Better than last month?

I try to read Seth Godin’s blog on a daily basis as I feel I learn a lot from him. His writing is to the point, his knowledge extraordinary and his delivery unquestionable.

I read his work because I want to improve. So, reading his blog yesterday I felt challenged to continue evolving and learning. Here it is:

Better?

Are you better at what you do than you were a month or two ago?

A lot better?

How did you get better? What did you read or try? Did you fail at something and learn from it? Does that mindless stuff you do at work when the boss isn’t looking (or all those meetings you go to are all those emails you answer) make you better or just pass the time?

If you got better faster, would that be a good thing? How could you make that happen?

A lot of questions so early in the morning, but the truth is that marketing rewards improvement. It didn’t used to. It used to reward stability. Corn Flakes are Corn Flakes.

Gordon Brown in the Dragons’ Den

This is a superb post on the “Real Business” website written by John Timpson

“It’s not as far-fetched as you think.”

The other night I found a recording of Dragons’ Den and soon saw Gordon Brown staggering up the stairs with Alistair Darling carrying a big book labelled Golden Rules. “Brown and Darling,” said Evan Davis, the presenter, “seek £2,500bn to support their project, UKplc.”

Gordon Brown made his pitch: “Following a decade of year-on-year growth and inflation within the target range, we face global uncertainty outside my control. To support essential services and stay on track to deliver best-in-class education and a free health service at the point of delivery, we need to invest £2,500bn.”

Alistair gazed admiringly while Gordon mentioned social housing, joined-up thinking and more new deal money to create a world-class workforce.

A Scottish Dragon interrupted. “Why would I invest in a chief executive who got his company heavily into debt?”

“But,” replied Gordon, looking irritated. “Borrowing is below acceptable levels set within my Golden Rules.”

“But you changed the rules,” continued the Dragon.

“No!” replied Gordon crossly. “The rules remain the same but we have entered a new economic cycle.” Alistair nodded in agreement.

Another Dragon spoke. “Your balance sheet excludes Northern Rock and ignores your pension liabilities.” Avoiding the question, Gordon bragged about low levels of unemployment.

“How many new jobs have gone to civil servants?” asked another Dragon.

“Glad you asked that,” deflected Gordon. “Our £26bn Gershon economy drive included substantial hidden non-cash savings through forecast improvements in our sickness record.”

“Mr Darling,” said the Dragon. “How many people in your department have experience of business?”

“My extremely competent team,” said Alistair, “are all highly trained civil servants.”

The Dragons had heard enough. “You don’t deserve my money,” one said. “You’ve lost control of expenditure, gone heavily into debt and customers don’t trust you. So, Mr Brown - I’m out.” With those words he left for Monte Carlo.

Alistair and Gordon trudged downstairs to be replaced by a smiling David Cameron happy in the knowledge that the next recession won’t come until 2025.

Definitions of Colleague Service

Recently I came across an article titled ‘Definitions of Customer Service’ by the Institute of Customer Service. Here are some definitions:

1. Delighting the customer, satisfying all their needs and giving them something extra to remember you by
2. Making every customer feel special, giving them the impression that they are your No 1 priority
3. Giving every customer a memorable experience, ensuring they will be pleased to return to you next time
4. Treating every customer with respect, satisfying all their needs and exceeding their expectations
5. Putting customers first - prioritising their needs and delivering a swift, friendly and efficient service.

This got me thinking. How often have you been angered by the actions of a colleague? Remember that feeling? Without proper management the frustration that you feel can turn into long term resentment.

So, why don’t more companies have a ‘Colleague Charter’ stating how you aim to treat one another. If you took the definitions above and changed the term ‘customer’ to ‘colleague’ you would have your charter:

1. Delighting your colleague, satisfying all their needs and giving them something extra to remember you by
2. Making every colleague feel special, giving them the impression that they are your No 1 priority
3. Giving every colleague a memorable experience, ensuring they will be pleased to return to you next time
4. Treating every colleague with respect, satisfying all their needs and exceeding their expectations
5. Putting colleagues first - prioritising their needs and delivering a swift, friendly and efficient service.

Just a thought!

Personal Goal Setting

Find Direction. Live Your Life Your Way.

Goal setting is a powerful process for thinking about your ideal future, and for motivating yourself to turn this vision of the future into reality.

