Employee's Opinion: Tool to Winning in Business

Everyone in the world wants Opinion and Dignity.
By Opinion i mean people want to say their minds, share their ideas, regardless of culture, age, gender and nationality. By dignity i mean people want to be respected for their work and effort.

In some organisation, employee below management level always feel anonymous in their ideas, employee could not speak up their ideas. each organisation should find the right approach to make opinion and dignity key in their organisation, that does not mean everyone's opinion should be put into practice or every single complain should be satisfied. That's what management judgement is all about, Obviously some people are smarter or more experienced or more creative but everyone should be heard and respected. Employee Dignity and opinion are key to business success.

Honesty and Openness: Key to Success in Business

Honesty and openness in business are sometimes underestimated, Jack Welch in his book "Winning" called lack of honesty and openness the biggest dirty little secret in business.


Lack of honesty and openness block ideas , it stops fast action and don't allow good people contributing to the growth of the business.

With honesty and openness everything seems to operate faster and better, lack of honesty and openness also implies people withhold comment and criticism in order to make people feel better or avoid conflict, they hoard information in order to avoid trouble, that's lack of honesty and openness and its really damaging.


Openness and honesty help you know where you are and where have to improve in your business. honesty and openness leads to winning in business, lets see how candor can help you become a winner in your business.

1. Honesty and Openness help people to participate in a conversation and when more people participate in a conversation you get new and rich ideas, everyone opens up and learn.

2. Honesty and Openness ct down cost, lots of cost, it will eliminate meaningless meetings, honesty and openness can replace PowerPoint slide and mind numbering presentations.

3. Honesty and Openness generates speed when everyone gets an idea, it can be debated rapidly, expandable and enhanced and act upon.

Why not add candor to your business, its a sure easy way to business success.

Mission & Values, Key to Success in Business

Every decent company/business should have mission and values in their bones, businesses shouldn't be allowed in the field without mission and values 

Mission 

Mission Statement announce exactly where you are going while values describes the behavior that will take you there. Mission Statement answer question like, how do we intend to win/succeed? to answer the question of how to win in business requires companies and business to make choices about its people, investment and other resources.

Effective mission statement give people clear direction to profitability and an inspiration that there are part of something big and important. Its important that a company and its people harped on the company's mission in every meeting both big and small, employee who drive the company mission should be publicly rewarded.

Getting a mission statement for your business is easy, you can get input from anywhere, listen to smart people, though setting the mission is top management responsibility, mission statement must not be delegated to anyone except those ultimately held accountable.

Values

Like we say earlier, Values describe the behaviors that will take you to your mission. the process of creating values has to be interactive, the management may come up with a first version, The management has to go out and ensure they have created an atmosphere where people feel its their obligation to contribute. Values like "we treat customers the way we will want to be treated"its pretty tangible. below are some behaviors which make values come to life.

1. Never let profit center conflicts get in the way of doing what is right for the customers

2. Give customers a fair deal, good customer service take time, its wrong to maximize short term profit at the expense of building those enduring relationship.

3. Look for ways to make it easier to do business with us

4. Its important you communicate daily with your customers, if there are talking to you, they can't be talking to your competitors.

5. Always remember to say "thank you"

Furthermore, to make values really important businesses have to reward the people who exhibit them and punish those who don't, this will make winning in business easier.

Whenever a manager is asked to leave because he didn't demonstrate the values, the organisation respond incredibly well.

In conclusion, a good mission statement and excellence values are great, but for a business values and mission to truly work together as a winning tool, there have to be mutually reinforcing. people in business often talk about mission and values, but too often the result is more talk and less real action. businesses need to know that there is too much to loose by not getting your mission and values straight, businesses will not reach its full potentials and wining in business will be difficult when mission and values are not concrete.

7 daily habits to Improve your day

1. Just after you brush your teeth, look at yourself in the mirror and smile. Even if you can't think of a reason to, still just smile and keep it up for 10 seconds. Guaranteed you will spend rest of the day happier. 

2. Finding yourself opening facebook or whatsapp again and again? Put away your laptop and phone and go on a short walk wherever you can. Walking is known to help collect your thoughts and relaxing you.

3. Meditate for 10 minutes. If you have no clue how to, just sit in a quiet place and try counting your breaths till 10-15. Your focus should be on your breath and no thinking. Restart counting as soon as your mind distracts you and you find yourself thinking of something else.  

4. Before your sit to work, remind yourself of TWO things that you need finished today (only two, no more). Remind yourself again in the lunch time. There are high chances you will get more important things done this way. 

