Brain work...

A little brain teaser to pass the time!  Print and enjoy.

Your Competitive Advantage...

If you're the owner of a small business, you know the margin between success and failure is very thin.  You need every advantage you can get.  Marketing, efficiency, economy...each has to be at it's best.  But there's one area that can give you more competitive advantage than anything else, and it doesn't take loads of investment to get there. 

Value Your Employees

Every person who works in your business is a potential goldmine.  If you treat them correctly and keep them motivated.  Studies show that what employees want from their job can be (superficially) boiled down to three things:

• Equity
• Achievement
• Camaraderie

Equity - people want to be treated fairly with respect.  Communicate, communicate, communicate.  And that means listen more often than speak.  Full communication not only helps get the job done better, but its a sign of respect.  Face up to poor performance.  Find out what's getting in the way of improved performance.  But also, don't shirk from dealing with poor performers, or your best people will soon lose their motivation.

Achievement - Instill an inspiring purpose in the workplace.  Help your people understand how important they are to you and to the mission.  Having a mission statement is a powerful uniting tool.  Provide recognition.  People need to be recognized when they do something well.  It gives pride and strengthens their connection to the mission.  Coach your team for improvement.  Help them reach the next level.  Most people are excited by progress and mastery.  Those who aren't will soon make room for others.

Camaraderie - People love to feel a part of a winning team, just look at professional sports fans.  Promote teamwork.  Teams are more effective getting things done well than individuals, and most people get a morale boost from feeling part of a team.

In short:

** Listen and involve your employees in the business.
** Promote teams and show interest in their ideas.
** Give your teams freedom with defined task boundaries and let their imaginations fly.

A word about money.  Most business owners feel helpless to ask more of their employees when they can't give more money.  Especially when they can't give big raises because they're just barely hanging on now.  I spent twelve years as a corporate compensation expert and I can tell you that the excitement from a money raise fades very quickly, and with it, any increase in motivation.  Money doesn't buy happiness...for very long.

For long-term satisfied employees, your best tool is to value your employees and make them feel it.  Recent surveys have shown that people are feeling less valued at work than ever before.  Think it's because of their pay?  Actually, the largest percentage (42%) said they felt less valued because of the behavior of their manager or supervisor.

Not their pay, workload, benefits...the behavior of their boss.

Yes, money is important, but not the most important.  A successful business with motivated employees generates money and raises.  But a valued workforce generates a successful business.

http://www.manifestationcoaching.com/

Irish words of wisdom

"Contending against knowledge,

contending without proofs,

Taking refuge in bad language,

A stiff delivery,

A muttering speech,

Hair-splitting,

Uncertain proofs,

Despising books,

Turning against custom,

Shifting one's pleading,

Inciting the mob,

Blowing one's own trumpet,

Shouting at the top of one's voice."

The Story of the Irish Race, 1921, Seumas MacManus.

The great Irish king Cormac MacArt on what makes a bad lawyer, circa the tenth century.  Some things never change. 

What a Coach Can Do....

Some folks think you need to be an under-achiever to benefit from a personal life coach.  Not true!  Here's a story about a highly ranked education professional, an expert in career creation, who attributes much of his personal and professional success to using a coach.  "All along, he worked with an executive coach who helped him figure out what motivated him and how to be a better manager, father, and community member."

His coach helped him build a dynamic career and help others in the process.  How could a coach help you?

Getting Started #1 (Mornings)…

Technorati Tags: mornings,waking up,bedtime,good sleep,sleeping,getting started,coaching,life coach,manifestation coaching

"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."  --  Will Rogers

Getting up in the morning can be one of my most difficult lifetime challenges. Some mornings, even though I can hear the birds chirping outside my sunny bedroom window, elevating myself up from my deep morning's sleep can seem an impossible and unwelcome chore. I used to joke that I'm not fully awake until 10 o'clock in the morning, but as I get a little older, it becomes that much less of a joke.

Speaking of the office, by the time I get there and face the piles of paper on my desk, I'm not so happy to be awake. Is it any wonder that the first thing I do is drop my briefcase and headed across the street for a strong cup of coffee?

