Balancing Entrepreneurship – Workshop 4 (Priority Identification)
The Appleton Greene Corporate Training Program (CTP) for Balancing Entrepreneurship is provided by Mr. Meuchel BS Certified Learning Provider (CLP). Program Specifications: Monthly cost USD$2,500.00; Monthly Workshops 6 hours; Monthly Support 4 hours; Program Duration 12 months; Program orders subject to ongoing availability.
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Learning Provider Profile
Mr. Meuchel is a Certified Learning Provider (CLP) at Appleton Greene and he has experience in management and entrepreneurship specializing in the construction industry. He has achieved a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering with a concentration in Construction Management. He has industry experience within the following sectors: Business Ownership; Design/Build; Construction Management and General Contracting. His experience within the construction industry incorporates all facets of construction including: Design Phase; Bid Phase and Construction Phase. He has had commercial experience within the following countries: United States of America, or more specifically within the following cities: Baltimore MD; Washington DC; Raleigh NC; Jacksonville FL and Atlanta GA. His personal achievements include: established time management processes; published book for entrepreneurs; entrepreneur mastermind program and construction expert witness. His service skills incorporate: time management; process development & testing; marketing & sales; owner & 1 subcontractor relations; estimating & budgeting; planning & scheduling; cost & quality control; inspections & safety; municipal regulations and permitting.
MOST Analysis
Mission Statement
The objective of the Priority Identification Phase of the program is to continue building on your work from the first three phases. By this juncture you have already established your goals and begun planning with those goals in mind. You have also evaluated the present state of both your business and your personal life in relation to your desired work-life balance and analyzed the feasibility that you are willing to do what it takes to make it happen. During this planning phase you will be guided through steps to analyze the data you have amassed and begin prioritizing the development, implementation, and testing. Again your mentor will be a valuable resource during this phase, providing guidance to help you prioritize your time and resources; critical in your quest to capitalize on opportunities and effectively allocate resources to maximize momentum while minimizing burnout. At this point in the program the curriculum and mentor will be focused on providing guidance to place emphasis on implementing strategies to work smarter instead of harder and to leverage strengths while compensating for weaknesses. Following the program, utilizing the mentor, and being coachable are all critical to the ultimate success of each participant. So, in simplistic terms, if you are able to consistently work smarter, not harder, then you can achieve a healthy work-life balance while also making more money. Once your priorities are identified and the steps are taken to rank and categorize these priorities into the proper order you will be ready to move into the next phase and start identifying your All-Star in-house and outsource partners.
Objectives
01. Priority Identification: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
02. Self Care: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
03. Corporate Entrepreneurship: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
04. Innovation: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
05. Growing Funds: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
06. Company Growth: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
07. Processes: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. 1 Month
08. Communication: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
09. Business Focus: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
10. Culture: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
11. Profitability: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
12. Relationships: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
Strategies
01. Priority Identification: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
02. Self Care: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
03. Corporate Entrepreneurship: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
04. Innovation: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
05. Growing Funds: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
06. Company Growth: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
07. Processes: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
08. Communication: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
09. Business Focus: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
10. Culture: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
11. Profitability: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
12. Relationships: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development.
Tasks
01. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Priority Identification.
02. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Self Care.
03. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Corporate Entrepreneurship.
04. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Innovation.
05. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Growing Funds.
06. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Company Growth.
07. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Processes.
08. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Communication.
09. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Business Focus.
10. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Culture.
11. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Profitability.
12. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Relationships.
Introduction
What Are Your Company’s Top Priorities?
Business priorities are actions or goals that assist your team in completing day-to-day chores as well as additional responsibilities. This could entail making decisions or developing duties to help your company run more efficiently. Customer service, personnel management, and developing and implementing a marketing strategy are all examples of company goals. It’s critical to take your time when determining your business goals so that you can compile a comprehensive list that addresses all of your company’s requirements.
Make your company priorities measurable by including the actual amount of the improvement you want to see. If you want to grow your company’s sales by 50%, for example, you’d mention that number in your goals and make sure your team members are aware of it. Having a measurable figure can help to clarify your goal, increasing the likelihood that the organization will achieve it. Also, to assist your personnel in completing the goal, strive to make your business priorities apparent.
Setting Company Priorities Has A Number Of Advantages
Setting business priorities has numerous advantages, including:
Managing Your Company
Business priorities might assist you in achieving your objectives. A mission statement is a declaration that defines a company’s vision or aims. Setting business priorities can assist you in achieving and exceeding your objectives by focusing on a single aim. Setting goals is also easy with a clear roadmap because you and your organization will know what the firm requires to achieve.
Locating Resources
Setting business priorities can also assist your organization in focusing on the things that will help it succeed. Business priorities can assist you figure out how much money you’ll need to reach your objectives. This can be in the form of time, money, business procedures, or outside assistance. Having business goals can also assist you in identifying and implementing business processes that could be improved.
Managing Your Workforce
Another advantage of establishing company priorities is that it can aid in the efficient management of your workforce. Employees can use business priorities to set their daily, weekly, and occasionally monthly activities to assist them achieve both personal and company objectives. Employee productivity may rise as a result of having a defined goal to strive for.
Making Plans For The Future
Defining corporate priorities can also aid in long-term planning. Because changes can occur unexpectedly, it’s critical to set goals that will assist your firm prepare for unanticipated outcomes or circumstances. This could include personnel layoffs or promotions, as well as the application of new laws or policies. If you have other investments or stocks, business priorities can also act as a safety net for your firm.
How to Prioritize Your Business
Here are seven stages to assist you determine your company’s business priorities:
1. Examine Your Company’s Mission Statement
Understanding and evaluating your company’s vision is the first step in determining your business priorities. Define the mission of your organization and how you and your workers will carry it out. Consider improving the readability and clarity of your mission statement so that your staff can readily express the company’s vision. You can visualize what priorities could assist you reach your company’s mission by examining your company’s vision. To aid you in this endeavor, make a list of precise statements that characterize your business so that you can explain its goal to others using relevant examples.
2. Make A List Of Your Strengths And Weaknesses
You can identify strengths and weaknesses inside your firm once you’ve defined and evaluated its vision. Reliable customer service, regular sales earnings, or an amazing database filing system are examples of strengths. Bad communication, a lack of backup plans, or poor money management are all possible flaws. Knowing your personal strengths and weaknesses can also help you figure out which aspects of your company you should outsource and which you should keep in-house.
3. Establish Objectives
You can begin identifying and creating your business priorities after completing the first two processes. Consider setting defined, attainable, and quantifiable objectives. The more specific and practical your objectives are, the more likely you and your team will achieve them. Measurable goals are essential for seeing visible and tangible achievements. Make it one of your business goals to address during meetings, for example, if you need additional product development ideas right now.
4. Collaborate With Other Members Of Your Team
Collaborate with your coworkers to select the most important priorities for your business. Set business priorities that enhance the company’s aim while also supporting the requirements of the workforce. Create work surveys, organize weekly meetings, or simply communicate more with your employees to achieve this. Employees can convey their ambitions for themselves and the firm when you communicate with them. Having conversations with staff and receiving input might help you figure out which areas need to be improved first.
5. Sort By Importance
Consider ranking your company priorities by importance now that you have a general concept of what they are. Some items on your to-do list may be more urgent than others, so start with the most crucial ones. For example, if your accountant suddenly changed businesses, you should make finding a new person a top priority. By defining the role of each goal and how its presence affects the firm, you may determine which goals take precedence. Other goals may be less important to your company’s visions, so they can be worked on later.
6. Sort By Category
You can categorize your priorities as well. This is a smart technique to categorize your list items according to their relationship. Organizing your things by category makes it easier for you and your staff to organize and navigate your to-do list. If your company has a lot of similar goals that you could group together in one area, this is a good sort of organization to use. Finances, marketing and advertising, sales, and development are some examples of categories. Create these categories to meet the needs of your business.
7. Track Progress Of Results
You might experience excellent results in your organization if you set business priorities. This might refer to a variety of things, such as higher sales, productivity, or customer approval rates. It’s critical to keep track of your outcomes so that you can see tangible evidence of your company’s success. Tracking your results may demonstrate how important business priorities are to your firm, encouraging you and your workers to set new goals as needed.
Is it all work and no play? It’s possible that you’ll need to alter your approach to time management
Freedom is a top value for entrepreneurs, but it is not a top priority. That’s a mistake.
For entrepreneurs, finding extra time to enjoy life is analogous to hunting for the holy grail; unfortunately, your search will be fruitless. Yes, each day is only 24 hours long. It is, nevertheless, absolutely viable to increase your productivity at work in order to claim more personal time. It’s not so much about controlling the clock as it is about making the right decisions. It all comes down to personal values, priorities, and limits.
What Are The Things That Are Most Important To You?
