Planting Ideas

Think of a carefully selected extra-special tomato seed. Potentially, that little seed can grow 25 pounds of wonderful fruit. One seed will easily produce one million times its weight in good food. But the seed with all its promise won’t grow any tomatoes unless it is planted.

So it is with great dreams. The best ideas in the world for making money, building a business, solving a social problem, or making an improvement in life are useless until they are planted in a well-prepared mind, tremendous results happen. Every great enterprise was once simply an idea that was planted

A fortune is an idea acted upon. All around us are people who have the disease of dreaming. This ailment takes on many forms, but it as common as the cold. As you grow your ideas, surround yourself with people who are positive. Positive people want you to win, achieve, enjoy life, find satisfaction, and contribute to others. Negative people want you to accept life as  it is, content with boredom and mediocrity, satisfied with a small income, and miss out rewards that come from helping 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.

Interacting with People

Direct open communication with others fosters trust, enhances information flow, and builds stronger relationships. Use following guidelines to increase such communication:

• Let people know in a timely way about information that affects them. Respond as quickly as possible to any questions they may have.
• Be aware of the messages you send non-verbally. Communicate a positive, open message to people by facing them and making eye contact (or using other culturally appropriate gestures when in other countries or cultures).
• To help your employees and others develop their skills, convey positive and constructive feedback. Positive feedback lets people know what they are doing correctly and the behavior you appreciate. Constructive feedback informs people of their ineffective behavior and gives them an opportunity to compensate for or improve the behavior.
• If conflicting or mixed messages come up in conversation, confront the discrepancy and work with the other person to clarify the misunderstanding.
• When you receive vague messages, define the issues in concrete terms so that all parties are clear about what is being said.
• When you need to get a point across in a direct, nonaggressive, fashion, simply say what you think and feel without putting the other person down.

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.

Writing a Marketing Plan

• Use a direct, professional writing style. Use appropriate business and marketing terms without jargon. Present and future tenses with active voice are generally better than past tense and passive voice.
• Be positive and specific. At the same time, avoid superlatives (such as terrific, wonderful). Specifics are better than glittering generalities. Use numbers for impact, justifying computations and projections with facts or reasonable quantitative assumptions where possible.
• Use bullet points for succinctness and emphasis. As with the list you are reading, bullets enable key points to be highlighted effectively and with great efficiency.
• Use “A level” (the first level) and “B level” (the second level headings under major section headings to help readers make easy transitions from one topic to another. This also forces the writer to organize the plan more carefully. Use these headings liberally, at least once every 200 to 300 words.
• Use visuals where appropriate. Illustrations, graphs, and charts enable large amounts of information to be presented succinctly.
• Shoot for a plan 15 to 35 pages in length, not including financial projections and appendices. An uncomplicated small business may require only 15 pages, while a new business startup may require more than 35 pages.
• Use care in layout, design, and presentation. Laser or ink-jet printers give a more professional look than  do dot matrix printers or typewriters. A bound report with a cover and clear title page adds professionalism.

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.

Preparing a Resume

All job applicants need to have information circulating that reflects positively on their strengths. That information needs to be sent to prospective employers in a format that is understandable and consistent with the organization’s hiring practices. In most instances, this is done through the resume.

No matter who you are or where you are in your career, you need a current resume. Your resume is typically the only information source that a recruiter will use in determining whether to grant you an interview. Therefore, your resume must be a sales tool; it must give key information that supports your candidacy, highlights your strengths, and differentiates you from other job applicants.

It is important to pinpoint a few key themes regarding resumes that may seem like common sense but are frequently ignored. If you are making a paper copy of your resume, it must be printed on a quality printer. The style of font should be easy to read—Courier or Times New Roman. Avoid any style that may be hard on the eyes, such as a script or italic font. A recruiter who must review 100 or more resumes a day is not going to look favorably at difficult to read resumes. Use an easy to read font and make the recruiter’s job easier.

It is also important to note that many companies today are using computer scanners to make the first pass through resumes. They scan each resume for specific information like key job elements, experience, work history, education, or technical expertise.

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.

Peer Appraisals

With more firms using self-managing teams, peer or team appraisals—the appraisal of an employee by his or her peers—are becoming popular. For example, an employee chooses an appraisal chairperson each year. That person then selects one supervisor and three other peers to evaluate the employee’s work.

