systems and good, daily habits. |
|
|
Put Your Papers & Mind to Rest - Organize For Productivity, Profit and Peace-of-Mind (Part3)
| |
| In this article we review the preparations and considerations required to set up an effective filing system. |
|
|
Staying Clutter-Free - Organize For Productivity, Profit and Peace-of-Mind (Part 5)
| |
| In this installment we review the steps required to remain (paper) clutter-free with minimal daily maintenance. We begin to learn about connecting our filing system with a process, which enables us to deal with paper (as well as all sorts of information, such as email, voicemail, etc.). |
|
|
Time Management & Productivity: Can You Really Manage Time?
| |
| Time Management is an oxymoron. We can't manage time. Time moves at a relentless, constant pace. Productivity and time are closely related. If time can't be managed, how do we increase productivity? This article offers a radically different view of "time management". |
|
|
Five Ways to Maximize Your Time When Social Networking
| |
| Social networking has been around in some shape or form since the late 1970s, when users could dial into Bulletin Board Systems to communicate with others sharing common interests. With the development of the World Wide Web in the 1990s, these systems have been supplanted by more sophisticated systems, leading up to today’s widely popular social networking sites.
A person could easily spend several hours per week (or even per day) checking out new sites, maintaining connections, and updating his or her profiles. Although effective social networking can and does lead to business opportunities, unfortunately, the activity itself will not generate any income, so it’s important to use your online time effectively. Here are five tips to help you do just that. |
|
|
Successful People Know How to Manage the Stress in Their Lives
| |
| Successful people are high performers. High performers maintain a reasonable level of health and fitness. They manage their stress. Here are a few simple steps you can take daily to increase your health and fitness and manage your daily dose of stress. Snack on healthy foods when you begin to feel a little slow and low. Take a few minutes in the afternoon to breathe deeply and relax. Move around -- don't spend all day every day in front of your computer. Exercise as often as possible. Get the same amount of sleep every night. If you follow these simple, common sense pieces of advice, you'll be able to prevent a lot of stress related illnesses. |
|
|
What Not To Wear: Can you see yourself in these 6 makeovers?
| |
| By default, we all have Cliff Jumping outfits in our closets. Find out which one of these six different business 'faces' (aka outfits) is the most worn out from overuse? This article light may be light in look and feel but not in lessons, which apply to both entrepreneurs and professionals alike, whether you are wanting more from your business or joint ventures, are in a business or career rut, or are already feeling successful. |
|
|
What can a burger teach you about business?
| |
| Did you know a burger can talk? Talk may be cheap but the wisdom gleaned from listening to the lessons learned from paying attention to the messy burgers of your life can be rich and rewarding for you. Want to know what that message burger is all about? Keep reading...
|
|
|
Practical Productivity Improvement and Cost Reduction
| |
| Inexpensive and quick actions to raise output and / or lower input in your organization, whatever your line of business. Act to raise profits or output, to ease bottlenecks, to refine operations that have lost their sharp focus over time or start effective new ones.
|
|
|
7 Time Management Secrets that Can Make You Wealthy
| |
| Do you want to increase your earnings by 50% or more? Who wouldn’t? The challenge is how to do that and work less at the same time. Many of the ultra-wealthy in our country have figured out how to do just that. After all, at one point the person now earning $20 million a year probably earned $200,000 or less at an earlier point in his/her career. That same person is not working a 100 times harder today. That person has learned to maximize their own productivity and to help others in their teams do the same.
There are 7 secrets to time management that can make you wealthy:
|
|
|
Be your best, not stressed: 3 entrepreneurial communication styles
| |
| This article, which teaches you how to leverage your Personal Communication Style to your advantage in your business or work, is especially for people with high standards and/or who expect a lot from themselves. Which of the three styles best describes you? |
|
|
Do your business and succeed, or get off the pot
| |
| This article is perfect for business owners who want to boost their level of pleasure and profit. It includes powerful mental reframes -- Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques -- that they can easily and readily apply on a daily basis. |
|
|
The Olympics teach entrepreneurs 4 winning ways to get focused
| |
| Take away these 4 business "lessons learned" about achieving unwavering focus that athletes apply during and while training for the Olympic games. Learn through concrete examples how to leverage your Enneagram personality type into your daily activities to help your business soar. |
|
|
Building Fires - What Leaders Do
| |
| Teaching, demonstrating and motivating through positive reinforcement are just a few of the examples of what leaders do to encourage the greatness in those they mentor. When properly done they can build followers into fiery leaders themselves. We can draw many parallels between developing the character of a leader and building a fire. |
|
|
How to Build Accountability in Your People
| |
| Every manager wants his or her employees to take on personal accountability for their work performance. Here are seven concrete actions you can take to foster that sense of responsibility in your staff. The benefits of this include greater productivity, confident, engaged employees who more rapidly reach their full performance potential, and less stress on you because you know you can count on them. The big bonus benefit is that you will have more time to focus on tasks that are strategically critical to the success and growth of the enterprise.
|
|
|
The 5 'Must Haves' for an ADHD Friendly Office
| |
| Organizing yourself at work so that you can achieve what you know you are capable of is a challenge for adults with ADHD. However there are five simple techniques that are easy to implement, and the results will leave you feeling productive and proud of yourself. |
|
|
Don't Bother Setting Goals
| |
| Don't bother setting goals. It's a waste of time. Let me explain why I feel this way about goals and then offer a better alternative. See if this scenario sounds familiar... |
|
|
How To Complete Your Goals With Ease
| |
| Are you struggling with a target you have set, or finding you just aren’t making any progress on a project that’s important to your business success? The bigger the dream, the harder it can be to get moving… Here’s a few simple tips that will make today productive for you! |
|
|
33 Ways To Motivate Your Employees
| |
| Motivating employees has always been a challenging issue. On the one hand, we can say that it's not possible to motivate employees at all - people typically do what they want to do; they are motivated for their own reasons, not for your reasons. On the other hand, research has shown that there is a strong relationship between happy employees and productivity. So how do you ensure that your employees are happy and motivated? |
|
|
How Do You Know If YOU Respond Effectively To Adversity?
| |
| You've heard the saying, "Change your thinking - change your results". It's true, but do you know what thinking needs to change and from what to what? It's not just about heaving positive thoughts on top of a dismal situation. Nor is it about denial. A bad decision followed by hopeful thinking doesn't change the bad decision into a good one. Understanding how the High Performer is able to achieve a desired outcome is the first step we must take to improve our own productivity. |
|
|
How To Double Your Profits By Tweaking Two Business Drivers
| |
| So, you want to double your turnover, eh? Here is a way to do just that by focusing on just two key levers of your business. let me refresh your understanding of the five key levers you can manipulate to grow your business. |
|
|
Reducing Energy Costs (and saving the planet)
| |
| For many of us, energy costs are signifcant - and rising. There are things we can do to lower them ... wouldn't it be crazy if we didn't try! |
|
|
The One Item Every Adult with ADHD Needs to Dramatically Increase Productivity
| |
| Very often it's the simplest things that make the biggest different in our lives. The same is true with increasing your productivity when you have ADHD. All you need is an kitchen timer! When you start to use a timer you will find it is a powerful weapon to beat procrastination and overwhelm. |
|
|
FaceBook Follies
| |
| From a purely business perspective, FaceBook makes no sense to me at all. Lemmings the world over are signed up by the millions because to exist in business, it seems mission-critical to be on FaceBook! Really? Apparently, the primary user base is still kids, students, families, budding entrepreneurs and befuddled geniuses... Those demographics should sound the "zero ROI" marketing alarm for any intelligently run business. Sophos's "Security Threat Report 2010" polled over 500 firms, 60% of whom responded that they believed that FaceBook was the social network that posed the biggest threat to security. That's aside from the billions of dollars of lost productivity! |
|
|
Get Fired Up! How to Accelerate Organizational Performance and Improve Job Satisfaction
| |
| The new realities of this economy have challenged business executives at all levels. Uncertainties about the economic recovery, increasing government involvement, rising health care costs, and the motivation of the workforce have placed management in a complicated and tenuous situation. While the challenges seem endless, one of the biggest issues executives face is how to improve performance as well as keep the workforce engaged and maintain a high level of productivity. |
|
|
Arthritis is Not Caused by Old Age
| |
| Arthritic aches and pains are a major issue in our ageing workforce. According to Professor Paul Hodges from University of Queensland's School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences body aches, pains and injuries are the second most expensive cause of lost productivity at work and health care expenditure. Only cardiovascular disease costs our society more. If arthritis was caused by old age, as implied by many welll-meaning physicians, surely all of our body would be worn out to the same degree because it's all the same age. |
|
|
How to Choose a Low Cost, Highly Effective Training Method: Forget Seminars!
