American and International Info Resources

Is it easier to have a bunch of people that are brand new to a team, or one that you mould from those you inherit?

In my business life I only had the latter. An existing group of employees, in each business who I had to work with, from each new day one. Never a new set that I could grow for myself.

There are different challenges in each case.

With an existing team you have to challenge and change ideas and behaviours set in their ways, unchallenged, sometimes for years. You run the risk that they have had poor experiences of what good quality performance is - or, as they say, what ‘good looks like’. This may not be good at all - not necessarily their fault though as no-one showed them differently!

In every business management I had, the outgoing manager was either leaving the business, retiring or being demoted. In one store I managed I was the first manager to be promoted out of there since the war!

That meant that whilst I had the numbers in place with some experience, it was quite a challenge to ensure that they came on board quickly, with what my own ideas of good performance and business delivery were.

Like a new football manager, I had to gradually change the personnel until they fit the team I wanted, with the exception of those who were prepared to change and develop. However, there were rare opportunities to transfer anyone out and definitely not for a fee. Occasionally someone might seriously transgress (like the supervisor who, I found out, regularly sent her staff out to the supermarket to do her weekly food shop for her - in business time - I demoted her to the ranks and she never showed up again!).

In developing a new team from scratch, the challenges are still significant. Their skills and understanding of organisational processes can be lacking, especially if new recruits to the organisation. Yet these individuals aren’t tarnished with poor behaviours, inherited from past underperforming models in the management hierarchy.

The easiest? I don’t know, as I never had a brand new team. Yet, in both cases, it is vital to set in stone standards that are clearly stated and as rigid as necessary to deliver the quality outputs the business needs. In both cases it is vital that the incoming manager is able to be the best example possible.

Then sticking firmly to the path, with consistency, fairness as well as building trusting relationships is the only way to success. There will be ups and downs, with failures and omissions, but this will guide you through successfully in the end.

With such a template, both types of team will work well and deliver outstanding results.

© 2005-6 Martin Haworth is a Business and Management Coach. He works worldwide, mainly by phone, with small business owners, managers and corporate leaders. He has hundreds of hints, tips and ideas at his website, http://www.coaching-businesses-to-success.com.

Every new business owner knows that a business plan is critical - it is drilled into them by potential investors and every banking officer they meet. So why is something that is so important to the launch of a new venture so difficult to write? Good question! In this article I will try to address when you should go out and hire a business plan writer versus taking on the task yourself. First time entrepreneurs often cringe when sitting down to write their business plan. Some spend 6 months agonizing over each period and comma, and even worse others spend 6 months procrastinating and do nothing. So lets break it down and see where / when a business planning company should be brought in:

Who will read your business plan and why?

First you need to really understand the purpose of your business plan and who your audience (reader) will be. This is an important point as a business plan being written for a $100,000 loan is VERY different than a document needed for a $10 million round of venture capital! Since this article is focused on first-time small business owners, I will focus on preparing business plans raising less then $1 million in capital. For this “startup” or “seed” business plan 30-35 pages are perfect. You are not expected to deliver a thick book (and no one will read it anyway!). Once you have this down, you can honestly assess which sections you are qualified / comfortable writing and which may need consulting help.

Here is what you should write on your own

It is important for you to write a basic draft / outline of your business plan. Without this direction you are probably asking too much of your consultant. Once you have your thoughts organized on paper you can see what you are comfortable completing. Here are a few suggestions:

Executive Summary: Draft the opening of your business plan - then hire a pro to come in and re-write it. Your executive summary will be read first and first impressions are critical!

Marketing: You need to write your own definition of your target customer / audience. For the market research on industry growth and fancy charts go ahead and hire a consultant.

Competitive Analysis: You should put together the first draft of this section, as it is almost as important to understand your competitors, as it is your customers. If you find a consultant that is an expert in your field, then you can work together and add to your initial list.

