5 Time Management Myths That Affect Your Workplace Productivity

Management Strategy, Organization/Management, Skill Management/Business Skill, Time Management/Strategy

Any phenomenon that becomes “fashionable” instantly acquires its own mythology. This mythology forms a system of concepts that are accepted and not questioned. At the same time, the vast majority of people do not think about whether it corresponds to reality.

This paradox has existed as long as humanity. Some such misconceptions are harmless and cute. But misconceptions about any management, especially time management, lead to real mistakes in life and work, reduce motivation, and kill faith in oneself. Time management games and activities increase motivation, engagement, and problem-solving skills. They also improve resource management, speaks creativity, and enhances teamwork abilities.

So, what is the history of time management?

History of Time Management

The history of time management goes back to the distant past. As far back as 2000 years ago in ancient Rome, the famous thinker Seneca proposed to divide all time into time spent with benefit and useless.

Seneca also began to keep a permanent record of time in writing. The thinker said that when living a certain period of time, one should evaluate it in terms of occupancy. In the later history of time management, these ideas formed the basis of such a concept as “personal efficiency.

Leon Battista Alberti, a writer and Italian scholar who lived in the 15 century, said that those who know how to manage time usefully will always be successful. To do this, he suggested using 2 rules:

Make a to-do list every day in the morning.
Arrange things in decreasing order of importance.

For centuries, all of these principles existed only in theoretical form, and only since the 1980s, this topic has begun to move from theory to practice. For teens, it will be useful to read time management tips.

Time management is necessary not only for executives and business owners: each of us must be able to manage our own assets to enjoy the process of life in its entirety. Of course, not everyone needs time management. If a person has nothing to do in his or her life, and his or her main task is “to kill time”, then time management is an irrelevant and unnecessary discipline for such a person.

In other words, you should first decide whether you really lack time and where you would like to spend your free minutes, hours, and days when they appear.

Time management consists of several components:

Strict time management.
Optimization of time resources.
Planning a day (week, month, or another period of time).
Organization of motivation.

Time Management Myths That Affect Your Workplace Productivity

Time management is important not only for work: people who have mastered the art of time management are more cheerful, healthy, and successful in professional and personal life. Effective time management allows you to think about all your actions and decisions in terms of their appropriateness for your own development and improvement.

Myth Number 1: You can’t be a Successful Person Without Time Management

The main danger of this myth is that it equates being organized with being successful. This is not the same thing. It is the substitution of the essence with a tool.

At first glance, this myth seems very plausible. How can you be successful if you can’t consciously and systematically manage your time and activities? It seems like you can’t.

However, any success is first of all decision-making. And only in the second place is their execution. If you don’t make decisions or make the wrong ones, then no time management will help you at all. You will do a lot of things that lead you nowhere.

For example, Konstantin is a successful businessman. When I first met him and his style of doing business, I fell into a stupor. He was the epitome of anti-time management. Absolute unpredictability in his thoughts, actions, and decisions. Nevertheless, he has outstanding business accomplishments. Due to what? First of all – due to enormous experience, brilliant intuition, ability to make the most accurate decisions under conditions of lack of information, not to get lost in difficult situations, to be flexible and fearless.

And this is not an isolated example. Neither Konstantin nor others like him did not need the classic system of time management or rules for improving productivity. They succeeded without their help.

Myth Number 2: There are Universal Time Management Systems That Suit all People

Most books on time management inconspicuously carry the idea that time management systems are not personal. After all, this is management! And it is a universal thing. At best, the authors divide people into rationalistic and intuitive (orderly and chaotic).

A greater stupidity is hard to imagine. A time management system is built into a person’s way of life and changes it (and the image, and the person). If it does not do this, it is ineffective. And a person’s lifestyle depends on his or her values, beliefs, cognitive filters and strategies, life situation, type of nervous system, peculiarities of character, activity, etc.

Trying to change your lifestyle by copying techniques developed by someone else is like trying to transplant someone else’s organ. Your body will accept it only under conditions of suppressed immunity, i.e. partial destruction of your identity. The same happens when you copy someone else’s way of life. It disorganizes you. Basically, there are only three possible alternatives:

It will destroy your identity if you follow it fanatically.
You abandon it or modify it beyond recognition (but this is a rare option).
By chance, it will coincide with your personality traits and you will be able to apply it permanently (this is even rarer).

Myth Number 3: Time Management Doesn’t Work

The number of people who have tried living by time management and given up on it is greater than those who have succeeded.

In order for you to manage your time really effectively and without violence to your nature, you must construct a time management system for yourself. This requires a prior analysis of the characteristics of your personality, activities, lifestyle, and situation. If you set up a time management system for yourself – it doesn’t mean that all your time will be spent on work, the development of yourself, and your skills. You should also make time in this system for primitive things like watching movies using VPN for Amazon Prime or playing video games on PS4 or PC as well as other activities that help you relax and reboot.

The same about Konstantin, or rather about his sad experience of implementing time management.

Konstantin liked to attend all kinds of training, seminars, and other developmental events. At one of them, some charismatic person managed to plant in Konstantin’s head the bacillus of time management.

Konstantin decided to give it a try and hired himself a guru of time management. This teacher was the exact opposite of Constantine in temperament and most of his personality traits. However, he possessed great persuasiveness. The experiment of introducing time management into Konstantin’s life lasted about seven months.

Konstantin began to trust his intuition less and began to base his decisions on more formal and rational methods. As a result, for the first time in the last 14 years of his business career, he incurred serious losses (several tens of millions) and found himself on the verge of bankruptcy.

Now, being with Konstantin, it is better not to talk about time management.

Myth Number 4: Time Management Guarantees Personal Development

Many time-management techniques include blocks devoted to goal-setting. This is very correct and appropriate. But here lies a dangerous trap.

It lies in the fact that having reached a certain stage of development, people find themselves in a crisis associated with the need to rethink themselves and their life. He or she must make a kind of quantum leap. Instead, within the framework of time management, he or she is presented with rather primitive technologies of goal-setting.

In the vast majority of cases, these technologies are good in themselves. However, they allow you to choose goals based on meanings and values that are already familiar to you. And they do not work at all when you are experiencing an existential crisis.

If you fall into this trap, then instead of doing inner work on yourself and making a kind of quantum leap, you will move toward goals that are no longer relevant to you. You will lose time and exacerbate your own crisis.

For example, Elena is a talented person who worked for a long time as a top manager of a large company and finally opened her own business.

At the same time, Elena was always aware that the area of her professional development was not really interesting to her either when she was working as a hired employee or when she opened her own business. She was successful and highly professional. But all these years she was plagued by the feeling that she was out of place.

A year and a half after opening her business, this feeling became very strong. And then Elena went to training on goal setting and time management. Being an emotional and enthusiastic person, Elena came out of the training elated and with a list of new goals in her hands.

For eight months, Elena worked on achieving her new goals and got her way. What was the result? Severe disappointment and depression. Loss of meaning and motivation to move forward.

When I asked Elena why she thought this was the case, she said that the goals she had set in the training were totally artificial and superficial. With the shortage of time and group work, she formed pacifier goals: superficially attractive and appealing to the approval of others, but completely unresponsive to her deepest needs.

Myth Number 5: Time Management Immediately Starts Saving Your Time

This myth has probably caused the most casualties among time management recruits. Here is what a typical story of a victim of this myth looks like.

Vasily is a mid-level manager. He is promoted and made head of a division. The volume of tasks and responsibilities increases dramatically. Vasily ceases to have time and cope. But he does not give up and buys a hyper-popular in managerial circles book on time management.

Why does Vasya do this? Stupid question. To have more time. However, with amazement and irritation, Vasya notes that in an attempt to apply the great wisdom in the book, he gets less time, his life becomes more difficult, and the free time does not increase. And, funnily enough, all these phenomena only worsen over time.

After a little floundering in this situation and having exhausted his willpower reserves, Vasya powerfully forgets about any kind of time management. And later, upon hearing this magic word, he reacts aggressively and profanely.

What Happened? A tragic conflict between myth and reality.

Mythological time management is a magic pill that quickly and forever gets rid of your time problems. Real-time management is a painful process of changing your lifestyle and developing completely new and unfamiliar skills.

As soon as you start implementing a little bit of sophisticated time management in your life, your efficiency goes down dramatically instead of going up! And it remains low until new skills and habits are developed. And developing them takes extra time, motivation, and energy.

Because human is a lazy and fairy tale-believing creature, few people make it all the way to the end. Nevertheless, everyone should know how to avoid burnout.

A Practical Task

If you have never tried to implement time management in your life, please write for yourself on the sheet of paper:

What goals would you like to achieve with it, what desires to realize?
What in your way of life now prevents you from achieving these goals?
What in you/your character prevents you from achieving these goals?

If you have tried any of the time management systems but were not successful in it, please answer the following questions:

What time management systems have you used?
How would you characterize the features of that system/s?
What goals did you want to achieve by using them?
What prevented you from achieving those goals?
What didn’t suit you about the time management system you were using?

If you have tried any of the time management systems, implemented them, and are still using them, please answer the following questions:

What are the main features of your time management system?
Is there anything in your time management system that you find inconvenient or not fully effective? If yes, describe it.
What would you like to improve in your time management?