Work may appear to be the most important aspect of your life, but is it really? You obviously want your company to succeed, but at what cost? It’s not beneficial for you or your business if you’re missing out on life. Entrepreneurs who prioritize family, friends, self-care, and activities they enjoy do better in business, in my experience.
When entrepreneurs are questioned about their personal values, connections, along with financial independence, are at the top of their list. Many people assume that the financial freedom that their company will provide in the future must come first. Prioritizing what you value the most, on the other hand, can be a stimulant for success. This does not have to be the case if you have the appropriate mindset, make sensible choices, and set proper boundaries.
Make a list of your top three values and define them. What needs to be in place in your life for you to feel happy and complete? I’m sure independence is on the top of your list; after all, isn’t it why you became an entrepreneur in the first place? Allowing yourself frequent tastes of that independence, whether for free or for a fee, will help it become a more permanent part of your life.
Examine Your Priorities And Options Carefully
When entrepreneurs express dissatisfaction with the amount of time they have in the day, we immediately look into three things: the type of work they choose to do each day, the fears or concerns that keep them from doing what they should be doing, and the habits they’ve developed around how they spend time in the gaps between their productive action points.
Make A List Of Your Priorities And Break Negative Habits
How much time do you spend thinking about what you should do in between chores and appointments, only to become overwhelmed and/or confused? Or maybe you push ideas of what you should be doing out of your mind. How much time do you spend staring at emails or scrolling through social media? You may become engrossed in your research or planning for longer than is necessary. If you’re being completely honest with yourself, you’re probably wasting more time than you’re actually producing. These bad behaviors are generally used to make people feel busy but aren’t actually productive. This is due to a lack of clarity, feeling overwhelmed, and fearful procrastination.
Keeping A Time Journal Is A Good Idea
Workers’ expected workweeks were compared to actual time recorded in time diaries in this study. The results demonstrate that those who claimed their “typical” workweeks were longer than 75 hours were considerably off the mark. They overestimated by roughly 25 hours on average. These guys weren’t lying; if you don’t prioritize, it can feel like you’re working 75 hours a week. Non-productive activities fill in the blanks, and before you know it, dinner time has passed you by and it’s dark outside.
A time diary is useful since it can indicate time-wasters as well as how much non-entrepreneurial work you do. If you can employ someone to take part of your responsibilities off your plate, do so. If you use the time you’ve freed up wisely, the money will return back to you tenfold (or more).
Set Reasonable Limits
Do you set time limits for yourself? Strong limits will help you free up a lot of time, which you can (ideally) spend sleeping, eating, grooming, running errands, and having fun outside of work. Instead of allowing constant interruptions, limit your personal calls and schedule specific times to meet with employees, clients, and vendors. Turn off notifications and refrain from checking your email during the day. It’s rare that you’ll need to answer right away. Also, make sure you understand your vision, goals, and next steps completely. This insight will lead you through the process of making wise decisions.
Make Decisions That Are Consistent With Your Ideals
Every week of the year, we all have 168 hours accessible to us. That’s a lot of time when you think about it. Your life will instantly improve if you build your schedule around the activities that are essential to you, rather than hoping for spare time to appear out of nowhere.
This does not mean that work should be prohibited totally during the evenings or on weekends. Let’s face it, you’re a business owner. It’s all about setting healthy priorities, getting rid of time wasters, and being flexible with your schedule.
Too many businesses like to live in chaos because it gives the impression that they are working hard to realize their goals. Rather, choose to work efficiently. Yes, sacrifices will still be made, but they will not be as frequent. There is a significant difference between the two.
Case Study
A legal structure is one of the first things that companies must figure out. Nellie Akalp, a serial entrepreneur and the founder of CorpNet.com, assists startups and small business owners in protecting, managing, and staying in compliance with all legal obligations.
With her 16-year business partner and husband Phil, Akalp launched her incorporation filing service. After obtaining a $100 domain name in 1997, the pair launched their first business, an online legal document filing service, from their flat. They worked relentlessly to expand that business, and it soon began bringing in $1 million in sales every month. Intuit bought the company for $20 million in 2005.
However, they only retired for a short time before deciding in 2009 that they were ready to start a new business.
“We looked at the marketplace for incorporation filing services at the time and no one was offering a service that really benefitted their clients in the way I would want to engage with small business owners,” Akalp explains. “That’s when we decided to create a niche for ourselves and started CorpNet.com during the height of the recession.”
Here’s what she had to say:
Starting a firm during the height of the recession was difficult, but we were able to stay afloat because we were very responsive. We wanted to develop some fantastic content and spread it across numerous platforms when we established CorpNet.com because social media was really taking off at the time. We established our brand as experts on small businesses by using social media to carve out a place for ourselves.
Social media must be a part of your marketing plan if your company is to be successful. You might as well close your business if you don’t have an efficient social media strategy these days. It’s not enough to have it to run a business; you also need to know how to use it to engage current and new clients.
Making sure you know your priorities is the key to achieving a work-life balance. Maintaining a strong marriage with my spouse is one of my top responsibilities, especially when it comes to running a business and co-parenting with him. Another is ensuring that I am happy and healthy in order to be a good leader, mother, business partner, and wife. It all comes down to being organized, planning ahead of time, and creating time for me as a person.
Every day, I get to work alongside my best buddy, which is the most incredible thing I could ask for. It isn’t for everyone to run a business with their spouse, but it works for us. We’re able to put our egos on the back burner. If we can’t agree on a business decision, we’ll seek input from mentors and other colleagues. Even if they advise anything that goes against Team Phil or Team Nellie’s wishes, we’ll always choose the greatest solution for our company.
You can’t make success your objective if you want to be successful. The key for anyone who is just starting out with a new firm is to focus on becoming significant rather than being successful. You can and will achieve your objectives if you have the vision, drive, and determination. You can conquer any barriers or problems that come your way.
Four Key Takeaways for Fast-Growing Businesses
1. Do not attempt to dominate the entire globe. Change is a constant in fast-growing businesses. The operating environment can change on a dime, so being able to analyze the situation quickly and prioritize the most important items to focus on is crucial. Attempting to tackle too many things at once exhausts you, and you rarely make meaningful progress in the manner you desire.
2. Keep your attention until you’re satisfied with your work. Jumping from priority to priority before you’ve made the progress you need is one pitfall. With a laser focus on fewer priorities, you and your team can ensure that your efforts are driving the organization in the most vital direction at the time.
3. It all boils down to balancing dynamic tensions. This, in my opinion, is what makes leadership so tough. The capacity to successfully assess your existing operating environment and prioritize work efforts while keeping in mind that you’re balancing your business on the head of a pin. Leaders must consider both the external and internal factors in order to achieve long-term success. We must maintain consistency while remaining adaptable to changes in the business environment. Quinn and Cameron’s competing values framework does an excellent job of describing the dynamic tensions that all leaders must manage if they are to be successful.
4. Prioritization and planning are iterative processes. Strategic planning cycles that last more than a few of years don’t appear to hold much water for most small, growing organizations. Because today’s corporate environment changes so quickly and radically, a shorter planning period is encouraged.This enables for a faster rate of evaluating and adapting one’s strategy. Companies begin to consider strategic planning as a continual learning and evolving process rather than an annual procedure by which they must live (or die) no matter what happens. An iterative approach like this allows firms to stay adaptable and prioritize the actions that will benefit them the most at any given time.
It’s not easy to run a fast-growing corporation. As an entrepreneur, there are many things that demand your attention in today’s fast-paced business world. Understanding the context in which you operate, identifying all possible areas of focus, and being disciplined enough to devote your full attention to a prioritized subset of tasks will allow you to have a greater impact in the areas that matter most to your success. As things in your environment change, you can use this good momentum to take a step back and examine and alter your priorities.
Executive Summary
Chapter 1: Priority Identification
Why Should Business Owners Prioritize Tasks?
Entrepreneurs are in charge of a variety of tasks related to launching a firm, including crafting a business plan, developing a marketing strategy, establishing a successful hiring procedure, and managing finances. You’re more prone to overlook important responsibilities and miss deadlines if you’re overwhelmed.
“As an entrepreneur, more than any other role, you have limited time to accomplish a never-ending list of tasks and to-dos,” said Felipe Zambrano, vice president of Avatrade Marketplace. “As a result, it’s critical to organize your time in order to be the most effective and move your company faster.”
Entrepreneurs must acquire a handle on what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and to whom they may delegate for the health of their firm – and their own well-being.
“You only have so much time during your day to get things done,” said Forrest McCall, owner of entrepreneurship blog Don’t Work Another Day. “By wasting time on tasks that do not yield results in growth for your business, you might find your business stagnant. By prioritizing tasks with the highest return on investment, your business can see tremendous growth.”
How Does An Entrepreneur Prioritize Tasks?
Organize your projects and manage your time in a logical manner. This guarantees that essential business issues are addressed and that your time is well utilized. Sort your responsibilities into priority order and schedule your week appropriately.