The Dreaded Financials

This is the most difficult part of a startup business plan, as you are making projections and assumptions on products / services that you have not even produced or sold yet! If you are stuck on this section you can hire a business plan consultant to just assist you with completing your projections (income statement, cash flow, and balance sheet). Figuring out the cost of goods, delivery costs, and return rates can be simplified by breaking them down into a “light” spreadsheet. Next you need to understand your startup and operating costs - items like electricity, travel, phone expenses, etc. Again just organize these and your consultant can make all the fancy charts and graphs. Just make sure you understand all of the assumptions - for example if you are opening a retail business, you should not look towards your consultant to “guess” your rent - go out and meet with a realtor and come back with real data. If you work closely with your consultant, the financials are a great section to bring in professional help.

Managing Expectations

Now that you know a bit more about when to hire a business plan writer you also need to manage your expectations. You can’t expect a $1,000 business plan to have 20 pages of competitive analysis and a full-blown marketing strategy! If you carefully work through which sections of your business plan need outside help and then manage your consultant closely, your final document will be a success! My next two articles will focus on “How to Find / Hire a Business Plan Consultant” and more importantly “When to Fire your Business Plan Consultant!”

Howard Schwartz is a partner in several business strategy groups, including HJ Ventures International, Inc. Howard has worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs worldwide with a focus on writing business plans for companies interested in raising capital from Venture Funds and Angel Investors. Howard’s business plans have secured several million dollars in funding.

For more information: http://www.hjventures.com

Without people you are never going to run a large business and without the right people you are never going to own a successful one. Employing people is not like buying a piece of machinery; as they do not come with money back guarantee or an instruction manual. You can’t just switch them on when you need to, or run them continuously for 24 hrs a day and then trade them in for a newer model at will. However employing the right people for your business can truly take you forward ahead of your competition. But before you decide whom, you need to decide should I?

Take Billy he is a self employed electrician and a very good one. He has spent 20 years working for large companies and had previously decided to set up on his own. He wanted a better quality of life, see the kids more and be in control of his destiny. He does great work and is much in demand, so he decides it is time to employ for the first time. He takes on 2 further electricians and a trainee to keep costs down. Within another 12 months he is now employing 10 people, including a secretary, for invoicing and answering the phone.

His turnover has now massively increased and he is now a true businessman with much respect in his local business club. But Billy is unhappy, as he looks down at his books and diary he realises, that although his turnover has increased, his profits have not, and is taking home pretty much the same wage as he did as a self-employed electrician. This is not all; he is working more hours and can’t take holidays in case something happens whilst he is away. His diary tells him, that he no longer goes onsite, except to fix work that an employee has not finished to standard. He is now a manager of people, a motivator, a social worker, a good guy, a bad guy, an administrator, but there is one thing he no longer is; that is an electrician.

Billy now has now learnt that it costs more than just wages to employ someone. There are insurances, courses, safety procedures, national insurance, work clothes, tools, travelling expenses and holiday pay etc. But one of the biggest lessons he has learnt is that none of his workforce ever works as hard as he hid, or has the flexibility that he had. He blames his workers for this, but none of these issues are his work force’s fault. They are entitled to be safe at work, have their national insurance paid and have holiday pay. And if they wanted to work as hard and have the flexibility of Billy, then they would set up their own business instead of being employed. This means that each job that Billy invoices for is no longer as profitable as the ones he used to do himself. Where as he would stay back and finish a job, his workforce wants to finish on time, then go back or charge you overtime. The list goes on and on. He has over 20 years experience of being and electrician, but not one day’s experience of becoming an employer at the point he took his first employee on. Even now, 12 months later he is still serving his apprenticeship.

Billy could have saved himself some grief by deciding why he wanted his business to grow as he had left employment for a better quality of life. He could have spent more time talking to his fellow businessmen about the real issues of employing people and not just those you read on a free brochure.

Then if he still wanted to go ahead, he then could have chosen whom he employed. Should he employ a manager for example, who has experience of managing people to fit in with his own needs, or take fewer people on and subcontracted some of the work out at busy times? A realistic business plan and cash flow predictions would have given indications of his potential earnings and what course to take, or even to decide if the extra commitment of employing was even worth it.