P.S. When answering the questions, please do not limit yourself to such general and meaningless concepts as “laziness” or “procrastination”. They do not explain anything, but only close the road to possible positive change. These questions will help you to understand what you really want.

The post 5 Time Management Myths That Affect Your Workplace Productivity appeared first on Calendar.

By: Susan Craig

Source: 5 Time Management Myths That Affect Your Workplace Productivity

Critics:

Time management is the process of planning and exercising conscious control of time spent on specific activities, especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity. It involves a juggling act of various demands upon a person relating to work, social life, family, hobbies, personal interests, and commitments with the finiteness of time. Using time effectively gives the person “choice” on spending or managing activities at their own time and expediency.

Time management may be aided by a range of skills, tools, and techniques used to manage time when accomplishing specific tasks, projects, and goals complying with a due date. Initially, time management referred to just business or work activities, but eventually, the term broadened to include personal activities as well. A time management system is a designed combination of processes, tools, techniques, and methods.

Time management is usually a necessity in any project management as it determines the project completion time and scope. It is also important to understand that both technical and structural differences in time management exist due to variations in cultural concepts of time. The major themes arising from the literature on time management include the following:

Creating an environment conducive to effectiveness (in terms of cost-benefit, quality of results, and time to complete tasks or project),
Setting of priorities,
The related process of reduction of time spent on non-priorities,
Implementation of goals.
See also
- Action item
- African time
- Attention management
- Calendaring software
- Chronemics
- Flow (psychology)
- Gantt chart
- Goal setting
- Interruption science
- Maestro concept
- Opportunity cost
- Order
- Polychronicity
- Precommitment
- Procrastination
- Professional organizing
- Prospective memory
- Punctuality
- Self-help
- Time and attendance
- Time perception
- Time to completion
- Time-tracking software
- Time value of money
- Work activity management
- Workforce management
- Workforce modeling

What Does It Mean to Be a Manager Today?

Organization/Management, Skill Management/Business Skill

A year into the pandemic, the implications of how Covid-19 has changed how people will work from now on are becoming clear. Many employees will be working in a hybrid world with more choices about where, when, and how much they work. For midsize companies specifically, Gartner analysis shows that 46% of the workforce is projected to be working hybrid in the near future.

To better understand the impact of Covid-19 on the future of work, we surveyed 3,049 knowledge workers and their managers across onsite, remote, and hybrid work contexts, as well as 75 HR leaders, including 20 leaders from midsize companies. Except where indicated, our findings come from these 2021 surveys.

Managers used to be selected and promoted largely based on their ability to manage and evaluate the performance of employees who could carry out a particular set of tasks. Within the last five years, HR executives started to hire and develop managers who were poised to be great coaches and teachers. But the assumption that coaching should be the primary function of management has been tested since the pandemic began. Three disruptive, transformative trends are challenging traditional definitions of the manager role:

Understanding Midsize Businesses

Normalization of remote work. As both employees and managers have become more distributed, their relationships to one another have also become more asynchronous. Gartner estimates that in more than 70% of manager-employee relationships, either the manager or the employee will be working remotely at least some of the time. This means that employees and their managers will be less likely to be working on the same things at the same time. Managers will have dramatically less visibility into the realities of their employees’ day-to-day and will begin to focus more on their outputs and less on the processes used to produce them.

Acceleration in use of technology to manage employees. More than one in four companies have invested in new technology to monitor their remote employees during the pandemic. Companies have been buying scheduling software, AI-enabled expense-report auditing tools, and even technologies to replace manager feedback using AI. While companies have been focused on how technology can automate employee tasks, it can just as effectively replace the tasks of managers. At the extreme, by 2024, new technologies have the potential to replace as much as 69% of the tasks historically done by managers, such as assigning work and nudging productivity.

Employees’ changing expectations. As companies have expanded the support they offer to their employees in areas like mental health and child care during the pandemic, the relationships between employees and their managers have started to shift to be more emotional and supportive. Knowledge workers now expect their managers to be part of their support system to help them improve their life experience, rather than just their employee experience.

When managerial tasks are replaced by technology, managers aren’t needed to manage workflows. When interactions become primarily virtual, managers can no longer rely on what they see to manage performance, and when relationships become more emotional, they can no longer limit the relationship to the sphere of work. These three trends have culminated in a new era of management where it’s less important to see what employees are doing and more important to understand how they feel.

Radical flexibility requires empathetic managers

To be successful in this new environment, managers must lead with empathy. In a 2021 Gartner survey of 4,787 global employees assessing the evolving role of management, only 47% of managers are prepared for this future role. The most effective managers of the future will be those who build fundamentally different relationships with their employees.

Empathy is nothing new. It’s a common term in the philosophy of good leadership, but it has yet to be a top management priority. The empathic manager is someone who can contextualize performance and behavior — who transcends simply understanding the facts of work and proactively asks questions and seeks information to place themselves in their direct reports’ contexts.

Empathy requires developing high levels of trust and care and a culture of acceptance within teams. This is a lot to ask of any individual: that they ask questions that produce vulnerable answers without compromising trust, diagnose the root cause of an employee’s behavior without making assumptions, and demonstrate the social-emotional intelligence necessary to imagine another’s feelings.

Empathy isn’t easy, but it’s worth it. In fact, in that same survey, 85% of HR leaders at midsize companies agreed that it’s more important now for managers to demonstrate empathy than it was before the pandemic. Further Gartner analysis shows that managers who display high levels of empathy have three times the impact on their employees’ performance than those who display low levels of empathy. Employees at organizations with high levels of empathy-based management are more than twice as likely to agree that their work environment is inclusive.

Creating a new workforce of empathic managers is especially difficult for midsize companies. While larger companies can earmark billions of dollars for learning and development for massive workforce transformation, smaller companies are more fiscally constrained and don’t have the same resources. Midsize companies also often don’t have the scale to create a managerial class within their workforce — they need managers to be both managers and doers.

Midsize companies need to find solutions to develop more empathic managers without massive investments and continue to have those managers work rather than just manage. This will require organizations and their HR functions to develop their managers’ skills, awaken their mindsets to manage in new ways, and create the capacity across the organization to enable this shift. Here’s how to adopt a holistic strategy that invests in all three of those strategies.

Develop empathy skills through vulnerable conversation practice

Asking managers to lead with empathy can be intimidating. Many managers understand empathy conceptually but aren’t sure how to use it as a management tool: Are these questions too personal? How do I create a trusting relationship with my direct reports? Is caring acceptable at work? How do I talk about social justice?

It goes against deeply ingrained assumptions that we should keep work and life separate. Managers need opportunities to practice — and, crucially, room to make mistakes — in order to learn to lead with empathy. Unfortunately, only 52% of 31 learning and development leaders polled in May 2020 report that they’re increasing their focus on soft skills.

To build empathy, Zillow creates cohorts of managers across the organization who engage in rotating one-on-one conversations with their peers to troubleshoot current managerial challenges. These conversations offer frequent, psychologically safe opportunities to engage in vulnerable conversations focused on how managers can commit to specific actions to care for themselves, as well as support the well-being of their team.

Managers are able to practice their empathy with their peers, asking specific questions to understand their challenges and articulating their own circumstances in response to probes. Importantly, these types of conversations offer managers the opportunity to fail — and in a safe space — which is an opportunity rarely given to figures of authority. They also help managers feel less isolated by practicing empathy with peers, who are less likely to pass judgment.

Empower a new manager mindset by creating a network of support

According to our 2021 survey of 4,787 global employees, 75% of HR leaders from midsize companies agree that managers’ roles have expanded, yet roles and teams are not structured to support well-being.

Goodway Group, a fully remote company since 2007, knows that the best business results and purpose for work happens within teams and that distributed teams face greater challenges with communication and shared visibility. Goodway created a dedicated role, the team success partner, whose responsibilities include fostering trust and psychological safety and supporting team health. Managers work with team success partners to respond to the unique challenges distributed employees are facing; this includes facilitating remote psychologically safe remote conversations and supporting new team member assimilation.

Managers’ motivation to be empathic increases when they have a support system that makes it clear that the burden isn’t theirs alone and when organizations invest in roles designed to support them.

Create manager capacity for empathy by optimizing reporting lines

Managers are already overburdened by the demands of the evolving work environment, and actions that drive empathy are time consuming. While 70% of midsize HR leaders agree managers are overwhelmed by their responsibilities, only 16% of midsize organizations have redefined the manager role to reduce the number of responsibilities on their plate.

Recognizing the pressure on managers to maintain team connectedness in a remote environment, leaders at Urgently, a digital roadside assistance company, rebalanced their managers’ workloads. When managers have a team size they can handle, they’re able to dedicate time to fostering deeper connections and responding with empathy. Moving to a hybrid environment creates complexity; one key part of the solution is to help managers prioritize their workload to focus on fewer, higher-impact relationships with individuals and teams.

Organizations that equip managers to be empathic by holistically addressing the three common barriers — skill, mindset, and capacity — will achieve outsized returns on performance in the post-Covid-19 world.

By:Brian Kropp, Alexia Cambon, and Sara Clark

Source: What Does It Mean to Be a Manager Today?