| |
| Auditory or speech-based learning is validated as both the least effective and least preferred training method, yet we overuse. Adults cannot absorb more than 2.5 hours new information at a time, yet we pay for full-day seminars. There are some outstanding podium performers out there... but not practical and accessible for everyday organizational learning. The answers to safeguarded learning, enhanced productivity and optimum cost containment follow in this quickguide. |
|
|
360 Degree Performance Feedback Enhances Productivity
| |
| Everyone in a company needs and deserves feedback about their contributions and performance. They need both affirmative "on course" feedback as well as corrective, "off course" feedback from all of their team members, not just the boss. Read on and you will find ten tips for developing 360 degree performance feedback among all members of your company team. |
|
|
Comprehending and Strengthening Your Staff's Conscience and Productivity
| |
| Looking to learn how to understand and strengthen your staff's conscience to enhance productivity and company profitability? Read on to learn about how you can determine the demise of a person's conscience and engage them in a mutual performance accountability process to strengthen their conscience and their character and performance. |
|
|
Fostering Staff Creativity To Enhance Productivity
| |
| Help yourself and all of your staff members become more productive by reading on and learning about 14 things people can do to help enhance their creativity in ways that will enhance their productivity. Also learn about 12 organizational blocks that I've found need to be need to be removed to allow personal creativity to flow optimally though out a company. |
|
|
Affirming Others Builds Trust and Motivation
| |
| As a leader, what do you feel and think when you receive a sincere affirmation from another person? Doesn't it build you up emotionally and increase your motivation? Here are ten points you can use as a leader to enhance your ability to more consistently and regularly affirm others, including your staff members, colleagues at work and customers. Doing it will build good will, trust and rapport between yourself and others and help them feel strong emotionally and more motivated to help you achieve your company's goals. |
|
|
Assessing Team Effectiveness: A Key to Enhancing Productivity and Profitability
| |
| This article outlines 12 proven attributes of excellently functioning teams. These attributes can be used to survey team members, staff members and other teams within a company as to how a team is perceived as functioning in these key areas. Leaders who are serious about building stellar teams will find this information invaluable. |
|
|
Convicted Civility vs. Interpersonal Rancor
| |
| What does interpersonal rancor do to relationships, productivity and customer relations within your company? This article outlines a hopeful alternative to interpersonal rancor, convicted civility. Read on the understand the concept and alternative and how to begin integrating it into your company culture and operating norms. |
|
|
Deterring Interpersonal Conflict to Enhance Productivity
| |
| Are you looking to discover nine things you can do, and encourage others to do, to deter interpersonal conflicts from escalating into interpersonal chaos? Read on to learn about the steps you can take to keep conflict in your company low and productivity high. |
|
|
How To Remove And Replace Unproductive Habits
| |
| Suffering from unproductive habits that deter the expression of your best character and competence? Read on and discover seven tips you, your staff members and your colleagues at work can implement to develop positive habits in the place of unproductive habits. |
|
|
If You Want Something You Don’t Have … TAKE ACTION!
| |
| Let's face it ... each of us want things we don't currently have and circumstances we'd love to improve.
The question is how bad do you want them, and are you willing to do what it takes?
I've often found myself complaining about how busy I am and how difficult it is to accomplish all that I want to.
About 18 months ago I decided to keep track of everything I was doing throughout the course of each day so I could attempt to figure out how I could maximize my productivity and accomplish more.
To my surprise ... |
|
|
Focus
| |
| Focus is the key to turning energy into productivity. It turns our dreams into goals into reality. |
|
|
Ultimate Productivity
| |
| We are all being bombarded daily with reports of business failures, economic downturns, home foreclosures, inflation threats, and the ever-present dreaded monster known as recession. There is very little, if anything, that you and I can do about these conditions on a global or national basis, but we can have an immense impact where it really matters in our own home and business.
|
|
|
Activity vs. Productivity
| |
| Most of us work very hard. We get up each day and spend eight hours or more doing something
we call work. If you talk to the most successful and the least successful persons you can find,
they will probably both tell you they are working extremely hard. If this is true, why are so few
people actually getting the results they want from their hard work? |
|
|
Lessons from Worst Bosses
| |
| If you are one of the 85% of people in our society who work simply to receive a paycheck, you are missing one of the great joys of life. Much of our identity, satisfaction, and fulfillment comes from the work we do. In a strange way, work might be a little like raising a child in that if you take it as an overall process, it is an amazing experience; but if you simply take a snapshot of one challenging moment, it can be exasperating.
|
|
|
Productivity and the Rubber Band Effect
| |
| Productivity and the Rubber Band Effect |
|
|
4 Ways To Effectively Tame Your Stress
| |
| Are you stressed? Here are four ways to rapidly and effectively get your stress under control. Learn how to optimize your stress levels so they fuel your progress instead of draining your energy. |
|
|
Time Management Tips that really work!
| |
| Why are Time Management Tips important? If done effectively they should give you more unscheduled time. Time to relax, reflect and reconnect with friends, family and your authentic self.
Sometimes we are so used to doing things the same way that we miss the opportunity to streamline processes that can make us more efficient!
The following Time Management Tips are meant to help! |
|
|
A Cool Time Management Lesson From A Fruit Smoothie!
| |
| Life events often are opportunities to learn something from if we're aware. But ... who could have guessed that a crazy thing like making a fruit smoothie could turn into a time management lesson. |
|
|
Are These Bandits Causing Crime in Your Workplace?
| |
| Do you ever get to the end of your workday wondering how it is that you 'worked' all day but got nothing accomplished? You don't need to look very far for the answer to this one. You can blame these innocent looking bandits and you're probably falling victim to them.
|
|
|
Are You Too Busy To Get Organized?
| |
| If you spend a lot of your day rifling through stacks of papers and files looking for things you need, you may want to take some time to tidy up. You probably think you’re too busy to get organized, but how much time do you waste searching for stuff? Getting organized doesn’t need to be a huge project taking up more time than you can afford. You can do it in little bits and pieces throughout the day. |
|
|
End Your Email Anxiety
| |
| There’s no doubt about it – email causes more grief than just about anything else in our workday. Unfortunately, we have no one to blame but ourselves. We have been grossly exaggerating its importance for so long now that we have become slaves to it. Too much power, time and energy is being given over to this time-sucking monster.
It’s time to put email in its place.
|
|
|
Get Your (Balancing) Act Together!
| |
| A chance conversation with a friend reminded me of the one important thing we need to do in order to maintain our sanity in this ever-demanding society we live and work in. We can become so consumed with systemizing and organizing ourselves at work, that we forget one of the most basic and fundamental keys to staying motivated to get stuff done ... |
|
|
Just A Minute
| |
| When it comes to getting stuff done, the value of a minute – and what can be accomplished in that time – is grossly underestimated. There are many things that can be done in a minute or less to get you on track and better organized. Every minute counts! |
|
|
Say 'Yes' to 'No'!
| |
| How often do you take on things to do that you know you’ll probably end up resenting the activity, the amount of time it’s now taking to do, or even the person that asked you for the favor? Or worse, you begin to resent yourself for not being able to have said ‘no’ in the first place. |
|
|
Time Management And The Secret To Getting Stuff Done
| |
| When you look around your office do you see evidence of incomplete commitments, projects, tasks and ‘I’ll deal with that later’ piles? Do you wonder how on earth you are EVER going to get it all done? Want to know my secret to getting stuff done? |
|
|
Time Management: Watch Out For The ‘Squirrels’ in Your Day!