If you relish the idea of a large business, then you probably have no choice to employ, but make sure you do it right first time. Only employ those who want to be employed and trust me; family and friends are not always the best option. Understand the money factors to the full, and accept you will need to put extra time into your employee’s career and well-being. Heath and safety, pensions, employment law are all subjects you will now need to be an expert in and of course how to mange with respect. In most cases if you look after them, they will look after you, but when there are exceptions; deal with them quickly, professionally and to the law.

People do not just work for their wage packet at the end of the week anymore. How they are treat, their workmates, pride of work location, working conditions etc. all play a part in whether someone wants to work for you or not. And in some professions getting the right qualified personnel can be like gold dust, so you may have to give out more than you want to sometimes to keep their loyalty.

But get the right people, treat them well and you could take on the world!

Mark is webmaster for Business Consultant North East and Business Courses and Management Advice.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal raised the question: Who’s to blame for inept managers?

The answer, of course, is the superiors who hire or promote them — but not because they intentionally select or retain poor performers. Every leader knows that his or her own success depends on putting the right people in the right positions. It’s easy to blame a manager’s poor performance on his or her boss, but more often than not, managerial incompetence isn’t obvious to superiors. Instead, fault lies with the systems used for evaluation and the alternatives available for dealing with performance failure.

Despite their widespread popularity, standard 360 evaluations and psychometric tests are poor substitutes for informed, thorough evaluation. Standardized assessments and tests are promoted as rapid, economical alternatives for determining competence and assessing performance. Consultants and salespeople alike tout them for their objectivity and accuracy.

In reality, the typical 360 evaluation is far from objective. How can a group of very different people, with very different relationships to the subject and very different priorities, be expected to evaluate an individual professionally and objectively?

Additionally, reliance on these measures can cause you to miss crucial information about how senior executives and managers think and how they relate to others on a day-to-day basis factors that can make or break your organization’s ability to perform. While 360s can appear relatively cheap and quick to implement, a poor evaluation system can have very expensive repercussions.

The second problem is the alternatives available for floundering executives. “Cutting poor performers loose” is a lose-lose proposition as a first-line response. If the alternative is firing, superiors may be reluctant to acknowledge a problem and even colleagues and subordinates might shrink from responsibility for destroying a career. When alternatives, such as a different position or behavioral coaching are available, problems are much more likely to be identified early on.

Every executive has strengths in some arena. The first key to effective leadership is correct placement. If an executive doesn’t have the talent for one area, he or she should be given the opportunity to do a different job. Richard Branson, billionaire founder of the Virgin Group of companies, believes strongly that if an employee is not excelling in one area of the company, he or she should be given the opportunity to do well in a different Virgin Group job. At Virgin, firing is seldom an option.

Coaching, too, can make a difference. It’s understandable that company leaders would hesitate to throw good money after bad by investing in coaching for problem managers. However, many organizations indiscriminately assign rising managers to executive development programs regardless of the specific needs of the individual. This is clearly a waste of time and money. Highly targeted and personalized executive coaching can be far more cost-effective in developing leadership competence.

Today’s organization can’t afford to lose quality people due to managerial incompetence.

But wasting time affixing blame won’t help. Greater investment in effective evaluation and coaching is a drop in the bucket compared to the expense of recruiting and training new people - not to mention the ultimate cost of employee disengagement and apathy.

Dr. Robert Karlsberg and Dr. Jane Adler are senior leadership consultants and founders of Strategic Leadership LLC. They work with senior executives to maximize performance, facilitate transitions and accelerate major change initiatives. Contact them at 301-530-5611 or visit http://www.PsychologyofPerformance.com

“PRAISE LOUDLY, BLAME SOFTLY”
- Catherine the Great

In a Leadership position, the pressure to perform is ceaseless. Hitting your numbers. Achieving your goals. Meeting your metrics. That’s what’s expected quarter after quarter.
But, why is the race getting more intense? Why does each day seem like a perpetual revved-up Indianapolis 500? And, why is it that the pressure you are getting from above, that you send below and place within, seems to be getting “louder, longer, meaner”?
That’s what Aubrey Daniels, in his performance management bible Bringing Out the Best in People, contends. We’re all hearing and sending the same messages:

Work harder.

Work faster.

Work smarter.

Be more creative.

Take more initiative.