Critics:

In the field of management, strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by an organization‘s managers on behalf of stakeholders, based on consideration of resources and an assessment of the internal and external environments in which the organization operates. Strategic management provides overall direction to an enterprise and involves specifying the organization’s objectives, developing policies and plans to achieve those objectives, and then allocating resources to implement the plans.

Academics and practicing managers have developed numerous models and frameworks to assist in strategic decision-making in the context of complex environments and competitive dynamics. Strategic management is not static in nature; the models often include a feedback loop to monitor execution and to inform the next round of planning.

Michael Porter identifies three principles underlying strategy:

creating a “unique and valuable [market] position“
making trade-offs by choosing “what not to do”
creating “fit” by aligning company activities with one another to support the chosen strategy

Corporate strategy involves answering a key question from a portfolio perspective: “What business should we be in?” Business strategy involves answering the question: “How shall we compete in this business?”

Management theory and practice often make a distinction between strategic management and operational management, with operational management concerned primarily with improving efficiency and controlling costs within the boundaries set by the organization’s strategy.

Interorganizational relationships allow independent organizations to get access to resources or to enter new markets. Interorganizational relationships represent a critical lever of competitive advantage.^[40]

The field of strategic management has paid much attention to the different forms of relationships between organizations ranging from strategic alliances to buyer-supplier relationships, joint ventures, networks, R&D consortia, licensing, and franchising.

On the one hand, scholars drawing on organizational economics (e.g., transaction costs theory) have argued that firms use interorganizational relationships when they are the most efficient form comparatively to other forms of organization such as operating on its own or using the market. On the other hand, scholars drawing on organizational theory (e.g., resource dependence theory) suggest that firms tend to partner with others when such relationships allow them to improve their status, power, reputation, or legitimacy.

Understanding Branch Managers: A Demanding and Highly Visible Job

Management Hacks, Management Strategy, Revenue Management, Skill Management/Business Skill, Workforce Management

A branch manager is an executive who is in charge of a particular location, or branch office, of a bank or other financial services company. Branch managers are typically responsible for all of the functions of that branch office, including hiring employees, overseeing the approval of loans and lines of credit (LOC), marketing, building a rapport with the community to attract business, assisting with customer relations, and ensuring that the branch meets its goals and objectives in a timely manner.

Key Takeaways

A branch manager is an employee who oversees the operations of a branch of a bank or financial institution.
Branch manager’s responsibilities include managing resources and staff, developing and attaining sales goals, delivering exceptional customer service, and growing the location’s revenues.
In prospective branch managers, employers look for someone with experience, proven success, and leadership skills.
Academically, branch managers typically have undergraduate degrees in finance, accounting, or related fields of study.

Understanding Branch Managers

A financial institution’s executives place great confidence in the company’s branch managers, expecting them to run their locations as their own businesses. A branch manager’s job description includes assuming responsibility for virtually all functions of their branch—including growing that location’s customer base and elevating the community’s perception of the company’s brand.

Branch managers also have the responsibility of delegating tasks to skilled workers and are responsible for their successes and failures. In fact, the branch manager is responsible for the success or failure of the branch they manage. Excellent multitasking and organization skills are necessary to accomplish tasks in a timely and efficient manner, not only for the branch manager but also for the people they manage. The branch manager will also oversee the performance of subsidiaries, such as bank tellers, loan officers, and back-office workers.

Requirements for Branch Managers

Because branch managers’ responsibilities include developing and maintaining good relationships with customers and employees, they should possess strong sales, people-management, and customer-service skills. Other attributes required of a branch manager are diligence, strong analytical skills, and the ability to prioritize, multitask, and focus on detail.

Branch managers are expected to be proactive about networking to bring in new business and increase revenue. A new branch manager might join the local chamber of commerce and attend business and networking events, where one often can meet influential community members. For example, a branch manager might meet a local hospital administrator and work out a deal to provide the branch’s services to the hospital’s employees.

Branch Manager Qualifications

Branch managers usually have undergraduate degrees in finance, accounting, or related fields. Some financial institutions will look at a branch manager job candidate with a non-finance-related bachelor’s degree as long as they have a master’s degree in a finance-related field.

Financial institutions hiring for branch manager positions look for candidates with both prior financial experience and proven leadership experience. They also seek candidates with a track record of increasing the number of a bank’s accounts, and hiring banks expect branch managers to be deeply knowledgeable about banking-industry regulations. Once hired, branch managers have the freedom to choose their teams, but they also must be able to ensure their teams’ success.

By: Adam Hayes

Source: Branch Manager Definition

Millionaire Mindset: 6 Steps to Think and Act Like a Millionaire

Business Planning/Strategies, Skill Management/Business Skill, Success Facts, Successful Strategy/Practice

The millionaire mindset is the key to changing your fortune. It’s how you go from average results to great wealth.

To become a millionaire you must first learn how to think, feel and act like a millionaire. Once you have achieved that mindset, you will have access to the riches of the world.

If you want to be rich; have a million dollar fortune and feel financially free then you should start with the millionaire mindset.

6 Steps to the Millionaire Mindset

Invest in yourself
Invest in learning
Don’t work for money, work to learn
Don’t learn for entertainment, learn for value
Invest in vehicles that will generate income.
Shift your motivation from getting to giving.

Follow these six steps to get the millionaire mindset and start to change your fortunes today.

Why I don’t make Millions?

I, like so many others in the world, had been brought up with the message: ‘Get a good job, work hard and you will be able to enjoy a modest to good life.’

This, I have to admit sounded like good advice. My fiancée and I had good jobs and we were living well and saving a reasonable amount of money.

But when we started to think about how we wanted to live, and the life we wanted for our future children, and how we wanted to live in retirement, we came to the realization that we would need to work a very long time and save a whole lot of money. And even then, we couldn’t live the way we wanted.

Steps to Think and Act Like a Millionaire

I knew there was a better way. I was aware that there were people living much easier. And I wanted more than the normal plan would give. I wanted financial freedom.

Millionaire Lessons

So I needed some new messages and some new lessons.

I read mountains of material and one of the most helpful resources I found, the one that got me started, was a blog I read for free on Medium.

I read Benjamin P. Hardy’s article, ‘Want To Become A Multi-Millionaire? Do These 15 Things Immediately’, and decided I was going to start following some of his rules and try and see if it would make a change.

I would encourage you all to read this article and learn directly from him what it means to live like a millionaire. However, at this stage I just want to explain how rules 1–6 have changed my ways of thinking and put me on a path to success.

Rules of the Millionaire Mindset

1. Invest At Least 10% Of Your Income In Yourself

The basic lesson of this rule, is if you want to be a millionaire you need to be committed.

If you just have dreams and plans, you will never really be driven to make the kind of changes needed to have the type of life you want.

Also, if you want to be earning millions, you need to have the skill to earn millions. You need to be worth it. To become worth it you need to invest in developing yourself and you need to invest real dollars so you take it seriously.

Success Lesson

So I realized, if I wanted to earn big and become a million dollar level earner I needed to invest in myself. To begin with I started by researching and taking advantage of the free information on the internet. As my ideas became more focused I began to make small investments in books that I thought would hold valuable knowledge that I required.

I bought several books, which I will expand on at a later date, but by thinking of them as an investment of my valuable time and money, I read them with purpose and soaked up all the knowledge they had to offer on becoming a success and making millions of dollars.

To read about some of the books that have boosted my understanding, my confidence and my millionaire mindset, follow these links:

Lessons from Stephen R. Covey at Follow your Passion and Find Your Voice
Lessons on Investing and Life from Tony Robbins at How to be a Success: Become Unshakeable (Part 1).
And you can follow the links for much more.

The next step

The next step was to up the game a small amount. From my research and reading I learned the value of online resources and the power of being part of a professional community. So I invested in a subscription to Medium. Knowing the valuable insights it contained and that it was costing me valuable money, I was driven to read every day.

This kept me focused with the kind of reading that was geared to making money and being influential in the 21st century. It also kept me up to date with what was happening in the world. But most importantly, it put me in contact with serious people; people playing the game at a higher level than I was. This expanded my knowledge, my thinking, my community and my scope of living.

Future steps

My next step will be to take courses that will work to provide me with the skills to one day launch my own business. A business that I will be inspired by, one that won’t feel like work. One that will eventually lead to full financial freedom and the feeling of working because I want to work and not because I have too.

The Lesson

By being invested and ‘having some skin in the game’, a wild dream can start to become a reality.

By putting money and time on the line, it forces you to take it seriously and to make very serious evaluations about what is possible.

Also, by expanding your knowledge, you start to answer the questions you need answered. Through this process, my fiancée found out where to invest our money and she made some great moves. I came to know where my skills were and about the areas I needed to go to find that great idea that would make me boss.

If you really want to live like a millionaire you need to be more than interested. You must be invested!

2. Invest At Least 80% of Your “Off” Time into Learning

I used to think that you work hard then you got to enjoy your time off.

I used to work my full day then come home, go to the gym, have dinner, then relax — which usually meant watching TV, playing guitar, going out with friends, drinking, eating and so on.

Basically, all my free time was about consuming what I earned during my work time.

Millionaire Mindset Rule 2 was a huge change for me.

My fiancée and I decided we would no longer waste our free time. We would invest it. At night I started reading articles and books about investment and making money. She would study the stock market and discuss investment options with her friends in the stock market game.