Use the ABCD task-management strategy to rank your obligations.
Improving productivity entails allocating your time wisely, which begins with planning. Follow these four success tips:
1. First and foremost, establish your “A” priority. Consider what your primary concentration would be if you had nothing else to accomplish the next day. There were no meetings, calls, or reports — nothing. Begin with a clean slate. What factors would have an impact on your long-term results? The answers are your “A” priorities: key activities that help you move forward with your main goals. Hiring a new account manager, preparing a large proposal, or opening a new branch site are examples of “A” priority. These high-priority tasks should account for 20% to 30% of your time.
2. Take care of your “B” obligations. The activities in your job description that must be completed today — the duties that keep you active – are referred to as “B” activities. Corresponding with clients, processing claims, overseeing staff, inputting data, reviewing contracts, sending products, or updating a database are all examples of “B” tasks. Most employees spend extra 30% to 40% of their time at work on “B” responsibilities. After you’ve completed a “A” responsibility, attend to them.
3. Put the “C” requirements where they belong. The unexpected or unwritten portions of your job that must be completed are referred to as “C” activities. “C” requirements are frequently created for you while you design your “A” priorities. Department meetings, routine requests, expense reports, filing, sorting, and reading updates are just a few examples. 20 percent to 25% of your time should be spent on “C” chores. Your paperwork alone can take up to five hours each week within this context. Traveling is a “C” requirement as well. It must be completed, but it is not a critical component of your job’s success.
4. Eliminate all “D” activities. Finally, there are activities that begin with the letter “D.” The letters “D” stand for “delete,” “delay,” “delegate,” and “drop.” Casual online surfing, delegating tasks, and reading email newsletters are all examples of “D” activities. Fixing a photocopier jam, waiting for software to load, or calling the help desk are all “D” tasks that take up a lot of time technologically. Be on the lookout for “D” activities. Miscellaneous time can account for up to 5% of a week’s work.
Chapter 2: Self Care
The Most Important Factor In Maintaining A Healthy Relationship With Yourself And Your Company
The road to entrepreneurship is not always easy.
More than just sales training and strategy are required to focus on obtaining appropriate clients, producing sales, and driving your sales success.
Starting and building your own company is nothing like working for someone else; in fact, selling for your own company is extremely different than selling for someone else.
Success in business needs us to show up as our actual selves in our marketing, branding, and conversations with potential consumers when we are our brand. This raises a whole new set of concerns that require far more than simply business training; maintaining mental and physical health is critical for long-term business viability.
Growing a business online necessitates us as entrepreneurs being visible on social media on a regular basis, which can lead to tiredness if we don’t take pauses.
Self-care has become somewhat of a buzzword in recent years, but simply taking 20 minutes after each solid block of work, rather than leaping from one activity to the next, can make a significant impact in our mental health and wellness.
You must do both the inner and outside work as an entrepreneur, and the more successful you become, the more vital this becomes.
Meditation, self-help literature, thinking practices, and even therapy can help you maintain a happy and healthy attitude in both life and work.
Make Self-Care A Priority In Your Life
Yes, we must put in the effort, which necessitates some ‘hustle,’ especially when we are just getting started in our businesses, but self-care should be an integral part of your work week.
Long baths, nature walks, massages, and meditation are examples of this, but whatever makes you feel good is what you should do.
Self-care is important for two reasons: first, it prevents burnout and keeps us sane and well, but it also allows our creative juices to flow, which is where you’ll get your best business ideas as an entrepreneur when we’switch off’ from work.
Assemble a support group of people who are familiar with the reality of being your own boss. This isn’t always our friends or family, but rather new people we encounter on the job.
Having a network of peers who are on the same path as you is critical for your emotional well-being as well as your professional development.
So consider taking that vacation or arranging that retreat; the value of re-energizing among peers who “get it” cannot be overstated.
Find your mission and keep focused on it. Try treating yourself with the same honesty and excitement that you treat your clients and the ways that your products or services are altering their business, life, relationships, health, or even happiness.
Treating yourself well allows you to serve others at your best, therefore you practically owe it to others to do so, whether it’s a trip to the salon or a family outing.
Finally, remind yourself that you can do this and that you can be, do, have, and create anything you want in your business, but it all begins with you believing in yourself and understanding the importance of prioritizing self-care practices such as rest, good nutrition, relationships, and movement.
Chapter 3: Corporate Entrepreneurship
A Strategic Priority for Corporate Entrepreneurship
The executive suite is where corporate entrepreneurship begins and ends. It necessitates strategic oversight and participation. It will not fly if the CEO and board of directors do not completely comprehend or commit to corporate entrepreneurship.
Corporate entrepreneurship is a series of activities aimed at improving a company’s ability to innovate, take risks, and capture market opportunities.
Corporate entrepreneurship is set up to fail in many firms because it is not a strategic priority. Between strategic management of an existing corporation and corporate entrepreneurship, there is a significant gap. The two collide: one is concerned with exploiting the core business, while the other is concerned with discovering new business opportunities.
Executive responsibilities, strategic decision-making, and resource allocation are all influenced by corporate entrepreneurship. It affects the political environment and shifts the power balance. It raises new concerns and casts doubt on long-held assumptions. It has the potential to cause division and strife. It has the potential to completely transform a company.
“Corporate entrepreneurship requires integrating the seemingly opposing activities of preserving the existing business and stimulating change through innovation”, according to the author of the essay The Relationship between Corporate Entrepreneurship and Strategic Management. These are two distinct tasks that necessitate two distinct competencies, resources, and cultures.
Organizations face the challenge of utilizing innovation to accelerate growth and emerge from the current crisis now more than ever. “As companies start to prepare for post-pandemic world, those that have fallen behind more resilient players will need to take fast, bold action to make up for lost ground”, according to McKinsey’s paper Strategic Resilience During the Covid-19 Crisis. This will necessitate a determined effort to change the emphasis away from extraction and toward exploration. Corporate entrepreneurship is fuelled by this reason.
Corporate entrepreneurship must be a clearly outlined process by the senior management team, based on an assessment of the organization’s key competencies and competitive position in accordance with the strategic direction. For entrepreneurship, a specialized corporate strategy is required.
A plan that incorporates many of the following elements:
• A clear vision of what the organization intends to accomplish, as well as clear objectives.
• Identifying internal and external constraints, as well as competing forces.
• A method for allocating resources, such as finance, leadership, sponsorship, and employees.
• A clear statement of decision-making powers, authority, accountability, and responsibility.
• A strategy for enhancing individual and organizational entrepreneurial skills.
• A change initiative aimed at fostering a risk-taking, proactive, and innovative culture.
• A description of the types of innovation projects the company plans to undertake.
• An idea generation, design, development, and implementation process.
• An investment portfolio that controls risk and reward over several time horizons.
• A policy to accept failure, learn from it, and use what you’ve learnt.
• A description of the tangible and intangible metrics used to assess success.
• A direct line of communication between the senior management team and the rest of the organization.
It’s not easy to implement corporate entrepreneurship in an established firm, but making it a strategic goal is a good place to start.
Chapter 4: Innovation
Innovation is the top priority, and it’s usually the first thing that comes to mind when you’re starting out as an entrepreneur, during the ideation and brainstorming stages. It must be kept in the forefront of your mind during the entire process of business development; without it, there is nothing that sets you apart from your competitors. It’s not necessary to come up with a whole new concept to be innovative; it could be as simple as upgrading an earlier model suit a new setting or integrating two previously unrelated concepts.
It is up to you how you innovate, but innovation must take precedence over convenience. If you have the option of renouncing what makes you distinct or taking a bigger risk, go for the bigger risk. It will always come back to bother you if you reduce your originality in the field.
You’ll Need an Innovation Plan
Innovation is a fruitless quest in many firms, despite large investments of management time and money. As Polaroid, Nokia, Sun Microsystems, Yahoo, Hewlett-Packard, and numerous others have discovered, innovation endeavors usually fail, and successful innovators have a difficult time maintaining their performance. Why is it so difficult to develop and retain an innovative capacity? The causes go far beyond the most usually cited cause: a lack of execution. The lack of an innovation strategy is at the base of the problem with innovation enhancement attempts.
A strategy is simply a commitment to a set of logical, mutually reinforcing policies or behaviors targeted at accomplishing a specified competitive goal. Good strategies help an organization’s many groups align, identify objectives and priorities, and focus efforts around them. Companies determine their overall company strategy (scope and positioning) on a regular basis, as well as how specific functions, such as marketing, operations, finance, and research and development, will support it. However, companies rarely identify strategies to match their innovation activities with their business strategy.
