I don’t know about you, but there have been days when I’ve been out and about and not been near the office once. On days like this, it’s difficult to get any work done let alone any marketing. 

So, what can you do? Here are my top tips to do business effectively when you’re on the move. 

1)   Plan in advance – how often have you had to rush because you needed petrol and didn’t get it before? Or, had to get up early to print out materials that you needed for the day? Yes – me too! But, if you plan in advance and do these things before the day you know you’re going to be out, you’ll find your life is much smoother. 

2)   Use Technology – there are so many things out there now to help us organise our lives better, so why not use them? Blackberrys and IPhones are fantastic for managing your emails and Notebooks are great for travelling with – they’re so much lighter than laptops and are often free if you sign up for mobile broadband. I got a new Notebook recently for just £20 a month! 

3)   Use a call minding company – manage any phone calls you receive while you’re out and about by using a call answering service. They will answer your calls in your company name and will send any messages to your emails or by text to you. People far appreciate speaking to a human being rather than an answering machine, making you look more professional too. We use Professional Call Minders who are fantastic. 

4)   Scale down your workload - much as we’d like to get everything done if you’re out working, your time will be limited. Recognise this and scale back your workload accordingly – sounds obvious, but we very often don’t do this leaving us feeling stressed because we haven’t done as much as we would like. 

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Growth–too much, too fast, too soon–can be a direct cause of failure. The same is true for organizations that see growth as the only way to survive.

”We must achieve 20% growth at all cost,” has lead to the demise of PC/CE companies throughout the industry. The drive in a down economy is a sure road to disaster.

The problem is, no one wants to stand still. It’s not “The American Way”. Each of us starts a company with one objective: to grow…to gain greater stature and increase profits.

And why not? We’re constantly bombarded with “bigger is better”.

Look at the business pages. You never see an item on a company that’s growing slowly or maintaining status quo. But financial editors aren’t to blame for covering the growth of companies, growth of stocks, growth of industries. People want to be associated with winners. And when they invest, they want their companies to grow in sales, profits and market value.

As a result, the desire to grow becomes compulsive.

It’s also true that there are times that when a business stops growing, it begins to wither and die.

Unfortunately for many management groups, growth for the sake of growth has become the all-consuming objective. If you aren’t achieving the same level of growth and expansion than those in your market segment you are obviously not living up to your fullest corporate potential. Nearly every other consideration takes a back seat to this golden grail.

Don’t get us wrong. Growth is necessary. And growth isn’t necessarily bad. But it takes a lot of planning and preparation.

Your Objective…ROI
Growth and size may contribute to an organization’s temporary well being, but offer no assurance of long-term health.

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Nothing focuses the mind better than the constant sight of a competitor who wants to wipe you off the map.– Wayne Calloway

When Eric Schmidt (Google) said he paid a premium of one billion for YouTube he spelled out part of the strategy companies increasingly use to compete – acquire for growth or to block competition. The old management stigma of NIH (not invented here) has been replaced by the scramble to keep up with or lead the pack at almost any cost. With the world economy showing signs of recovering, companies are positioning themselves for the next phase of growth, the next big thing! Companies that were started two – three and more years ago nursed their activities along paying close attention to their cash flow to bring their products, services and technology along waiting for the business climate to improve. Admittedly the climate for IPOs (initial public offering) is weak – not even considering the fiscal and physical toll it takes on the company – all indicators point to a pent-up M&A activity and enthusiasm for the coming.

Mind-boggling, record-breaking numbers have grabbed the headlines:

• Dell buying Perot Systems for $3.9 billion
• Cisco acquiring Tandberg for $3 billion
• Adobe buying Omniture for $1.8 billion
• VMware grabbing SpringSource for a lowly $420 million
• Intuit snapping up PayCycle and Mint for a lousy $170 million each

These are only the tip of the iceberg. Tons of friendly and unfriendly M&A deals are being pursued or speculated:

• HP and Polycom
• Oracle checking out SuccessFactors, Taleo, Concur, RightNow, NetSuite, Citrix, ???
• Dell, Nokia and HP watching Palm’s struggles
• Google promising a buy a month

Many more “discussions” are started and broken off.

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The foundations of creative leadership start with taking personal responsibility for our actions as part of a group; in feeling confidant enough to suggest and accept revisions in team goals and performance. To successfully learn new styles of creative thinking and applied problem-solving, we must take personal leadership in using them, and in the interaction with our fellow workers and clients.

Peter Drucker said,” Management is doing things right; Leadership is doing the right things.” Handling problems, challenges and mistakes, effectively, depends on being able to cut to root causes, and to develop real actionable solutions.

I challenge you to discover new approaches to the problems you encounter; to see them as opportunities to grow and change the way you live, lead, or do business. A wise man told me; “My ability to earn would be directly dependent on my ability to solve problems.” In business, we are essentially paid for our ability to solve our client’s problems by the provision of innovative, productive services or products.

Creativity tools and tips can be applied in at least two directions:

• Problem solving
• Strategic planning

“Effectiveness - often survival - does not depend solely on how much effort we expend, but on whether or not the effort we invest is in the right direction.”

It has been my experience that creativity tools help in the process of defining the direction, and outlining the process needed to successfully reach the goals you set, or in solving perplexing problems you encounter enroute.