And, if we don’t get the desired results, we tell the same people again, usually the same thing. This time a little louder, or longer, or perhaps a little meaner.

Is this sounding vaguely familiar?
If so, it’s probably the right time for a quickie refresher on the ONE unbelievably
simple thing you can do as a leader to keep your peoples’ momentum and
engagement soaring and ease the strain of relentless pressure.

PRAISE - A Management Tool
Honest, genuine praise.
The stuff that NONE of us gets nearly enough of.
Especially those sitting in the board room.

The Power of Positive Praise: Fast Facts
* The number-one reason people leave their jobs: They don’t feel appreciated.

* Sixty-five percent (65%) of Americans received no recognition in the workplace last year.

* Bad bosses could increase the risk of stroke by 33%.

* A study found that negative employees can scare off every customer they speak with — for good.

* Nine out of 10 people say they are more productive when they’re around positive people.

* Extending longevity: Increasing positive emotions could lengthen life span by 10 years.

Performance Management Tip — Be Nice: It’s Good for Business

In their book How Full is Your Bucket, co-authors Tom Rath and Don Clifton draw on Gallup research and millions of interviews to show that positive give-and-take leads to higher worker satisfaction and productivity and a happier world. Most of us already recognize that fact. What we seem to forget is that we can deliberately choose to make our interactions positive or negative. And, we have twenty thousand moments in a given day, according to Rath, to exercise that choice. If 65% of people received no recognition for good work in their workplaces, clearly, there aren’t enough positive moments or interactions happening in the workplace.

The financial aspects of positivity are just as compelling, says Rath. “Gallup polling has revealed that 99 out of 100 people say they want a more positive environment at work, and 9 out of 10 say they’re more productive when they’re around positive people. Employees who report receiving recognition and praise within the last seven days show increased productivity, get higher scores from customers, and have better safety records. They’re just more engaged at work.
On the other hand, people who are actively disengaged — employees who are not only unhappy with their own roles, but are also scaring customers off — cost the economy between $250 billion and $300 billion a year. And when we add injury, illness, turnover, and other factors associated with
negativity or active disengagement, the cost could be closer to a trillion dollars, and that’s nearly 10% of the U.S. GDP.”

The Bottom Line: What Positive Leaders Achieve
Indeed, the litmus test of a positive leader is the esprit de corps he creates with his troops, says the Gallup folks. Positive leaders deliberately increase the flow of positive emotions within their organization. They choose to do this not just because it is a “nice” thing to do for the sake of improving morale, but because it leads to a measurable increase in performance. Studies show that organizational leaders
who share positive emotions have workgroups with:

• A more positive mood

• Enhanced job satisfaction

• Greater engagement

• Improved performance

What differentiates positive leaders from the rest? Instead of being concerned with what they can get out of their employees, positive leaders search for opportunities to invest in everyone who works for them. They view each interaction with another person as an opportunity to increase his or her positive emotions.

Shary Hauer’s Executive Coaching ADVICE: Five Strategies to Vibrate Resonance

In Management Training, did anyone tell you that one of your top jobs as leader is Climate Control Officer? That means you have to keep a constant look-out to reduce negativity, fear, apathy, silent compliance and other dissonant signals seeping into your organization. Know how to read the engagement levels of your team. Are you picking up on low energy signals? Tune in more closely to your team’s “emotional register” and find ways to amplify an upbeat, positive climate.

Here are several strategies to help you keep a constant look-out for opportunities to reinforce positive behavior and performance:

1. Prevent “Bucket Dipping”: Increase your own awareness of how often your comments are negative. How much “bucket filling” do you do compared to others? Do you have low impact, some impact, or high impact on your environment? To find out, take the quick Positive Impact Assessment: http://gx.gallup.com/dipper.gx

2. Track Your Positive/Negative Ratio. Think about your most recent inter-actions with others. Were they more positive or more negative? Did you give someone a compliment, or did you choose to make a negative comment instead? Work toward a ratio of five positive comments to every one negative comment. Check out http://www.bucketbook.com/content/default.aspx?ci=12214 for an Interaction Scorecard to tally your positive/negative comments.