The process of setting goals helps you choose where you want to go in life. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know where you have to concentrate your efforts. You’ll also quickly spot the distractions that would otherwise lure you from your course.

More than this, properly-set goals can be incredibly motivating, and as you get into the habit of setting and achieving goals, you’ll find that your self-confidence builds fast.

Achieving More With Focus

Goal setting techniques are used by top-level athletes, successful business-people and achievers in all fields. They give you long-term vision and short-term motivation. They focus your acquisition of knowledge and help you to organize your time and your resources so that you can make the very most of your life.

By setting sharp, clearly defined goals, you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals. You can see forward progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. By setting goals, you will also raise your self-confidence, as you recognize your ability and competence in achieving the goals that you have set.

Starting to Set Personal Goals

Goals are set on a number of different levels: First you create your “big picture” of what you want to do with your life, and decide what large-scale goals you want to achieve. Second, you break these down into the smaller and smaller targets that you must hit so that you reach your lifetime goals. Finally, once you have your plan, you start working to achieve it.

We start this process with your Lifetime Goals, and work down to the things you can do today to start moving towards them.

<!–(Don’t forget: If you want to fast-track your goal setting and get the most from it, then either join our Design Your Life program or talk to one of our coaches.)

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Your Lifetime Goals

The first step in setting personal goals is to consider what you want to achieve in your lifetime (or by a time at least, say, 10 years in the future) as setting Lifetime Goals gives you the overall perspective that shapes all other aspects of your decision making.

To give a broad, balanced coverage of all important areas in your life, try to set goals in some of these categories (or in categories of your own, where these are important to you):

• Artistic:
  Do you want to achieve any artistic goals? If so, what?

• Attitude:
  Is any part of your mindset holding you back? Is there any part of the way that you behave that upsets you? If so, set a goal to improve your behavior or find a solution to the problem.
• Career:
  What level do you want to reach in your career?
• Education:
  Is there any knowledge you want to acquire in particular? What information and skills will you need to achieve other goals?
• Family:
  Do you want to be a parent? If so, how are you going to be a good parent? How do you want to be seen by a partner or by members of your extended family?
• Financial:
  How much do you want to earn by what stage?
• Physical:
  Are there any athletic goals you want to achieve, or do you want good health deep into old age? What steps are you going to take to achieve this?
• Pleasure:
  How do you want to enjoy yourself? - you should ensure that some of your life is for you!
• Public Service:
  Do you want to make the world a better place? If so, how?

Spend some time brainstorming these, and then select one goal in each category that best reflects what you want to do. Then consider trimming again so that you have a small number of really significant goals on which you can focus.

As you do this, make sure that the goals that you have set are ones that you genuinely want to achieve, not ones that your parents, family, or employers might want (if you have a partner, you probably want to consider what he or she wants, however make sure you also remain true to yourself!)

Starting to Achieve Your Lifetime Goals

Once you have set your lifetime goals, set a 25 year plan of smaller goals that you should complete if you are to reach your lifetime plan. Then set a 5 year plan, 1 year plan, 6 month plan, and 1 month plan of progressively smaller goals that you should reach to achieve your lifetime goals. Each of these should be based on the previous plan.

Then create a daily to-do list of things that you should do today to work towards your lifetime goals. At an early stage these goals may be to read books and gather information on the achievement of your goals. This will help you to improve the quality and realism of your goal setting.

Finally review your plans, and make sure that they fit the way in which you want to live your life.

Staying on Course

Once you have decided your first set of plans, keep the process going by reviewing and updating your to-do list on a daily basis. Periodically review the longer term plans, and modify them to reflect your changing priorities and experience.
<!– An easy way of doing this is to use the goal-setting software like GoalPro 6 on a daily basis (you can download a free trial version of GoalPro from Success Studios web site.) GoalPro uses a similar set of categories to ones we recommend - either use theirs, or adapt the software to use ours. –>

Goal Setting Tips

The following broad guidelines will help you to set effective goals:

• State each goal as a positive statement: Express your goals positively - ‘Execute this technique well’ is a much better goal than ‘Don’t make this stupid mistake.’
• Be precise: Set a precise goal, putting in dates, times and amounts so that you can measure achievement. If you do this, you will know exactly when you have achieved the goal, and can take complete satisfaction from having achieved it.
• Set priorities: When you have several goals, give each a priority. This helps you to avoid feeling overwhelmed by too many goals, and helps to direct your attention to the most important ones.
• Write goals down: This crystallizes them and gives them more force.
• Keep operational goals small: Keep the low-level goals you are working towards small and achievable. If a goal is too large, then it can seem that you are not making progress towards it. Keeping goals small and incremental gives more opportunities for reward. Derive today’s goals from larger ones.
• Set performance goals, not outcome goals: You should take care to set goals over which you have as much control as possible. There is nothing more dispiriting than failing to achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond your control. In business, these could be bad business environments or unexpected effects of government policy. In sport, for example, these reasons could include poor judging, bad weather, injury, or just plain bad luck. If you base your goals on personal performance, then you can keep control over the achievement of your goals and draw satisfaction from them.

• Set realistic goals: It is important to set goals that you can achieve. All sorts of people (employers, parents, media, society) can set unrealistic goals for you. They will often do this in ignorance of your own desires and ambitions. Alternatively you may set goals that are too high, because you may not appreciate either the obstacles in the way or understand quite how much skill you need to develop to achieve a particular level of performance.

<!–This is something we focus on in detail in our “Design Your Life” program, which not only helps you decide your goals, it then helps you set the vivid, compelling goals you need if you’re to make the most of your goal setting.

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SMART Goals: A useful way of making goals more powerful is to use the SMART mnemonic. While there are plenty of variants, SMART usually stands for: S Specific M Measurable A Attainable R Relevant T Time-bound For example, instead of having “to sail around the world” as a goal, it is more powerful to say “To have completed my trip around the world by December 31, 2015.” Obviously, this will only be attainable if a lot of preparation has been completed beforehand!

Achieving Goals

When you have achieved a goal, take the time to enjoy the satisfaction of having done so. Absorb the implications of the goal achievement, and observe the progress you have made towards other goals. If the goal was a significant one, reward yourself appropriately. All of this helps you build the self-confidence you deserve!

With the experience of having achieved this goal, review the rest of your goal plans:

• If you achieved the goal too easily, make your next goals harder.
• If the goal took a dispiriting length of time to achieve, make the next goals a little easier.
• If you learned something that would lead you to change other goals, do so.
• If you noticed a deficit in your skills despite achieving the goal, decide whether to set goals to fix this.

Failure to meet goals does not matter much, as long as you learn from it. Feed lessons learned back into your goal setting program.

Remember too that your goals will change as time goes on. Adjust them regularly to reflect growth in your knowledge and experience, and if goals do not hold any attraction any longer, then let them go.

Key points:

Goal setting is an important method of:

• Deciding what is important for you to achieve in your life;
• Separating what is important from what is irrelevant, or a distraction;
• Motivating yourself; and
• Building your self-confidence, based on successful achievement of goals.

If you don’t already set goals, do so, starting now. As you make this technique part of your life, you’ll find your career accelerating, and you’ll wonder how you did without it! <!–These services and resources can help you set and achieve your goals more effectively:

• Design Your Life: Mind Tools life design and goal setting system. Click here to find out more.
• Make Time for Success: As Mind Tools’ time management and personal productivity course, this contains more than 140 pages of tips, techniques and skills that can help you work better and get the most that life has to offer. Learn how to set realistic goals, generate a life plan, and master powerful organizational techniques that help you turn your goals into lasting achievements. Click here to learn more.
• Goal Setting with Mind Tools Career Coaches: If you want help and support getting started, then consider working with a Mind Tools coach. Our coaches specialize in helping you think about what you want to achieve, coach you through the setting of clear and appropriate goals, and then help you make success, the achievement of these goals, a habit. This speeds you on your way to well-balanced, long-term success. Click here to find out more.

Also, consider joining our members area, the Career Excellence Club, to build the many career skills you’ll need for lasting success.

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A good way of getting going with this is to use the Mind Tools Life Plan Workbook. Supported by worksheets and advice, this guides you through a simple 5-step process for setting your life goals and for organizing yourself for success.

The next article explains how to schedule effectively- this is essential if you’re going to manage your workload and still keep time for yourself. To visit this, click “Next article”, below. And for other useful techniques, see the suggested links underneath.

Pedal Power

Business idea - Contract hire for pedal bikes!

I have truly found the joy of cycling to work. I used to walk the 40 mins to work. Driving would take over 30 mins (to complete the 2 miles). Then I bought a bike and I have more time on my hands as it only takes me 10-15 mins door to door.