| |
| What on earth can squirrels possibly have to do with time management and getting stuff done? Well, a ‘squirrel’ is anything that suddenly takes your attention away from what you’re working on. If you’ve seen Pixar’s animated movie ‘Up,’ you’ll know ... |
|
|
3 Rules for Integrating New Employees into the Workplace
| |
| There are certain cardinal rules to follow and they are as important as filling out the required forms for insurance and all the other parts of business. There are emotional factors at work whether you want them to be or not. If you tackle these areas you are guaranteed to have a better chance of new employees ready to sprint from the starting gate. |
|
|
Happy Employees = productive employess
| |
| As the owner of a small business, you may wonder what your employees' emotional or mental health has to do with you. Well, not only does an employee's mental frame of mind impact directly on his or her ability to perform, but also on your organisational productivity and profitability. |
|
|
Simple Tips to Higher Productivity while Working from Home
| |
| Everyone has heard of all the glamorous reasons on why you should work from home. A few of the reasons are flexible hours, no long commutes, no office politics or a boss peeking over your shoulder. One thing that I would like to cover in this article is something you don’t hear much about; productivity or the lack there of. |
|
|
Send workers home to boost productivity
| |
| No, I'm not talking about getting rid of the deadwood, I'm talking about telecommuting and a virtual workforce. Think about it. Fewer bodies, less space, lower rent. What else don't you need? Well, electricity, heat, air conditioning, water, paper, phone, fax, copier, pens, notepads...you get the idea. It's time to cross that chasm and send your people home! Let's get your staff working remotely and watch your margins AND productivity soar! |
|
|
How to Increase Productivity through a Motivated Workforce
| |
| As managers, we all want employees who are motivated or engaged at work. We want employees who will not only do a good job, but also go that extra mile when dealing with customers and work colleagues. It is easy to assume that when we see an employee who lacks motivation, that we have "hired the wrong person" for the job. |
|
|
Leisure Is As Important As Work
| |
| Leisure is no longer a dirty word in business. In fact its part of a new human resource trend to improve business productivity. Leisure has been out of favour since the Industrial Age work ethic killed it off generations ago as "a waste of productive time”. There's at least five good reasons why it's back in vogue.
|
|
|
Inspiring People for Maximum Productivity
| |
| It is amazing to learn and witness an ordinary teacher inspire average students for outstanding performance. There are numerous outstanding coaches who were never star players in their day. And there are the average employees who became leaders and turned organizations around-on the positive side. What one sees among these leaders, regardless of their background, is individuals with a vision, burning desire to turn that vision into reality, ability to communicate that vision to others in a way that inspires positive attitude, determination and action from the listeners.
|
|
|
Are You Working in the Red Zone, or Just Working?
| |
| What is worth the effort in your business? Where does your productivity and focus pay off the most? Of course, the activities that produce the greatest results are not the easiest. The biggest successes often come when we are in the difficult, magnified, and critical “red zone.†|
|
|
The clock is ticking
| |
| Time management can be stressful and have a negative effect on productivity.Techniques are available to put time on your side. |
|
|
Back from Hell
| |
| Burnout needs to be spoken about widely and respected for the debilitating disease that it can be and the more that is written about it the better. Leaders need to stop, learn and listen and be very clear as to what it is – take note as to whether they are already burnt out, close to the edge and pushing themselves beyond the point of no return. They need to be aware of the other health problems that can be associated with it and not get stuck in any of them. They also need to know how it can impact on the culture of their organization, people aspect of the business and productivity and profits. Education is paramount as to what stress is – that there is good stress and bad stress and that it needs to be respected otherwise a price may be paid that is not warranted or wanted. |
|
|
Lesson #2: Look To the Future
| |
| “We are targeting innovation,” says Page. “The dream as conceived 25 years ago has not been achieved. Until software becomes the ultimate tool for collaboration, productivity, and efficiency, the work is not done. And there's nothing more fun than doing that work.” |
|
|
Lesson #4: Take Care of Your Team
| |
| “Our employees, who have named themselves Googlers, are everything,” Page explains to his company’s investors. “Google is organized around the ability to attract and leverage the talent of exceptional technologists and business people. We have been lucky to recruit many creative, principled and hard working stars. We hope to recruit many more in the future. We will reward and treat them well.” |
|
|
Sergey Brin and Larry Page Quotes
| |
| Sergey Brin and Larry Page Quotes |
|
|
Isadore “Issy” Sharp Quotes
| |
| Isadore “Issy” Sharp Quotes |
|
|
Lesson #1: Succeed Through Innovation Not Exploitation
| |
| American Apparel is about much more than clothes or at least Charney hopes so. In creating the company of his dreams, Charney wanted to make sure that it stood for something, that it was selling a message along with its products. That message is that a company does not have to be exploitive in order to turn a profit. |
|
|
Lesson #5: Take Time Off to Tune Up
| |
| When Orfalea first rented his little $100 per week garage near the USC campus, he was told his venture would never work. It was a pipe dream, they said. It was a business that would flunk as fast as Orfalea had in school. Still, says Orfalea, “I didn’t listen. I knew what I was going to do.” |
|
|
Lesson #3: Engage with Your Employees
| |
| In 1886, Heinz returned from a trip to Germany. It was an eye-opening journey for more reason than one. Along the way, Heinz had acquired a myriad of different business management ideas that he could not wait to get back to America to begin implementing and experimenting with in his own company. One of those ideas related to the management and treatment of his workers. |
|
|
Clear the Decks and Block Your Time
| |
| A simple formula for setting priorities every day |
|
|
The Stealth Productivity Secret: (Ssshh) Lights Out
| |
| Try these tricks and modifications to your routine and see if they help you have better nights. |
|
|
Planning
| |
| If I were to ask the question, Would you like to improve your productivity dramatically without working any longer or any harder? chances are pretty good that you would say, “That would be nice! I’d be more effective and I’d probably get a raise! I might even have more fun in the process.” |
|
|
The Art of the Layoff
| |
| We’re in a bubble again. It’s not as frothy as last time, but hallelujah, this time we know what to do, right? One good thing about the dotcom implosion in 2000 is that we got lots of practice laying people off, and I’m afraid that this valuable knowledge may get lost. |
|
|
What's Culture Got To Do with It?
| |
| A beautifully crafted strategy can fail when the employees in various divisions within an organization clash. Logically, we think that strategy should drive behavior, but, in reality, it's the culture—underlying norms, values, belief systems—that dictates how effectively people work together. Employees' behavior has direct impact on the bottom line, costs, revenue streams, level of productivity, customer satisfaction, even the brand—every aspect of the business is affected. If strategy and culture are not aligned, the culture may support behaviors that conflict with what has to get done—and actually block execution of the strategy. |
|
|
Science Daily Week: Which is more effective: bonuses or raises?
| |
| I recently learned about Science Daily. It is a treasure chest of interesting studies that has implications on business practices. I’ve collected so much material from it that this is going to be “Science Daily Week” in my blog. |
|
|
How to Check E-mail Twice a Day… or Once Every 10 Days
| |
| If you don’t yet use Twitter, don’t start. It’s pointless e-mail on steroids. I had to laugh when I saw a post by the one-and-only Robert Scoble on the 19th titled “Productivity up 200%, Twitter Down.” |
|
|
How to Motivate Yourself Financially
| |
| I once knew a guy who had terrific ideas, would talk them up at hurricane force, and then go off and putter away at something else. He would lose his momentum before he even got going. What's the point? |
|
|
Privacy, Investing Alpha, and the CEO's Mother-in-Law
| |
| Much of investing is a search for hard-to-get data that can give you an edge, or alpha. That quest for alpha via better data is one of the themes of my Money:Tech 2008 conference, and it is the topic of an unusual and fascinating article in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal. |
|
|
Use Math to Create Loyalty
| |
| This week's tip comes from my friend Chip Conley, author of the new book "Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow" and CEO of Joie de Vivre hotels. Many people have told me and Chip that we were separated at birth in terms of our approach to business and life. |
|
|
Teleworking
| |
| Among the business trends for 2008 is an even greater increase in teleworking. |
|
|
Higher Gas Prices = Lower Worker Productivity
| |
| As gas prices climb higher and higher, the costs hurt people in more places than just their wallets. |
|
|
Banning Gossip in the Office
| |
| Nearly everybody gossips at work. I guess it’s human nature, but people just like to talk about each other, and rarely does it do anything but add negativity to the workplace. |
|
|
Henry Ford and the source of our fear
| |
| Henry Ford left us much more than cars and the highway system we built for them. He changed the world’s expectations for work. While Ford gets credit for “inventing the assembly line,” his great insight was that he understood the power of productivity. |
|
|
The Ten-Minute Difference
| |
| American workers are basically honest and they are almost always at work on time. However, for most workers, the last one hundred yards to get to work are pretty hectic. There is the mad dash into the parking lot, the rush to the building, the clocking in, the sprint to the coffee pot, and the unloading of bags, briefcases and outer garments. The work day frequently starts five to ten minutes after the paycheck starts.
