Home Office – Emerging Possibilities

Advances in technology and the downsizing of organizations offer opportunities for micro enterprises particularly for extending professional services, apparel design, crafts manufacturing and sales, catering, computer programming, copy editing, financial planning, graphic art & design, insurance agency, interior decoration, interior design, event management, realting, research, tailoring, travel agency, tutoring, and data entry/typing. You can also offer home/office cleaning services, or an errand service. The more you know about the business that you may undertake, the better.

 Subcontracting is another option. Procure orders and sublet to experts.

 My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

De-Stress Without Distress

Stress is a significant problem in the workplace and many people are searching for effective antidotes. Unfortunately, most look in the wrong places. The answer is not to follow the crowds who take sedatives or tranquilizers, but to take control. It is for this reason that options to control your symptoms are critical to learn. They include:

1. Relaxation Response
2. Biofeedback
3. Music
4. Art
5. Fashion
6. Acupuncture
7. Positive Imagery
8. Placebos (Latin word = I shall please)
9. Hobbies
10. Humor

All these options are easy to master and free from side effects. They will improve your health today, and may even save your life tomorrow.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Pricing

Whether or not it is so recognized, pricing is one of the most crucial decision functions of a marketing manager. Pricing is an art, a game played for high stakes; for marketing strategists, it is the moment of truth. All of marketing comes to focus in the pricing decision. To a large extent, pricing decisions determine the types of customers and competitors an organization will attract. Likewise, a single pricing error can effectively nullify all other marketing-mix activities. Despite its importance, price rarely serves as the focus of marketing strategy, in part because it is the easiest marketing-mix activity for the competition to imitate.

It can be easily demonstrated that price is a direct determinant of profit (or loss). This fact is apparent from the fundamental relationship.

Profit = total revenue – total cost

Revenue is a direct result of unit price times quantity sold, and costs are indirectly influenced by quantity sold, which in turn is partially dependent on unit price. Hence, price simultaneously influences both revenues and costs.

Despite its importance, pricing remains on of the least understood marketing-mix activities.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Constitution of Service Sector

Service sector comprises following services:

Lodging Services

Hotels, rooming houses, and other lodging places

Sporting and recreation camps

Trailering parks and camp sites for transients

Personal Services

Laundries

Childcare

Linen supply

Shoe repair

Diaper service

Funeral homes

Carpet cleaning

Tax preparation

Photographic studios

Beauty shops

Health clubs

Business Services

Accounting

Exterminating

Agencies

Employment agencies

Collection agencies

Computer programming

Commercial photography

R&D labs

Commercial art

Secretarial services

Management services

Window cleaning

Public relations

Consulting

Detective agencies

Equipment rental

Interior design

Automotive Repair Services and Garages

Auto rental

Tire retreading

Truck rental

Exhaust system shops

Parking lots

Car washes

Paint shops

Transmission repair

Motion Picture Industry

Production

Theaters

Distribution

Drive-ins

Amusement and Recreation Services

Dance halls

Race tracks

Orchestras

Golf courses

Pool halls

Amusement parks

Carnivals

Fairs

Ice-skating rinks

Botanical gardens

Circuses

Swimming pools

Health Services

Physicians

Nursery care

Dentists

Medical labs

Chiropractors

Dental labs

Legal Services

Educational Services

Libraries

Correspondence schools

Schools

Data processing schools

Social Services

Child care

Family services

Job training

Non-commercial Museums, Art Galleries, and Botanical & Zoological Gardens

Selected Membership Organizations

Business associations

Civic associations

Financial Services

Banking

Investment firms

Insurance

Real estate agencies

Miscellaneous Repair Services

Radio and television

Welding

Watch

Sharpening

Reuphoistery

Septic tank cleaning

Architectural

Surveying

Engineering

Utilities

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Direct Marketing

Direct market refers to direct mail, mail order, or coupon advertising, telephone marketing, or any method of marketing that attempts to make a sale right then and there. It does not require a middleman. It does not require a store. It only requires a seller and a buyer. And because of that, much unnecessary game playing is removed from the marketing process, leaving only accountable results. When you run a TV commercial or newspaper ad, you do all in your power to make sure that it works, but you don’t really know if it does. But when you engage in direct-mail advertising, the firm of direct marketing you will know clearly whether or not your mailing worked. Either it did or didn’t. If it worked, you’ll know how well it worked. And if it failed, you’ll know how dismally it failed.

