Article Directory
Working in Organisations - Open Systems At the worst of times companies can look and act like badly functioning families: dictatorial, patriarchal, rigid and uncooperative. The staff are de-motivated, communication is poor, growth is slowed and team-spirit is non-existent. Like the Patriarch in a family who says, "Something needs to be done around here", someone in the company usually calls for a "Culture Change" or some similar course of action in order to address a potential or actual decline. Structures are shaken up, mission statements are issued, new communication avenues are created. ...
Use This Simple Time Tested Process And Move Your Business Forward In 2006 - Another year is just about ready to finish and it is time to start thinking about next year. If you own your own business or you manage a business division, then you need to ask yourself if all of the expectations that were set forth at the beginning of the year were met. If not then maybe what stopped you was a lack of goals and objectives, or just a lack of a good process to use when planning them. The goal setting process is essential to the success or failure of the business, and many careers have derailed due to a lack of them. ...
Top Ten Ways to Motivate Your Employees As You Go - Rather than, 'We're doing Motivation today', making your place being a great place to work, it becomes a whole lot easier. Yes, there is a place for those external 'raft-builds', 'away days' and 'paintballing'! Get them in context; there is work to do up front to leverage those experiences and get the best value from them. Just build great relationships in your business or organisation, one-to-one - then have the fun day out and grow even more! "Motivation is like food for the brain. You cannot get enough in one sitting. ...
Top Ten Tips When You Need to Hire Help in Your Business - If you think ahead and plan, many nightmare, panic and chaos situations can be overcome. By ensuring that you have a great group of people around you, there will be more to fall back on when the going gets tough - because that, as they say, when the tough really do get going. Big challenges can be very difficult to face - and they can be fascinating and exhilarating. So here's some thoughts on how to make the best of these times, by getting ready in advance and making it work. 1. Plan Ahead Look out for what you might need in the future and plan to make business life far, far easier for yourself. ...
Time to Stop Yourself Doing Everything in Your Business - You've been there and done it. You've got the tee-shirt and your experiences mean that you can cut so many corners. So you do. It's easier. You respond to all the requests, questions, challenges and mistakes of your people. By fixing them. And after a while two things happen. Firstly - You get exhausted, because everything revolves around you - every piddling decision, people wait for you. Secondly - Remarkably, your people start to leave - or give poor service - or get grumpy. Or all these, and more! How ungrateful, you've done everything for them. ...
Team Building Events and Exercises - This document is all about understanding teams and team building training; the purpose of team building activities; why corporate team building events can be effective; planning a team building strategy; building creative teams. Why have a team building activity or event? This is a phrase we hear a lot these days: 'we need some kind of teambuilding activity'. Corporate team building events are on the increase: everyone seems to be having them these days. But are they living up to expectations? See, from our point of view, often the people talking about team building don't really know what they mean. ...
Success Leaves Clues - In my study of people who have a knack for success, who seem to make the accurate choice at the best time, and who appear to constantly be in the right place at the right time, I noticed some essential success principles that they all use. Their use of these principles is almost automatic. In other words, it is hard-wired into their nervous system. It is reflexive. It is an aspect of their subconscious programming. No doubt there are many other principles responsible for their success, but these few were always present. ...
Sticking to It The Art of Adherence - How many times have we been told the formula for maintaining a healthy weight is to eat a balanced diet and exercise regularly? Everybody knows the formula, although sophisticated marketers package it in many creative ways. So if we all know what the formula is, why is it so difficult to apply it to our lives? The secret to losing weight is not in knowing the formula - it's in applying what we already know. Most organizations understand how to develop a strategy, but many fail to successfully execute it. ...
Stepping Into Possibility Thinking - Our thoughts really belong to the collective consciousness of the world in all of time. Our individual minds process the cumulative database recorded on the physical and subtle levels and devise interesting combinations, unique interpretations, and random permutations. When this assemblage of information is startling enough, we hail it as an expression of genius. The pattern of human thinking is designed to hold homeostatic belief systems. This has great survival value for establishing consensus reality. ...
Screening Job Applicants - What Really Goes On Behind Closed Doors - The first goal of any hiring manager is not to find a candidate, but to ELIMINATE unqualified candidates. Most hiring managers reading your resume will take the pile of up to 500 letters they received and try to separate the definite "no's' (Don't Call) into one pile and the interesting resumes into the second pile (Might Call). They then go back and eliminate again until what they have is a manageable pile (5-10 max) of pre-qualified candidates (To Call). Getting into the second pile (Might Call) is your first goal. ...