|
|
|
MYTHS ABOUT MARKETING TO OLDER PEOPLE
| |
| As older people, defined here as people over 50, become a larger and larger market with more and more disposable income, they become increasingly important to you. So it's crucial that you operate by the realities and not by the myths. The myth clarification starts here:
|
|
|
County: Smokers Need Not Apply
| |
| If you smoke, don’t even think about applying for a government job in Sarasota County. |
|
|
Rudeness at Work
| |
| How important is it to you that people be polite at work? A professor of psychology at West Chester University in Pennsylvania conducted a study all about rudeness in the workplace. Jennifer Bunk found that about 75 percent of workers say they’re treated rudely at least once a year. That can mean anything from being ignored by the boss or hearing snide remarks from coworkers. |
|
|
What marketers actually sell
| |
| Not powder or chemicals or rubber or steel or silicon or talk or installations or even sugary water.
What marketers sell is hope. |
|
|
Productivity and Attitude
| |
| I'm the only one who does anything around here! Several years ago I was on a late-night television show in New York City. For some strange reason, they wanted me in the studio that afternoon at 4:30. I walked in and was stunned by the small size of the reception area. It contained a couch for three, a chair for one and a sink, refrigerator and coffee maker. |
|
|
Beware of The Barrier of Busyness
| |
| Busyness mistaken for productivity saps our energy and means we achieve less than we are capable of. Here are 10 tips to ensure you are not bound by the barrier of busyness. |
|
|
Expanding Your Business in a Recession: Cross Marketing
| |
| Networking is smart marketing in a recession because it is largely free. Cross Marketing tactics are particularly important, as synergies are exploited when we cross market. By multiplying Networking with Cross Marketing, we can develop marketing strategies that not only expand our business through a recession, but beyond.
|
|
|
What is slowing your journey down and impacting success?
| |
| You may know that self-control-even discipline-may be needed to improve your productivity. Whether you are seeking improvement in your professional or personal life, you may have to make sacrifices in order to accomplish a greater good. How do you begin? Read this article is a good start. |
|
|
Track Your Time for Increased Productivity
| |
| You are busy all day and spend long hours at the office. Yet, you can't ever seem to catch up. Where did your day go? In this article you will learn how inexpensive time-tracking software applications can help you gain control of your activities, your time and, ultimately, your life. |
|
|
Exploring The 3Rs of Leadership
| |
| Sometimes we get so focused on getting things done that we don't take time to remember that activity is not necessarily accomplishment. In fact, the most important thing is often what you don't do. |
|
|
You Don't Need An Expert
| |
| You don't need an employee engagement expert to confirm what you already know and Gallup polling substantiates: the majority of employees are disengaged at work. You don't need an employee survey to tell you why discretionary efforts are tamed, passions for work are fleeting, and ideas are tethered. And you don't need a consultant to explain why cynicism is up, enthusiasm is down, and trust is the new workplace currency.
|
|
|
How to Work Less and Get More Done
| |
| In the days before email, the most pervasive interruption for the average manager was a ringing phone. Now that email is everywhere, including our PDAs, managers receive literally dozens if not hundreds of messages/interruptions/distractions every day. The problem gets worse as employees who are sending email messages within a company can easily send copies, no matter how trivial, to everyone else - including to other managers. The end result is that with the advent of email it's easy for a manager to spend an entire day reacting to other people's priorities. That's why I when it comes to a manager's productivity, email is the silent killer. The good news is some managers have learned to get past the clutter... |
|
|
Managing Multiple Priorities - How to juggle customers, projects, and admin – and still have a life
| |
| It may be a popular advertising slogan - our customers are our number one priority. As a manager however, buying into that strategy will actually reduce your effectiveness and damage your business. I learned this the hard way... |
|
|
Essential office supplies list to increase productivity
| |
| Essential office supplies list to increase productivity around the office. |
|
|
How to Motivate Your Staff and Employees to Do Their Best
| |
| While it’s true that you can’t really motivate your employees; they have to motivate themselves; there are some things you can do as an owner or manager to create the proper environment for employees to provide their own self-motivation, i.e., to do what is expected of them. To do this, you need to find out what motivates your employees.
|
|
|
Do you have an email addiction?
| |
| don't be a slave to your email-- find a time and place to give it attention and then find another task to complete |
|
|
Need More Time? 5 Top Tips on How to Get More Done
| |
| If you’re like most of my coaching clients, you probably feel like you’re scampering around like a roadrunner – with too much to do in the time you have to get it done.
If that’s the case, read on, this article is all about improving your productivity and getting more meaningful work accomplished with the time you have. |
|
|
Three tips on how to manage your time & attention and increase productivity
| |
| Busy professionals can all relate to feeling like there is just not enough time in the day. The world is out for our attention and workplace reactive behaviour is on the rise. Multitasking, once considered an attribute, has now come to light as having some pretty serious consequences. Your attention is your most valuable asset, take some time to find out where it is being spent. |
|
|
10 Best Practices for a Successful Coach
| |
| Successful coaches have many things in common. Here are the top 10. How many do you need to add or work on? |
|
|
Executive Coaching to Develop Emotionally Intelligent Leaders
| |
| Driving the trend for executive coaching is the business reality that good people are hard to find and harder to keep. With a constant need to stay competitive, companies are seeing coaching as a way to help valued employees develop swiftly in a rapidly changing business environment.
A growing number of Fortune 500 companies offer executive coaching to their top people. Whether hiring external coaches or training their own leaders in coaching skills, companies are finding that coaching is essential for creating change and evolving people towards their highest productivity and potential. |
|
|
Do People Enjoy You?
| |
| Article of 996 words explaining the techniques to use in order to ensure you are creating a positive, memorable experience for others when they are with you |
|
|
Trust Keeps Leaders off the Slippery Slope
| |
| There are numerous advantages when leaders can build an environment of high trust. One important one is that the employees in the organization become helpful watchdogs to help prevent ethical dilemmas, but that is only one advantage. Here are 10 key benefits of building a high trust organization:
1. Lower risk of ethical debacles
2. Higher productivity
3. Lower costs
4. Less conflict
5. Focus on the vision
6. Trust is evident to customers
7. Focus on development
8. Improved communications
9. Better reinforcement
10. More efficient problem solving |
|
|
Pushing Past Procrastination - The Revelation
| |
| Does procrastination raise its nasty head and throw your life into turmoil and confusion? Don't be hard on yourself - you are certainly not the only one in that boat! The trick is to acknowledge that you have a somewhat unwarranted visitor, whose name is Procrastination, and work to discover what is underneath so that you might maximize the control you have over balance and productivity in your life. |
|
|
Monetize Lost Productivity
| |
| By definition, productivity is a measure of output from a production process, per unit of input or more simply yielding results, benefits or profits. Productivity is distinct from profitability. Profitability is the net difference between revenues and expenses. However, every little improvement to productivity has a direct impact on your profitability. |
|
|
Manage Your Team by Tracking Productivity
| |
| By tracking your team’s productivity, you will know when your team members are overworked and when they are underworked and adjust their work loads accordingly. You will also be able to identify and eliminate various online time-wasters and distractions your team deals with. Finally, by tracking how much time your team spent on each task, you can better quantify and analyze each task’s ROI. |
|
|
Cost Control in this Economy
| |
| Cost control is not just a checklist, but a way of thinking that cost effectiveness is the primary objective. Focus on results, not the process. And please, don’t just look at direct hourly people for improvement. That is probably not where your big costs are. Show me the money. |
|
|
Effective Managers Understand Psychology
| |
| Novice managers often struggle to get the best out of their people because they labor under a one-dimensional view of what motivates their employees. In this article, Leslie Allan illustrates how a little psychology can return huge dividends. |
|
|
Making the Team
| |
| There is something special about the challenge young people face when attempting to make the team. This healthy competition ignites a desire to perform that cannot easily be replicated for this young generation of Americans. Regardless of the sport, the desire to achieve and play is a remarkable source of motivation. Imagine the organizational potential if an organization could replicate this as source of motivation on the job. What would happen to key organizational metrics like attendance and productivity?