Some of the leadership objectives would be:

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While Total Quality Management has proven to be an effective process for improving organizational functioning, its value can only be assured through a comprehensive and well­thought­out implementation process. The purpose of this chapter is to outline key aspects of implementation of large­scale organizational change which may enable a practitioner to more thoughtfully and successfully implement TQM. First, the context will be set. TQM is, in fact, a large­scale systems change, and guiding principles and considerations regarding this scale of change will be presented. Without attention to contextual factors, well­intended changes may not be adequately designed. As another aspect of context, the expectations and perceptions of employees (workers and managers) will be assessed, so that the implementation plan can address them. Specifically, sources of resistance to change and ways of dealing with them will be discussed. This is important to allow a change agent to anticipate resistances and design for them, so that the process does not bog down or stall. Next, a model of implementation will be presented, including a discussion of key principles. Visionary leadership will be offered as an overriding perspective for someone instituting TQM. In recent years the literature on change management and leadership has grown steadily, and applications based on research findings will be more likely to succeed. Use of tested principles will also enable the change agent to avoid reinventing the proverbial wheel. Implementation principles will be followed by a review of steps in managing the transition to the new system and ways of helping institutionalize the process as part of the organization’s culture. This section, too, will be informed by current writing in transition management and institutionalization of change.

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“Well, I’m gonna’ get out of bed every morning… breath in and out all day long. Then, after a while I won’t have to remind myself to get out of bed every morning and breathe in and out.” – Sam Baldwin, Sleepless in Seattle (Tristar – 1993) 

Hopping out of bed, checking voicemail, checking our email, checking a few gotta’ see Web sites, having a cup of coffee is the fairly typical start of most people’s day around the globe, around the calendar.

Two billion plus computers, four billion plus plus mobile devices, a gazillion (and growing) Web sites, blogs, social nets and instant in-touch services have shrunk the world–and the clock–to fit nicely in our screen(s).

That’s one of the reasons we savor the few hours every few months we spend underwater.  Gliding through the water…exploring nooks and crannies…watching the varieties of sea life floating by…listening to our bubbles from our regulator and watching them rise.

Sure, it’s flat cool. 

It also has another benefit.

It’s pretty much guaranteed to be one of the few places we cannot use a cellphone or computer.  We can’t reach out to and can’t be reached by people who absolutely, positively must get ahold of us right NOW!!! Anywhere else you and we (actually about 20 percent of the total world population) are connected.

Big Pipes, Longer Time
The bigger the pipes’ bandwidth in a an area, the more people are connected.

At work and at school, being able to connect is expected. 

It turns out 8, 10, 12 hours staring at the screen isn’t enough.

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This may not be the first time that your CEO has sliced your training budget and I am sure it will not be the last. If you already run a lean and mean training function, then congratulations on your efforts. You may find, though, that your previous good management will not slow the CEO from asking you to shed some more expenses. Whether you have already optimized your training function in the past or you realize that you have a long way to go, here are ten practical steps that you can take to weather any financial storm.

1. Provide more self-help workbooks and on-the-job aids.
Replace some of the high cost training sessions with materials and aids placed where people do the work. Laminated procedures, checklists, tips’n’tricks, lists of shortcut keys, ready reckoners, and so on, may be effective replacements for full-blown training sessions. If somebody is having difficulty handling angry customers or using Microsoft Excel, check out your local training publishers for self-paced workbooks.

2. Conscript local experts or coaches to take the place of some training sessions.
If people have some knowledge and skills about the subject, identify one or two local experts in each area to act as a central point for all questions. Make sure that the experts and coaches you nominate have the required communication and interpersonal skills.

3. Cut training sessions that do not add value to the organization.
Does your organization really need that assertiveness skills training course? What tangible benefit did your organization achieve from it? Drop courses that do not show a demonstrable advantage to your organization. I’m not saying that these kinds of courses are never worthwhile. During difficult periods is the time to review whether they are of real benefit to your organization now.

4.

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We all want that sense of achievement that comes with reaching our goals. Whether we are working for ourselves or working within a larger organization, we get a deep sense of satisfaction when we accomplish what we set out to do. Some people seem to achieve their objectives without much effort. Others never quite seem to get there. Have you experienced frustrations such as these?

• Only half of your managers are using the new system after spending over one million dollars on its implementation.
• The incidence of customer complaints continues to rise even after the latest product redesign.
• Members of your department continually change focus so nothing gets finished.

If so, then you may need to revisit how you set goals and plan for their accomplishment. From my years of working in a number of organizations and on a variety of projects, I have condensed the lessons I have learned into a simple five step process. I call this process the Five Cs approach. This approach does not use any rocket science, just the basics needed for getting things done in your organization. By using the Five Cs process steps you will improve the chances of achieving your and your organization’s objectives.

The Five Cs approach can be used for activities as basic as organizing your team’s leave calendar to the more complex planning and rollout of your organization’s annual fundraiser. The approach consists of these five basic steps:

Create   >>   Commit   >>   Communicate   >>   Carry Out   >>   Check

The steps in the process are essentially sequential, meaning that you will need mostly to complete an earlier step before proceeding to the next. Shortcutting steps in the process will only increase the amount of rework that you will need to do later on.

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