Professional Personal Development - What is it - We think the term 'training' is too restrictive, and we only use it because that is the context within which many organisations can understand what we do. But whether you call it people skills training, interpersonal skills training, soft skills training or professional personal development, what we're talking about is people changing what they do in order to be more effective, more able and quite simply, happier at their job and in their personal lives. What we do know is that people take on new behaviours best when there is a parallel shift in their personal development. ...
Prenuptial Agreements Protect Your Family Business - Imagine this scenario. You have worked very hard to build up a small business for yourself. You are your own boss and your business is running quite successfully. The only thing missing from your life is someone to share it with. You finally meet that special someone and choose to get married. But before you make that step, you start to wonder about this life you have built for yourself. Does she really love me? Is he only after my money? These questions race through your mind. What can you do to make sure that you don't lose everything you have worked so hard for? The answer lies in prenuptial agreements. ...
Mental Toughness For Modern Life - Have you ever wondered how would survive in a hostage situation? Being captured and held as a hostage by terrorists? What would give you the will to survive and stay alive? Make a mental list of memories, loved ones, beliefs, techniques that would keep you alive if taken hostage or a prisoner of war. In today's uncertain world there is a reasonable chance that someone we know will be one or two degrees removed from a hostage, a bomb blast victim or a prisoner of war (POW). My own grandfather was a Maori prisoner of war during World War 2. ...
Leadership Development - Leadership Styles and Training - What makes a good leader? Leadership development Ever since we started Impact Factory, lo these many years ago, we have struggled with the whole notion of leadership development or leadership training. Indeed, we have resisted writing about it in much detail because the subject is so subjective. Are leaders born or made? Can you use management leadership training to give leadership skills to someone who isn't leadership material? How is it done? Given that we're being asked to create a lot more leadership programmes of late, we decided we'd take a hard look at just what makes a good leader. ...
Job-Hunting - The Best Story Always Wins - There's an old joke about two men hunting in the jungle. Suddenly, they come upon a man-eating tiger that has not eaten for days. The hunters both start running with the tiger in hot pursuit. As they are running, one hunter says to the other. "You know, we'll never be able to outrun this tiger." To which the other hunter replies, "I don't have to outrun the tiger; I only have to outrun you." The point of the story is that, yes, there will be many other candidates in the stack of 500 cover letters and resumes that the hiring manager will receive for just one ad and many will have more experience and better qualifications than you. ...
Job Security for Three Decades - There is a growing need for more Chair Yoga teachers. Education about the mental and physical benefits of Yoga has spread like "wild fire" in the past couple of decades; but what about the needs of those who are not so young and limber? In some parts of the world, the number of seniors will outweigh the working population. Italy, the United States, and the rest of Europe, will see senior populations grow rapidly. Within the United States, every seven seconds, someone turns 50 years of age. ...
Job Search Tip Master the FOUR BEES - Ok. So you've decided it's time to make a career move! Maybe you just got laid off. Or management is driving you crazy. Maybe you need to make more money. Or you're anxious to advance yourself. Whatever your reasons, it's critically important that you go into the job marketplace with your eyes wide open. If you haven't been there recently, things have changed--a lot! For example, the expectations of employers are different from what they were just a few years ago. Formerly, it was enough to have a good resume with a strong employment track record of accomplishments. ...
Forensic Accounting- CSI of Accounting Jobs - Forensic accounting is one of the fastest growing areas of accounting jobs in the market today. This specialized area is interesting and dynamic, and provides unlimited opportunities for the next few decades. Forensic accountants work in two primary areas, investigative accounting and litigation support. Investigative accounting encompasses not just the numbers and documents of a company, but the business environment as well. Forensic accountants investigate the financial operations of an enterprise and prepare information that may be used in a criminal or civil court case. ...
Five Ways In Which You Can Save Success From Failure - Things are going great for you. Your life is amazing. Things just could not be better, and then BOOM! Something happens to take the rug out from under you. You may be afraid, confused, angry, or all of the above and more. What you really need to though is figure out what went wrong. Just follow these five steps, and you will be back on your way, better than ever: 1. Take a step back Any time things are going badly, the first thing you should do is just simply take a step back and re-evaluate the situation. ...
Entertain Your Staff For Larger Profits - Today's employees, particularly those involved with corporate finance and other major business sectors, are leaning more towards corporate event management and corporate entertainment as a key source of contentment and happiness at work. This reflects the emergence of what has become defined as corporate culture - one that recognizes the need to keep staff happy through team games, special event days and other activities that help build camaraderie and teamwork. 1. Happy Workers Work Harder Such episodes come as a welcome break for most rank and file, and usually end up energizing staff and renewing their interest in work. ...
