How many business cards have you gathered since you’ve been in business? I’ve seen business owners with hundreds if not thousands of business cards stored in card boxes, in jacket pockets, stapled to diaries and contact details scribbled on bits of paper. 

Are you the same? Do you have hundreds of business cards lying around in various places?  

I’d like you to ask yourself a question…how effective are these business cards for you at the moment? 

A few years ago, I was in the same situation. I had piles of business cards. In fact, I remember I had to go out and buy two more business card boxes because I just did not have the space to hold them all. 

But I didn’t actually do anything with them. They were just sat there looking at me.  

Occasionally, if someone asked me for some contact details, I’d go through them quickly to find the right person, but rarely found the card I was looking for. 

Then I began to realise the power of contacting past contacts and it dawned on me that I would actually need to do something about my business cards. So, I painstakingly sat there and typed them all out onto a database on excel. 

Just putting these contacts somewhere made it possible for me to do something with them. For instance, I could: 

• Touch base with these contacts to find out how they were getting on.
• Make notes and colour code excel to show what was happening with each person.
• Find people quickly and easily.
• Produce reports and statistics if I needed to. 

The most important difference though was that I was able to follow up with people and start to build a relationship with them. Because I could touch base with people properly, I found it had a dramatic difference on my business and got me new customers. 

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I see many organizations, both large and small, continue to communicate fragments of important policies and processes to employees through one-time emails and the like. This could include a new purchase authorization policy or a new data entry procedure. Expecting employees to forage through past emails and other transitory type documents only leads to wasted time and exasperation.

Process clarity is one of the three key foci in effective organizational design, along with people and technology. Yet with the haphazard process management common in many businesses, it is little wonder that employees struggle to do a good job. How an invoice is processed, customer complaint handled or engineering drawing approved in many organizations depends more on who does it and what day of the week it was done on rather than on sound business reasoning. Where process and role clarity is lacking, personal idiosyncrasies and political maneuvering take over.

Moreover, research indicates that less than 20 percent of product defects and service problems are due to non-random factors, such as malicious employees, machine breakdown and poor raw materials. The other 80 percent or more of problems is due to systemic deficiencies with processes. So, although mapping your business processes is relatively simple to do and involves no costly capital expenditure, it pays huge dividends in business efficiency and employee commitment. If you are thinking about mapping your processes, here are ten key pointers to keep in mind.

1. Involve employees who actually do the work in the mapping

Employees who do the actual work are in the best position to know the detailed steps in each process. They are also most familiar with the common roadblocks and bottlenecks and the key contacts in the organization to get things done. Involve your employees up front by inviting them to join process-mapping teams.

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Are you looking for a change in your life? Do you feel that you’ve stopped growing as a person? Do you feel that your life and career have stagnated and you’re ready to take them to the next level? Are you dissatisfied with your current position and eager to advance to a happier and more prosperous position?

The only way to survive and rise to the top of the successful career ladder in today’s economic conditions is to become a wise, effective, and unmatched professional who cannot be replaced or laid off. You must be indispensable! You must be independent, in control, and able to find and attract the best possible position for your skill set-so that even if you ARE laid off, you can still fight your way back to success. And the only way to achieve all of that is to CHANGE.

Let’s face it - we all need to change and improve our lives for the better in one way or another. Most people do try their best to improve their lives so that they can have all the things they dream of for themselves and their families. But the fact is that very few people follow the right approach to real change. Some try to develop new habits, some quit their jobs and start their own businesses, some go back to school, some relocate to other countries where they can find higher salaries and better positions.

You might have noticed, however, that although everyone tries to change, only a select few actually succeed in that endeavor and are able to make significant changes and improvements in their lives. Those few lucky people seem to possess some hidden secrets that allow them to effortlessly advance and reach higher levels of success.

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Why not take some time this year during the quiet days after Christmas to identify what you really want to achieve in 2009? Make it real, concrete, achievable and imagine what it will be like this time next year knowing you have achieved these goals. Use the following points as a way to get ready for a brilliant 2009.

1. Acknowledge the previous year’s achievements: So few of us take the time to acknowledge and amaze ourselves at how much we have done over the previous 12 months. Take the time to write down what you are proud of, how you have grown, what you have learned, and then read it over. Surprise yourself!
2. Fewer Goals: Only choose 3-5 goals at the most. If you feel as though there are so many areas of your life where you want to set goals, fine. You can focus on the other areas next year. Choose 3-5 areas where you want to set goals. This is setting yourself up for success.
3. Make it specific: It’s not much good saying you want to lose weight. If you lost one pound over the year, you have met that goal! No, make it specific (e.g.,  I want to lose 15 lbs and add a deadline.
4. Benefits of achieving this goal: You need to write down at least three benefits of achieving this goal. Keep it near you so that when you falter, this will keep you going.
5. Failure is not an option. It’s inevitable.  A Japanese proverb says: “Fall down seven times; stand up eight times.” Of course you are going to slip, make mistakes and not always do what you want. Accept that as the reality. Then, ask yourself how you are going to get back on track. Don’t waste time on beating yourself up, it’s pointless, and will not get you to your goal any quicker. 
6. Write them down, write them down, write them down.