3. Shine the Light on What Is Right. Focus MORE on what your people or peers do right rather than where they need improvement. Don’t underestimate the power of reinforcing good behaviors.

4. Know Your People’s Preference. To help you make each positive interaction individualized and specific, take a look at the questions in the Bucket Filling Interview Guide:

http:www.bucketbook.com. My favorite questions include: What increases your positive emotion or “fills your bucket” the most? From whom do you most like to receive recognition or praise? What form of recognition motivates you the most? What is the greatest recognition you have ever received?

5. Target Your Praise. Rather than the vague “great job!”, be specific as possible with your praise. Target your praise to specific accomplishments, and not to general work. It is better to say, “Sue, that presentation you made this morning was very thorough and informative.” vs. “Sue, you are a great employee to have around.” Here are some more ways to help you give praise with more ease and
impact: “John, I really liked the way you…”; “Thank you for….; “Linda, I noticed that when you…”; “Robin, you did a great job of…”; “It was terrific that you…Tom”.

About Shary Hauer, Executive Coach and Potentialist

Shary Hauer is the founder and Head Coach of The Hauer Group, Inc., an Executive Leadership Development firm based in Clearwater Beach, Florida. She is a Master Certified Coach (MCC) of high-achieving, high-potential corporate executives who aspire to lead their organizations and lives masterfully. As the Executive Potentialist, Shary guides leaders and their teams in cultivating positive behavior change tapping all of their potentials through one-on-one Executive Coaching, Team Coaching and Leadership Workshops. Shary has coached over 250 global executives throughout the U.S., Canada, and Latin America. For more information, please contact http://www.thehauergroup.com.

What Is Proxemics?

The study of the communicative aspects of personal space and territory is called proxemics. Everyone is surrounded by an invisible zone of psychological comfort that follows us everywhere we travel. This protective bubble acts as a buffer zone against unwanted touching and attacks. Our comfort zone varies depending on who we are talking to and the situation that we are in. The amount of space that we use while interacting with others can play a significant factor in the type of interaction we have with that person.

Why Is Proxemics Important For A Negotiation?

Proxemics gives a lot of nonverbal information to the other person regarding the level of trust and intimacy that the person has for them. As cooperation is a key factor in Street Negotiation, you must be able to read their level of comfort with you by the amount of distance that they are comfortable dealing with you at. Your goal in a negotiation is to gain their cooperation and by knowing how personal space is internally regulated, you can foster better communication and cooperative behavior from your counterpart. Knowing the dynamics of personal space will also prevent you from unknowingly violating your counterpart’s personal space and causing unnecessary tension.

What Is Our Comfort Zone?

In 1959, anthropologist Edward Hall discovered that humans are distinctly aware of our perception of space and territory and he conducted numerous studies and experiments in which he concluded that United States Americans had four distinct comfort distances, each with their own specific ranges of comfort, and that these distances were surprisingly universal to most Americans. He also noted that comfort zones varied drastically between cultures. The four distances of personal territory for U.S. Americans are:

018 inches. Intimate distance. Reserved for deep personal relationships. Vision is impaired at this level and the main senses used are smell and touch. This distance is used for sexual contact or comforting someone.

18 inches4 feet. Personal distance. Reserved for personal conversation. This is distance is used for having personal conversations with friends, family, or associates.

4 feet12 feet. Social distance. Reserved for formal interactions such as business meetings or interviews.

12 feetline of sight. Public distance. Reserved for such things as public speaking and lectures.

Note: These distances apply only to those interactions where the participants’ orientation is face-to-face with each other and are aware of each other’s presence.

Violating Personal Space Is Threatening

The territorial space that people claim as distinctly belonging to them is their personal space (4 feet). When someone who has not yet gained our trust enters our personal space, we tend to feel uncomfortable or even threatened because the intruder has trespassed onto our own space. This is much the same way as if a stranger walked into the backyard of your home without your permission. Entering someone’s personal distance without first establishing some level of trust can cause conflict and defensiveness to occur. When a violation of space occurs, it causes the other person to become uncomfortable and instinctively they will move themselves away from the person to regain the correct level of personal territory. You’ll want to pay attention to this behavior because it is a sure indication that you have intruded upon their comfort zone.Police officers are sometimes trained in the technique of deliberately invading the personal space of their suspect during an interview to make the suspect feel uncomfortable and intimidating him into giving up information.