Without a strategy, innovation efforts can easily devolve into a jumble of well-publicized best practices, such as dividing R&D into decentralized autonomous teams, spawning internal entrepreneurial ventures, establishing corporate venture-capital arms, pursuing external alliances, embracing open innovation and crowdsourcing, collaborating with customers, and implementing rapid prototyping, to name a few. There’s nothing wrong with any of those methods in and of themselves. The problem is that an organization’s ability to innovate is determined by its innovation system, which is a set of interdependent processes and structures that governs how a company searches for new problems and solutions, synthesizes ideas into a business concept and product designs, and chooses which projects to fund. Individual best practices necessitate compromises. Adopting a single technique typically necessitates a slew of other adjustments to the organization’s innovation system. Without an innovation strategy, a corporation will be unable to make trade-off judgments and select all of the components of the innovation system.
Chapter 5: Growing Funds
Obtaining Credit
Cash is required for business expansion. As the phrase goes, “it takes money to make money.” Finding the cash to get a new firm off the ground, on the other hand, might be difficult. Lending standards have tightened dramatically since 2008, making it more difficult than ever to obtain the funds you require.
The important thing is not to take it too seriously.
What if I told you that Because banks are tightening their lending regulations, 91 percent of loan applications are declined. A business seeking too much accounts for less than 17% of all requests.
How Can I Increase My Chances Of Obtaining The Funds I Require?
• A Business Plan — financial institutions and investors want to know what you’re going to do with the money before they lend it to you. Your potential investors will be able to tell if your firm has legs if you have a clear and detailed business plan.
• A Business Coach – Even better, find a mentor who can assist you in navigating the turbulent waters that every entrepreneur must cross. An experienced business coach can help alleviate a lot of the worry that comes with starting a business. They can also assist you in putting together a business plan to help you obtain the cash you want.
Flow Of Funds
In your firm, cash flow should be your top financial priority. Simply said, cash flow is an estimate of how much money you have now and how it will change in the near future. You may have $1,500 in the bank, but you’re awaiting payment on a $3,000 invoice and are aware of a $1,600 debt looming. To guarantee that all of your payments are paid on time, you must manage your cash on hand. Just because your company is prosperous doesn’t mean it’s risk-free. Even though they were prosperous on paper, several firms have run out of funds and closed their doors.
Manage your cash flow carefully by assigning at least one employee to keep track of it. Before making any large financial decisions, consider your cash on hand and put in place procedural stopgaps to keep you financially positive. To avoid non-payment concerns, you can, for example, postpone bill payments until the last feasible day and do credit checks on your consumers.
Chapter 6: Company Growth
Increasing Leads
While keeping and strengthening existing client connections should be a top priority for any business owner, locating and creating new client relationships should be a close second. This is especially true for fledgling enterprises that must quickly establish a client base.
Understanding your target market and perseverance are the two keys to good lead nurturing. That implies you need to know what you’re selling and who it’s for. Don’t give up too soon after you’ve defined the value you provide.
After only two efforts to reach a prospect, sales personnel at more than two-thirds of companies gave up.
Where to look for and nurture leads
• Social media — knowing who you’re talking to and where they hang out online is helpful once again. By posting amazing content, hosting competitions, and using the channel’s own ad portals to target certain categories, you may locate and engage potential customers through your social channels.
• Email marketing series — people are more inclined to read content that is relevant to them. The more people who read it, the more likely you are to develop a relationship with your prospects. People buy from people they know, like, and trust, as the old adage goes. If they don’t like you, they won’t trust you. And if they don’t know you, they can’t like you. So don’t be scared to reach out and get to know your prospects.
Chapter 7: Processes
Why Is It Necessary to Prioritize Processes and Projects in Order to Implement a Strategy?
To successfully implement a strategy, improvement initiatives must be focused on processes that have a strong influence on the plan. It is critical not only to have a strong strategy, but also to know how to put it into action (Kirchmer, Franz 2014) using the right business model and enabling procedures (Scheer 2018). Organizations’ inability to properly implement their strategy is a major stumbling block to their success. Only roughly 15-20% of a company’s processes are competitive (Kirchmer, 2017). By identifying these high-impact processes, you may focus on process transformations and improvements in the areas that are most critical to your present strategy. This ensures that your company concentrates its resources on the procedures that have the biggest influence on business plan implementation. According to a study conducted by The Gartner Group, only 13% of firms achieve their annual strategic goals (Cantara, 2015). It is critical to align performance improvement activities with the business strategy in order to meet business objectives. Focusing on high-impact procedures can help you achieve the best results while reducing risk. The end result is extremely company-specific business processes that generate significant competitive advantages, as well as processes that follow industry best practices when that is sufficient (Kirchmer, Franz, 2014). Prioritizing the proper procedures will boost the value and success rate of key projects, raise team attention on strategic goals, and help you gain a competitive edge.
It’s critical to examine the impact of projects and procedures when analyzing an organization’s strategic initiatives to ensure that you get the most value for your money. To execute methodically on your strategic goals, you prioritize projects tackling high-impact, low-maturity processes. These are the processes with the greatest value potential since they have a significant impact on the strategy but currently perform at or below the industry average (Kirchmer, Franz 2014). You may build a roadmap to get your plan implemented without boiling the ocean once you’ve identified the high impact, low maturity processes and corresponding improvement projects (Kirchmer, Franz, 2012).
Figure 1: Strategy Management Dashboard
Chapter 8: Communication
Find your own voice, as well as the voice you want your company to have, and use it to deliver your message.
“The quality of our life is ultimately determined by how we communicate with others and with ourselves.” – Anthony Robbins
No one can teach you how to find your unique voice because you are you and no one else is like you. Finding your voice, on the other hand, will help your company stand out from the crowd. Your individuality shapes how you see the world and will aid you in finding your position in the corporate world. As a leader, you have the most influence on your company’s environment, so how you see things will affect the atmosphere, as well as the products and services you and your team produce. Of course, you’ll need to go a little further into your perception to figure out what people want from you and your company, but it all starts with you and your team.
In terms of your company, the most crucial question you’ll ever ask yourself is “What do I want my company to be recognized for?” Although this one question appears to be straightforward, there is more to it than meets the eye. The answer to this one question can bring clarity, and as clarity on company priorities has been listed as a top technique to enhance worker engagement, this can only benefit the degree of communication taking place in your firm. The way you respond to this question can help you establish a mission statement, which you can then use to construct your firm around. This statement can also assist you in determining who your target audience is, what you should say to them, and how you should deliver your message.
After you’ve gathered all of this information, you may create a marketing strategy based on your findings. What is the location of your consumer base? How can you entice them to pay attention to you? And why aren’t they one of your customers yet? You’ll be unstoppable once you have these answers because you’ll be able to break through barriers between you and your customers and start communicating successfully.
You now know who you are and what you stand for, which is the most crucial aspect of communication. It is impossible to adequately convey your message without first understanding yourself and your business. Not only is it critical to communicate with your team, since this fosters trust and leads to better connections, but what you say to customers and how you say it are also critical. Don’t lose out on the chance to spread your message in the most effective way possible and grow your business immensely. Learning how to communicate with your consumers effectively will only help your company flourish.
Chapter 9: Business Focus
Concentrate On Your Company And How It Fits Into The Larger Business Picture
“Here is the prime condition of success: Concentrate your energy, thought and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged. Having begun on one line, resolve to fight it out on that line, to lead in it, adopt every improvement, have the best machinery, and know the most about it.” — Andrew Carnegie
You likely have business objectives, and it’s focus that will help you achieve those objectives. Clarity fosters attention, which boosts productivity, which leads to better time management, which yields outcomes. There are numerous distractions attempting to divert your focus away from what is genuinely essential, but you are stronger than that. You have far too much to do and far too little time. Always keep in mind that your attention is a gift to yourself, and your time is a gift to others. People rely on you and your time, thus it is up to us to concentrate. “You are more likely to acquire power by narrowing your focus and applying your energies, like the sun’s rays, to a limited range of activities in a small number of domains” says Jeffrey Pfeffer, author of Power.
So, as a leader, where else should you concentrate your efforts? You should concentrate on your organizational architecture, according to Deloitte’s 2016 Global Human Capital Trends study. Because the old business landscape is changing at such a quick speed, your primary focus should be on ensuring that you and your team are prepared for what lies ahead. Is it possible to add more positions to your company’s workforce in order to provide a better client experience? (You are erroneous if you believe you are merely selling products or services.) In fact, the experience you provide your customers is the most crucial representation of your company.) Stop living in the past, or even the now, and start focusing on the future, since you’ll be able to profit from other people’s complacency.
Chapter 10: Culture
Your company’s culture is what will motivate your employees to work hard. If your company’s culture begins to deteriorate, even if it is in favor of exciting new chances, you risk alienating your core employees and ending up with a disgruntled skeleton crew to propel your company ahead.
Let’s imagine you’ve just gotten a new client and are concerned about how you’ll handle the work. Implementing a succession of cultural changes, such as tougher scheduling restrictions and more bureaucratic processes, may cause more harm than good to your company’s morale. Consider the cultural implications of your behavior.