On the weekend, my fiancée worked on Saturday, so I decided to make Saturday my writing day. It started with 2 hours and then it quickly became a whole day job.

I cut back my drinking on the weekend and invested much more time into productive activities. This cut down our consumption on things we didn’t need and freed up more money to invest. We were becoming more focused on our goals and more aware of our situation in the world.

Millionaire Mindset: Becoming more productive

Free time, entertainment and relaxation are all very important. But like everything, they should be done in moderation and with purpose. We spend quality time doing what makes us happy. But we spend the greater quantity of our free time on making us stronger, smarter and better. This helps us to live with purpose and guides us towards our million dollar goals.

You can’t earn a million dollar lifestyle by paying for free time. Invest your free time so you can spend your time free in the future.

3. Don’t Work For Money, Work to Learn

By this stage we were starting to develop a millionaire mindset. We were starting to invest our savings and feeling very grateful that we were in a situation where we could afford to make substantial investments every month. We were making modest gains from the stock market and feeling very good about our decision to become investors.

However, the dream of being financially free and living blissful everyday was not yet a reality. And it was starting to become frustrating dragging myself into work every day.

How to have a millionaire mindset when you have a average job?

In my dreams I was rich, I was the boss — I was making the world a better place with my great wealth and amazing company. But in reality, I was still working day to day.

However, when I decided to change my mindset and decided to see work as a process of learning and not just a process of trading time for money, I discovered much more purpose and passion for it. I came to see that I had skills teaching. That probably the best area for me to make the most money was still in education.

Don’t Focus on the money.

So, I decided not to focus on the money. Work was now a possibility to learn and develop skills. Where possible, I guided work to fit my new needs; as a teacher I was able to choose activities and topics that played into my interests. My students also benefited from learning about real life issues and skills.

Alongside this, I became more conscious of learning how to become a better teacher, a better communicator, how to use my time better, how to deal with children and colleagues and how to use new technology and so on. I was learning more skills and purposefully becoming smarter, stronger, and better.

Don’t simply work to make money. Work to learn the skills you need to take your life in the direction you want to go.

4. Don’t Learn For Entertainment, Learn To Create More Value

A simple but tough lesson for me. As a teacher, I value learning for the sake of learning and I enjoy it.

However, if you want to have the millionaire minset, you can’t waste your valuable time learning things that don’t add value.

For me it was difficult. I used to love playing guitar. When I was in Ha Noi, just prior to coming to Ho Chi Minh and starting out on this journey, I played guitar all the time. I was watching YouTube and studying how to play Spanish style guitar and how to finger-pick. And I had finally mastered Stairway to Heaven — well I could play along start to end (minus the solo).

Now, I don’t play much guitar anymore. But when I weigh the value of my future success to my family, as opposed to the joy they would get from my guitar playing, I know I am making the right decision.

For others it may have been the right decision to keep playing guitar, but for me I know deep down I don’t have the passion to make it pay — my employable passion is writing, so that’s what I’m working at and trying to master.

Nurture the passions you make pay.

I have always loved creative writing and I studied it at university. When I started at my new school I put my hand up to run a creative writing class and I make time every week to write. However, before I was writing very casually and it was very much an enjoyable time filling activity.

Now I write with purpose: if it’s going to take up my valuable time it needs to add value. Now I write professionally; I write to improve my life and my abilities, and I write with the goal that I will one day be able to make something out of it.

Get rid of hobbies that are bad.

The other thing I love is TV. I haven’t been able to cut it out all together, but it’s now a very minor amount of my time. It’s part of that 20% rest and relax time, and I’m cool with that.

Long story short: If you want the millionaire mindset, you need to make everything add value. You don’t have time to master hobbies and interests that don’t add value. But at the same time, if you take a million-dollar-mindset to your hobbies, you can turn waste of time activities into a true path to success.

If I thought I could play like Hendricks I’d be a guitarist, and not a writer. Find your true passions and skills and make them pay!

5. Invest At Least 10% Of Your Income Into Vehicles That Will Generate More Money

The path to absolute financial freedom is by investing money in passive income generators like the stock market and property.

This is central to the millionaire mindset. You can never work your way to free. You need to leverage your time and money and make money flow to you.

The obvious streams of wealth creation are stocks and property.

We plan to do both, but at the start, with minimal capital, we started with the stock market. I will cover more on this at a later stage, but basically, the more you can invest and the earlier you invest the better.

If you can start early and put away at least 10% of your income every month, then through the power of compound interest you can create a revenue stream that will one day let you retire before you’re old and allow you to live well.

My partner and I wanted freedom. We want it in 10 years time. So we put every spare dollar we can find into the stock market. We are making good returns by investing in good companies. We also feel a sense of empowerment when we think of ourselves as part owners of some of the biggest companies in the country.

Also, by being invested, we watch our money working for us every day.

Advantages of Investing

It is a reminder of what we’re worth and a driver for us to increase our worth. We still live well. Not as extravagantly as others, but we don’t go without.

I will admit that occasionally I do get a bit jealous when I see my colleagues jet-setting off here and there every holiday. However, every day I’m buoyed by the thought that one day we will be making money by doing nothing at all. What we don’t consume today will multiply and provide me with everything I need in years to come. That’s a very happy thought.

Don’t work for money, make money work for you.

6. Shift Your Motivation From Getting To Giving

All of these lessons turned me on the millionaire mindset, the kind of purposeful thinking and living that is needed if you want to go for massive success. However, there was still one massive question that bugged me:

Why do I deserve to make millions?

I was raised with a Christian ideal for money — the message very clearly was “rich don’t go to Heaven”. So for me it was difficult to say I deserved to be a millionaire. It was something obscene to want to live lavishly and to have more than others. But rule number 6 gave me the answer.

Ethics of the Millionaire Mindset

If you want to make millions and you want to be a big success, you need to provide value to others. If you want to have a big successful company, you need to provide something your customers need.

Also, if my motivation is solely to be rich so that I can have a lot of stuff, then I won’t make it. Right now I have lots of stuff and I don’t really need much more — it would be nice but I don’t need it and it makes it hard to work extra hard for stuff you don’t need.

Furthermore, if it’s just about free time for me then that’s not enough.

Work gives people purpose. I used to be a slacker trying to avoid work and I can tell you it didn’t make me feel good. I had plenty of free time and nothing to do.

Contribution is the ultimate purpose.

But what drives me is my need to give to others. I have started to develop my idea for a business and it is rewarding because it fixes a problem in the world and it is designed to help humanity with its very real needs.

This genuine motivation drives me to write every Saturday morning, even after I’ve worked all week and I wake up already living like a wealthy person. I can see the value and I love doing it, and it’s what I want to do forever.

I’m also really driven for my investments to do well. Not because I want more stuff, but because I want more time with my fiancée. I want to be able to spend more time with my son. And I want to be able to help people in trouble and I want to be a force for good in the world.

If I just wanted the money and the stuff, I would give up now. It’s too hard to win big just for stuff I don’t need. But I have a passion to make everything better. I want to live that million dollar life style I dream of and I want to help as many people as possible.

Make your life a gift to the world and your life will become a gift to you and let you live like a millionaire regardless of the money in the bank.

Now I have the Millionaire Mindset:

In Hardy’s list he goes on to explain how to build your business into a million dollar business. I will work through these steps as I start to develop my own business ideas further. But for the time being, I truly believe that following these initial guidelines have put me on a path to tremendous success. In this way Hardy has given a great gift and I have no doubt he will have all the success he deserves.

By: Joseph Brown

Source: Millionaire Mindset: 6 Steps to Think and Act Like a Millionaire | by Joseph Brown | The Startup | Medium

8 Bad Money Habits

Aliyan Shaikh in Business Teaching

How I am Growing $0 to $80,000 and How You Can Too

The Retired Millennial in The Post-Grad Survival Guide

The Kakeibo Budget Helped Me with My Money and My Relationship

YiShun.Lai in The Startup

4 Key Pieces of Financial Advice Americans Wish They Could Give to Their Younger Selves | The…

Staff in The Motley Fool

If You’re Trying to Get Rich — Go About it the Right Way

Lynda Coker in The Ascent

The Top 3 Investments to Make in Your 20’s

Darby Days in The Post-Grad Survival Guide

The FIRE Movement Isn’t For Everyone

Aphinya Dechalert in Hustle Thrive Grow

Don’t Be Tricked With “Low APR Financing”

Pendora in The Startup

Brian Tracy

I think you’ll agree with me when I say that everybody wants to know how to become a millionaire and get rich. Unfortunately, some people just don’t know where to start. Would you be surprised to learn that you can get rich in your own way, starting today? http://bit.ly/2ZBFdpX The following 6 tips will help you visualize the road ahead of you and enable you to set goals to make more money than you ever dreamed.

Learn how to think like a millionaire with my FREE download. Click the link above! ___ Learn more: Give me a follow on Clubhouse! @briantracy — see you there! Subscribe to my channel for free offers, tips and more! YouTube: http://ow.ly/ScHSb Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/BrianTracyPage Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/BrianTracy Google+: +BrianTracyOfficialPage Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/BrianTracy Instagram: @TheBrianTracy Blog: http://bit.ly/1rc4hlg

What Is Management 3.0 & Why You Should Pay Attention To Energize Your Teams

Business Leadership/Strategies, Management Hacks, Management Strategy, Revenue Management, Skill Management/Business Skill

Jurgen Appelo is a software engineer, trainer, entrepreneur, author, speaker and traveler, who has been driving agility in companies. One of his works, “ Management 3.0 ” , condenses a team management methodology so that they can survive amid chaos and fragility.

