The Right Career Move

When it comes to career it is up to you to create options for growth and expansion.  Here are a few helpful points:

Pick a boss, not a job.  Your boss can often be the most important factor in your success or failure.  A boss who is skeptical regarding your capabilities will not allow you to take up new challenges or conduct new experiments.  On the other hand, an easy going boss will not push you to avail opportunities to stretch yourself beyond your comfort zone. 

Before making a career move, thoroughly research the organisation you plan to join. Does it treat is employees as potential or resource?  Potential is to be tapped, while resources are to be consumed. 

Unless you passionately enjoy what you do, success will remain an illusion.  If you are passionate about marketing but you work in finance, the chances are that you will soon be at war with yourself. 

Apart from your primary passion, profession, always find avenues to create a second line of defense.  If your primary career becomes redundant, due to external factors, you will then have something to fall back upon.  So, Plan B must be in place all the time. 

Fortune favours the bold and the brave.  A certain Colonel Sanders changed his career at the age of 66 and from being a loser salesman he became an extremely successful entrepreneur. 

Summar at Workplace.... Dressing Tips

Summer is a time to flaunt your trendy summer wear.  It is the time to experiment with fresh and lively colours.  However, with the rising temperature and power outrages, comfort also becomes a prominent consideration.  It is imperative to look neatly attired while simultaneously surviving the heat and avoiding horrendously unattractive sweat stains.  In short, summers should be about hassle free dressing.  Here are a few ideas on how to build effortless summer style:
Mixing and matching works best.  A light shade top with a stripy shalwar or vice versa makes for good summer wear. 

Splurge on flowery, flowing, printed sundresses for effortless summer femininity. 
Consider purchasing knee length kameezes in colorful print patterns that exude the cool and breezy look. 

Hop on the Capri pant craze, buy a pair of cotton white, being or black Capri or full length pants to take you anywhere.  Pair them easily with a loose or slightly form fitting \bright single toned or floral long kameez, the trick here is the airy fabric.  For the most flattering Capri/pants look, opt for a wide leg.  Choose bright or neutral colours. 

Fancy footwear is key; consider revamping your shoe closet with a new pair of sandals, flip flops or flats with flashy embellishments.

Avoid dark bags; switch to large, bright bags or two-tone canvas, woven straw, or lighter neutral carriers.

Binges in, so be it your shoes, bags or jewellery, bling away.  For work, small, subtle diamantes with a basic elegant pendant and bracelet will give the final finish to your summer work attire. 
Finally, summer is not for tousled hairstyles, long sleeves, dark colored clothes and cotton jackets.  Save them for cooler months. 

Some Guidelines On How To Keep Eployees Motivated

While organisations invest a substantial amount of money on buying and maintaining machinery, keeping employees motivated is often overlooked.  However, since human beings are decidedly different from machines, they need to be motivated and at times even pampered. 

Here are some guidelines on how to keep employees motivated:

Make your employees feel wanted and secure to keep them committed t the organization. 

Pay your employees more than what the market offers.  Review their benefits package on a yearly basis.  Make sure that your employees are aware of the benefits that are being given to them. 

Ensure that the objectives chalked out for each individual are clear and can be easily understand. 

Maintain open channels of communication and keep team members updated on the organization’s progress.

Institute a system of training to enhance employee skills.  This will result in individual and organizational development.

Make sure that you are accessible to your tem members at all times.  Ensure that team members are accessible to each other as well. 

Maintain a friendly work environment so that your employees feel like coming to work and can enjoy their jobs. 

Initiate a fair system of rewards.

Arrange get together like annual dinners, picnics, social events etc. so that the team turns into a family.  Make it a point to remember employees special occasions such as birthdays, weddings etc.  When employees are faced with crisis, take care of them. 

Hot to Improve productivity ...Tips

No one likes a complaining voice, least of all HR, as the management may perceive these complaints as the HR department’s failure to deliver adequate services.  However, not all grievances are invalid and if tackled positively can be used to improve productivity and processes. 

Here are some tips:
A user friendly complaint policy or standard Operating procedure (SOP) not only provides a guideline on how to deal with contentious issues but also indicates to the employees that the organisation values their opinions. 

Policies are useless unless mindsets are aligned.  All incoming information should be treated as constructive feedback.  Until that happens minds will remain closed to suggestions.

Sift the good from the bad through non judgmental evaluation.
Verify all facts, especially those of a serious nature.  This will not only encourage others to follow suits but also allow HR to learn about different issues on a firs t hand basis. 

Handling of the complaint process should note seen as policing rather it should facilitate the all round coordination and involvement of key stakeholders.

Avoid falling in the typical lip servicing trap.  Trust and confidence are synonymous with promptness and fairness; organisations and HR departments lose credibility in their absence. 

Suggestion boxes, task forces, etc., should be promoted as effective tools. 

A corporate environment where people are encouraged to voice their opinions without fear and are publicly recognized for doing so should be nurtured. 

Perhaps the best way to achieve company growth is by listening to people and acting on their opinions.  Often the difference between average and great companies lies in their ability to execute this function well. 

Free advice is worth what you pay for it

A recent edition of Fortune Magazine featured a host of successful people including Bill Gates, Tiger Woods, General Colin Powell sharing the in a section entitle The best Advice I ever Got.  Here are some that have helped me along the way.

From Anthony Robbins:  There is no such thing as success or failure; there are only outcomes.  This is very similar to Shakespeare’s There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.  How we label the outcome also determines our approach to dealing with it.

Also from Mr.  Robbins: When preparation meets opportunities, luck happens.  Too often we are waiting for life to happen to us instead of the other way around.  I don’t know the source of this one but it is really good:  You have got to be in it to win it. 
There is also a story of a blonde who kept praying to win the lottery until finally one day, God said to her:  Could you at least buy a ticket?  I hope this is not the story of your life.  Another one of my favorites is from Eleanor Roosevelt, who said:  No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.  Unless we draw our boundaries, people will step al over us.  Learn to stand up for what you think is right but do it respectfully and without ego.  Last, but not least, this one is from a previous boss:  Free advice is worth what you pay for it.  There you go. 

Consulting Venture for an Organisation

Consultants are generally viewed as doctors who are supposed to diagnose your organisation’s ailments and suggest relevant remedies.  Depending on the ailment, the remedies can range from revisiting oranisational strategic priorities and making necessary modifications to tweaking the business model employed. 
In effect, a consultant’s job is to bring significant business change within short time frames.  Thus the flexibility to attack a multitude of problems is imperative for the success of any consulting intervention.

Within the current fast paced, dynamic and unpredictable economic environment two ingredients are necessary for any consulting venture to be successful:

This involves the consultant’s ability to implement new insights and pertinent best practices from the industry.  Additionally, an easy decision making process while quickly taking stock of difficult situations (both internal and external) are essential components of any probable effective solution, which is ready to be implemented. 

World over companies are laying off employees and slashing budgets to deal with the current economic situation.  Gone are the days when a consultant would stay for months using his or set 6 steps or 15 topic modules.  Today consultants need to conduct effective needs analysis to ensure that they hit the bull’s eye and customize the methodology to quickly turn around the oranisational condition.

Of course, expecting consulting to come with a magic wand to make your company the rising star in this age of halted growth is not a pragmatic view either.  It is therefore critical for consultants to help the client set realistic expectations and explain exactly what value would their advisory services bring;  helping the organisation differentiate mere wishes from what should e the ideal goal in quantitative terms. 

This type of collaboration based on a greater degree of trust and a common goal of improving the organisation is necessary to enable the company to survive during these tough times and perhaps even lure customers from a dying competitor.