You can now download the October issue of Better Business Focus. Please feel free to e-mail Better Business Focus to your friends or colleagues.
Below is a selection of articles from this month’s issue, and we hope you enjoy the read!
Better Business Focus: Expert Inspiration for a Better Business.
Better Business Focus is the essential key for business owners and managers. It achieves that by focusing on the way in which successful businesses compete and manage their organisations. It focuses on how people are recruited, coached and developed; on how marketing and selling is undertaken in professional markets as well as in markets with intense competition; on how technology and the Internet is reshaping the face of domestic and home business; and on how people are being equipped with new skills and techniques. In short, it offers expert inspiration for a better business.
This Month’s articles include:
- David Finkel
It’s time to check in with your staff regarding Coronavirus: Six months ago, the world as we knew it changed. Business owners all over the country were dealing with uncertainty as we navigated the waters of quarantine, remote working, and new local and state regulations. For some business owners, quarantine meant having to rethink the way that they did business and come up with new and creative ways to reach their customer base. - Jeff Haden
How Bill Gates approaches problem solving: Don’t reinvent the wheel: Having the right answers is important, but success can also be achieved by asking the right questions. - Dr Lynda Shaw
The importance of being humble post lockdown: More now than ever, when people around us are struggling with health worries, unemployment and a host of other losses, anxieties, or difficulties, it is an important time to try and be more humble and to think of one another. Make being humble one of your five a day. - Barry Urquhart
Downturn highlights – online marketing, advertising weaknesses, deficiencies: Online communications perform best when consumers are actively searching brand names, product specifications, prices and value-packages. Those channels have exposed inadequacies when consumers have retreated from the marketplace, as at present, and have a need to be stimulated and titillated to contemplate purchases, prefer specific brand names and to re-enter the marketplace. - Marla Tabaka
Entrepreneurs who use vision boards are more likely to achieve success: As I was training to become a coach (remember, this was about 20 years ago), the whole Law of Attraction/Vision Board concept was rejected by most of our population. Thankfully, with the advancements in neuroscience we can see how these seemingly magical tools work to help us manifest a better life. Since they’ve become more mainstream (alleluia!) it’s been fun and exciting to speak about things like metaphysics and the wonders of neuroscience without having to disguise the conversation in conventional wording. So here we go! - Mike Shipulski
The courage to speak up: If you see things differently than others, congratulations. You’re thinking for yourself. - Soren Kaplan
A simple template for key performance indicators (KPIs) get people focused on what really matters: Management guru Peter Drucker once said, “What’s measured improves.” So true. - Tom Koulopoulos
A piece of trash with four simple words changed my life and maybe yours too: While there may be no one secret to living a meaningful life, this simple piece of advice definitely holds the key to unlocking some of life’s secrets. - Sunil Bali
Space, the final frontier…..: Martina Navratilova was once asked, “How do you maintain your focus and manage to keep playing professional tennis at the age of 43”? - Janet Sernack
Leading and managing human transitions through adversity: Connecting with a diverse range of my coaching and consulting clients over the past few weeks, has seriously deepened my understanding of the impact of disruption and adversity, on our stress levels and neurology, and the importance of leading and managing these factors, from both the business and the human perspective. - Marcel Schwantes
4 Ways to build a learning culture while your workforce is remote: As business leaders and individuals grapple with the staggering impact of Covid-19, one thing has become undoubtedly clear. In order for leaders to foster organizational resilience and weather the post-pandemic storm, they must prioritize the learning and development of their workforce. - Dimis Michaelides
Politicians and Bureaucrats – Friends or Foes of Innovation? Politicians and bureaucrats are condemned to co-exist with each other and with the other pivots of entrepreneurship: businessmen. Sweet or toxic their symbiosis is necessary, as they are both key players in the innovation game. - Michael Graber
Secrets of a successful serial Intrapreneur – Paul Campbell: Chief Innovation Officer, W.L. Gore & Associates: A Keynote presentation from the Back End of Innovation Conference. The first slide gave away the four secrets in brief form: Ideation, Deconstruct, Incubate, Scale up. - Greg Satell
The Eureka moment myth: In 1928, Alexander Fleming arrived at his lab to find that a mysterious mould had contaminated his Petri dishes and was eradicating the bacteria colonies he was trying to grow. Intrigued, he decided to study the mould. That’s how Fleming came to be known as the discoverer of penicillin. - Adam Malofsky
Innovation is a lifestyle, not a bunch of metrics: Far too many supposed innovation experts believe that measuring activities is critical to success. Maybe. Maybe not so much. At least for the big stuff. Innovation activities simply for the sake of doing something without context and insight from the measure may be in fact very misleading. - Paul Sloane
The limits of positive thinking: The magical potency of positive thinking has been a common theme among motivational speakers for a long time. In 1952 Norman Vincent Peale published his seminal book, The Power of Positive Thinking. He advocated that you should always be optimistic. You should build a mental picture of yourself succeeding. - Urko Wood
Debunking myths to drive growth: Some people believe that the most innovative companies create customer demand with breakthrough new offerings. They say things like, “Nobody knew they needed an iPhone until Apple created it. Apple created needs that people didn’t even know they had.” Hence, if you want to be an innovation leader, strive to create customer needs. This may sound good, but it’s a misbelief caused by confusing product solutions with customer needs. Get this right or suffer high failure rates and missed opportunities. - Shelly Greenway
What is an Innovation sprint and why you might need one? Innovation Sprints are a really hot topic right now and for good reason. Some of the biggest companies in the world are using them to build the products we know and love.