5. Just before sleeping, tell your brain to wake you up at ___a.m. You will be surprised when soon you would stop needing the alarm clock. Still a stubborn sleeper? Put your cellphone some distance away from you when sleeping so that you need to walk up to it when the alarm rings.

6. Revisit your day and remember the positive/good things from the day. Be thankful for those.

7. Try to do at least one new thing - be it taking a different route to work, talking to a new person, experimenting an activity you haven't before. Don't let your curiosity and awe die in the daily grind. 

What you need to know about Content Marketing

“Content marketing” is a word used everywhere in the business world these days. The idea is deceptively simple: You use your voice of authority in your industry in order to serve up useful, relevant content that provides some value and insight and keeps customers engaged with your brand. Write a few good blog posts, and the engaged customer we all dream about will loyally patronize your business and evangelize to his or her social network, right?

In practice, content marketing is not so simple. It takes a lot of effort to build and maintain the right sort of audience. The general wisdom holds that the average person is so constantly bombarded by information that they are increasingly reluctant to devote their scarce mental resources to listening to or understanding any message you might want to convey. With the right strategy, however, you can cut through this content saturation. 

Here, then, are five jets to getting your message to penetrate people’s everyday lives.

1. Know Your Audience

For such a simple concept, this step is often overlooked.  Schaefer of the excellent  marketing blog writes about a time when he scrapped an entire blog post that he had already written because he realized that he had simply been writing for other marketing professionals whom he wanted to impress. He recognized that he had to offer his core readers (small business people) something useful and informative. We should all put so much thought into everything we produce.

2. Be Consistent

You can’t just post a great article then let yourself off the hook for a while. The key to establishing an engaged audience and a base of future customers is to keep them coming back to you for new material. Knowing that you’re going to be producing, say, two articles every week will foster a readership that consistently engages with your brand.

3. Be Unique

If you work in a highly niche industry, there’s only going to be so much insight you can provide that hasn’t already been picked over by yourself or your competitors. In order to counter this “staleness,” you need to establish a unique voice or perspective. Be funny, witty, or highly insightful. Get creative. Once you’ve established a distinct voice your readers will turn to you for your unique perspective on matters.

4. Take Advantage of Experts

Give yourself a day off every now and then and reach out to an industry expert for some guest-generated content. They will likely have a unique perspective that adds some appealing variety to your regular content maintenance.

5. Remember Visuals

In the age of Twitter, it’s important to recognize the sad reality that people’s attention spans are minuscule and finite. They are more inclined to absorb short, punchy messages than to read anything in great detail. Remember to
 
In the new era of content marketing the marketplace of ideas can be terribly unforgiving. Make sure you give your readers something useful, in a unique voice, on a regular basis, and the brand engagement will follow.

include some video every now and then. Graphs and infographics help to distill abstract data into easily-digestible morsels.

Bill Gates just revealed the 3 things that he thinks could prevent humanity's worst-case sceenrio

Bill Gates is a big believer in the idea that humanity is making progress on some of its biggest problems. But until recently, he hasn't spoken much about the issue that could make poverty, disease, and violence far worse than they are today: climate change.

In his most recent Gates Notes post, he lays out his ideas for innovations that could help the world "avoid the worst climate-change scenarios while also lifting people out of poverty, growing food more efficiently, and saving lives by reducing pollution." Check them out below.

Create incentives to innovate

The world spends billions of dollars each year on clean-energy research, but it's not even close to enough to get us out of our climate mess. Gates believes that governments should take the initiative on this, offering extensive funding for basic research.

"We need hundreds of companies working on thousands of ideas, including crazy-sounding ones that don't get enough funding, such as high-altitude wind and solar chemical (using the energy of the sun to make hydrocarbons)," he writes. "If government research budgets open up the pipeline of innovation, not only will I expand my investments, but I believe other investors would join me in taking these risks."

Build an energy market that actually reflects reality

Energy markets today don't consider factors like environmental and health impacts. If they did, renewable energy could be even more competitive than it is today. "Whatever approach we take, it should create incentives to develop new energy solutions while also giving energy companies enough certainty to plan and execute the transition to zero-carbon sources," writes Gates.

Help poor countries prepare for a warming climate

As most things do, climate change will impact the poor more than everyone else. Maybe, if we're really smart about it, we can mitigate global warming. But poor countries should still be prepared for that not to happen. "For our part, the Gates Foundation is concentrating on one key aspect of adaptation: helping small farmers — who make up the majority of the world’s poor — adjust to hotter, more unpredictable weather by raising agricultural productivity," Gates writes.

7 Keys to Understanding Entrepreneurship

 Here are seven Keys to help better understand the logic of entrepreneurship. The logic may surprise you, as it is not the logic taught in business school.