Proximity Separates The Strong From The Weak

Our social use for space can tell us a lot about the status, confidence, and power of the people around us. Just look at your own work place and examine who has the biggest office and who commands the most space while walking around.

The people who possess the most power and authority command a greater amount of personal space that they can call their own. They will often distance themselves from other people around them. In the workplace, the “important” top-dog might have their own corner office apart from the rest of the workers who might be scrunched together in cubicles.

Confident people and people of higher status are comfortable going straight to the center of the attention while lower status or non-confident people tend to hover near the exits or the back of the room. University studies have shown that the students who sit front and center of the classroom received the highest grades in the class, while those who sat in the back and at the corner’s of the room received the worst grades.

The goal is to approach as close as you can to the other person without making them feel uncomfortable. This will facilitate better rapport between both parties.

Are They Using Barriers?

Any inanimate object that is placed between you and the person you are talking with is an indication of defensiveness. A table, desk, pillows, drinking glass etc. that is set between you and the other person is an unconscious equivalent of shielding our body from attack and provides us with a level of emotional comfort from something that we do not like. A person who creates barriers between themselves and the other person is usually expressing deception, defensiveness, or ulterior motives.

Using Proxemics For Emotional Emphasis

Proxemics can be used in combination with other behaviors to add emphasis to the message. For example, if a person is angry with you and they invade your intimate space, then the perceived threat of their anger is dramatically increased if compared with the same person being angry with you from across the room. If a couple are in love and they are maintaining eye contact with each other from across a room, then the impact of that eye contact is much less meaningful than if they were inches from each other.

Where Should I Sit?

Side-by-side fosters cooperation. If you are trying to facilitate cooperation, then the best place for you to sit is by their side (i.e. to their right or left). By sitting to their side, we enhance cooperative behavior from them by conveying that we are not competing against them. It also points both of you towards the direction of the problem that exists, such as a report on the table, or research material that needs organizing.

Opposite sides fosters competition. Sitting directly across from someone, such as an employer sitting direct across from a prospective applicant with a table in between them, tends to foster a competing-type attitude.

Sit at 90 for good conversation. The best seating position at a table for a cooperative exchange of information is at the corner of the table. One person takes one side of the corner and the other person takes the other side. The benefits of this position are that: (1) It allows for both parties to enter into each other’s personal space, creating a stronger bond than if they remained distant from each other. (2) It breaks up the stuffy formalness of the situation by moving you closer to them. The corner of the table adds a bit of psychological security for both parties by having a bit of a barrier between them, but it is not as much of a barrier as if you sat opposite one another.

Gender differences. A study done by Byrne and Fisher (1975) showed that American men generally chose to sit across from people who they considered their friends and American women chose to sit adjacent to the people that they considered to be their friends. Additionally, the study showed that men did not like strangers sitting across from them and women did not like having strangers sitting next to them.

Key Points

–Proxemics is the study of the communicative aspects of space.

–Entering one’s personal space can cause them to feel threatened.

–Sitting side-by-side fosters cooperation. Sitting opposite one another fosters competition. Sitting 90 to each other fosters conversation.

–Using inanimate objects as barriers is a sign of anxiety, defensiveness, or deception.

–Approach as close as you can to the other person without making them feel uncomfortable. This will increase your rapport.

About The Author

Tristan Loo is an experienced negotiator and an expert in conflict resolution. He uses his law enforcement experience to train others in the prinicples of defusing conflict and reaching agreements. Visit his website at http://www.streetnegotiation.com

The quality of the project management you have integrated into your industry or department can mean the difference between holding out and thriving in a very cut throat industry that you serve. It’s very crucial to understand the evolution of a project management lifecycle and avoid skirting or skipping important upfront issues from the outset.

It’s also very important to understand the concept of not over dissecting a problem or being paralyzed to a point where further action is not being executed. A dreadful opponent to you in this case would be “Feature Creep” where individuals from the department keep changing their minds on requirements or have new ideas on better ones.