This model, based on Edgar Morin’s so-called complexity theory, is based on the notion that a system – a company, a government, a project – is not feasible to analyze as a mere sum of its component parts; rather, it is the relationships and interactions that give it meaning and momentum. To graph this, imagine a network, with interlocking threads connecting each component. These threads are the facts, actions, decisions, and interactions that make up the world.

Read: Because it’s so much more fun: 10 reasons to work as a team

That is why management has been seen for several years as a system of networks and people, of dynamic relationships, and not only about areas or departments, profits and processes. It is a living system, not machines that systematically replicate the same result.

Principles for energizing and developing talent

In its 3.0 model, Appelo shares several principles that serve to support the work of leaders and teams in today’s changing world. Here are some of them:

1. Energize people

To achieve this, it is necessary to know what it is that motivates them and that is part of their life purpose: the more consistent it is with the purpose of the organization, there will be a greater individual commitment and team cooperation. For the psychologist and professor Edward Deci, there are two types of motivations:

Extrinsic: stimuli that are provided from outside the person (for example, a performance bonus, constant congratulations from the leader, etc.).
Intrinsic: those stimuli that are internal and relevant to the person, even when it is not their primary goal (for example, a project in charge). However, if you find a meaning, a why in what you do, you connect better and there is your own reward.

Author Daniel Pink offers a similar look at intrinsic motivation in his book “Drive”, where he affirms that most people are moved more by this type of impulse than by extrinsic. In other words, in the end and in essence, people care more about satisfaction than external rewards, although they should not be lacking, and he explains that there are three factors that new management leaders need to take into account to boost talent: mastery -the desire of each one to be better in what is important to him-, autonomy -the impulse to guide his own life-; let me mention self-leadership-; and purpose – intention to serve something greater than ourselves.

2. Empower teams

To achieve this, the author of Management 3.0 points out that it is entirely possible for each team to organize itself, if it has the confidence of the leaders.

At this point, it is essential that those who lead people focus on doing their job and not on micro-management and that teams participate in collective decisions on relevant issues. In addition, it is necessary for everyone to understand that they are part of a joint system, and not the mere sum of individualities, and that the knowledge of market needs is not in the hands of a single person, but that there is a broader perspective of their needs.

To empower, there are four lines of action that are strategic to generate relationships of trust:

Let the leader trust his team.
Let the team trust their leader.
Let team members trust each other.
Let the leader trust himself.

3. Development of skills

We already know that it is difficult for any company to achieve results if its members are not trained; and the leaders are responsible for enabling the conditions for this process to take place. Some ways are:

Leading by example: living what is preached.
Promote self-learning: appreciate personal maturing time.
Coaching and mentoring: as transversal support and support tools throughout the organization.
Training and certification: to raise standards against the competition.
Collaborative learning: internal development, where everyone learns from each other.
Learning from error: doing retrospectives and tests in controlled environments.
Measure the results: feedback in the shortest possible cycles; use of keeping metrics on information radiators; indicators agreed between those who participate.
Smaller teams: the author recommends no more than 10 to 12 people.

4. Improve everything and observe the team environment

It is key in the management 3.0 model to focus on real continuous improvement, for which it is necessary to facilitate change processes and model the natural resistance that may appear.

Some suggestions for leaders are to observe the team environment, what they need, and let it be known that you are available; find cracks or faults and go to their roots to promote solutions that the team implements; define clear and specific goals and have great communication skills, a key factor of every good manager.

To learn more: The 4 keys to authentic leadership

Also, incentivize defining small victories or milestones that energize people; review achievements and not just failures; and it is also essential to recognize people.

The implementation of this leadership style implies a cultural change in companies that is not necessarily rapid, although it can be agile, if you have the conviction and vision to carry it out.

Ultimately, it depends on each company how far they want to go and on each leader, how much they want their teams to develop. Two questions that only they can answer.

You may be interested in: Keys to achieve a success-oriented work team

By: Daniel Colombo

Source: What Is Management 3.0 and Why You Should Pay Attention to Energize Your Teams

Management 3.0

Many teams use Mind Maps to explore certain topics. Similarly you can use Personal Maps to explore your team itself. Personal Maps facilitate team collaboration and bonding in a rather distant world. With this video, you will learn how to use Personal Maps to break down the barriers of cubicles and longer distances, and then you may even learn how silly you were when you thought you had nothing in common! Here you can learn more about this Management 3.0 Workout: https://management30.com/product/work… Here’s a trick, instead of presenting your own, spark conversations by presenting each other! What are you waiting for? Try this 7-minute exercise out and tell us below how it went!

How To Keep Sustainability At The Forefront Of Decision-Making

Business Goals/Programs, Business Leadership/Strategies, Business Planning/Strategies, Skill Management/Business Skill

In times of great upheaval, it can be difficult for businesses to see the big picture. Sure, making quick, data-driven decisions to reach the right customer at the right moment is important, especially when business is uncertain. But bigger aspirational goals are still essential—maybe more so.

This dynamic can be especially true when it concerns corporate sustainability—sometimes referred to as environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals that measure the societal impact of a company or business. ESG goals are designed to allow businesses to meet their present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. And ignoring those longer-term goals in the service of the here and now can undermine the future health of both the company and their customers.

In many ways, deprioritizing ESG goals in times of crisis is understandable. When economic strains are great and the business future looks cloudy, leaders often hunker down with a laser focus on the bottom line. But they must also continue to focus on the soul of their corporation, and what differentiates their products and their people.

Today, sustainability should be front and center for companies. Business leaders increasingly see sustainability as a key facet of their mission and build it into their principles and strategy to ensure business resilience. Further, they need to acknowledge the business risk of ignoring sustainability, whether through supply chain disruptions, public perception, or lack of investment in upcoming technologies.

A plan for progress

First, let’s define our terms—what do we mean by “sustainability”? A good place to start is with the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a collection of 17 interlinked goals designed to be a “blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all.”

The SDGs include decreasing hunger and poverty, combating climate change, creating clean water, reducing income inequality, and forging better educational opportunities. They were set in 2015 by the U.N. General Assembly and are intended to be achieved by 2030.

Today, we hear quite a bit about climate change and the need to reduce carbon emissions, but sustainability is much broader—including environmental and societal impact. Not all management teams and boards are up to speed on what their company can and should do to improve their footprint, even if employees have good data and solid proposals. Here are six things business leaders can do to stay on track to meet ambitious ESG goals.

1. Make the business case

Sustainability makes business sense. A focus on ESG can help management reduce capital costs and improve the firm’s valuation. That’s because as more investors look to put money into companies with stronger ESG performance, larger pools of capital will be available to those companies. According to a study by the United Nations Global Compact and Accenture, “between 2013-2019, companies with consistently high environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance enjoyed 4.7x higher operating margins and lower volatility than low ESG performers over the same period.”

“Over the past several months, when global markets have faced tremendous pressures and volatility, companies with high ESG scores have continued to outperform, experiencing a cumulative relative return 6.3% higher than bottom performers and facing lower volatility.”

– Accenture report, “The green behind the cloud,” September 2020

Additionally, according to a 2018 global survey by Accenture of nearly 30,000 consumers in 35 countries, 62% of respondents wanted companies to take a stand on current and broadly relevant issues, including sustainability. And 42% of consumers walk away from the brand in frustration if the company doesn’t align with customer beliefs.

2. Keep an eye on the data

Everything around us is affected by big data today and your work on sustainability should be no exception. Keep a close eye on measuring your goals, performance, and operational changes with data. Be especially mindful of the sourcing and reliability of the data collected.

One big tire company, for instance, uses data generated by sensors in their tires globally to reduce waste, increase profits, and reduce the number of defective tires going to landfills, thus doing their bit for the environment. Small improvements in efficiency due to resource optimization can result in big savings.

Related: Unlock the transformational power of information you’re already collecting. Get the “CIO’s Guide to Data Analytics and Machine Learning.”

3. Make sustainability a key part of your executive structure

Organizations should have a chief sustainability officer and team working closely with line-of-business and tech leadership. The chief sustainability officer needs to be in board meetings and other gatherings where the long-term health of the company is considered. They must be a bridge between technologists and business strategists, pushing them to look at sustainability through a new lens—a technology lens—and asking how technology can help a company build a more sustainable world.

4. Expand your ecosystem

Reaching your sustainability goals doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It requires an ecosystem of both government and nongovernment organizations, researchers, scientists, technologists, and businesses, for example, who share the same views. Establishing this ecosystem enables collaboration through the sharing of knowledge, data, analytics, and technologies. Seek to collaborate with others who support and foster similar goals.

Throw out your regular playbook. Sustainability is not just about technology—it is about enabling change to the business processes. It requires us all to think much more collaboratively. We are in this together.