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Yep, folks, it’s that time again - a time to set resolutions which we seem to assume we won’t keep, a time to think about really getting the job of our dreams. Here are some ideas/steps for making 2009 the best year of your career. So, why not take 2-3 hours to think about how you can make 2009 the year of your career. 

Acknowledge the Accomplishments of 2008

Begin by reviewing what really worked for you in 2008. What were your triumphs? What did you do that you were really proud of? Did you get a new account? Increase your sales? Streamline the systems in your job? What did you enjoy doing during the year? Identify the parts of the job that you really got a buzz out of. Write them all down. The chances are you will begin to remember triumphs and achievements that you had forgotten. Acknowledge them. Even if you think you had no triumphs–you survived without getting fired–that counts, as well.

        
Identify Your Strengths – Know What You are Good At

What do you do really well? What do you do so well that it’s effortless for you and you assume any plonker could do it? What do other people give you really positive feedback on? These are some keys to your strengths. Another useful way to identify your own strengths is to take some of the psychometric tests available. Some of the better known ones are: DISC, Myers-Briggs and the Enneagram. Do a google for any of them, and you should be able to do one online free or for a reasonable price. Self-knowledge is a key component of finding your dream career. Knowing what you are not so good at is useful, as well.

Where Can You Contribute? Make the Present Better

Given that it’s unlikely that you will have an invite on Monday morning to your new job, what can you do in the meantime to improve your contribution to your current position.

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Microsoft PowerPoint is the software of choice for many when it comes to making a presentation before students, employees, project team members and the like. As with other similar presentation packages, it offers many useful features and functions. The downside is that in all too many presentations, the technology takes center stage, shunting the presenter to the role of supporting act. We have all witnessed presentations that seemed designed to help us catch up on our sleep and others that were a whirlwind, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”.

Over the years of witnessing hundreds of presentations, I have seen my fair share of yawn promoters and storms in teacups. As a professional trainer, I thought: Why not condense the most common errors that I have seen and draw some useful lessons from which we can all benefit? Here are my top seven PowerPoint annoyances and what we can learn from each of these to improve our own performance.

1. Not telling the participants the purpose of the session

You know the kind of presentation I am talking about. From one slide to the next, you have little to no idea of where the presentation is going. You wonder whether you should even have turned up. Eliminate the guessing game by letting your audience know up front the purpose of your session and how you plan to achieve it.

2. Overdosing participants with information

Novice presenters often suffer the illusion that some content is good, so more is better. With this mindset, these presenters cram as much as possible onto each slide, filling it with font sizes as small as 10 point. Help your participants avoid eye strain and to stay interested by using plenty of white space and font sizes large enough to read from the back row. Add to your slides tables, charts and other graphics that will aid understanding your message.

3.

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A lot of people think summer is slow and not the time to focus on their websites.

So many people are out of town, some businesses slow down. Not to mention we all have concerns about the economy right now.

I want to propose a different perspective.

1. People are sticking closer to home because of high gas prices. You’ve all heard the term “Staycation” thrown around by the media. If you watch the Daily Show with Jon Stewart you heard John Hodgeman (the PC guy from the commercials) create his own new word for the “stick closer to home because gas is way too expensive” phenomenon: “Holistays”.

No matter what you call it, people are sticking closer to home. People are shopping online even more.

It’s a great time to offer a shipping special. With the cost of shipping going up, again due to the cost of a gas, a shipping special is much appreciated right now.

You can tap into this situation by playing it up. Just as The Daily Show created a segment that was funny and garnered a lot of attention; you can find a way to make the current situation work in your favor.

2. If things are a little slow, it is actually the perfect time to devote some of your time to your website.

It is suggested that you review your website and refresh it at least once a year. Just a handful of suggestions for you:

• Now is a good time to check the links and pages within your site and make sure everything is in working order. Get rid of those pesky 404 errors from broken links.
• You could also come up with a summer special.
• Jazz up the site.
• Add some testimonials.
• Look at your web stats and see if you can increase conversions.

3. Now is when you absolutely must start focusing on your upcoming holiday campaigns.

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Sometimes delays are important, but if you’re not adding value, then it is not good.

Some level of friction and delay are prevalent in virtually every business. Depending on what you are trying to achieve, they are not automatically bad things. There are times when deliberately slowing down (introducing delay to) an activity is the right thing to do. But where they are a result of poorly evolved processes, lack of training or resources, or lack of knowledge - it’s time to take action and remove them from your life!

How can we define Friction and Delay? Friction is whatever gets in the way of a smooth and uninterrupted flow of events. Think of sliding along a bench covered in sandpaper versus one covered with oil. Delay is adding time without adding value.

High levels of these in any business are expensive, leading to lower productivity, and higher costs.

Why do businesses tolerate these levels of friction and delay??

They are considered a cost of doing business.
Many business owners don’t know or realize that there is another way of doing things – a way that could really improve their business

The business suffers from inertia when it comes to improvements.
Inefficiencies cause significantly lower productivity as employees create workarounds to get the job done. Over time, the workarounds become the accepted process, and the opportunity for taking action on the source of the problem is forgotten

Too much time is wasted on dealing with the symptoms.
Many owners spend tremendous time and energy dealing with the results of delay and friction in their organizations without striking at the cause of the problems

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