Peer appraisals can predict future management success. Peer ratings have other benefits. Peer appraisals have an immediate positive impact on improving perception of open communication, task motivation, social loafing, group viability, cohesion, and satisfaction.

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.

Positive Discipline

Positive discipline attempts to integrate the disciplinary process with the performance management system. When problems arise, rather than promptly responding with a written verbal warning (punitive), positive discipline attempts to get the employee back on track by helping to convince the individual to abide by company performance standards. That is, in using positive discipline, attempts are made to reinforce the good work behaviors of the employee, while simultaneously emphasizing to the employee the problems created by the undesirable performance.

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.

Process Engineering

Although continuous improvement methods are positive starts in many of our organizations, they generally focus on incremental change. Such action—a constant and permanent search to make things better—is intuitively appealing. Many organizations, however, operate in an environment of rapid and dynamic change. As the elements around them change so quickly, a continuous improvement process may keep them behind the times.

The problem with a focus on continuous improvements is that it may provide a false sense of security. It may make organizational members feel as if they are actively doing something positive, which is somewhat true. Unfortunately, ongoing incremental change may prevent a company from facing up to the possibility that what the organization may really need radical or quantum change, referred to as work process engineering. Continuous change may also make employees feel as if they are taking progressive action while, at the same time, avoiding having to implement quantum changes that will threaten certain aspects of organizational life. The incremental approach of continuous improvement, then, may be today’s version of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It is imperative in today’s business environment that all organizational members consider the challenge that work process engineering may have for their organizational processes. This is because work process engineering can lead to “major gains in cost, service, or time,” as well as an organization in preparing to meet the challenges technology changes foster.

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.

 

Simultaneous Production and Consumption

Whereas most goods are produced first, then sold and consumed, most services are sold first and then produced and consumed simultaneously. A restaurant services cannot be provided until they have been sold, and the dining experience is essentially produced and consumed at the same time. Frequently this also means that the customer is present while the service is being produced and thus views and may even take part in the production process. This also means that frequently customers will interact with each other during the service production process and thus may affect each others’ experiences. For example, strangers seated next to each other in an airplane may well affect the nature of the service experience for each other. That passengers understand this fact is clearly apparent in the way business travelers will often go to great lengths to be sure they are not seated next to families with small children. Another outcome of simultaneous production and consumption is that service producers find themselves playing a role as part of the product itself and as an essential ingredient in the service experience for the consumer.

Because services often are produced and consumed at the same time, mass production is difficult if not possible. The quality of service and customer satisfaction will be highly dependent on what happens in “real time,” including actions of employees and the interactions between employees and customers. Similarly, it is not usually possible to gain significant economies of scale through centralization. Usually operations need to be relatively decentralized so that the service can be delivered to the consumer in convenient locations. Also because of simultaneous production and consumption, the customer is involved in and observes the production process and thus may affect (positively or negatively) the outcome of the service transaction.

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.

 

Nourish your Dream Seed

Think some more about your tomato seed. It is an excellent seed, the soil is well prepared, and you have planted it. But to grow and pay off with good-tasting tomatoes, the seed needs nourishment – sunlight, fertilizers, and water.

Your dream seed also requires nutrition – imagination, encouragement, and ideas – to grow and make you prosper. In the US alone, some two million businesses are started each year but only a small fraction succeeds. In one way or another, neglect is the main reason.

Those who make their dream of financial independence and prosperity grow in a multi-level marketing business. The basic idea – the dream seed has all the potential you need. Other people make it work. People who aren’t any smarter or better than you are.

Once the dream is planted, feed it. Attend seminars. Go to school if necessary. Join trade associations. Talk to successful people. Read.

Let other success-minded people help you. Birds of flock together. That rule always stands. So, if you want to make a large income and accumulate wealth, affiliate with people who are comfortable earning large incomes and who are determined to acquire even more net worth. You become like the people you associate with every day. If your circle of friends is people who are resigned to mediocrity and the whatever-will-be-will be philosophy, in time you will be one of them. Your dream will die, your vision will shrink, and your spiritual death will come.

As you grow your dreams, surround yourself with people who are positive. Positive people want you to win, to achieve, to enjoy the good life, to find genuine satisfaction, and to make a contribution to others.

Negative people want you to accept life as it is, to be content with boredom and mediocrity, to be satisfied with a small income, and to miss out on the rewards that come from helping 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.