Cycling to work this morning, I bobbed and weaved in and out of the stationary traffic and I wondered why the people sitting in their cars didn’t drive too. Of course, there are some obvious reasons. Firstly, those that travel a long 10miles plus are probably right not to cycle to work. Then there are those that need their car for work purposes. That’s fine. But, I don’t understand those who drive the 2-3 miles into work every morning. It is wasted time. You can’t read, you can’t work, you can’t use your mobile (any more) so you are simply wasting time! Imagine that you are stuck in the car for 30mins each way. That’s one hour a day and FIVE hours a week. That isn’t far off a full working day. Imagine cutting that time in half. It would give you an extra 2.5 hours a week.

But, not one for leaving it at that I wanted to know why those who could cycle, don’t. There are a number of reasons. Health & fitness, ability, anxiety and cost.

Cost can be quite prohibitive with bikes becoming more and more expensive. There are schemes in place where companies will buy the bike for you and you pay it off on a monthly basis over 3 years.

Perhaps there is room in the market for a long term bike hire business. Just as you would contract hire a car you could contract hire a bike. It seems to make sense and with the roads clogging up you could save time, get fit and use the bike outside work too.

Just a thought!

A new era in Welsh business support

A new era in Welsh business support will go live this week with a single flexible investment fund and in my opinion it couldn’t come sooner.

The funding situation in Wales until now has been one of utter confusion. There were so many funding providers out there that it added to the stress of starting your own business.

So, why hasn’t public funding in private business worked? I believe there are some key points:

1. Those in the public sector did not understand the needs of the private sector.

2. The private sector was not consulted as to how funding should be distributed.

3. Businesses that would have otherwise failed in the commercial world became support companies (making a lot of money in the process) and ended up advising other businesses.

The big question that people are asking is, ‘Is it going to work this time’? Without doubt, having a central investment fund will be vital to the success of the funding system in Wales. I am certain that the confusion that existing until now will evaporate somewhat and we will be left with a cleaner, neater system.

There is one thing that bothers me though. The plan is to have 200 business relationship managers in place to assist businesses with finding out what finding is available. These 200 managers are going to be sourced from within existing funding programmes or reallocated from within the public sector. Why is it that funding for private business will be allocated by those in the public sector with little or no knowledge of business?

Aside from this negativity, I am going to remain positive. Government is always slow moving and a change in the investment fund system can only be positive.

Space to advertise?

The world is becoming more populated and the busier it gets the more people there are to advertise to. With more people to advertise to and more businesses flooding the marketing, advertising space is at a premium.

TV viewers are in decline so there are less and less people seeing adverts through that medium. Internet use is up so there are going to be more businesses wanting to advertise on the internet. The difficulty is finding the right web site to advertise on.

Where am I going with all of this? When I was going out for a run last night an Audi TT (new shape) passed me with company branding over it. It just happened to be an Estate Agent. I turned to my friend and said “What a great advert for that company. They are obviously doing well despite the credit crunch”. Then it hit me. What if that car was nothing to do with the Estate Agent but instead they just paid that person a monthly fee to brand the car?

The reality is that there is more space than ever to advertise. Paying individuals a monthly (or weekly) fee to brand a car is a great way to advertise your company (and seem bigger or more affluent than you might be) depending on what your business does.

The benefit to the car owner is that they earn money to subsidise the use and maintenance of the car.

So, there must be a downside. Well, yes, there is. Last year I was meeting a friend for a beer. He was ten minutes late because on his way his car was hit by a bag of fish and chips from a passing white van. The van was covered in the branding of a cement company based in Cardiff. My friend happened to work for a large construction firm and subsequently closed the account with the cement company and went with one of their competitors.

The lesson here is that anyone carrying your brand is an ambassador to your business and whilst you want to get maximum brand exposure you have to be careful not to destroy your brand in the process.

The start of another business blog

I realise that there are plenty of business blogs in the internet world. But, as I sat at my desk, determined to start a blog, I thought of what interested me the most and it all revolves around business.

Now, my copywriting is not the best. I do not have the ability of Jeremy Clarkson or the fluidity of Sion Barry, but I do love business and want to write about businesses that I come into contact with every day.

A hope that I have is that it proves useful to those who read it and that I benefit from writing my thoughts down.

So, let’s see how things go and enjoy the journey.