Of course, similar pattern emerges from me when I start on projects. I suppose you can begin to see the pattern yourself: the only thing I don't have trouble getting started is my car and that's because it's a Honda. In fact it took me three tries to start this article and it's now Saturday afternoon.

Am I alone? I don't think so.

There's two parts to getting started, preparation and execution. Let's start with getting up in the morning. The best way to get up in the morning is to get a good night's sleep, and the best way to get a good night's sleep is to be prepared for one.

Getting To Sleep at Night

Relax.  The best thing you can do for yourself to prepare for a good sleep is to be relaxed. For me that means reading a good book, for you that could be a hot bath, or even a bowl of cereal with warm milk.

Set a regular bedtime. I know it sounds like something you tell your children, but the body is a creature of habit. Get your body accustomed to going to sleep at a particular time of the evening and it will become easier and easier to sleep at that time.

Don't wait until you're drowsing on the sofa. That drowsing is exactly what you want to drift you into a good night’s sleep. If you have to interrupt it by getting up off the sofa, getting undressed and getting into bed, you've already interrupted your sleep.

This sounds silly, but keep an orderly bed. Tangled sheets and blankets hang you up at night and make you toss and turn more than you normally would. Take just a moment before you go to sleep to straighten out your covers and make sure you're comfortable.

Use music or white noise. Many people have trouble turning off their brain when they lay on the pillow at night. Their thinking continues to run a mile a minute, or they listen to every sound they hear and project a potential disaster. Gentle music of any genre in the background, or even a white noise machine with the sound of the ocean or birds chirping quietly, can distract your mind and help you focus on the nothingness that will bring you sleep.

Get a good pillow. You'd be surprised how fast a pillow wears out and ceases to provide the proper support. If you’ve had your pillow more than three or four years, it's time to replace it. If it's one of those expensive down-filled pillows, consider taking it to a dry cleaner to have it cleaned and fluffed and possibly even refilled.

Remember that the pillow is more than just a block to lay your head on. It needs to provide the proper support for your head and neck so that you can breathe properly while you sleep, and minimize strain on the back and shoulder muscles.

Getting Up in the Morning

Now that we've mastered preparing and getting a good night of sleep, I thought about getting up in the morning. This is the real problem for me. When I was young, it was common for me to sleep through three alarm clocks and still be late for school. I know now it wasn't because I didn't hear the alarm clocks, it was because I wasn't ready to face the day. Sometimes the reason that you can't get up in the morning is because you don't want to, and sometimes the reason is because you didn't get enough sleep and you can't wake up. It's important to know which is which and which is happening to you.

Here’s what worked for me for both reasons.

Don't use the sleep button. Don't let your body think that each deadline gives you more time. Reconcile both your body and your mind to getting up without the extra 10 minutes or 15 minutes or 30 minutes that you steal with the sleep button. Think about it, if you can regularly give yourself an extra 15 or 30 minutes, then set your alarm appropriately and get up when it rings. Steve Pavlina suggests that you use a Pavlovian training method of repetition to a custom yourself to getting up upon hearing the alarm. However you get there, fight that hesitation to fall back into sleep.

Stretch. Before you even throw the covers back, stretch out take a deep breath open your eyes and look around your room. Give your body a chance to become accustomed to being awake.

Shower immediately. Don't slump around making your coffee, picking what you're going to wear for the day. Hit the shower right away. It's much harder to fall back asleep if you're showered and shaved.

Don't think about the day ahead of you. There's plenty of time for that. Give yourself at least an hour in the morning of not thinking about the day that's coming up. Instead, listen to the sounds of the morning or music, appreciate the weather, say hello to your fish. Anything but stressing yourself out by anticipating the events of the day.  Don’t listen to the news.  You can hear that on the way to work.  This time is for easing into the day.

These are my strategies for getting a good sleep and getting out of a good sleep the next day for a good start.

Having conquered that, I next set out to master the art of facing my desk in the morning. I'll write more about that in the near future.

Www.manifestationcoaching.com

Season of simplifying…

[see the original at www.ManifestationCoaching.com]


Spring is on the way, and that means it’s getting to be my least and most favorite time of the year.  I love Spring weather, especially here in Los Angeles.  Clear sunny blue skies with brisk cool breezes is my idea of heaven on earth.

