You can now download the August issue of Better Business Focus HERE. Please feel free to share with your friends or colleagues.
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:
Mike Shipulski
Just say no to cubicles: Whether it’s placing machine tools on the factory floor or designing work spaces for people that work at the company, the number one guiding metric is resources per square foot.
Janet Sernack
Riding the wave of disruptive change: Being born and raised in Sydney, Australia, family trips to Bondi Beach to enjoy the delights of the dazzling sea and blazing sunshine were a regular weekend event. It was where I learned to body surf, that if you seek to ride a wave, you have to work or flow with it to let it carry you to the shore.
Greg Satell
True transformation isn’t top down or bottom-up, but side-to-side: In a disruptive era, the only viable strategy is to adapt and that is especially true today. With change seeming to accelerate with each passing year, every organization must transform itself. Those who are unable to change often find that they are unable to compete and soon disappear altogether.
Dr Lynda Shaw
How bosses should deal with redundancy well: Lockdown has massively impacted our economy and a huge spike of redundancies is expected to be just around the corner. Anyone who has previously experienced redundancy knows how difficult this experience is. Here are some tips for bosses on how to handle redundancies as well as possible.
Michael Graber
Crisis as human-to-human accelerant: There’s nothing like a good crisis to make you refine your values, and Covid-19 has everyone taking stock of what really matters in life.
Barry Urquhart
Communication, Punctuality, Productivity Casualties of Coronavirus: Interestingly, the commercial traffic on social media, phone-lines and mass media is down appreciably, because of COVID-19, and the related lockdown of societies.
Andy Bounds
Are you ‘working from HOME’ or ‘living in WORK’? Here’s a phrase I’m hearing more and more: “I’m not enjoying being at home as much as I used to” When I ask why, it’s clear people don’t feel they’re ‘working from HOME’. Instead, they’re ‘living in WORK’.
Geoffrey James
Warren Buffett says discounts are for dummies: It’s a total myth that billionaires are smarter than us mere mortals. I’ve interviewed more than a few, and believe me, when you get outside their area of expertise, they’re more often wrong than right. (Elon Musk bloviating about Artificial Intelligence comes to mind.)
Paul Sloane
Five foundations for building a culture of Innovation: If you are trying to transform an organisation which is sluggish and risk averse into one which is innovative and entrepreneurial then you have taken on a massive task. One approach is to use the Prosci ADKAR Change Management methodology as advocated by Jeffrey Hiatt and Tim Creasey. It consists of five key stages.
Professor Colin Coulson-Thomas
Navigating risks and opportunities in a volatile world: Our topic is navigating risks and opportunities in a volatile world. During most of my lifetime much of the world has been volatile. There have been wars, dramatic political developments, unexpected events and many false dawns.
Dimis Michaelides
“I think, therefore I am”… said the machine to the stunned humans: She didn’t actually say it like that. She might have asked “to be or not to be?” and insisted that “that is the question”. In any case, machines are already up to asking profound existential questions.
Tamara Ghandour
3 reasons why your brainstorms suck: Brainstorms are important and an easy way to get everybody together to collaborate, discuss, debate, and ultimately, innovate. But sometimes, you come out of them feeling as if you didn’t get the ideas that you needed, or that the same ideas were being rehashed, or that it was a complete waste of time. So, why do your brainstorms suck, and how can you overcome that?
Sunil Bali
Confucius was a daydream believer… “All your dreams are made, when you’re chained to the mirror and the razor blade,” sang rock star, philosopher and Ivor Novello award-winning songwriter Noel Gallagher.
Tom Koulopoulos
Harvard study reveals one exercise that predicts 96% lower cardiovascular risk: In less than 10 minutes you can gauge your risk of a heart disease or a cardiac event by doing this exercise.
Mike Greene
Why you should first seek to understand — before trying to be understood: People really don’t listen. People are just either not that interested in what you’re saying, or they are too focused on their own agenda. It’s ridiculous to see two people acting like they can’t really hear each other — by choice.
Amy Vetter
Should you—or shouldn’t you? Learn how to be a stronger decision maker: Just as with life, business is a constant barrage of decision making. Should you hire that person? Should you launch this project? Should you expand? Cut back?
Soren Kaplan
Want a high-performing team? Try the OGSM model: For the past 25 years, I’ve worked with hundreds of groups across dozens of big companies and startups. One thing’s consistent: everyone works in teams, and the ultimate success of any organization relies on the overall effectiveness of the teams within it.
Mukesh Gupta
How to come out stronger and ready to thrive post crisis: Premise; We are already seeing a lot of signals in the economy of the upcoming tectonic shifts and the ripples that they will cause.