|
|
|
Why Leaders Are Successful In Network Marketing And Others Aren't
| |
| All successful leaders have the same attributes and they stay focused on the project at hand. Most people are very fickle jumping from pillar to post and not really knowing why or what they are doing. They tend to blame every other person or thing for their failures instead of looking at themselves and searching for the real problem which usually comes from within. It's not easy having a network marketing or home business, particularly when you're used to answering to a boss. It's very easy to get sidetracked with doing menial tasks that aren't remotely related to productivity for your business because you have no-one to answer to at the end of the day, only yourself. Lets face it you can easily let yourself of the hook if you don't finish a task. Are you going to sack you? Not likely! Here are a few tips that will keep you focused... |
|
|
Maximizing New Hire Value
| |
| What would it mean to your organization to bring your new hires up to full productivity in half the time? When new hire development programs function effectively, the new hires perform meaningful work sooner, and their managers’, peers’ and trainers’ time involvement is reduced, increasing everyone’s productivity. |
|
|
Employee Freedom, A New "Old" Paradigm
| |
| In 1994 Jim Belasco and Ralph Stayer wrote Flight of the buffalo which focuses on learning to let employees lead. In 2009 Brian Carney and Isaac Getz wrote Freedom, Inc. which focuses on how to free your employees and let them lead your business to higher productivity, profits and growth. These are two examples of books that explain why a "flat organization" is better and how to build or transform an organization with it. As Gen-Y begins to take over leadership in the majority of American business, these concepts of employee empowerment, self-management and flat structure will be their demand. They care more about work-life balance than money, and they just might be able to salvage the mess we boomers have made of things. Success in the 21st century demands employers embrace this new "old" paradigm. |
|
|
5 Steps to Creating a Successful Workplace
| |
| A successful workplace that fosters productivity and the growth of its employees is accomplished by implementing five fundamental elements: goal setting, rewards, balance, accountability and feedback. While each element can be implemented on its own, administering all elements as a complete program or initiative in the workplace will work towards producing the desired results that are sought after by managers and executives. |
|
|
10 Tips for Improving Staff Morale
| |
| It's often been said that employees leave managers, not companies. Research conducted by the Corporate Leadership Council (2003) provides support for this assertion. This study found that managers have a significant influence on a worker's level of commitment to their job. The study revealed that more than 70% of an employee's commitment is directly related to the interaction they have with their manager. If the manager/employee interactions are negative, low morale will often result. |
|
|
Work From Home - Dress For Success
| |
| Working from home is usually an exciting idea to most. An easy thing to remember is that your environment affects your productivity. Something as simple as getting dressed in "business clothes" may be all you need to get you focused. |
|
|
Management by Walking About (but take a camera)!
| |
| The related article on 'Go To Gemba' points out that you have to see and hear things for yourself - never trust what you are told. Management by Walking About (MBWA) is clearly a simple way to see and hear things - but if you add a digital camera, you can collect evidence at the same time ... and you often see things through a camera lens that you don't see directly. |
|
|
How to Create Success in Half the Time Using a Personal Coach
| |
| What are the qualities of a great coach? It’s the same qualities you see in the great coaches in the athletic arena everyday. The following are some of the qualities to seek when enlisting the services of an effective coach. |
|
|
Five Stress Management Secrets for Challenging Times: How to Use Stress for Your Career Success
| |
| When you learn how to manage stress, you benefit in the following ways:
* Improved health and decreased incidence of disease
* Improved mood
* Improved memory and thinking
* Improved sleep
* Improved relationships
* Reduced absenteeism
* Improved productivity
* Improved workplace environment
The following are five stress management secrets that will allow you to fulfill your career, business, and life ambitions while living a happier life
|
|
|
Do You Wear Success Blinders?
| |
| Women often find themselves in the position of multitasking; trying to complete too many things at once. With too much on our plate, it is often difficult to concentrate on what your high value are and spending the time and focus that they require. The article gives some tips on how to put your success blinders on and increase productivity. |
|
|
Systems, Flexibility, and Spontaneity
| |
| Women entrepreneurs often under estimate the power of having systems. There is often the misconception that systems are complicated and time-consuming. This article gives some simple tips for creating systems and why they are useful. |
|
|
EI - The Most Powerful Tool in Your Kit
| |
| Getting more with fewer resources is a mantra in today's workplace. Emotional Intelligence plays a big part in personal and corporate productivity. Emotional assessment, training and education can play a big role in the effort to get more (productivity) with fewer resources. |
|
|
Developing People ~ A Key to Eliciting Excellence
| |
| There is tremendous opportunity and satisfaction as a leader in developing others. By effectively developing the people around us, we elicit excellence in a number of impactful and far-reaching ways. Developing others is an important function of effective leadership. |
|
|
Dealing With End-of-Year Overwhelm
| |
| Overwhelm comes from doing too much, too fast with little regard for how well you are actually performing the task at hand. I know we consider ourselves multi-tasking wonders, but the truth of the matter is that this is not always the best way to do and enjoy whatever it is that you are doing. When you feel overwhelm rising, and you do feel it physically, stop. Just stop what you are doing. Be present in the moment, allow the anxiety to diffuse, take a break as mentioned above and then reboot to move forward with a clear head.
|
|
|
Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance: Tips & Tools to Increase Productivity
| |
| Prior proper planning prevents poor performance. It may be a tongue twister, but it’s important to remember that our productivity is greatly increased when we make the time to prepare. Preparation is a discipline and successful professionals make the time. Here are five ways to do your homework and prepare. |
|
|
How to Deal: Difficult Leaders
| |
| Your office morale is low, although your productivity is at a constant, sub par level. The atmosphere in the organization is that of sheer terror and dissatisfaction, not because of a near miss deadline, but because a supervisor has an overly authoritative approach to leading his team, or department. Such a scenario is not as far-fetched as it may seem. In many organizations, an over zealous (but well meaning) supervisor or manager may exercise severe leadership tactics in order to create the most successful team possible. Unfortunately, for the employees, such a leadership leads to dissatisfaction to the organization and later, a loss of talent for the organization as dissatisfied employees begin to leave. In this edition of Astronology, The How to Deal trilogy will discuss difficult managers. |
|
|
Retention Of Your Best Employees
| |
| Good employees are hired through your most effective recruitment strategies and finding those employees takes time, effort and money. But once you have them, how do you hold on to them? Retention of the best employees is one of the largest challenges faced by many organizations today.
|
|
|
Controlling Chaos During Expansion
| |
| Chaos, confusion and catastrophe are what Michael Gerber of Entrepreneur Magazine calls “The Three C’s of Business Failure.” It is not uncommon for a small business to be plagued with chaos. The best advice is to take control before chaos becomes habit. “Most small businesses are a hopeless mess,” Gerber says. Disorganization and confusion are irritating, but worst of all, they cost your business money. Chaos eats away at productivity and, ultimately, profits. How can you steer your business clear of chaos? |
|
|
Shiny Happy Calendar
| |
| The sight of the blank year ahead excites me. For me, it represents a year of possibilities that I'll create -with my family, friends, clients, colleagues and the world. |
|
|
Who Cares about Work-Life Balance?
| |
| Whether you manage one person, or lead an organization with thousands of employees, supporting your staff to create a better work-life balance makes sense and cents. When people you work with feel you respect their work-life balance and allow them some autonomy in their choices, they will feel more valued, more engaged, and more committed to the organization. You can make a difference in your employees work-life balance by giving them support and tools to make choices that fit with each person’s individual work-life preferences. Keeping your staff satisfied keeps them working well and working for you. |
|
|
10 Years
| |
| This past week, as you already know if you are connected to me via email, newsletter, Facebook or LinkedIn, is the 10th anniversary of my business.
