You can now download the April issue of Better Business Focus . Please feel free to e-mail Better Business Focus to your friends or colleagues.
Better Business Focus: Expert Inspiration for a Better Business.
Better Business Focus is the essential key for business owners and managers. It achieves that by focusing on the way in which successful businesses compete and manage their organisations. It focuses on how people are recruited, coached and developed; on how marketing and selling is undertaken in professional markets as well as in markets with intense competition; on how technology and the Internet is reshaping the face of domestic and home business; and on how people are being equipped with new skills and techniques. In short, it offers expert inspiration for a better business.
Below is a selection of articles from this month’s issue, and we hope you enjoy the read!
- David Finkel
How to help your remote employees feel like part of the team: I recently talked about hiring independent contractors and remote workers for your business, and how if done properly it can really help you scale and grow your business while keeping a handle on your overhead costs. - Dan Blacharski
Pandemic disruptions and a paradigm shift in virtual business: Over the past year the personal and business disruptions due to the COVID pandemic have brought disaster, closings of long-standing successful businesses, job loss, and distress on a personal level. Recovery will be a long and painstaking process, and in some cases, will involve bringing in an entirely new way of thinking about how we work, play, and communicate with others. - Sunil Bali
The wisdom of Monty Python…: Whilst they’re best known for lumberjack confessions, parrot mortality, and the life of Brian, the men from Monty Python have also uttered many words of wisdom. - Mukesh Gupta
Tips on leading a successful transformation effort: We are living in a world where every organisation is undergoing some form of transition or transformation – forced or otherwise. Another thing we know is that most change efforts fail. - Amy Vetter
Powering your future with lessons from 2020: I don’t need to tell you that it’s been quite a year. The memes about 2020 are everywhere so there’s no need to repeat them here, but suffice it to say we’ve all been through a lot these past 12 months. As stressful and chaotic as this time has been, there are plenty of lessons to take from it—far more than in a “normal” year, even. From a personal growth perspective, those lessons can be powerful and long-lasting. - Marcel Schwantes
Warren Buffett: Investing in yourself is the best way to find success: Warren Buffett has amassed a following of millions who’ve learned, like Buffett, that success is achieved by making smart investment decisions. - Barry Urquhart
Beware: Aimless Future: The COVID pandemic has taught commerce many salutary lessons. Philosophies, practices, structures and policies have all been reviewed, refined and above all, questioned. The inherent rationalisations and justifications contained in the statement; we have always done it this way, carry no charter and little credence. - Dimis Michaelides
Innovation and Pandemic Economics. Now is the time for a boom in social innovation: The impact of Covid-19 on work and the economy is at least as dramatic as its impact on personal and public health. The pandemic has greatly accelerated innovations in the ways people work with enormous benefits and some sinister effects too. This should herald a new era of widespread social innovation. - Janet Sernack
Controlling the controllables: A recent article by McKinsey and Co “COVID-19: Implications for business” describes a paradoxical dilemma for managers: the need to process both the rapid changes in AI, digitization, automation, and the uncertainty of the Covid-19 crisis. - Justin Bariso
You’re using social media all wrong. Here’s what you should do instead. Like many business owners, I’ve worked hard over the years to leverage social media to build my network and attract potential clients and customers. - How to AirDrop from your iPhone or iPad to your Mac
- August J. Aquila
Succession planning best practices: Succession planning today is more complex for professional services firms than it was 15 years ago. Practices have become more complex, the traditional business model that served firms so well in the 20th century, no longer works today, and clients have become more sophisticated. - Paul Sloane
Be more open and less directive, start with these words: In the 1970s, psychologist Matie Flowers carried out an experiment to study how teams discuss and make decisions. Flowers asked 40 separate teams to come up with plans to solve a hypothetical problem at a school. This involved a mix of issues including staff conflicts, inadequate budgets and classroom discipline. - Tom Koulopoulos
Why Google can no longer innovate – according to a 13-year Veteran: I’m talking here about four lessons that are at the core of why so many successful businesses eventually fail. - Thom Dennis
Top ten attributes every great business leader needs in 2021: Successful business leaders may previously have been visionaries of their brand, expert decision makers with a growth mindset and possessed extraordinary levels of energy, but the qualities needed to be a good leader in 2021 have changed vastly due to the seismic pressures of the ongoing Covid-19 situation and the events that have brought suppressed and ignored social issues to the fore. - Greg Satell
2021: What comes after Covid? In 1973, in the wake of the Arab defeat in the Yom Kippur war with Israel, OPEC instituted an oil embargo on America and its allies. The immediate effects of the crisis was a surge in gas prices and a recession in the west. The ripple effects, however, were far more complex and played out over decades - Dr Lynda Shaw
The psychology of resilience (& how to cope with setbacks): After a truly tumultuous year, devastating for some, all of us have had to cope in ways we would never have previously anticipated. We asked neuroscientist, business psychologist and change specialist Dr Lynda Shaw what resilience is, why it is so important and how best to develop resilience in 2021.