Chapter 11: Profitability
Many entrepreneurs go into the game because they want to make money, and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, some people overlook the necessity of profitability in favor of corporate expansion. They may use all incoming cash to buy new equipment or hire more employees, putting a premium on expansion rather than sustainability. This bet can pay off in some situations, but it’s usually a poor strategic decision.
Even if you began a business for purposes other than profit, you’ll be unable to improve the business, sustain yourself, or invest in your own future if you don’t make a profit. In the short term, taking a loss may be required, but in the long run, your emphasis on profitability must never be abandoned if you want to prosper.
Chapter 12: Relationships
People are your most valuable business asset, so relationships are crucial.
“The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.” — Theodore Roosevelt
Very few businesses understand just how important relationships are. Although some of them said that relationships were essential to them, their actions did not reflect this. Because they were more concerned with their income and profit margins than the people who made their businesses feasible and profitable in the first place, they never made time for people. There would have been no success without any of these people, from the personnel who made these enterprises run to the customers who paid the entire operation. Nonetheless, it appeared that people were viewed as disposable rather than valuable much too often.
Gallup discovered that 87 percent of employees globally and 71 percent of employees in the United States are disengaged. And unless something is done to combat it, the percentage will only rise. By 2025, people between the ages of 20 and 35 will make up 75% of the global workforce, and a study performed by the global marketing firm McCann WorldGroup found that more than 90% of those polled identified “connection and community” as their most important requirement. Entrepreneurs who can get ahead of the curve and see this now will be able to retain more staff in the future. Not only that, but they will foster an appreciating culture, which can never be a bad thing.
However, contrary to popular belief, customers should not come first. This may explain why such a high value is placed on the culture that a company creates. Employees, on the other hand, should come first, because this is the only way to develop an extension of yourself. It is not your responsibility as a leader to manage everything alone; rather, it is your job to build a culture of leaders who can make decisions for themselves. Yes, we need more macro-level leaders, not micro-level leaders, and the only way to accomplish that right now is to focus on your people rather than yourself. Because you don’t personally interact with clients every day as a leader, your attention should be on your staff, because happy people consistently give outstanding service, resulting in more followers of the brand you’ve developed. “Clients do not come first,” declared Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group, in response to this. “Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.”
So, how can you build the foundation of relationships in your business? As often as possible, meet with each employee one-on-one. Spending time with your staff, whether it’s a 5-minute meeting or a five-hour meeting, is the best move you can do.
Curriculum
Balancing Entrepreneurship – Workshop 1 – Priority Identification
- Priority Identification
- Self Care
- Corporate Entrepreneurship
- Innovation
- Growing Funds
- Company Growth
- Processes
- Communication
- Business Focus
- Culture
- Profitability
- Relationships
Distance Learning
Introduction
Welcome to Appleton Greene and thank you for enrolling on the Balancing Entrepreneurship corporate training program. You will be learning through our unique facilitation via distance-learning method, which will enable you to practically implement everything that you learn academically. The methods and materials used in your program have been designed and developed to ensure that you derive the maximum benefits and enjoyment possible. We hope that you find the program challenging and fun to do. However, if you have never been a distance-learner before, you may be experiencing some trepidation at the task before you. So we will get you started by giving you some basic information and guidance on how you can make the best use of the modules, how you should manage the materials and what you should be doing as you work through them. This guide is designed to point you in the right direction and help you to become an effective distance-learner. Take a few hours or so to study this guide and your guide to tutorial support for students, while making notes, before you start to study in earnest.
Study environment
You will need to locate a quiet and private place to study, preferably a room where you can easily be isolated from external disturbances or distractions. Make sure the room is well-lit and incorporates a relaxed, pleasant feel. If you can spoil yourself within your study environment, you will have much more of a chance to ensure that you are always in the right frame of mind when you do devote time to study. For example, a nice fire, the ability to play soft soothing background music, soft but effective lighting, perhaps a nice view if possible and a good size desk with a comfortable chair. Make sure that your family know when you are studying and understand your study rules. Your study environment is very important. The ideal situation, if at all possible, is to have a separate study, which can be devoted to you. If this is not possible then you will need to pay a lot more attention to developing and managing your study schedule, because it will affect other people as well as yourself. The better your study environment, the more productive you will be.
Study tools & rules
Try and make sure that your study tools are sufficient and in good working order. You will need to have access to a computer, scanner and printer, with access to the internet. You will need a very comfortable chair, which supports your lower back, and you will need a good filing system. It can be very frustrating if you are spending valuable study time trying to fix study tools that are unreliable, or unsuitable for the task. Make sure that your study tools are up to date. You will also need to consider some study rules. Some of these rules will apply to you and will be intended to help you to be more disciplined about when and how you study. This distance-learning guide will help you and after you have read it you can put some thought into what your study rules should be. You will also need to negotiate some study rules for your family, friends or anyone who lives with you. They too will need to be disciplined in order to ensure that they can support you while you study. It is important to ensure that your family and friends are an integral part of your study team. Having their support and encouragement can prove to be a crucial contribution to your successful completion of the program. Involve them in as much as you can.
Successful distance-learning
Distance-learners are freed from the necessity of attending regular classes or workshops, since they can study in their own way, at their own pace and for their own purposes. But unlike traditional internal training courses, it is the student’s responsibility, with a distance-learning program, to ensure that they manage their own study contribution. This requires strong self-discipline and self-motivation skills and there must be a clear will to succeed. Those students who are used to managing themselves, are good at managing others and who enjoy working in isolation, are more likely to be good distance-learners. It is also important to be aware of the main reasons why you are studying and of the main objectives that you are hoping to achieve as a result. You will need to remind yourself of these objectives at times when you need to motivate yourself. Never lose sight of your long-term goals and your short-term objectives. There is nobody available here to pamper you, or to look after you, or to spoon-feed you with information, so you will need to find ways to encourage and appreciate yourself while you are studying. Make sure that you chart your study progress, so that you can be sure of your achievements and re-evaluate your goals and objectives regularly.
Self-assessment
Appleton Greene training programs are in all cases post-graduate programs. Consequently, you should already have obtained a business-related degree and be an experienced learner. You should therefore already be aware of your study strengths and weaknesses. For example, which time of the day are you at your most productive? Are you a lark or an owl? What study methods do you respond to the most? Are you a consistent learner? How do you discipline yourself? How do you ensure that you enjoy yourself while studying? It is important to understand yourself as a learner and so some self-assessment early on will be necessary if you are to apply yourself correctly. Perform a SWOT analysis on yourself as a student. List your internal strengths and weaknesses as a student and your external opportunities and threats. This will help you later on when you are creating a study plan. You can then incorporate features within your study plan that can ensure that you are playing to your strengths, while compensating for your weaknesses. You can also ensure that you make the most of your opportunities, while avoiding the potential threats to your success.
Accepting responsibility as a student
Training programs invariably require a significant investment, both in terms of what they cost and in the time that you need to contribute to study and the responsibility for successful completion of training programs rests entirely with the student. This is never more apparent than when a student is learning via distance-learning. Accepting responsibility as a student is an important step towards ensuring that you can successfully complete your training program. It is easy to instantly blame other people or factors when things go wrong. But the fact of the matter is that if a failure is your failure, then you have the power to do something about it, it is entirely in your own hands. If it is always someone else’s failure, then you are powerless to do anything about it. All students study in entirely different ways, this is because we are all individuals and what is right for one student, is not necessarily right for another. In order to succeed, you will have to accept personal responsibility for finding a way to plan, implement and manage a personal study plan that works for you. If you do not succeed, you only have yourself to blame.
Planning
By far the most critical contribution to stress, is the feeling of not being in control. In the absence of planning we tend to be reactive and can stumble from pillar to post in the hope that things will turn out fine in the end. Invariably they don’t! In order to be in control, we need to have firm ideas about how and when we want to do things. We also need to consider as many possible eventualities as we can, so that we are prepared for them when they happen. Prescriptive Change, is far easier to manage and control, than Emergent Change. The same is true with distance-learning. It is much easier and much more enjoyable, if you feel that you are in control and that things are going to plan. Even when things do go wrong, you are prepared for them and can act accordingly without any unnecessary stress. It is important therefore that you do take time to plan your studies properly.
Management
Once you have developed a clear study plan, it is of equal importance to ensure that you manage the implementation of it. Most of us usually enjoy planning, but it is usually during implementation when things go wrong. Targets are not met and we do not understand why. Sometimes we do not even know if targets are being met. It is not enough for us to conclude that the study plan just failed. If it is failing, you will need to understand what you can do about it. Similarly if your study plan is succeeding, it is still important to understand why, so that you can improve upon your success. You therefore need to have guidelines for self-assessment so that you can be consistent with performance improvement throughout the program. If you manage things correctly, then your performance should constantly improve throughout the program.