In between the planning of a Happy Hour, a contest, a book sale and free coaching hours, I’ve reflected on some of the things I’ve learned on my own journey towards greater career and work-life balance satisfaction. |
|
|
Need To Cut Costs by 50% - Use a Virtual Assistant
| |
| Here is a simple definition of what a Virtual Assistant is and how it can benefit your business. There are a lot of misunderstandings about Virtual Assistants, VA's can save business owners money while improving their efficiency and productivity. |
|
|
10 Tweetlater Tactics to Make Your Twitter Life 100 Times More Productive
| |
| Being a fan of twitter and a gadget geek I have tried a fair few twitter tactics and table offerings over the last few months and one of my favourites is Tweetlater for several reasons. So, if you're looking for a reason to splash out on a twitter tool take a look at my list of twitter tactics you can apply by using tweetlater professional as part of your social media marketing campaign. |
|
|
GIVE CUSTOMERS WHAT THEY WANT
| |
| Finding out what customers want, and then setting out to meet their needs, provided it can be done at a profit, is what helps prevail in the marketplace. Demonstrating to customers how a product or service can satisfy their wants and desires will strengthen the holding glue between the customer and your business.
The wise business owner is always aware of customer wants. Many businesses make the mistake of assuming that a customer’s number one priority is low price. But before price even becomes a factor, the customer wants other things. The customer is looking for ways to improve their quality of life, their productivity, to become more profitable, or to increase their competitive advantage. Meeting one or all of these fundamental wants will add value and move the customer forward. |
|
|
Should I fire my bad clients?
| |
| Run a mental checklist over your client base right now. Who fits into the ‘good’ client list and who falls into the ‘bad’ client list?
It all really depends on what you define as good and bad.
As we know not all clients are good for your business. Some clients are a wrong fit for your business but could be a good fit for someone else; therefore in of themselves they are not necessarily ‘bad’.
However, others are just downright bad for your business. |
|
|
How The APE Philosophy Can Help Your Organization
| |
| Complacency sets in, challenges happen, can your organization survive? The APE Philosophy is simple and creates no extra work. If you want to help your organization be prepared and read on! |
|
|
LifeWave : Create Your Success In 90 Days
| |
| You can create more than you ever have in the next 90 days with LifeWave. Before you say "impossible", let me share with you these critical and yet easy steps that you can start using immediately. These steps are critical to creating momentum in your business and your life. |
|
|
Preparing for the Strategic Planning Retreat - A Checklist
| |
| Every nonprofit organization should conduct strategic planning on a regular basis, as strategic plans outline what action steps the organization will take in the future to sustain and grow their operation, while adhering to their mission. Many organizations focus attention on conducting the strategic planning session and developing a plan, but don't allocate sufficient time to prepare for the planning retreat. Taking time to adequately prepare for a strategic planning session can help the actual event to run much more smoothly and efficiently, resulting in greater productivity. This article provides a checklist of items to consider in preparing for your next strategic planning retreat.
|
|
|
Watch Out for People Who Belong to the
| |
| Some tips on avoiding people who are literally bad news and are members of the "Chicken Little Club". |
|
|
How can you make your press release stand out?
| |
| Not all press releases are created equal. If you the media to take notice there are five key elements you've must have. |
|
|
6 Irrefutable Reasons Why Working At Home In Your Own Home Based Business Makes Sense.
| |
| Home based businesses comprise one-half of all businesses. Whatever is holding you back from starting your own work at home business, consider these 6 reasons why you should work from home in your own business. |
|
|
5 Secrets To Success In Your Zrii Health Drink Opportunity
| |
| You can be more productive in the next 90 days than you have been all year using these vital and yet simple steps. These are the secrets used by the most successful people in the world. |
|
|
Time To Sell
| |
| As business owners or sales managers, one thing we can all do to boost profits, productivity as well as longevity in our sales ranks is to get our sales people working on the right things. Of course, before we can accomplish this, we need to be truthfully-aware of what they're working on now... |
|
|
How To Avoid Being Scammed From Bad Business Opportunities
| |
| The internet is a huge gateway to the thousands of online opportunities that are more than willing to accept anybody who is seeking to make extra income online in the long run. Because the Internet is so accessible these days all over the world, many businesses started to form online in hopes of recruiting them for better productivity. |
|
|
Pros And Cons Of Socialized Medicine
| |
| The price of the new system will include increased taxes. In some ways, it won't matter who those taxes are paid by. If they are paid by the companies, they will raise the cost of the items they sell, so the individuals will be hurt as well. |
|
|
The Interview Process in a Nutshell
| |
| Have you ever thought about the full cost of hiring a new employee? There are the obvious costs: placing an ad, the wages spent on time looking at resumes and conducting interviews, pre-employment physical, reference checks.
Then there are the less obvious costs: wages for training time of both the trainer and new employee, lost productivity while the position is vacant, lost productivity while the new employee learns and gets up to speed, the cost of mistakes.
When you add it all up it definitely motivates you to minimize employee turnover, doesn’t it? And there are many strategies an employer can utilize to create an environment that inspires employee loyalty. But the first and most important step is making the right hiring decision. |
|
|
How to Overcome Resistance in Your Home Based Business
| |
| I am often asked how I get so much done...running multiple profit centers while still having plenty of time for exercise, reading, learning and play. One thing I can attribute to my productivity is the attitude I took the very first day of my being self employed – I gave my home based business the same respect I had given my previous jobs. Here’s what I did, and continue to do. |
|
|
Marketing Strategies: Are You Proactive Enough?
| |
| Are you reacting to your circumstances or creating them? Learn how to switch that focus! This article gives you some great tips on how to be proactive. |
|
|
Warren Buffett Owner Principle # 3
| |
| Warren Buffett states that Berkshire Hathaway long term principle is to 'maximize Berkshire Hathaway's average annual rate of gain in intrinsic business value on a per share basis. This article dissects and analyzes the meanings inherent in this statement and how this principle can work for you. |
|
|
Employment Reference Checks - Providing and Receiving
| |
| It’s becoming more and more challenging for companies to conduct employment reference checks on potential new hires. It’s not only frustrating to those doing the hiring but also to those looking to be hired. |
|
|
Systemize Your Success
| |
| A key ingredient to any successful business or successful person is systemization. Have you systemized your success? |
|
|
Productivity, Wages and Prices - What's This About?
| |
| A company that consistently raises productivity can increase profits and wages while keeping prices stable so as to compete more effectively in the marketplace, build company value, and attract and retain the best people in the labor market. Focusing on consistent productivity growth is a most important aspect of management responsibility. |
|
|
Can a Manager Be Too Nice?
| |
| Managers can make or break motivation and productivity for employees. Having the right employee in a management position is crucial for any company. |
|
|
Boot Camp Training for Conflict Resolution Skills
| |
| A few hours of conflict resolution training can help work groups and teams to better manage conflict levels in the workplace. Providing employees with a common conflict resolution language and process can pay dividends in maintaining productivity and morale. Eight key skills of conflict resolution are... |
|
|
Article Writing Secrets & Strategies - 5 Ways to Never Run Out of Stuff to Say in Your Articles
| |
| No matter what your expertise lies in, you can always generate new and interesting ideas for articles IF you follow these guidelines... |
|
|
Increase Productivity and Profitability by Simply Eliminating Gossip
| |
| Do your employees gossip? Have you ever considered the financial impact to your bottom line? What can you do to eliminate it? |
|
|
The Law of Average
| |
| I was working with a fairly large company recently on their business strategy, and how they were going to get their whole team engaged so that everyone was pulling their own weight, and everyone had a passion for the growth of the company. The idea was, if everyone could work together, productivity would increase, business relationships would flourish and the end of year bonus would be much bigger. Their goal was to be above average over all of the competitors in their market. That was the plan... |
|
|
The Importance of Mental Conditioning to our Success
| |
| "The world meets nobody halfway , if you want it you gotta take it."This memorable quote from a Sylvester Stallone movie is still etched in my memory bank. What is the meaning behind this quote? It simply means that if we want to succeed in anything in this world we need to do the things that make the difference to whether we succeed or not because there are no in-between measures for the winners. The biggest obstacle we face in reaching our goals is ourselves. |
|
|
The Art of Virtual Leadership - 4 Keys to Leading Remote Workers and Managing Virtual Teams
| |
| There are 4 main keys to leading remote employees. These tips for distance management will help you work more successfully with your mobile workers and virtual teams. |
|
|
Do you know when your next big idea will hit you?
| |
| A simple idea of collecting thoughts and ideas and organizing your day. Habits that built an empire for Andrew Carnegie, the world's richest ever man. |
|
|
Hire Right and Fire Fast- Facing Up to Hiring Mistakes
| |
| Of course you want the best talent available for your business, with the characteristics and personality that fit your culture. Hiring the “right” people is critical to every organization. In a recession the stakes are even higher: every smart idea to innovate or save costs matters more; and every bit of passion enhances productivity.