Beware of feature creep as it will rear it’s ugly head at every step of every stage you come across of your project. Things such as that, as well as losing focus on the core objectives will usually result in project failure because a core part or stage of the project is not able to move onward.

Leadership in this examples is absolutely critical in order to prevent mishaps, and total project disasters from happening. These usually are not only a waste of time, resources, but a major drain on employee morale and faith in the leadership of the organization.

It’s critcally important to formulate a communication strategy before the project begins. Make sure to sit down with the clients and constituencies during a set agenda and with set goals as well as a decided upon methodology to capture and organize requirements from everyone who has a stake in the project you are working on. Otherwise they will call you up every five minutes and give you new requirements or ask you to alter existing ones.

It goes without saying, this is not a very productive use of your time nor is it of theirs. A solid big picture perspective of all the project needs has to be looked at before moving forward with the actual implementation. This due diligence will take up a bit more time in the beginning but will save lots of time, money, concerns, and potentially broken relationships down the line.

Geshe Michael Roach is a Princeton graduate and a Buddhist monk. After graduation, he spent seven years studying the wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism. At the suggestion of his teacher, he joined a fledgling diamond business in New York to test his ideals in real life. He stayed with the business as a member of the core management team for seventeen years.

The company grew from a start-up with two owners and two employees to $100 million in sales and five hundred employees in offices around the world. The Diamond Cutter: The Buddha on Strategies for Managing Your Business and Your Life tells the story of how Geshe Michael Roach built the diamond division of this company, using principles culled from ancient Tibetan Buddhism as the driving force behind his decision making.

Drawing on lessons he learned in the diamond business and years in Buddhist monasteries, Roach shows how taking care of others is the ultimate path to taking care of oneself, even–especially–in business. As he puts it, you have to engage in “mental gardening,” which means doing certain practical things that will form new habits that will create an ideal reality for you. If this sounds a little outrageous, his very precise instructions are down to earth and address numerous specific issues common to the business/management world.

Through this practice, you will become a considerate, generous, introspective, creative person of immense integrity, and that will be the key to your wealth…

Some of the many insights in The Diamond Cutter are as follows:

A business should be successful; it should make money. There is no conflict between spirituality and success in business. Successful business people have the resources to do more good in the world than those people without the same resources do. In addition, the very people who are attracted to business are the same people who have the strength to grasp and carry out the deeper practices of the spirit.

Money should be made honestly and with absolute integrity. How we make money matters more than anything else does. It determines our ability to keep making money as nobody can indefinitely run a business built on dishonesty or deception. It also significantly affects our ability to enjoy the money we make.

Nothing is good or bad in and of itself; everything has a hidden potential. This is what the Buddhists call emptiness. What is bad news for you may be good news for someone else, and vice versa. We must not leap to conclusions about events, but must stop to consider what potential they really have for us. Even competitors can be seen as fairy godmothers challenging us to find the correct path to greater accomplishment. It is a matter of perception. With the right state of mind, we can turn our problems into opportunities.

We should look ahead to the inevitable end of our days in business, and put ourselves in a position where we can honestly say our years in business had some meaning. The idea here is to anticipate our future, and move in a direction that will allow us to look back on our past with total joy and satisfaction.

The Diamond Cutter: The Buddha on Strategies for Managing Your Business and Your Life by Geshe Michael Roach (Author)

List Price: $23.95 through Barnes and Noble

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About The Author

Janet K. Ilacqua is a freelance writer based in Tracy, California. She specializes in academic writing and ghostwriting of books and manuals for individuals and small businesses. For more information about her services, check her website at http://www.writeupondemand.com.

jilacqua@aol.com

Has your life become an endless string of days slogging through the same old mediocre rut that you have awakened to every morning for years and years? Can you even remember the hopes and dreams you had for yourself when you were younger? Have you noticed that the harder you work at setting goals and putting in overtime, your situation never changes?

Do you look around and see people who seem to have everything and who seem to cruise through life with little apparent stress or effort? Have you ever wondered what esoteric knowledge is tapped into, that you have no access to, by creative geniuses like Twain, Edison, Mozart and Steinmetz? Were Jesus, Gandhi, and the Buddha really made of stuff more holy than the rest of us?