Study objectives & tasks
The first place to start is developing your program objectives. These should feature your reasons for undertaking the training program in order of priority. Keep them succinct and to the point in order to avoid confusion. Do not just write the first things that come into your head because they are likely to be too similar to each other. Make a list of possible departmental headings, such as: Customer Service; E-business; Finance; Globalization; Human Resources; Technology; Legal; Management; Marketing and Production. Then brainstorm for ideas by listing as many things that you want to achieve under each heading and later re-arrange these things in order of priority. Finally, select the top item from each department heading and choose these as your program objectives. Try and restrict yourself to five because it will enable you to focus clearly. It is likely that the other things that you listed will be achieved if each of the top objectives are achieved. If this does not prove to be the case, then simply work through the process again.
Study forecast
As a guide, the Appleton Greene Balancing Entrepreneurship corporate training program should take 12-18 months to complete, depending upon your availability and current commitments. The reason why there is such a variance in time estimates is because every student is an individual, with differing productivity levels and different commitments. These differentiations are then exaggerated by the fact that this is a distance-learning program, which incorporates the practical integration of academic theory as an as a part of the training program. Consequently all of the project studies are real, which means that important decisions and compromises need to be made. You will want to get things right and will need to be patient with your expectations in order to ensure that they are. We would always recommend that you are prudent with your own task and time forecasts, but you still need to develop them and have a clear indication of what are realistic expectations in your case. With reference to your time planning: consider the time that you can realistically dedicate towards study with the program every week; calculate how long it should take you to complete the program, using the guidelines featured here; then break the program down into logical modules and allocate a suitable proportion of time to each of them, these will be your milestones; you can create a time plan by using a spreadsheet on your computer, or a personal organizer such as MS Outlook, you could also use a financial forecasting software; break your time forecasts down into manageable chunks of time, the more specific you can be, the more productive and accurate your time management will be; finally, use formulas where possible to do your time calculations for you, because this will help later on when your forecasts need to change in line with actual performance. With reference to your task planning: refer to your list of tasks that need to be undertaken in order to achieve your program objectives; with reference to your time plan, calculate when each task should be implemented; remember that you are not estimating when your objectives will be achieved, but when you will need to focus upon implementing the corresponding tasks; you also need to ensure that each task is implemented in conjunction with the associated training modules which are relevant; then break each single task down into a list of specific to do’s, say approximately ten to do’s for each task and enter these into your study plan; once again you could use MS Outlook to incorporate both your time and task planning and this could constitute your study plan; you could also use a project management software like MS Project. You should now have a clear and realistic forecast detailing when you can expect to be able to do something about undertaking the tasks to achieve your program objectives.
Performance management
It is one thing to develop your study forecast, it is quite another to monitor your progress. Ultimately it is less important whether you achieve your original study forecast and more important that you update it so that it constantly remains realistic in line with your performance. As you begin to work through the program, you will begin to have more of an idea about your own personal performance and productivity levels as a distance-learner. Once you have completed your first study module, you should re-evaluate your study forecast for both time and tasks, so that they reflect your actual performance level achieved. In order to achieve this you must first time yourself while training by using an alarm clock. Set the alarm for hourly intervals and make a note of how far you have come within that time. You can then make a note of your actual performance on your study plan and then compare your performance against your forecast. Then consider the reasons that have contributed towards your performance level, whether they are positive or negative and make a considered adjustment to your future forecasts as a result. Given time, you should start achieving your forecasts regularly.
With reference to time management: time yourself while you are studying and make a note of the actual time taken in your study plan; consider your successes with time-efficiency and the reasons for the success in each case and take this into consideration when reviewing future time planning; consider your failures with time-efficiency and the reasons for the failures in each case and take this into consideration when reviewing future time planning; re-evaluate your study forecast in relation to time planning for the remainder of your training program to ensure that you continue to be realistic about your time expectations. You need to be consistent with your time management, otherwise you will never complete your studies. This will either be because you are not contributing enough time to your studies, or you will become less efficient with the time that you do allocate to your studies. Remember, if you are not in control of your studies, they can just become yet another cause of stress for you.
With reference to your task management: time yourself while you are studying and make a note of the actual tasks that you have undertaken in your study plan; consider your successes with task-efficiency and the reasons for the success in each case; take this into consideration when reviewing future task planning; consider your failures with task-efficiency and the reasons for the failures in each case and take this into consideration when reviewing future task planning; re-evaluate your study forecast in relation to task planning for the remainder of your training program to ensure that you continue to be realistic about your task expectations. You need to be consistent with your task management, otherwise you will never know whether you are achieving your program objectives or not.
Keeping in touch
You will have access to qualified and experienced professors and tutors who are responsible for providing tutorial support for your particular training program. So don’t be shy about letting them know how you are getting on. We keep electronic records of all tutorial support emails so that professors and tutors can review previous correspondence before considering an individual response. It also means that there is a record of all communications between you and your professors and tutors and this helps to avoid any unnecessary duplication, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation. If you have a problem relating to the program, share it with them via email. It is likely that they have come across the same problem before and are usually able to make helpful suggestions and steer you in the right direction. To learn more about when and how to use tutorial support, please refer to the Tutorial Support section of this student information guide. This will help you to ensure that you are making the most of tutorial support that is available to you and will ultimately contribute towards your success and enjoyment with your training program.
Work colleagues and family
You should certainly discuss your program study progress with your colleagues, friends and your family. Appleton Greene training programs are very practical. They require you to seek information from other people, to plan, develop and implement processes with other people and to achieve feedback from other people in relation to viability and productivity. You will therefore have plenty of opportunities to test your ideas and enlist the views of others. People tend to be sympathetic towards distance-learners, so don’t bottle it all up in yourself. Get out there and share it! It is also likely that your family and colleagues are going to benefit from your labors with the program, so they are likely to be much more interested in being involved than you might think. Be bold about delegating work to those who might benefit themselves. This is a great way to achieve understanding and commitment from people who you may later rely upon for process implementation. Share your experiences with your friends and family.
Making it relevant
The key to successful learning is to make it relevant to your own individual circumstances. At all times you should be trying to make bridges between the content of the program and your own situation. Whether you achieve this through quiet reflection or through interactive discussion with your colleagues, client partners or your family, remember that it is the most important and rewarding aspect of translating your studies into real self-improvement. You should be clear about how you want the program to benefit you. This involves setting clear study objectives in relation to the content of the course in terms of understanding, concepts, completing research or reviewing activities and relating the content of the modules to your own situation. Your objectives may understandably change as you work through the program, in which case you should enter the revised objectives on your study plan so that you have a permanent reminder of what you are trying to achieve, when and why.
Distance-learning check-list
Prepare your study environment, your study tools and rules.
Undertake detailed self-assessment in terms of your ability as a learner.
Create a format for your study plan.
Consider your study objectives and tasks.
Create a study forecast.
Assess your study performance.
Re-evaluate your study forecast.
Be consistent when managing your study plan.
Use your Appleton Greene Certified Learning Provider (CLP) for tutorial support.
Make sure you keep in touch with those around you.
Tutorial Support
Programs
Appleton Greene uses standard and bespoke corporate training programs as vessels to transfer business process improvement knowledge into the heart of our clients’ organizations. Each individual program focuses upon the implementation of a specific business process, which enables clients to easily quantify their return on investment. There are hundreds of established Appleton Greene corporate training products now available to clients within customer services, e-business, finance, globalization, human resources, information technology, legal, management, marketing and production. It does not matter whether a client’s employees are located within one office, or an unlimited number of international offices, we can still bring them together to learn and implement specific business processes collectively. Our approach to global localization enables us to provide clients with a truly international service with that all important personal touch. Appleton Greene corporate training programs can be provided virtually or locally and they are all unique in that they individually focus upon a specific business function. They are implemented over a sustainable period of time and professional support is consistently provided by qualified learning providers and specialist consultants.
Support available
You will have a designated Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and an Accredited Consultant and we encourage you to communicate with them as much as possible. In all cases tutorial support is provided online because we can then keep a record of all communications to ensure that tutorial support remains consistent. You would also be forwarding your work to the tutorial support unit for evaluation and assessment. You will receive individual feedback on all of the work that you undertake on a one-to-one basis, together with specific recommendations for anything that may need to be changed in order to achieve a pass with merit or a pass with distinction and you then have as many opportunities as you may need to re-submit project studies until they meet with the required standard. Consequently the only reason that you should really fail (CLP) is if you do not do the work. It makes no difference to us whether a student takes 12 months or 18 months to complete the program, what matters is that in all cases the same quality standard will have been achieved.
