Better Business Focus newsletter – December 2020

You can now download the December 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.

December 2020

  • Are you ready for a remote-work winter? As we approach the coldest part of the year, it’s clear that our current work-from-home (WFH) forecast shows no signs of slowing down. With the lower temperatures likely to produce a spike in Covid-19 cases, its possible restrictions will be tighter during the winter than during the previous few months.
  • Covid-19 recovery tips for 2021: There has been a huge cost from it but there has also been a lot of necessary learning which needs to be integrated into current organisational cultures to be sustainable, resilient and to last beyond the pandemic. Whilst the pandemic is likely to have increased anxiety and difficulties, it will also create new perspectives as to which work practices are outdated and need to change within organisations.
  • We all have way too much time on our hands: We must have way too much time on our hands. I mean, how else could we possibly have so much time chronically shouting into our social media echo chambers and attacking those with different views?
  • Responding to future challenges by cultivating mental toughness: In my last article “Leading and Managing Transitional Change” we described how leaders could help their people to transition through the fears and challenges they are experiencing as a result of the disruptive COVID-19 pandemic, by cultivating their mental toughness.
  • Here’s how to tell within 5 seconds if listening to music will make you more effective at work: Sometimes science only confirms what you already know. For example, stress negatively impacts performance, resulting in poorer quality of work, decreased leadership effectiveness, and increased error rates.
  • Virtual Meetings – how to make them more interesting: A great tip for Virtual Meetings:  If you’re speaking non-stop for over 2-3 minutes, add variety.
  • Confidence – ‘One of our five-a-day’: Confidence comes from a positive place of self-assurance and a healthy appreciation of our own abilities or qualities. Being confident can positively affect your personal and business life including being closely linked with strong leadership and negotiation skills.  There is a stark difference between confidence and arrogance. Confident people are aware of their own abilities, whereas arrogant people have an exaggerated sense of their own abilities and their importance.
  • Affordable confidence: Be careful.  Signs from the marketplace can be, and are, confusing, conflicting and misleading.
  • Why Zebras don’t get ulcers…..  In his book, “Why Zebra’s don’t get ulcers,” psychologist Professor Robert Sapolsky says that what you think not only determines how happy you are, but also how healthy you are.
  • Testing your business model: Sometimes we get caught up in the details when we should be working on the foundation. Here’s a rule: If the underlying foundation is not secure, don’t bother working on anything else.
  • Fly, Crash, Adapt: Paul MacCready (1925 – 2007) was an aeronautical engineer and inventor of the first human-powered aircraft.
  • 4 things all managers must know about digital transformation but don’t: Today, technology has become central to how every business competes. Futuristic advancements like artificial intelligence, big data and cloud computing are no longer pie-in-the-sky propositions, but mission critical initiatives that leaders are racing to implement within their organizations.
  • Which of these 7 Deadly Website Sins do you commit?  However much time and money you throw at your website, it’s all wasted unless it makes people want to buy from you.
  • What you should and shouldn’t do when hiring a business coach: As a business coach for over twenty five years, I can say with great certainty that this is a topic that I feel very passionate about. I have taken on board clients that had great potential and an amazing product, yet they struggled with how best to use and leverage a business coach to grow their business.
  • Embody the problems to discover innovation: Much of the work of innovation takes place trying to deeply understand the unmet needs of a particular market. As one Innovation school of thought calls it, what are the “jobs to be done?” Discerning these needs, these undone jobs, takes more empathy than data, more heart than head, and it takes a real investment of time and attention.
  • The dark side of the fifth law of trust: The Fifth Law of Trust is that Trust is Transferable. The best way to describe it is by asking: did your parents tell you, when you were young, to never get into a car with a complete stranger? Especially if they offer you something just to get into the car with them? So, let me ask you, have you followed that advice?
  • Use internal service agreements to boost service consistency: In many organisations where service is identified as an area for improvement, the problem is not poor service from every department or person, it is inconsistent service in pockets of the organization. Poor service in one area brings down the perception of service levels in all areas.
  • 5 Simple Questions for Making Tough Life Decisions: I was terrified, but I was comfortable.  That was the way it felt almost 30 years ago when I started my first company. I was gainfully employed, making an extraordinary salary, had all the perks and privileges of an executive position in a thriving company at the age of 27, and yet I knew it was not the place I was meant to be. But I was terrified by the prospect of the uncertainty in breaking out and following my passion and my dreams.

FREE No-Obligation Meeting

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam7
nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam
erat, sed diam voluptua.