Google Cloud and Unilever, for instance, are working together to fight deforestation through sustainable commodity sourcing. By combining the power of cloud computing with satellite imagery and AI through Google Cloud and Google Earth Engine, Unilever is building a more holistic view of the forests, water cycles, and biodiversity that intersects their supply chain—raising sustainable sourcing standards for suppliers and bringing them closer to their goal of ending deforestation and regenerating natural resources.

This will allow Unilever to provide a better picture of the ecosystems connected to their supply chain, and create a better mechanism for detecting deforestation. Ultimately, it will lead to greater accountability while simultaneously prioritizing critical areas of forest and habitats in need of protection.

5. Be an internal evangelist for change

As a business leader committed to helping the organization meet ambitious ESG goals, being an internal evangelist and continuously championing the importance of sustainable practices is key. Make it your mission to reinforce the mindset that sustainability is not optional—it’s imperative not only for the success of the organization but for much broader, purpose-driven motives beyond that. Work on collaborating with other managers to propose and execute on initiatives to “green” operations within each department. Commit to following through on these initiatives, measuring the impact, and improving the effectiveness as you go.

6. Make bold commitments—even if the path there isn’t clear

As Accenture underscores in this September 2020 report on how a thoughtful cloud-first approach can help boost your profits and benefit the planet, “the greater the ambition, the greater the reduction in carbon emissions.” Broaden the scope of possibility by setting ambitious sustainability goals and timelines for your organization. You might not know how to get there, but making bold, transparent commitments opens the door for increased collaboration and sets the direction for others who might be able to help find a way.

For example, in September Google announced a new goal to operate on 24/7 carbon-free energy in all our data centers and campuses worldwide by 2030. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet was candid, saying, “this is far more challenging than the traditional approach of matching energy usage with renewable energy, but we’re working to get this done by 2030.” Establishing executive buy-in, setting shared goals, enforcing accountability, and consistently measuring and evaluating your progress will make all the difference when it comes to moving the needle.

It may be hard to do, but I believe that now, even during a global crisis, sustainability should be at the center of a business’s decision-making. Sustainability is not only good for your bottom line, but it’s also good for your top line and good for the planet—the perfect trifecta.

Keep the momentum going: Reduce your environmental impact with Google Cloud. Explore tools and technology for sustainability at scale.

Jen Bennett

Jen is a Technical Director in Google’s Office of the CTO where she collaborates and co-innovates with Google’s strategic customers. She has spent her career leading engineering and product organizations leveraging data and analytics to transform a number of industries from sports and media to manufacturing. In her free time, Jen reached the pinnacle of soccer (football) as a FIFA referee refereeing several Women’s World Cups between 2002-2010. Jen holds a MS BioEngineering from University of Pittsburgh and a BSEE from Cornell University.

Churchill College, University of Cambridge

Businesses are under pressure to become socially and environmentally sustainable, but this creates difficulties in decision-making, as executives need to reconcile competing social, environmental and economic demands. Most of the solutions proposed to this problem have focused either on improving information and analysis (Zapico, 2014), on cognitive approaches (Hahn, Preuss, Pinkse, & Figge, 2014) or on organisational issues, such as shared values (Epstein, Buhovac, & Yuthas, 2015). However, there has been very little work looking at the integrated set of capabilities that organisations might need to be able to address multiple tensions. We therefore set out to understand how executives experience the conflicting demands of sustainable business, and how they resolve these tensions in decision-making.

To Recognize Risks Earlier, Invest in Analytics

Analytics, Business Management PLR, Management Strategy, Organization/Management, Revenue Management, Skill Management/Business Skill, Workforce Management

You’ve probably heard business leaders justify their flat-footedness in a crisis by claiming that every organization is flying blind in times of deep uncertainty. But in fact some leaders know precisely where they’re going. They understand what’s required to chart a course through market turbulence, and they’ve built organizations with keen situational awareness.

When it comes to developing the ability to figure out where things are heading and respond nimbly to a changing environment, nothing is more important than analytics. Unfortunately, in recent years analytics (also known as data mining or business intelligence) has become the unloved stepchild of data sciences, overshadowed by machine learning and statistics. Those two disciplines layer mathematical sophistication on top of a foundation of human intuition, creating an appealing illusion of objectivity and deft steering. Ironically, of the three, analytics is the most essential competency for navigating crises.

Solutions based on AI and machine learning hum along well during stable times but fall apart when disaster strikes. These technologies automate tasks by extracting patterns from data and turning them into instructions. Such models can quickly become obsolete when the inputs to the system change. Analytics, in contrast, alerts you when the rules of the game are changing. Without that kind of a warning, automation solutions can quickly go off the rails, leaving you exposed to exogenous shocks.

Statistics has a similar shortcoming during a crisis. Statisticians help decision-makers get rigorous answers. But what if they’re asking the wrong questions? While statistical skills are required to test hypotheses, analysts have the acumen to come up with the right hypotheses in the first place. To attempt statistics without analytics, you’d need great confidence in your assumptions—the kind of confidence that’s foolhardy when a crisis pulls the rug out from under you.

Analysts thrive in ambiguity. Their talent is exploration, which makes them particularly good at foreseeing and responding to crises. By searching internal and external data sources for critical information, analysts keep a finger on the pulse of what’s going on. They scan the horizon for trends and formulate questions about what’s behind them. Their job is to inspire executives with thought-provoking yet qualified possibilities. Once the highest-priority hypotheses have been short-listed by leaders, then it’s time to call in a statistician to pressure-test them and separate true insights from red herrings.

During good times, leading organizations build analytics capabilities to strengthen their ability to innovate. Analysts’ ability to find clues to such things as shifting consumer tastes can help firms take advantage of opportunities before less-savvy competitors do. When the going gets tough, however, what looked like a nice-to-have innovation booster turns into a must-have safety net. To be sure, some events are impossible to see in advance—the true black swans—but addressing their fallout is a game best played with open eyes.

Unfortunately, it’s very hard to cobble together a mature analytics department on short notice. The technical skills that allow analysts to guzzle data with lightning speed merely increase the mass of information they encounter. Spotting a gem in it takes something more. Without domain knowledge, business acumen, and strong intuition about the practical value of discoveries—as well as the communication skills to convey them to decision-makers effectively—analysts will struggle to be useful. It takes time for them to learn to judge what’s important in addition to what’s interesting. You can’t expect them to be an instant solution to charting a course through your latest crisis. Instead, see them as an investment in your future nimbleness.

It also takes time to secure access to the promising data sources analysts need. Ideally, business leaders won’t wait for a big disruption to begin building relationships with data vendors, industry partners, and data collection specialists. Bear in mind that in the face of an extreme shock, your historical data sources may become obsolete. If your understanding of the past fails to give you a useful window on tomorrow’s world—perhaps because a pandemic has changed everything—it doesn’t matter how good your information was yesterday. You need new information. After the 2008 financial crash, for example, banks around the world recognized that there might be an advantage to analyzing nontraditional signals of creditworthiness, such as data from supermarket loyalty cards, but not all players were equally positioned to get access to them.

Additionally, your internal data stores may require special processing before analysts can mine them, so it’s worth thinking about hiring supporting data engineers. If analytics is the discipline of making data useful, then data engineering is the discipline of making data usable; it provides behind-the-scenes infrastructure that makes machine logs and colossal data stores compatible with analytics tool kits.

When I began speaking at conferences about the importance of analytics, I found that convincing an audience of its value was the easy part. The mood changed when I explained the catch: Analytics is a time investment. You can’t count on getting something useful out of every foray into a data set. To succeed at exploration, your organization needs a culture of no-strings-attached analytics. As the leader, you are responsible for setting the scope (which data sources should be looked at) and the time frame (“You have two weeks to explore this database”). Then you must ensure that analysts aren’t punished for coming back empty-handed.

During an extreme shock, your historical data sources may become obsolete. Then it doesn’t matter how good your information was yesterday. You need new information.

Once business leaders accept that analytics represents an investment that may not immediately pay off, I hit the next stumbling block: the perception that only a large and technologically sophisticated company such as Alphabet can afford it. This is nonsense. In my experience you’re more likely to find analytics thriving in start-ups than at well-established behemoths.

Start-ups naturally invest in analytics as they try to navigate a new market, with several generalists taking on a share of the exploratory work. Then as the venture grows, the culture changes. Workers are trusted less and made more accountable for return on their efforts, and overzealous management stifles opportunities for analytics to thrive. Analysts hired into this culture rarely get to enjoy the most interesting part of their work—exploration—and instead serve as human search engines and dashboard janitors. Many quit out of frustration as their potential is squandered.

Creating a culture where analytics flourishes takes thoughtful leadership. As organizations grow toward incumbency, only the most visionary will have the courage to nurture a true analytics department and make sure that business leaders have access to it and are influenced by it. Industries that have been burned by a previous crisis — banking is a good example — are especially likely to invest in analytics and apply it to risk management.

Becoming a leader in analytics takes a commitment to trust your analysts and give them space to do their work. Their job, after all, will be to reveal threats that you never even imagined should be on your radar. That sort of work can’t be managed with a stopwatch and a checklist.

Crises such as a pandemic—when no one has the answers, and uncertainty is high—remind us of the importance of asking the right questions. Analytics gives firms an edge in learning and adapting. When the world is suddenly upended, those who can learn the fastest are best positioned to succeed. Smart companies will invest in analytics today to get ahead of whatever is coming tomorrow.