1. Find your flow.

Do what concentrates your motivation. Based on Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s work entitled Flow, find the work that brings you joy, where you are creating things spontaneously, as if you were in a jazz band. Who you are, who and what you know determine the means of your entrepreneurial endeavor. According to Saras Sarasvathy inEffectuation, the founders of Starbucks did not study market trends but their own need for quality coffee. Facebook began as a sophomoric (pun intended) social comparison tool.

2. Choose the bird in the hand.

To put it another way, expert entrepreneurs follow more of an inductive process than a deductive one. They don’t analyze the environment for the best opportunities and then seek to exploit them; rather, they begin at home with what they can do and believe are worth doing. They create something new with what they have motivated by something that could be better.

College students tend to marry post-graduation. Some engineering students were frustrated they would have to hire a photographer to follow them around if they wanted to capture the look on their fiancee’s face the moment they proposed. So they created a ring box with a camera and recording device in it. It became a business called Ring Cam.

3. Get the right people on the bus.

As Jim Collins tells us in Good to Great, it’s first "who,'' then "what". Entrepreneurial knowledge, values and skills can be learned, meaning all people can become entrepreneurial. But not all people share the same worldview and values. It is important to find people to work with who share your passion

4. Be a quilt maker.

Getting the right people on the bus won’t work unless you are a quilt-maker making a patch-work quilt. Quilt-maker entrepreneurs, according to Saras Sarasvathy, begin with a bundle of ideas and organize them in a meaningful way. But more importantly, they create their work with others, who also contribute their ideas. Creating businesses is a tight-knit communal project. In contrast, puzzle-makers also work communally, but they are less business fabricators than opportunity arbitrageurs. Expert entrepreneurs seem to be business fabricators.

5. Get out of the building.

The most difficult thing for many people is to stop planning and to start doing. Specifically, according to Steve Blank in The Four Steps to the Epiphany, one of the biggest challenges for entrepreneurs is talking with potential customers, suppliers, channel members, investors, etc. The expert entrepreneurs studied by Saras Sarasvathy, in contrast, immediately created partnerships with customers who even helped finance their business project.

6. Make lemonade out of lemons.

Getting out of the building to test ideas on real people who are real customers provides immediate feedback. To do this means seeing failure -- not making immediate sales -- as a learning opportunity. Expert entrepreneurs, according to Saras Sarasvathy, leverage contingencies. Ivory soap and 3M sticky notes were mistakes.

7. Invest in riders, not horses. 

A corollary to getting the right people on the bus is looking for people who are more likely to invest in people versus their ideas. Business ideas fail, but people who keep trying are more likely to improve the odds with each new venture.

Taylor Swift and Calvin Harris to get married

Calvin Harris and Taylor Swift are really happy together and they could soon take the step further. Indeed, there are more and more rumours about the fact that the power couple could get married soon.

According to Life & Style magazine, the Scottish DJ is currently looking for a ring: “He’s looking at cushion-cut center stones and is willing to drop at least $500,000!”.

For a few months, the two lovebirds have been very close and don’t hesitate to publicly display their affection. Clavin recently said that Taylor is his “the love of his life”.

Do you think Taylor Swift and Calvin Harris will get married soon?

Wife of World Richest Billionaire fetches water with local Malawi Women

Melinda Gates wife of Bill Gate (World Richest man), was pictured on Saturday with Malawi local women carrying on her head a bucket of water.

Net worth of the United States’ billionaire Bill Gates, according to Forbes magazine’s annual list of the world’s billionaires, stands at $76 billion.

Melinda Gates, who described herself as “philanthropist, businesswoman, mother, passionate advocate for women and girls,” posted a photo of herself with a 20-litre bucket of water on her head alongside two other Malawian women, walking on a dirt road.

In another picture posted on her Instagram page, she was seen doing the dishes in a Malawian village.

Describing her experience, Gates said on her Facebook page, “During my stay in Malawi, I joined the women collecting drinking water. I carried 20 litres and it was tough. Meanwhile, Chrissy (middle) is carrying about 40 litres. Many women do this every day.”

She has been described as one of the world’s famous social activist “who is trying to serve the people in ignorance.”

In June, wife of the US billionaire met with Malawian President Peter Mutharika at Kamuzu Palace in Lilongwe. The agenda was to discuss the promotion of safe motherhood and maternal health in the country.

HOW TO WIN IN BUSINESS MARKETING (PART 1&2)

While this may be hard for some business owners to come grips with, like those who feel that “marketing is a strange form of creative voodoo thinking,” marketing is not only a system—it may be the most important system in any business.