There are strong reasons to hire the talent you want quickly, and there are circumstances where it’s okay to take more time. But careful as you might be, you will sometimes make hiring mistakes. And in those cases you have no choice-you have to fire fast.
Read More About
-The case for fast hiring
-When to slow-hire
-Facing up to hiring mistakes
-Fight your instincts |
|
|
How to Choose the Right Online Quiz Software
| |
| Online quiz software comes in many varieties and flavors, making it difficult to compare applications. The proper online quiz software will help you improve efficiency. This article will give you some simple guidance to choose the right online quiz software. |
|
|
Home Based Business Opportunity- How to Guard against the Economic Downturn
| |
| The current economic recession which started in mid-2008 has made it difficult for many people to sustain their businesses. This is especially true of small businesses that have fewer resources when compared to larger organizations. If your home based business opportunity is one of those which is affected, this article should act as a good starting point for you to explore the options in order to guard it against a financial downfall. |
|
|
Running Your Home Business While Traveling
| |
| One of the most commonly overlooked essential needs of someone with their own business is vacation time. Most entrepreneurs, knowing exactly how much their business makes when they're paying attention, see a vacation as a double hit - there's the cost of the vacation package itself, and then there's the cost of not running your business directly on top of it. |
|
|
Is it the Right Time To Start a Business?
| |
| There are both aspects of a downturn, the good and the bad for entrepreneurs. However, it brings along with it loads of opportunities for them. Your success does not depend on the oppurtunities you grab, but on the ones that you let go. A smart entreprenuer has the vision to analyze on ways to effectively capitalize the oppurtuinty which is served in his platter. |
|
|
Check Your Ego at the Door
| |
| Managers by the nature of their duties have authority over employees that report to them. How the manager exercises this authority defines them as a manager or leader of people. Leaders control their ego, in most cases, managers do not and it takes a confident person, secure in their abilities to control their ego. Ego, for our purpose of discussion is defined as and elevated inaccurate self-image of importance and using that idea to coerce an employee to complete their command.
|
|
|
Shame is the Secret Saboteur of Success
| |
| Shame is the painful belief that a person is defective by their very existence, and is the secret weapon of sabotage against personal success. Essentially, shamed is a response that results from our parents and teachers helping us learn how to be a part of society, which we very early on tend to absorb into our energy bodies at a core level. Over time, people affected by shame make compromised decisions from a diminished view of themselves which affects their productivity, relationships and overall life wealth. |
|
|
The Surefire Way to Grow Your Personal Economy
| |
| When you do well, you help the national and global economy to do well. Your results are one of the millions of little bits that make up the bigger economies, which are only a reflection of the collective experiences of 'the people'. So when you grow your personal economy, everyone wins. |
|
|
Remote workers are happier, study says
| |
| Employees say that having the option to work from home gives them greater flexibility and satisfaction, according to a new survey. |
|
|
Computer technology........ The future of the job market in the United States.
| |
| This artical discusses why applied technology, specifically computer related fields are currently a good choice for anyone selecting a rewarding career in a tight job market.
|
|
|
The “Karmically Correct” Way to Lay Off an Employee
| |
| For anyone in the unlucky position of having to fire an employee, here is the “karmically correct” way to lay off an employee: |
|
|
Doing Something Right Once
| |
| Want to know the secret to saving time, saving aggravation, achieving more and making more money? It's doing tasks that bring residual results. |
|
|
5 Reasons Why You Need To Take Daily Breaks While Working At Home
| |
| When you are working at home, one thing that you often forget to do is to take a break on a regular basis. Most on site jobs provide breaks to their employees, and when you are working at home, you need to take breaks as well. It's easy to think that you'll get more done if you just stay at your desk, but this is rarely the case. If you are not convinced that you really need these breaks, here are five different reasons that you need to take daily breaks while working at home. |
|
|
Improving Business Performance by Creating High Performance Teams
| |
| As a manager, executive or business owner your top priority today is exceeding company goals. You can't do it yourself, so the best way to exceed your goals is to have what we call "High Performance Teams" working for you. |
|
|
Leaders Don't Allow Tasks to Take Time Away from People
| |
| In the short term, focusing on tasks gets things done. In the medium to long term, the task-focused manager creates even more work for themselves because they allow the team to wither and become demotivated. This causes a drop in productivity and results begin to wane. It becomes a death spiral when the manager puts even more emphasis on tasks, hoping to turn things around. |
|
|
Six Steps To Creating More Productive Staff Performance Evaluations
| |
| Conducting a performance review can be difficult, for both the employer and employee. However, done correctly, the review process can be productive and key to employee retention. This article provides some helpful tips related to preparing for and conducting effective staff performance evaluations. |
|
|
Small Business Phone Systems Options
| |
| Small business phone systems options used to be pretty cut and dry. In the ‘old days' there was simply a rotary phone or a touch pad phone that could place calls on hold in one location on site and route those calls to another location on site. Those days, though not so long ago, are long gone and now small business phone system options are almost unlimited. |
|
|
Keys To Wealth and Success (Part 1)
| |
| This is not sexy, but you need to hear it. it is one of the biggest silent killers of wealth and success. |
|
|
Building Resilience
| |
| How to bounce back from the letdowns and life happens situations, 6 steps that work. |
|
|
How to Clean out the Clutter and Pump Up Your Profits
| |
| Have you ever felt totally overwhelmed because you were surrounded by clutter? When you work in a cluttered environment it crowds your thinking and easily distracts you. Not only that clutter wastes your time and your money. |
|
|
Fasting and Feasting
| |
| Your Classroom Exercise to Creating a Business and Life Mentality that Keeps You On Top.
|
|
|
Is Your Management Causing Employee Issues and Slow Business Growth?
| |
| Employee issues are most often symptoms of inconsistent or failing management; deal with supervisor/manager competency and impact and you not only have engaged employees but also an effective, productive and efficient organization.
|
|
|
The Benefit of Hope
| |
| Can you find a way to sell the benefit of hope?
If so, the practice might very well provide you with a significant advantage when interacting with customers or colleagues, especially in today's tougher economy...
|
|
|
Zoar in Your Zone
| |
| us...we too need to find our "zone".
All of us have zones of energy, creativity, sleepiness. Does it make sense to work creatively in your sleepiness zone? Of course not...yet we will schedule appointments and take on projects when we are disconnected from our own energy. So take a week and make a note in your calendar of the times you feel E for energized, S for sleepy and C for creativity. Then schedule your appointments around your own zone.