By: Cassie Kozyrkov

RedRisks

👀 OVERVIEW: On the 3rd June 2020, I presented a live event on Risk Management Fundamentals. This video is an extract of the “Risk Identification” presentation. Due to demand, a future live event rerun is planned and if this appeals to you, please subscribe to the weekly newsletter on the website and I can keep you posted. 🖥 WEBSITE / POST: https://www.redrisks.com/risk-managem… 📧 SUBSCRIBE to my free WEEKLY newsletter: https://www.redrisks.com 🙏 ABOUT THIS YOUTUBE CHANNEL (“RedRisks”): https://youtu.be/AsXUaIACQrA 🔔 PLEASE SUBSCRIBE AND SUPPORT THIS YOUTUBE CHANNEL: If you liked this video, please give me a thumbs up (or a thumbs down – they’re all important). 👪 CONNECT WITH ME: Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sonnigopal/

How Entrepreneurs Can Use Data Aggregation to Grow Their Business

Business Goals/Programs, Business Strategy Course, Business/Customer Care, Skill Management/Business Skill

One of the rising tech sectors today is data aggregation with many millennials coming to the forefront of the industry to bundle information and convey it in a summary form.

Aggregating is all around us

To fully understand what data aggregation is, let’s look at this example: Data-collecting companies, like Facebook, gather intelligence such as likes or page-visits users consume. This information is carefully organized to promote ads or document what users see in their feeds. In business using behavior metrics such as the number of transactions, or average age of the consumer, helps the company focus on bestsellers.

What does this mean to the average entrepreneur? Using these kinds of systems can pinpoint and increase productivity to boost sales and growth.

Dollars for data

Vasiliy Fomin is an excellent example of someone currently cashing in by way of running a data aggregator, bundling information from various sources into a single API, and allowing all types of businesses to power their offerings to consumers. He’s been able to build a thriving business earning millions in revenue by selling aggregated vehicle data, arrest record data, and more to a network of qualified resellers.

For entrepreneurs, research and development are essential in understanding the market behavior so as to provide the best services to their customers. Data aggregators embrace innovations, new ideas and critical questioning by syncing with the industry’s changing trends in various aspects like leading, hiring, retaining and technology.

Related: 4 Ways Businesses and Consumers Can Take Back Their Data

By: Luis Jorge Rios Entrepreneur Leadership Network Contributor

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5 Ways To Be an Excellent Project Manager During COVID-19

Management Strategy, Plans/Projects, Skill Management/Business Skill, Workforce Management

There’s no question that the way we did things last year cannot be the status quo way we do things this year. Or maybe even next year. Who knows how long this will go on and what long lasting effects the COVID-19 pandemic will have on our behaviors and business practices for the long term. That doesn’t mean we still can’t practice excellence and lead very successful projects either from the home or office or somewhere else… like the beach… as long as the person on the next towel over is 6 feet or more away from us.

I’ve compiled a list of 5 ways we can use best practices even better to successfully manage our projects and teams to excellence in project performance and deliver well for our now somewhat more uneasy and anxious clients in this climate of uncertainty. Let’s examine these five ways…

Communicate well and often. Communication is Job One for the project manager. And as many of us are working remotely and virtually we need to be better than ever at communicating effectively and efficiently. We need to be better listeners than ever before. That goes for everyone on both sides of the project and up and down the list of project team members and stakeholders. It’s “all in” when we are battling this type of bump in the road on projects as we are all going through unprecedented times. Remote work and remote project management is not for everyone and there are going to be project managers and project team members out there “learning as they go” on communication and how to work on remote projects. Communication will be the key to success.

Delegate tasks properly. When the landscape of a normal project has to change like this in times like this, it is extremely critical that the project manager be a very effective delegator of project assignments. You can’t just “assign” and move on. Knowing what you’re assigning and understanding and playing on everyone’s greatest areas of strengths will be a critical success ingredient. You can’t just toss out assignments as this is uncharted territory for many of us. And you must always followup with team members after assigning tasks. Always followup before it’s too late and deadlines become affected.

Know scope will change. Your project customer is going through the same issues you are and that your organization is going through. Lack of access to physical resources, and uncertainty of the workforce, uncertainty of the organizations real needs today, tomorrow and next month. Needs are changing – no one expected the coronavirus to affect the workforce like this and organizations like this or for this long. The project you are leading was probably conceived before the virus was even an issue… many big projects are planned out before the end of the previous fiscal year so that budgeting can be in place at the right time. Given all of that, be prepared to manage a project where the scope may be changing and requirements – especially some of the specific details – are going to change.

Anticipate the risks. Along with scope likely changing to some degree during the project, there can undoubtedly be other risks in this crazy virus-plagued world. Vendors may not be available to meet supply demands for project or final solution needs on a moment’s notice. Or they might not be in business at all or have the workforce ready to produce for your project needs. You may not have access to your entire team for the whole project or even the customer’s full team or subject matter experts (SMEs). The risks we must plan for right now on projects may be far different than the risks we are used to planning for under more normal circumstances. Anticipate a broader range – think outside the box during risk planning… you are going to realize issues on your projects that you never saw coming.

Be prepared to fully take the project reins. You have senior management and you have your team and you have your stakeholders. Under normal conditions you have these individuals down the hall in their offices or you know how to get in touch with them 24/7. They may or may not be readily available. What does that mean for you as the project lead? You may be making tough project decisions with no one available to bounce ideas off of and no time to delay those decisions till they are available. This not for the faint of heart, but project management never has been.

Summary / call for input

The coronavirus has drastically changed lives, buying behaviors, safety precautions and life priorities. No doubt about it. So, it seems logical that it would change the way we operate our businesses, interact with clients and manage our projects. When we are affected this much, it’s unavoidable that the way we manage and interact and lead projects would also change.

How about our readers? Have you been working remotely? How have you managed to remain effective and lead teams professionally and productively during this pandemic? Please share your thoughts and strategies.

By: Brad Egeland

Online PM Courses – Mike Clayton 20.6K subscribers One thing dominates world news. The spread of the Coronavirus infection COVID-19 is now global, and many countries are seeing massive disruption. So, how should you respond, as a Project Manager? In this video, I go through a 7-step response plan. Our full COVID-19 article, with business references and resources is at https://onlinepmcourses.com/covid-19-… Do also take a look at our article: Managing Remote Teams: How to Meet the Challenges https://onlinepmcourses.com/managing-…

As an educator, and with a community of Project Managers who come to me for answers, I feel a need to respond. So, here is an outline COVID-19 plan for you. Its purpose is to remind you of seven priorities, and to act as a starter in forming your own plan. 1. Protect your people Your team, stakeholders, community. Number 2 on this list may be the first thing to do, but this is your first priority. Reduce the need for travel. Encourage more home working. Put people’s health ahead of project deadlines. 2. Put it on your risk register Convene a project Working Group and discuss a series of scenarios.

Then use each of those to identify risks and work on mitigations. Look for base case common features across scenarios and build infrastructure to handle it. 3. Consider if your project should be halted or delayed Open a conversation with your project sponsor, board, client… You need to be the one that goes to them, rather than them coming to you – that shows you as leading the situation, rather than just managing outcomes. You’ll need their sign-off on some decisions. 4. Key into organizational responses Your wider organization will be responding too.

Your skills are valuable, so offer your help in formulating it. Bring organization-tier thinking into your project. And also link into responses among your wider business and social communities. 5. Consider procurement commitments This one cuts both ways. You may need to delay deliveries of materials or bringing in contracted staff, if your project will slow down. Liaise with your suppliers. But, equally, if you plan to continue work, you may choose to advance purchase decisions and delivery dates to de-risk availability of materials. 6. Keep talking In times of uncertainty, fear, and possible panic, make communication a top priority. Even if you don’t know anything new, communicate that fact.

Be open and candid with your team, stakeholders, and your client/boss/sponsor. Communicate your scenarios and plans, and then update with how events are affecting your project and changes to those plans. 7. Regular review cycle to reconsider plans and responses Set up a regular review process, to keep yourself and key people up-to-date on external facts, and allow time to consider responses.

The situation may change fast. Establishing a process to evaluate changes will give you the infrastructure to adapt quickly. For more great Project Management videos, please subscribe to this channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMZf… For all our great Project Management articles and resources, please check out the OnlinePMCourses website: https://onlinepmcourses.com/ For basic Management Courses – free training hosted on YouTube, with 2 new management lessons a week, check out our sister channel, Management Courses: http://youtube.com/c/managementcourses For more of our Project Management videos in themed collections, join our Free Academy of Project Management: https://onlinepmcourses.com/free-acad…#COVID-19

Ten Reasons Why Big Firms Stick With Obsolete Management

Management Strategy, Organization/Management, Skill Management/Business Skill, Workforce Management

Following the first five of Ten Reasons Why Big Firms Stick With 20 ^th Century Management, here are five more reasons:

1. The Transition To 21st Century Management Is Hard Work

Stopping the momentum of the giant flywheel of 20^th Century management and turning it into something more agile can involve a lot of work. Everything in 21^st Century management is the opposite of 20^th Century management.