Employee Motivation - The 8 Basics - Building a team of motivated people in your business is vital to get the very best results, but so many managers focus on the 'ra-ra-ra', rather than the important things - the things that make people feel comfortable in their working environment. Here are eight that you might want to have a think about: 1. The Weather Is it too hot, or too cold. Your people need an environment which is, like Goldilocks said, 'Just right'. So is the office too stuffy in summer? Or too icy in winter? Is it draughty? Do people get wet when accepting deliveries, because the outside roof leaks? Literally make sure that external factors are as they wish. ...
Effective Management - 4 Ways to Inspire loyalty in your Business - Today as people become increasingly conscious of their worth, they are no longer willing to stay in a job that has become intolerable and impersonal to them. This means that in the corporate or business world, it no longer suffice to have a system in place and expect people to just comply by them. Without some form of human connections, things won't work out for long and the strength of commitment from your employees will simply disintegrate. Whether you're an executive, a business owner with employees or an organisation with a team of board members, you have a common ground. ...
Distance Learning for Your MBA - In today's job market, a bachelor's degree often isn't enough to give you the edge over other job applicants. However, getting your MBA at a local college or university may be just too much for a full-time breadwinner with a home and family to care for. There are still ways to advance your education, though, and one of the most popular is getting your MBA through distance learning. Distance learning via internet is a relatively recent phenomenon. Usually, a student will enroll in an online university and take the all of the classes online. ...
Dealing with Change and Change Management - How do you Deal With Change? There is a lot of talk about "change" - how important it is, how we should alter the way we do to things at work and in our personal lives in order to be more effective. Sometimes we even hear how it is essential to change even if just for change's sake. At Impact Factory, we too think that change is important. However we are more interested in the process of change and what the implications of change actually are. We exist within contradiction. On the one hand, we need stability and perform well when we feel secure and established in our working and home lives. ...
Customer Relationship Management - A Brief Look At What It Is - Small business/large business management and success is largely dependent upon customer acquisition, customer relationship enhancements, and customer retention, otherwise known as Customer Relationship Management, or CRM. CRM is a combination of enterprise strategies, business processes and information technologies that are used to learn about customers' needs and behaviors in order to develop stronger relationships with them. In the not-too-far past, CRM mainly consisted of a roll-a-deck index file and a telephone and answer machine. ...
Coaching and Mentoring using one - Once you've been hired to do a job, particularly if it's a well paid and/or high-flying job, you're supposed to know everything, be able to handle everything with ease, deal with other people's problems and in general be super-person. Right? Well, not exactly. There are loads of people who get hired for, or promoted to, really good jobs because of the skills and capabilities they have demonstrated. Yet six months later they are floundering and don't appear to be up to it all. You may be one of those people. ...
Classic Leadership Styles - Much has been said over the years about leadership styles. Yet research into the best and most practical overview leads to the easiest conclusion (there will always be variables on these, as well as mixes of them), are that there are four distinct leadership styles. With one to avoid as well! 1. The Autocrat This leadership style is one that is typically less prevalent now than it was in the 70's and 80's. This leader thrives on leading from the front making all the decisions and typically dragging the rest of his people along with him. ...
6 Biggest Job Search Mistakes - If you're serious about finding a job you MUST avoid these fundamental flaws that can sabotage your job search campaign. 1. Writing a resume no one wants to read! Your resume can NOT focus on YOU and your past! It must show employers how you can make a difference to them going forward. They could care less about your career goals and job objectives. Or your work history, for that matter. UNLESS you can show them how it affects their bottom line. And remember, employers are buying YOU . . . ...
5 Easy Ways To Become a Job-Search - According to current Department of Labor statistics, today's college graduates will, on average, have 8 to 10 jobs and as many as 3 careers in their lifetime. In addition, in today's job market with downsizing, rightsizing, layoffs, mergers and acquisitions, etc. your job skills and job-hunting skills need to be constantly updated and refined. The job market is getting tougher and your competition is getting smarter. That's why you need to gain every advantage you can. You need to become a Job-Search "Commando". ...
21st Century Job Search Alternative - The 21st Century job search marketplace is constantly shifting. So are job-seekers. And so are the rules for how you can land a great employment opportunity. In fact, today there are two marketplaces. One is the old-fashioned traditional marketplace of resumes, classified ads, website postings, agencies and recruiters, interviews and rejection letters. The other is the hot fast-track job search marketplace of career partners, contact banks, automated interviews, professional introductions, interactive dialogs, on-the-spot employment creation and savvy negotiations. ...
