WANTED: The Business Renaissance Man

WANTED: The Business Renaissance Man

Richard Branson once said that his biggest motivation was to “…keep challenging myself. I see life almost like one long University education that I never had – everyday I’m learning something new.” Learning in business, just like learning is school is necessary. At the same time the education and learning that you do, it requires a return on investment (ROI). This ROI is based on getting valuable information in the form of a practical education with real world application – this is the next required step in educational evolution.

The VUCA Business Strategy

The VUCA Business Strategy

Creating a strategy for a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment.

It is a tough world, one that is changing fast, getting more competitive, plagued with disasters - can you navigate through it? By creating, testing and developing a VUCA strategy, you can ensure survival and sustainability in an otherwise complicated business environment.

VUCA is a military acronym for the volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity of situations or environments. Each of these elements is necessary to review within a business context in order to view current and future states of an organization. I believe there are core elements which can transform your business strategy into a resistant, VUCA strategy.

Why You Need to Create Professional Training for Experienced Workers

How to get more out of an experienced hire!

Most mid to large size firms have a training and development or on-boarding program for new graduates – from Bachelor’s to PhD’s. This program or session gets them acquired to the company, general role, departments and potential peers or mentors. This gets them on the right track and begins to bridge them from academic to work life.  But what do you do with someone joining your company after 5-10 years in the business world? How do you on-board someone going from a technical to a business role? Do you on-board someone who recently joined from an acquisition? Do you on-board a new division in a growing business area? Most companies would say no.

Bury the Competition: The Competitive Analysis

Bury the Competition: The Competitive Analysis

“Number one, cash is king… number two, communicate… number three, buy or bury the competition.”

-Jack Welsh

Of the three pillars for a successful business strategy, competition is the most dynamic. Identifying competition and completing a competitive analysis is paramount to create a competitive strategy. The process of competitive analysis is constantly required as economics, industries, customers, competition, products and every other factor is constantly in motion, changing. The goal of competitive analysis is to gain enough customer insight to create a value proposition greater than that of the competition, as viewed by the customers.

Creating That Golden Moment - Value Driven Work

Creating That Golden Moment - Meaning and Value Driven Work

Your career is in a natural state of entropy.

In following the second law of thermodynamics, entropy (the measure of randomness) will never decrease as the number of variables continuously increase over time. With the constant expansion of variability, a sense of meaning can also be lost. This loss of meaning in your work may cause you to only go through the motions at work, while avoiding any negative repercussions. Your job may seem like an endless stream of meaningless busywork which is constantly multiplying and being thrust upon you. Worst of all, you may feel trapped in your job for whatever reason. This may be the case for you, or your employees. Fortunately, through specific actions you can remediate the situation to reengage yourself or your employees.

Manage the Personality to Motivate the Employee

Manage the Personality to Motivate the Employee

Personalities are the sum of possibilities in which an individual reacts and interacts with others. As personality is how we react and interact, it proves to reason that it shapes one’s behavior as well. It is the job of a manager to provide the most effective workplace and productive employees, good managers align business goals to an employee’s strengths and weaknesses, skills and abilities – all of which are impacted by the employee’s personality. If aligned effectively, the product is highly effective employees and business results. According to a recently Gallup survey, 64% of all people hate their jobs. If you, as a manager, were to put the right people in the right job and gave them the right goals for their position, I can guarantee their work attitude, productivity and drive would improve.

Hiring the Best by Using Smart Interview Questions

Hiring the Best by Using Smart Interview Questions

In recently going through a series of interview processes and in preparing to interview others, I started thinking a lot about hiring practices and the interview process. Nowadays in many large companies, there is a very structured and rigid set of questions a potential employer can ask. Many interview questions are based on HR practices and rules/regulations in regards to hiring practices to minimize discrimination. In order to limit the liability a company has in hiring someone. Questions are asked from a subset of possible approved questions. This has limited the hiring ability, but in order to hire the best, one must be able to ask the perfect follow-up questions to make sure the right person is getting in the door.