The goal of the firm is now to create a continuous stream of value for customers and users. Making money is the result, not the goal. This goal requires a different structure of work to enable the full talents of those doing the work, often through small self-organizing teams working in short cycles, focused tightly on delivering value for customers. Instead of a steep vertical hierarchy of authority, there is a flat network or hierarchy of competence, in which ideas can come from anywhere. Recommended For You

These three principles in turn require radically different processes. Leadership has to be inspirational rather transactional, and, given the distributed nature of work, it is required throughout the organization. Strategy tends to include not only coping with competition but also creating new businesses that attract new customers. Innovation encompasses systematic efforts to find new needs and new ways of meeting them, including the creation of interactive ecosystems. Salesand marketing involve making a real difference in the lives of customers and users. Given the new role of talent, people management must attract and enable the talent required to deliver value to customers. Because the firm operates as a network of teams tightly focused on creating customer value, the budget typically reflects decisions already taken in strategy; there are often no organizational silos to fight over it.

Principles, processes and practices of 20th Century and 21st Century management Steve Denning

PROMOTED Deloitte BrandVoice | Paid Program An Accelerated Future For Tax Leaders Civic Nation BrandVoice | Paid Program YES I CAN: Where Young People Will Decide The 2020 Elections Grads of Life BrandVoice | Paid Program No, Putting A Person Of Color On Your Panel Doesn’t Accomplish “Diversity”

Is it any wonder that executives find it easier to accept the extravagant compensation that is lavished on them for maintaining the status quo, rather than undertaking the difficult multi-year slog to transform the corporation from top to bottom, with a significant risk that they will be cast aside, somewhere along the way?

2. Small Change Experiments Don’t Last

The middle course is to maintain the status quo, while exploring alternatives on a small scale. Executives initially experimented doubling down on 20^th Century management tools. Firms downsized, reorganized, delayered, and reengineered. They acquired new companies and shed struggling businesses. But these tended to be one-off experiments, not a coherent way to run the whole organization on a continuing basis. The assumptions of 20^th Century management remained intact.

In some cases, they also explored 21^st Century management approaches to solve particular problems, such as an increased customer orientation, deploying teams, greater delegation, inspirational leadership practices, bolder strategies, innovation initiatives, attracting better talent, improving diversity, and so on.

But they generally came back to the standard model of 20^th Century management practices as the default norm, once the particular problem was solved. This after all was how most other big firm was being run, what business schools were teaching, and what major consulting firms were advising.

“The problem can persist even if a company is quick to adopt the latest managerial tools and techniques,” writes Professor Annika Steiber, “because usually these upgrades don’t go deep enough; they serve mainly as add-ons to an underlying system that is no longer right.”

3. No Objective Measure Of Truth

As Thomas Kuhn noted in The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions (1962), even in science, there isn’t really any objective basis for choosing between two competing scientific theories. There is usually no way to conduct a simple experiment to show that one theory is right and the other wrong, at which point all scientists abruptly drop the old theory and espouse the new. Instead, there is generally evidence both for supporting and questioning the competing theories. Scientists have to weigh up different kinds of evidence and then decide to put their careers behind one theory or the other. This doesn’t happen overnight. This is even more true in paradigm shifts in management.

Thus revolutions in intellectual matters happen slowly. “When an individual or group first produces a synthesis able to attract most of the next generation’s practitioners,” Kuhn writes, “the older schools gradually disappear. In part their disappearance is caused by their members’ conversion to the new paradigm. But there are always some men who cling to one or another of the older views.”

All of these phenomena are observable in the ongoing transition from the 20^th Century management to the 21^st Century paradigm of managing. Managing in the new way is in some ways like being in a new world compared to 20th Century management. Familiar words like “manager”, “leader” and “strategy” have different meanings. Decades-old ways of doing things are suddenly no longer appropriate. New ways have to be learned. Attitudes and behaviors have to change. To old hands, 21^st Century management can come to be seen as very strange.

4. Lack Of Management Awareness of The 21st Century Management

The tendency in the financial press to dismiss Agile and Silicon Valley management as something to do with “big tech” “AI” and “network effects” encourages executives to continue to ignore these developments.

Managers practicing 20^th Century management had never really “chosen” that way of managing in the first place. They had started studying at a business school and then began working in a firm, or series of firms, where everyone had the same basic assumptions, habits and attitudes towards principles and processes. Young managers had little choice but to accept those assumptions and attitudes if they wanted to go on working there and to advance. In many cases, working in that way had gone on for years or even decades.

These managers rarely had to consider the possibility that there might be an equally coherent way of running a large organization that could be a better fit with the current marketplace. In fact, this different way of running corporations had emerged in software development and small startups in and around Silicon Valley, as well as individual firms in Europe and China. It began appearing around 2000 and progress was initially piecemeal. But by 2020, a synthesis of the principles and processes was emerging of a system of management that was equally coherent and potentially providing providing more value to customers, better workplaces for employees, and more profit to the firm. Yet managers were often not aware of these developments.

5. A Different Way Of Thinking

Perhaps the most significant hurdle to be overcome in making the transition to 21^st management is that it requires not only doing things differently but also thinking differently.

Thus the principles and processes of 20^th Century management reflect the idea of the firm as a machine. It is something that can be controlled and measured and analyzed separately. Each individual part of the firm’s behavior can be predicted. Its outputs will be proportional to inputs. It can be understood quite separately from its context. Every problem has a root cause and every problem can be solved.

21^st Century management requires a different way of thinking. The firm is viewed, not as a machine, but rather as a complex adaptive system, like a garden. This means that the firm can’t be mechanically programmed or fixed. It can’t be analyzed separately from its context. Its behavior can’t be fully predicted. It can only be understood through its interactions with its environment. There needs to be a recognition that the environment may well push back.

This new way of thinking is often difficult for those who have spent decades in the old set of assumptions. But for those who make the transition, the benefits can be extraordinary.

Steve Denning

My book, “The Age of Agile” was published by HarperCollins in 2018 and was selected by the Financial Times as one of the best business books of 2018. I consult with organizations around the world on leadership, innovation, management and business narrative. For many years I worked at the World Bank, where I held many management positions, including director of knowledge management (1996-2000). I am currently a director of the SD Learning Consortium. I am also the author of the Leader’s Guide to Radical Management, The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling and The Secret Language of Leadership.

Leadership Strategy and Tactics from Jocko Willink. Christian Charron, Cedrick Gauthier and Martin Clement discuss. In the military, a field manual provides instructions in simple, clear, step-by-step language to help soldiers complete their mission.

In the civilian sector, books offer information on everything from fixing a leaky faucet to developing an effective workout program to cooking a good steak. Made in JeemanStudio.com Social Media Links 【Instagram Martin】 https://www.instagram.com/mart.clement/ 【Instagram Chris】 https://www.instagram.com/chris.charron/ 【Instagram Rami】 https://www.instagram.com/ramimortgages/ ——– Business pages: [Martin] https://www.martinclement.ca [Christian] https://www.christiancharron.ca [Cedrick]. https://cedrickgauthier.com/ [Rami] https://ramimortgages.com

History of Time Management

Time Management Myths That Affect Your Workplace Productivity

Myth Number 1: You can’t be a Successful Person Without Time Management

Myth Number 2: There are Universal Time Management Systems That Suit all People

Myth Number 3: Time Management Doesn’t Work

Myth Number 4: Time Management Guarantees Personal Development

Myth Number 5: Time Management Immediately Starts Saving Your Time

A Practical Task

See also

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Understanding Midsize Businesses

Radical flexibility requires empathetic managers

Develop empathy skills through vulnerable conversation practice

Empower a new manager mindset by creating a network of support

Create manager capacity for empathy by optimizing reporting lines

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Key Takeaways

Understanding Branch Managers

Requirements for Branch Managers

Branch Manager Qualifications

Related Terms

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6 Steps to the Millionaire Mindset

Why I don’t make Millions?

Steps to Think and Act Like a Millionaire

Millionaire Lessons

Rules of the Millionaire Mindset

1. Invest At Least 10% Of Your Income In Yourself

The next step

The Lesson

2. Invest At Least 80% of Your “Off” Time into Learning

Millionaire Mindset: Becoming more productive

3. Don’t Work For Money, Work to Learn

How to have a millionaire mindset when you have a average job?

Don’t Focus on the money.

4. Don’t Learn For Entertainment, Learn To Create More Value

Nurture the passions you make pay.

Get rid of hobbies that are bad.

5. Invest At Least 10% Of Your Income Into Vehicles That Will Generate More Money

Advantages of Investing

6. Shift Your Motivation From Getting To Giving

Ethics of the Millionaire Mindset

Contribution is the ultimate purpose.

Now I have the Millionaire Mindset:

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Principles for energizing and developing talent

1. Energize people

2. Empower teams

3. Development of skills

4. Improve everything and observe the team environment

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A plan for progress

1. Make the business case

2. Keep an eye on the data

3. Make sustainability a key part of your executive structure

4. Expand your ecosystem

5. Be an internal evangelist for change

6. Make bold commitments—even if the path there isn’t clear

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Aggregating is all around us

Dollars for data

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1. The Transition To 21st Century Management Is Hard Work

2. Small Change Experiments Don’t Last

3. No Objective Measure Of Truth

4. Lack Of Management Awareness of The 21st Century Management

5. A Different Way Of Thinking

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