When you're working in your zone, you never look at a clock! Read this for tips to zoar in your zone!
|
|
|
Why You Are Kidding Yourself If You Think Smoking Helps You To Relax In The Workplace
| |
| With a lot of legislation starting to restrict smoking in or around the workplace, smokers are beginning to feel ostracized around the workplace. Many claim that smoking helps them relax at work bringing rise to greater productivity. But if you analyze what goes on during a typical cigarette break you will soon discover that it is not the cigarette that makes smokers feel more relaxed...
|
|
|
How Much Can Your Staff Handle?...The Limiting Factor Behind Sustainable Productivity Gains
| |
| Most companies are now trying to boost flagging profits with a smaller workforce. What that means is that each member of your staff will be required to work with greater speed , efficiency and productivity than ever before. But what if your remaining staff can't physically, mentally or emotionally handle this increased workload? What will it cost your company in terms of absenteeism, workers compensation and skyrocketing health premiums if your company just wears out your employees to the point of illness, injury or burn out? What can you do to prevent employee burnout?
|
|
|
5 Simple Tips To Be More Productive
| |
| These are 5 simple tips to help keep you productive and on track in your profession or business. |
|
|
Why You Are Kidding Yourself If You Think Smoking Helps You To Relax At Work
| |
| With a lot of legislation starting to restrict smoking in or around the workplace, smokers are beginning to feel ostracized around the workplace. Many claim that smoking helps them relax at work bringing rise to greater productivity. But if you analyze what goes on during a typical cigarette break you will soon discover that it is not the cigarette that makes smokers feel more relaxed...
|
|
|
Delegation - What is the role of a Manager?
| |
| Are you reluctant to let go of tasks because you fear someone else will do them better? People that struggle to delegate often stock pile their knowledge. They aren’t good at sharing skills, as they like to feel that they are needed. Being successful does not mean being that best at everything, but knowing when to use the right people to help. |
|
|
4 Helpful Guides in Leading a Virtual Working Environment
| |
| Don't let hiring 'virtual' staff turn you away from the possibilities... There are definitive ways of ascertaining whether your virtual staff are delivering the results you are paying for... so go for it. |
|
|
4 Keys to Achieve Success With Your Virtual Teams
| |
| Virtual teams are the way of the future. Businesses no longer need to tie in full time employees at exorbitant costs when they don't have to - they can hire virtual employees/contractors to do the same work at a fraction of the cost. So how do you make the most of hiring virtual staff and make this work for you? |
|
|
Don’t tell me it’s out of your control
| |
| ‘It's out of my control.' ‘I can't do anything about it.' ‘I'm just the sales person.'
Sales people who sell in equipment and service contracts take note. This story is about you and your responsibility to the customer for the life of the sale not just the initial sale of the machine and the signing of the contract.
The quotes above are what I heard this week from a sales person from a well-known equipment manufacture who sold us a complete equipment and service package 18 months ago. It certainly wasn't what I wanted to hear. Without going into too much detail we have had the ‘printer from hell'. |
|
|
Recession Proofing Your Sales Force
| |
| As the leader of your organization, the next 6 months will prove to be more pressure-filled then you may have experienced in years. With decreasing prospects and the cost of doing business increasing, a squeeze on profits is inevitable.
|
|
|
Leadership Tips to Create Greater Accountability in Your Organization
| |
| Accountability becomes mission-critical in challenging times. We need everyone in our organization to take ownership of results and make things happen. Creating an environment of accountability rests with management. Based on our 22 years of experience in organizational development and leadership training, we have discovered that managers systematically remove accountability. As a result the manager themselves ends up shouldering all the responsibility and stress. Here are some practical ideas to create greater accountability in your organization. |
|
|
SUCCESSFUL COMMUNICATION
| |
| Many businesses today are using technology such as the Internet, fax machines, e-mail, and voice mail to enhance their productivity and efficiency. The use of technology has effected the lines of communication between managers and their sales teams. It is a less personal way to communicate and can lead to feelings of alienation. |
|
|
Solution Sales - What is it?
| |
| An article discussing what is Solution Sales. |
|
|
Sales – Are You Up for the Challenge?
| |
| Selling is not easy. The last thing sales professionals should do is to make it any harder. The question is "Are you up for the challenge." |
|
|
Cold Calling - Tips to make it easier
| |
| An article giving ways to motivate yourself to make cold calls. |
|
|
Are you inspiring excellence?
| |
| As an excellence advocate, one of your responsibilities is to inspire excellence in other people – especially those who work with you and for you. Excellence in the workplace leads to higher profits, higher job satisfaction ratings, and higher employee morale. Are you inspiring excellence? If not, then this article will show you how to start spreading the excellence around. |
|
|
Taxes The Good News and the Bad News For Increasing Business Productivity
| |
| Cost to do business extends far beyond the standard fix costs of rent, utilities, insurance, etc. How you address these costs has a direct bearing on your sales to profits to employee retention. |
|
|
Surviving A Tough Economy Requires Focused Workers
| |
| The unemployment rate now exceeds 9% and workers are scared. If a member of their family has not lost their job, they know someone who has. If they're lucky to still have their job, they may have had their pay cut, hours reduced, or seen their retirement fund evaporate. It's ugly and though we may be seeing faint signs of recovery, job losses are expected to hit 10% before we escape this economic calamity. Surviving in a tough economy requires a two-prong approach-addressing the immediate crisis, while positioning your organization for the long-term. Too many managers sacrifice their future by simply focusing on today.
|
|
|
Eight Ways to Engage Employees and Power-Up Performance During a Recession
| |
| Imagine a workplace in which employees feel important and listened to…Now stop imagining it and CREATE it!
|
|
|
Writing Tip: Avoid worn-out clichés in your closing sentence
| |
| To clearly communicate a deadline, timeline or schedule for what needs to get done, avoid worn-out clichés in your closing sentence. |
|
|
Writing Tip: Avoid worn-out clichés in your opening sentence
| |
| To clearly communicate what needs to get done, avoid worn-out clichés in your opening sentence. |
|
|
Writing Tip: Five ways to make it easy for your readers
| |
| You are more productive when you prominently position your bottom line up front. This writing tip is easier said than done. Here are five things you can do to make your emails and other documents easy to read—and write! |
|
|
Writing Tip: Put what you want to get done in paragraph one
| |
| To pique the interest of your readers, give them your "bottom line" up front. This writing tip is common sense, but not common practice. |
|
|
Writing Tip: Use a forecasting subject line
| |
| When you want your emails to get things done, begin with a forecasting subject line. This simple step will turn your readers from passive to active. It often determines whether your email gets read or not. |
|
|
Top Ten reasons to Play
| |
|
Play is crucial to creativity, health and well-being. attaining a work/life balance. |
|
|
Does YOUR Elevator Take People Up?
| |
| Who doesn't enjoy receiving kudos for a job well done, or good effort
put forth, but how often do we think to dole them out to others. It's easy to
get caught up in the flurry of work and home activities, and checking off the
to-do list; taking dear family and friends a bit for granted.
|
|
|
From Radicals to Retirees
| |
| This article, published in the June edition of Winning Workplaces, will help you discover proactive ways to address the impact of the loss of boomer employees and ways to meet the needs of workers over 50.
|
|
|
Listen and Learn
| |
| Listening isn't just a nice to have soft skill. With organizations and individuals so fervently focused on the bottom line, actively listening has never been as important as it is now.
A focus on listening can lead to more effective teamwork, higher productivity, fewer conflicts and errors, enhanced innovation and problem-solving, improved recruiting and retention, superior customer relations and more. As authors on leadership development have noted through the years, listening is not just a nice thing to do, it’s essential! |
|
|
Good Employees for your Franchise Company
| |
| The employees that you hire can, to a large degree, make or break your business. Here are some characteristics to look for when hiring employees. Does the perfect employee exist? Yes, but you have to look for them, and then develop them. |
|
|
Differentiation-Based Leadership: Three questions that every leader must ask
| |
| The more competition you face, the greater the need to highlight the differentiation -- the unique advantage of your product or service -- in order to succeed in the marketplace. Differentiation-based leadership places the onus of grasping, defining and communicating that differentiation on the shoulders of the leader, and extends the concept to encompass every area of business -- including the leader him or herself. Using differentiation as the central principle of strategic competitive advantage, these are the three questions that every leader must ask. |
|
|
80/20 Principle in Entrepreneurship
| |
| To work effectively and profitably in business our 20% input of work should yield 80% output.
1. Where is the 20% input in your daily work either at home or in business that returns 80% rewards?
2. What has to happen in your business to pay attention and focus on that best 80% return?
We should act on what inspires us. Sometimes unknown to ourselves, there is a power in us greater than our resistance. Because of this we should feed our inspiration and starve our resistance. Do not rob the world of what you have to share. |
|
|
Break a Few Eggs
| |
| When faced with new challenges, do you ever ask yourself, “Why does this always happen to me?”, “What else am I suppose to do?”, and “I only have so many hours in a day “? Are these thoughts and statements normal? Will they restrain and inhibit your productivity, or are they normal reactions to everyday challenges? |
|
|
Think Big, Start Small! – Take Your First Step Towards Achieving Your Goals Today
| |
| Do you have a goal you want to achieve but are feeling overwhelmed or stuck, and not sure how to proceed? If so, this article provides the basic steps you can take to break your goal down into easy, manageable steps, making goal achievement possible and easier. |
|