Small businesses always want to grab the idea of the week. And small business owners are absolutely the worst at this because they’re doing a hundred things. So the shiny object that makes the most noise this week is now the marketing plan. The thing is, if a business owner gets the strategy part right in marketing, he or she can surround it with just about any set of tactics that are performed and measured consistently. that’s how important the strategy piece is. There are two very significant components to getting a marketing strategy down for a business: to narrow focus down to an ideal client, and to find some way to clearly differentiate one’s business. Now those may not sound like earth-shattering ideas, but most businesses don’t think about them as thoroughly as they should.

Part One: Define the Ideal Client

Many small businesses try to be all things to all people and find it hard to really focus or succeed at serving narrowly defined market segments. Small businesses don’t necessarily intend to be all things; it just sort of happens from a lack of focus and a prospect on the phone asking for some help in an area that’s not really the business’ thing. While it may seem like growth to take on a new customer, if that customer isn’t a good !t, it can actually stunt real growth. In some cases, trying to work with customers who are not ideal clients can lead to such a bad experience for both your business and the customer that you actually create vocal detractors for your business. Most businesses are best suited to serve a narrowly defined market segment – a sweet spot. this doesn’t mean the sweet spot won’t grow, evolve and change altogether over time, but at any given time there exists a set, ideal client for most businesses. The trick is to discover what that ideal client looks like in the most specific way possible, and then build an entire marketing strategy around attracting more of these. For some, an ideal client might simply be a subset of people who can afford what you offer. For others, the ideal client might be comprised of six to eight long-term clients. In the latter, a company is probably better off working with people who are a perfect fit or life may get miserable. A perfect fit may mean that the customer has the kind of need your company can really help with, but it also might mean the client values your unique approach and treats your staff with the respect the relationship deserves. A multiple red fag client, taken because they said they can pay, will suck the life out of a small business faster than almost any other dynamic. A less than ideal client can also come in the form of a person with whom a company would love to work, but they just don’t really have the need that matches what the business does best. think of a good friend or relative who works for an organization that’s not a good fit, or buddy at your golf club who has a company you would like to help, but doesn’t have the resources. The 5 steps below, applied to a current client base and worked in order, will tell small businesses more about their true ideal client than any marketing class or book ever will. 

1. Find your most profitable clients. 

2. From the above group, identify those that refer. 

3. From that even smaller group, find common demographic characteristics 

4. Take the time now to understand the behavior that makes them ideal. 

5. Draw a fully developed biographical sketch to use as a marketing guide.

Part Two: Differentiate the Business 

Small businesses absolutely must find or create, as part of their strategy, a way to differentiate their business from all the other businesses that claim to do the same thing. this isn’t necessarily a new concept, but it’s one of the hardest to get businesses to actually do. Everyone wants to think what they do is so unique. Unfortunately, in most cases, it’s something that everyone either can or does claim as well. Here’s a good way to get a sense of this idea. Cut and paste the first paragraph of your top five competitors’ websites, blacking out all references to names, and then pass the document around the office to see if anyone can recognize which company each paragraph belongs to. Chances are, the descriptions will be nearly impossible to tell apart. One of the most effective bits of research you can conduct to help find what really sets your organization apart is to sit down and interview a handful of your best customers. Ask them these questions:

- What made you decide to hire us?
 - What’s one thing we do better than others like us?
 - What’s one thing we could do better?
 - Would you refer us or do you refer us?
 - If you would refer us, what would you say?

If your customer simply tells you that you provide great service, then push a bit with questions such as:

- What does good service look like?
 - Tell me a story, or a time when we provided good service.
 - What did that entail?

It’s amazing how quickly core differences come to the surface, directly from the mouth of a satisfied customer. Look for common threads that surface in conversations, then develop a core message that supports those themes. It’s not easy because business owners often want to be like everyone else; they don’t want to be the different kind. Everybody in our industry talks about their services in the same way, so that’s what business owners think they need to do. Stepping outside the box is essential. It’s actually how businesses charge a premium for their services and products. It’s also one of the hardest things to do. If your business is receiving phone calls and inquiries, and one of the first questions is, “How much?” there’s a really good chance you’re not differentiating your business. If prospects can’t tell how the business is different, they’re going to use the one measure that makes sense: price. As many small business owners have discovered, competing on price is not fun. There’s always going to be someone willing to go out of business faster.

What people like most may not sound unique or sexy. It might be the unique products and services, but often it’s a company’s way of delivering an experience. It’s the people, guarantees, packaging, brand promotion, and special touches. It is how the company positions its business to solve a problem that everybody in the industry is having. that’s what people buy.
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