Support Process
Please forward all of your future emails to the designated (CLP) Tutorial Support Unit email address that has been provided and please do not duplicate or copy your emails to other AGC email accounts as this will just cause unnecessary administration. Please note that emails are always answered as quickly as possible but you will need to allow a period of up to 20 business days for responses to general tutorial support emails during busy periods, because emails are answered strictly within the order in which they are received. You will also need to allow a period of up to 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies. This does not include weekends or public holidays. Please therefore kindly allow for this within your time planning. All communications are managed online via email because it enables tutorial service support managers to review other communications which have been received before responding and it ensures that there is a copy of all communications retained on file for future reference. All communications will be stored within your personal (CLP) study file here at Appleton Greene throughout your designated study period. If you need any assistance or clarification at any time, please do not hesitate to contact us by forwarding an email and remember that we are here to help. If you have any questions, please list and number your questions succinctly and you can then be sure of receiving specific answers to each and every query.
Time Management
It takes approximately 1 Year to complete the Balancing Entrepreneurship corporate training program, incorporating 12 x 6-hour monthly workshops. Each student will also need to contribute approximately 4 hours per week over 1 Year of their personal time. Students can study from home or work at their own pace and are responsible for managing their own study plan. There are no formal examinations and students are evaluated and assessed based upon their project study submissions, together with the quality of their internal analysis and supporting documents. They can contribute more time towards study when they have the time to do so and can contribute less time when they are busy. All students tend to be in full time employment while studying and the Balancing Entrepreneurship program is purposely designed to accommodate this, so there is plenty of flexibility in terms of time management. It makes no difference to us at Appleton Greene, whether individuals take 12-18 months to complete this program. What matters is that in all cases the same standard of quality will have been achieved with the standard and bespoke programs that have been developed.
Distance Learning Guide
The distance learning guide should be your first port of call when starting your training program. It will help you when you are planning how and when to study, how to create the right environment and how to establish the right frame of mind. If you can lay the foundations properly during the planning stage, then it will contribute to your enjoyment and productivity while training later. The guide helps to change your lifestyle in order to accommodate time for study and to cultivate good study habits. It helps you to chart your progress so that you can measure your performance and achieve your goals. It explains the tools that you will need for study and how to make them work. It also explains how to translate academic theory into practical reality. Spend some time now working through your distance learning guide and make sure that you have firm foundations in place so that you can make the most of your distance learning program. There is no requirement for you to attend training workshops or classes at Appleton Greene offices. The entire program is undertaken online, program course manuals and project studies are administered via the Appleton Greene web site and via email, so you are able to study at your own pace and in the comfort of your own home or office as long as you have a computer and access to the internet.
How To Study
The how to study guide provides students with a clear understanding of the Appleton Greene facilitation via distance learning training methods and enables students to obtain a clear overview of the training program content. It enables students to understand the step-by-step training methods used by Appleton Greene and how course manuals are integrated with project studies. It explains the research and development that is required and the need to provide evidence and references to support your statements. It also enables students to understand precisely what will be required of them in order to achieve a pass with merit and a pass with distinction for individual project studies and provides useful guidance on how to be innovative and creative when developing your Unique Program Proposition (UPP).
Tutorial Support
Tutorial support for the Appleton Greene Balancing Entrepreneurship corporate training program is provided online either through the Appleton Greene Client Support Portal (CSP), or via email. All tutorial support requests are facilitated by a designated Program Administration Manager (PAM). They are responsible for deciding which professor or tutor is the most appropriate option relating to the support required and then the tutorial support request is forwarded onto them. Once the professor or tutor has completed the tutorial support request and answered any questions that have been asked, this communication is then returned to the student via email by the designated Program Administration Manager (PAM). This enables all tutorial support, between students, professors and tutors, to be facilitated by the designated Program Administration Manager (PAM) efficiently and securely through the email account. You will therefore need to allow a period of up to 20 business days for responses to general support queries and up to 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies, because all tutorial support requests are answered strictly within the order in which they are received. This does not include weekends or public holidays. Consequently you need to put some thought into the management of your tutorial support procedure in order to ensure that your study plan is feasible and to obtain the maximum possible benefit from tutorial support during your period of study. Please retain copies of your tutorial support emails for future reference. Please ensure that ALL of your tutorial support emails are set out using the format as suggested within your guide to tutorial support. Your tutorial support emails need to be referenced clearly to the specific part of the course manual or project study which you are working on at any given time. You also need to list and number any questions that you would like to ask, up to a maximum of five questions within each tutorial support email. Remember the more specific you can be with your questions the more specific your answers will be too and this will help you to avoid any unnecessary misunderstanding, misinterpretation, or duplication. The guide to tutorial support is intended to help you to understand how and when to use support in order to ensure that you get the most out of your training program. Appleton Greene training programs are designed to enable you to do things for yourself. They provide you with a structure or a framework and we use tutorial support to facilitate students while they practically implement what they learn. In other words, we are enabling students to do things for themselves. The benefits of distance learning via facilitation are considerable and are much more sustainable in the long-term than traditional short-term knowledge sharing programs. Consequently you should learn how and when to use tutorial support so that you can maximize the benefits from your learning experience with Appleton Greene. This guide describes the purpose of each training function and how to use them and how to use tutorial support in relation to each aspect of the training program. It also provides useful tips and guidance with regard to best practice.
Tutorial Support Tips
Students are often unsure about how and when to use tutorial support with Appleton Greene. This Tip List will help you to understand more about how to achieve the most from using tutorial support. Refer to it regularly to ensure that you are continuing to use the service properly. Tutorial support is critical to the success of your training experience, but it is important to understand when and how to use it in order to maximize the benefit that you receive. It is no coincidence that those students who succeed are those that learn how to be positive, proactive and productive when using tutorial support.
Be positive and friendly with your tutorial support emails
Remember that if you forward an email to the tutorial support unit, you are dealing with real people. “Do unto others as you would expect others to do unto you”. If you are positive, complimentary and generally friendly in your emails, you will generate a similar response in return. This will be more enjoyable, productive and rewarding for you in the long-term.
Think about the impression that you want to create
Every time that you communicate, you create an impression, which can be either positive or negative, so put some thought into the impression that you want to create. Remember that copies of all tutorial support emails are stored electronically and tutors will always refer to prior correspondence before responding to any current emails. Over a period of time, a general opinion will be arrived at in relation to your character, attitude and ability. Try to manage your own frustrations, mood swings and temperament professionally, without involving the tutorial support team. Demonstrating frustration or a lack of patience is a weakness and will be interpreted as such. The good thing about communicating in writing, is that you will have the time to consider your content carefully, you can review it and proof-read it before sending your email to Appleton Greene and this should help you to communicate more professionally, consistently and to avoid any unnecessary knee-jerk reactions to individual situations as and when they may arise. Please also remember that the CLP Tutorial Support Unit will not just be responsible for evaluating and assessing the quality of your work, they will also be responsible for providing recommendations to other learning providers and to client contacts within the Appleton Greene global client network, so do be in control of your own emotions and try to create a good impression.
Remember that quality is preferred to quantity
Please remember that when you send an email to the tutorial support team, you are not using Twitter or Text Messaging. Try not to forward an email every time that you have a thought. This will not prove to be productive either for you or for the tutorial support team. Take time to prepare your communications properly, as if you were writing a professional letter to a business colleague and make a list of queries that you are likely to have and then incorporate them within one email, say once every month, so that the tutorial support team can understand more about context, application and your methodology for study. Get yourself into a consistent routine with your tutorial support requests and use the tutorial support template provided with ALL of your emails. The (CLP) Tutorial Support Unit will not spoon-feed you with information. They need to be able to evaluate and assess your tutorial support requests carefully and professionally.
Be specific about your questions in order to receive specific answers
Try not to write essays by thinking as you are writing tutorial support emails. The tutorial support unit can be unclear about what in fact you are asking, or what you are looking to achieve. Be specific about asking questions that you want answers to. Number your questions. You will then receive specific answers to each and every question. This is the main purpose of tutorial support via email.
Keep a record of your tutorial support emails
It is important that you keep a record of all tutorial support emails that are forwarded to you. You can then refer to them when necessary and it avoids any unnecessary duplication, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation.
Individual training workshops or telephone support
Please be advised that Appleton Greene does not provide separate or individual tutorial support meetings, workshops, or provide telephone support for individual students. Appleton Greene is an equal opportunities learning and service provider and we are therefore understandably bound to treat all students equally. We cannot therefore broker special financial or study arrangements with individual students regardless of the circumstances. All tutorial support is provided online and this enables Appleton Greene to keep a record of all communications between students, professors and tutors on file for future reference, in accordance with our quality management procedure and your terms and conditions of enrolment. All tutorial support is provided online via email because it enables us to have time to consider support content carefully, it ensures that you receive a considered and detailed response to your queries. You can number questions that you would like to ask, which relate to things that you do not understand or where clarification may be required. You can then be sure of receiving specific answers to each individual query. You will also then have a record of these communications and of all tutorial support, which has been provided to you. This makes tutorial support administration more productive by avoiding any unnecessary duplication, misunderstanding, or misinterpretation.