The rebirth of beautiful weather is the basis of the tradition of Spring housecleaning, starting over with a clean slate so to speak.  While I love a clean house and orderly office, I detest what it takes to get one and keep it that way.  I suppose you could call me a supremely lazy neat freak.  So I look for easy ways to get or stay organized.


Here’s a few of my discoveries:


Go Paperless.  This is the 21st century; it’s time to give up on paper. 
Continuing to receive paper means you have tons of mail to deal with.  You bring in the mail when you get home from work.  It sits there until you open it.  Then you open it, read it, and it sits there until you either file it or shred it.  Then you put it into the file or shred pile, and it sits there some more.  Stop the madness!!
Going digital with your important records means they take up almost no space at all, so you can get rid of most of those ugly file cabinets.  You save time and money because there are no file folders to buy, and no labels to write.  Filing is a snap; simply name your files properly and the computer sorts them by any number of ways.


More importantly, it’s easy to duplicate digital records to safely store copies offsite in case of disaster.


Get e-bills.  Most utilities, credit card companies, and phone service providers all offer their bills in digital versions so that you can stop receiving paper bills.  Take them up on this offer.  When you receive your e-bill by email, simply save it to a folder on your computer named for the biller.  I have a master folder named File Docs, and I keep them all there.


Scan what you can.  What you can’t get as electronic documents, scan.  Scanners used to cost of lot of money, but now you can get them inexpensively incorporated into printers, or standalone.  What you choose will depend on your needs, preferences, and budget.



Get a photo-quality scanner so that you can preserve photos as well as documents.  If you have a lot of paper to scan, consider a scanner with a sheet feeder.  If you have a lot of photo negatives, there is equipment specially designed for that use.


Whatever you choose, you’ll find it makes a world of difference.  Go here for a selection of scanners to review.


Standardize.  Take a lesson from WWII tank warfare.  The Germans used a variety of designs of tanks.  The Russians relied on two basic designs.  German tanks were probably superior, but all the different designs meant tons of different spare parts to stock and keep track of when the tanks inevitably broke down.  The Russian tanks won.


Think about that the next time you’re frustrated because you can’t find the right size lid to that storage container for tonight’s leftovers.  You have a container for every use, in every size.  You’re totally prepared for anything.  But you can never find what you need when you need it.
Forget that. 


Use only two sizes of inexpensive clear food storage containers.  One container should snugly hold two servings.  The other should hold about twice that.  Make sure they both use the same size lid.  If you have less than one serving, combine it with something else or don’t bother saving it.  Most people don’t use the more expensive storage containers enough to justify the added expense.  Supplement with plastic sandwich bags that seal and that’s all the leftover storage most people need.


Exploit your crock pot.  Or, if you’re like me, find it first, then exploit it.  It’s probably buried behind the wok, the bread maker, the espresso machine, the roasting pan, and assorted sauce pans.  If you don’t have one, seriously consider purchasing one.  If money is constrained, a refurbished or used one works quite nicely. 


The wonderful thing about a crock pot is that it takes so little to accomplish so much.  Create entire meals from one pot, without standing over the stove all day.  Now experiencing a resurgence in popularity because people have discovered that you can do much more with a crock pot than simply simmer stew, a crock pot can be your friend too.  Simple recipes can make meal preparation satisfying and simplified.


House the Homeless.  Disorganization is a combination of things with no home, and things not in their home.  Don’t support homelessness.  Make sure everything you own has a home, a place to rest out of the way and preferably out of sight.


On your desk, use storage containers and organizers to make sure that everything can be put away.  Then, develop the habit of putting things back in their home when you are finished.  You probably remember hearing the admonishment to put your toys away?  Well, some things never change!





“Getting organized” has such an intimidating sound to it that many people are defeated even before they start.  Instead of deciding to get everything organized, consider starting to use these three simple strategies – not all at once, but gradually,  the way real behavioral change is created. 


Good luck!


[see the original at www.ManifestationCoaching.com]

Web site update …

I spent this morning working on my web site, doing some minor content revision and design refinements.  I hope the slightly modified structure will be easier to navigate and make more sense to the first time visitor.

Your comments are always appreciated.

www.ManifestationCoaching.com