The fact is that the super successful people of the modern age, the truly happy people in your neighborhood, the creative geniuses of ages past, and our holy teachers have all had one thing in common, whether they were consciously aware of it or not. That one thing is this: they tapped into the power of the universal laws of creation which we are all subject to and they aligned the creative energy that is in all things to manifest the reality of their own lives. Whether consciously or not, they lived not as if the outside world was something happening to them, but as if they were happening to the outside world. They created their own reality.

You can apply the same universal laws to your own life and create the reality you want for yourself. The fact is that you already know how to align yourself with these laws. You have simply forgotten how to do it.

This is not to say that all you have to do is wish for good luck and riches and it will come to you. As in all other things, there is no free lunch. You have to work for it. The good news is that there are many mentors out there who have discovered these secrets (or, have actually discovered that there are no secrets, there is only faulty memory) and who are standing ready to lead us along the paths they have already trodden. All we have to do is ask the right questions and really pay attention to and apply the answers.

We really can manifest the lives we want and by doing so, we can change the world.

Join me on my path to learn from the world’s greatest manifestation mentors by visiting me at http://www.universallawsseeker.com

It’s such a time-honored maxim it seems all but ordained by God. The customer is always right! Yes, a company’s most desirable objective must always be to keep its customers both loyal and happy. Certainly, it’s the secret to business success.

And how does one achieve this? By paying attention to your customers, i.e., serving them, listening, adjusting, responding. You do whatever they say, making sure your employees do the same. The customer pays the freight, after all… they must forever be number one.

So that makes a lot of sense, n’est-ce pas? “Good Business 101. Then again, hell, hmmm… maybe not! One major US airline company may be an indication that this long-held truism should be shipped out to relic-dom. At this company, you see, it seems the customer ain’t always right at allit’s the employee!

Let’s try a little quiz: Name the most successful major airline in America today, American, you say? Nah. United? Uh-uh. Delta? TWA? US Air? Wrong, wrong, wrong again! The very best airline today is a relative upstart called Southwest, based in Phoenix of all places. In fact, it’s the ONLY major airline to turn a profit in each of the last 25 years.

Southwest leads its industry in quite a few categories: It’s tops in price per earnings, for example (with a 27 rating it compares pretty well to American and Delta who each scored a pitiful 5), and it leads the pack too in on-time performance and in customer complaints, where it earns the fewest. Yet its President Herb Kelleher credits the company’s success NOT to an overarching concern for customers, as is usually a CEO’s boast. Herb e would surely be the first to brag about Southwest’s happy customers and how they do indeed count, but his primary kudos instead target the company’s mad, passionate commitment to fully support and nurture its employees.

Though it might be a stretch to say the company’s philosophy is, literally, the “employee is always right,” one could argue that the Southwest culture has hammered this axiom into place. Some Southwest executives have even been heard to say out loud, “Our employees come first and customers second.”

“We try to allow our people to be themselves and not have to surrender their personality when they arrive at Southwest,” Kelleher once explained to the media. “We deal with them as individuals.” One industry analyst explains, “Employees at Southwest are selected primarily for attitude, while most companies select primarily for skills. (Like employee-friendly Wal-Mart) they have a particular view for people who will fit into a team-oriented organization with its family feel and a certain degree of fun built in.”

It’s an appealing point of view. Think for a moment about your own responses to those you encounter throughout your management day: When you really think about it, where do the best ideas come from, your customers or your employees? Perhaps your firm conducts ongoing market research surveys and focus groups, as many do, but is the same spotlight and intensity ever pointed in the direction of workers? When it is, you’ll be on the Southwest track, and probably doing well. If it’s not, you may be missing out on a big one.

Ken Lizotte CMC is Chief Imaginative Officer (CIO) of emerson consulting group inc. (Concord, MA), which transforms consultants, law firms, executives and companies into “thoughtleaders.” This article is an excerpt from his newest book “Beyond Reason: Questioning Assumptions of Everyday Life”.

Visit ==>www.thoughtleading.com for more info.