Direct mail is the least expensive method of marketing on a per sale basis. The overall cost may be high, but if it works for you, it is inexpensive marketing. Direct marketing is more science than art. This is not to downplay the art of creating a successful direct mail package.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

 

Negotiating for Change

Occasionally, in any change effort a manager may run into another kind of roadblock: he/she may require the cooperation and support of managers in other departments and divisions, but may have no formal authority over them. Attempts to influence or persuade them  to support change may fail because the change may involve a perceived loss for the other managers, this could be loss in status, power, authority, prestige or prerequisites. Under these circumstances, it is not in the self-interest of those managers to support the change. Situations like these make the management of change explicitly political because, in order to gain their support, the manager may have to do some bargaining. In other words, when influence and persuasion fail, a manager may need to mobilize support through negotiation. Many managers, particularly those with technical backgrounds, find this process distasteful because it seems irrational. However, there is little that is irrational in these situations and they arise out of calculated self-interest. Just as there are sound scientific principles to influence and persuade people, negotiation and bargaining can also be based on logic and science. While part of negotiation—like management—is art, most of it is amenable of scientific analysis.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Power

Power is what everyone wants and no one seems to have enough of. The desire for power is inherent in our very nature and fundamental to our survival.

Nowhere is the pursuit of power more evident than in today’s workplace. Managers are constantly striving to increase their arsenal of power, which is how it should be. Some may use power for selfish gain; others may use it to benefit the company. Regardless of how managers use power, the fact remains that without it they are incapable of achieving anything of significance for themselves, other people, the company, or society at large.

Power operates under the same principle as love: the more one gives to others, the more one receives in return. Unfortunately, many managers assume that there is a limited supply of power.

Most people contribute only a small fraction of their full capabilities, simply because they don’t feel a sense of personal power. They are bound by a bureaucratic management system that does little to encourage initiative and high performance. Almost all the power within the organization rests with those at the very top. Powerless in their ability to achieve results, most people eventually lose interest and settle for mediocrity.

The secret of achieving success as a manager and as a company lies in learning how to release the hidden potential of people. It lies in helping workers on all levels, from floor sweeper to executive, experience a sense of their own power. There are no success limits for the managers who master this art. Likewise, the company that rewards managers for successfully employing this art dramatically increases its ability to achieve its objectives.

If you want to achieve ultimate power for yourself you must get out of your own way. Instead of focusing your energies on the acquisition of power for yourself, focus them on how you can empower the people who work for you. If you are successful in giving your people power, they will surely lift you on their shoulders to heights of power and success you never dreamed possible.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

What Employees Need to Learn

What employees need to learn, beyond their immediate assignments, depends on what the employer wants them to contribute. Leading companies want employees to consider themselves members of the organization, to recommend and implement ways of making the company more successful. Consequently, they tell them a great deal about corporate goals and plans, the operation of the job site, the jobs of peers and managers, the functions of adjacent work units, the technology in use, effective problem-solving methods, and actual costs.

A handful of companies encourage employees to learn the act of technological adaptation, an art whose importance is destined to grow. Potential new uses of flexible automation, robots, or end-user office automation are limited only by the ingenuity of the users. Continuous learning centers are a good example of how to stimulate adaptation.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Training the Trainer

If learning is to be truly continuous, an organization must look to its own resources for more and more of the teaching. Sole reliance on professional trainers, whether internal or external, is expensive and, in many instances, redundant. The only irreplaceable capital an enterprise possesses is the knowledge stored in the brains of its people. But the productivity of intellectual capital depends on how effectively the owners share it with those who can use it.

Skill at teaching comes naturally to a few; most of us have to acquire it the hard way. Leading companies have therefore adopted the practice of training the trainer, and their experience confirms that content experts learn the art of training more readily than training experts can master unfamiliar technical content. As a bonus, they find, the ad hoc trainers gain new insights and reinforce their own knowledge as they transmit it to others.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Definitions of Strategy

Strategy: the science of planning and directing military operations, a plan or action based on this; skill in managing or planning, esp. by using stratagems. (Collins Pocket Dictionary, 1986)

Stratagems: a trick or plan for deceiving an enemy in war; any trick or scheme. (Collins Pocket Dictionary, 1986)

Strategic: sound in strategy; advantageous; needed for carrying on war; directed against the military and industrial installations of the enemy. (Collins Pocket Dictionary, 1986)

A strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. The word strategy has military connotations, because it derives from the Greek word for general. A strategy is a long term plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal. Strategy may also refer to:

• Business strategy, the art and science of enabling an organization to achieve its objective
  • Marketing Strategy, a process that allows an organization to increase sales and achieve a competitive advantage
  • Technology strategy, a document that explains how information technology should be used as part of a business strategy
  • Digital strategy, the process of specifying an organization’s processes to deploy online assets
• Trading strategy, a predefined set of rules to apply in finance (Wikipedia)

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.