Mistakes

The only man who never makes mistakes is the man who never does anything.
Theodore Roosevelt, 1858-1919, Twenty-sixth President of the USA

Success

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed. (Booker T. Washington, 1856-1915, American Leader and Educator)

Why Business Processes?

Ask this question: would you set sail without a chart or map & navigation instruments? We it's the same in a business - you need a map of how the organisation does it's business. This is especially important in a company as everyone needs to know what they are supposed to do and how they interrelate with the rest of the team and organisation. So ask the 'crew' to brainstorm their processes and draw them up with a tool - the facilitator can do this with graphical tool that all can review - "a picture tells a thousand words." Having had a hand in drawing them up they will feel they own them and go on to improve them!

Boring old processes!

W. Edwards Deming said "If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing" [Deming taught the Japanese how to improve manufacturing design (and thus service), product quality,in the 1950s and we all know how successful they became!

Your Job Search Strategy

Have a look at the video by Kristi Daeda -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMe4PbEuCsw


It provides a simple & straightforward 4 point plan for your job search strategy covering:

• Personal Brand
• Mission Statement
• Job Search tool kit
• Networking Plan

For more help have a look at:

http://www.businessballs.com/personal-development.htm

This is a great web site ........ and this section provides good sound advice on personal development, self-discovery, self-help, motivation and achievement psychology

Whether you are in a job or looking for one I recommend reading this book:

How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie

This book is still giving us good advice after over 70 years!

Successes and failures

I guess we could all recite instances of these. Often, in business, the ones we label failures are to do with a breakdown in human relations. Maybe we don’t even notice it at the time. One example of this is back in the mid 90’s when I was working at Birse Communications in Tunbridge Wells. It was a great contract to be offered – good money and a company that genuinely needed help. My mistake comes down to very simple things. The management came from the construction industry – used to getting in at 7.30 am. I came from a very different industry. Telecoms and IT was already a much more laid back culture where the old fashioned 1950’s rules were already forgotten. Indeed, teleworking and homeworking were beginning to become a fact. I had family commitments down in Sussex as a single father. My idea was to get to the office at the normal time, 9am. The journey was over an hour and I thought this reasonable. However, my absence at that early hour meant to say that the MD of the company was frustrated at me not being there and he was already making decisions way down the track by the time I rolled up so my discussions with him were more by the way of instructions from him to me. Later on, by the time the company was sold to Sirti (an Italian company), I was already on the fringe of the decision making group.

I had not only lost the position of helping form policy but also had lost the opportunity to make a friend of the MD and be seen as one of his trusted parties. Thus, eventually, when the shake up came with Sirti, I was not included. The lesson to be learned from this is –

Understand who the important people in an organisation are and play the game their way. There will be plenty of opportunity later on for you to put your stamp on the organisation as your influence grows. Those first few weeks are critical.