Tutorial Support Email Format
You should use this tutorial support format if you need to request clarification or assistance while studying with your training program. Please note that ALL of your tutorial support request emails should use the same format. You should therefore set up a standard email template, which you can then use as and when you need to. Emails that are forwarded to Appleton Greene, which do not use the following format, may be rejected and returned to you by the (CLP) Program Administration Manager. A detailed response will then be forwarded to you via email usually within 20 business days of receipt for general support queries and 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies. This does not include weekends or public holidays. Your tutorial support request, together with the corresponding TSU reply, will then be saved and stored within your electronic TSU file at Appleton Greene for future reference.
Subject line of your email
Please insert: Appleton Greene (CLP) Tutorial Support Request: (Your Full Name) (Date), within the subject line of your email.
Main body of your email
Please insert:
1. Appleton Greene Certified Learning Provider (CLP) Tutorial Support Request
2. Your Full Name
3. Date of TS request
4. Preferred email address
5. Backup email address
6. Course manual page name or number (reference)
7. Project study page name or number (reference)
Subject of enquiry
Please insert a maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Briefly outline the subject matter of your inquiry, or what your questions relate to.
Question 1
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Question 3
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Question 4
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Question 5
Maximum of 50 words (please be succinct)
Please note that a maximum of 5 questions is permitted with each individual tutorial support request email.
Procedure
* List the questions that you want to ask first, then re-arrange them in order of priority. Make sure that you reference them, where necessary, to the course manuals or project studies.
* Make sure that you are specific about your questions and number them. Try to plan the content within your emails to make sure that it is relevant.
* Make sure that your tutorial support emails are set out correctly, using the Tutorial Support Email Format provided here.
* Save a copy of your email and incorporate the date sent after the subject title. Keep your tutorial support emails within the same file and in date order for easy reference.
* Allow up to 20 business days for a response to general tutorial support emails and up to 30 business days for the evaluation and assessment of project studies, because detailed individual responses will be made in all cases and tutorial support emails are answered strictly within the order in which they are received.
* Emails can and do get lost. So if you have not received a reply within the appropriate time, forward another copy or a reminder to the tutorial support unit to be sure that it has been received but do not forward reminders unless the appropriate time has elapsed.
* When you receive a reply, save it immediately featuring the date of receipt after the subject heading for easy reference. In most cases the tutorial support unit replies to your questions individually, so you will have a record of the questions that you asked as well as the answers offered. With project studies however, separate emails are usually forwarded by the tutorial support unit, so do keep a record of your own original emails as well.
* Remember to be positive and friendly in your emails. You are dealing with real people who will respond to the same things that you respond to.
* Try not to repeat questions that have already been asked in previous emails. If this happens the tutorial support unit will probably just refer you to the appropriate answers that have already been provided within previous emails.
* If you lose your tutorial support email records you can write to Appleton Greene to receive a copy of your tutorial support file, but a separate administration charge may be levied for this service.
How To Study
Your Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and Accredited Consultant can help you to plan a task list for getting started so that you can be clear about your direction and your priorities in relation to your training program. It is also a good way to introduce yourself to the tutorial support team.
Planning your study environment
Your study conditions are of great importance and will have a direct effect on how much you enjoy your training program. Consider how much space you will have, whether it is comfortable and private and whether you are likely to be disturbed. The study tools and facilities at your disposal are also important to the success of your distance-learning experience. Your tutorial support unit can help with useful tips and guidance, regardless of your starting position. It is important to get this right before you start working on your training program.
Planning your program objectives
It is important that you have a clear list of study objectives, in order of priority, before you start working on your training program. Your tutorial support unit can offer assistance here to ensure that your study objectives have been afforded due consideration and priority.
Planning how and when to study
Distance-learners are freed from the necessity of attending regular classes, since they can study in their own way, at their own pace and for their own purposes. This approach is designed to let you study efficiently away from the traditional classroom environment. It is important however, that you plan how and when to study, so that you are making the most of your natural attributes, strengths and opportunities. Your tutorial support unit can offer assistance and useful tips to ensure that you are playing to your strengths.
Planning your study tasks
You should have a clear understanding of the study tasks that you should be undertaking and the priority associated with each task. These tasks should also be integrated with your program objectives. The distance learning guide and the guide to tutorial support for students should help you here, but if you need any clarification or assistance, please contact your tutorial support unit.
Planning your time
You will need to allocate specific times during your calendar when you intend to study if you are to have a realistic chance of completing your program on time. You are responsible for planning and managing your own study time, so it is important that you are successful with this. Your tutorial support unit can help you with this if your time plan is not working.
Keeping in touch
Consistency is the key here. If you communicate too frequently in short bursts, or too infrequently with no pattern, then your management ability with your studies will be questioned, both by you and by your tutorial support unit. It is obvious when a student is in control and when one is not and this will depend how able you are at sticking with your study plan. Inconsistency invariably leads to in-completion.
Charting your progress
Your tutorial support team can help you to chart your own study progress. Refer to your distance learning guide for further details.
Making it work
To succeed, all that you will need to do is apply yourself to undertaking your training program and interpreting it correctly. Success or failure lies in your hands and your hands alone, so be sure that you have a strategy for making it work. Your Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and Accredited Consultant can guide you through the process of program planning, development and implementation.
Reading methods
Interpretation is often unique to the individual but it can be improved and even quantified by implementing consistent interpretation methods. Interpretation can be affected by outside interference such as family members, TV, or the Internet, or simply by other thoughts which are demanding priority in our minds. One thing that can improve our productivity is using recognized reading methods. This helps us to focus and to be more structured when reading information for reasons of importance, rather than relaxation.
Speed reading
When reading through course manuals for the first time, subconsciously set your reading speed to be just fast enough that you cannot dwell on individual words or tables. With practice, you should be able to read an A4 sheet of paper in one minute. You will not achieve much in the way of a detailed understanding, but your brain will retain a useful overview. This overview will be important later on and will enable you to keep individual issues in perspective with a more generic picture because speed reading appeals to the memory part of the brain. Do not worry about what you do or do not remember at this stage.
Content reading
Once you have speed read everything, you can then start work in earnest. You now need to read a particular section of your course manual thoroughly, by making detailed notes while you read. This process is called Content Reading and it will help to consolidate your understanding and interpretation of the information that has been provided.
Making structured notes on the course manuals
When you are content reading, you should be making detailed notes, which are both structured and informative. Make these notes in a MS Word document on your computer, because you can then amend and update these as and when you deem it to be necessary. List your notes under three headings: 1. Interpretation – 2. Questions – 3. Tasks. The purpose of the 1st section is to clarify your interpretation by writing it down. The purpose of the 2nd section is to list any questions that the issue raises for you. The purpose of the 3rd section is to list any tasks that you should undertake as a result. Anyone who has graduated with a business-related degree should already be familiar with this process.
Organizing structured notes separately
You should then transfer your notes to a separate study notebook, preferably one that enables easy referencing, such as a MS Word Document, a MS Excel Spreadsheet, a MS Access Database, or a personal organizer on your cell phone. Transferring your notes allows you to have the opportunity of cross-checking and verifying them, which assists considerably with understanding and interpretation. You will also find that the better you are at doing this, the more chance you will have of ensuring that you achieve your study objectives.
Question your understanding
Do challenge your understanding. Explain things to yourself in your own words by writing things down.
Clarifying your understanding
If you are at all unsure, forward an email to your tutorial support unit and they will help to clarify your understanding.
Question your interpretation
Do challenge your interpretation. Qualify your interpretation by writing it down.
Clarifying your interpretation
If you are at all unsure, forward an email to your tutorial support unit and they will help to clarify your interpretation.
Qualification Requirements
The student will need to successfully complete the project study and all of the exercises relating to the Balancing Entrepreneurship corporate training program, achieving a pass with merit or distinction in each case, in order to qualify as an Accredited Balancing Entrepreneurship Specialist (APTS). All monthly workshops need to be tried and tested within your company. These project studies can be completed in your own time and at your own pace and in the comfort of your own home or office. There are no formal examinations, assessment is based upon the successful completion of the project studies. They are called project studies because, unlike case studies, these projects are not theoretical, they incorporate real program processes that need to be properly researched and developed. The project studies assist us in measuring your understanding and interpretation of the training program and enable us to assess qualification merits. All of the project studies are based entirely upon the content within the training program and they enable you to integrate what you have learnt into your corporate training practice.
Balancing Entrepreneurship – Grading Contribution
Project Study – Grading Contribution
Customer Service – 10%
E-business – 05%
Finance – 10%
Globalization – 10%
Human Resources – 10%
Information Technology – 10%
Legal – 05%
Management – 10%
Marketing – 10%
Production – 10%
Education – 05%
Logistics – 05%
TOTAL GRADING – 100%
Qualification grades
A mark of 90% = Pass with Distinction.
A mark of 75% = Pass with Merit.
A mark of less than 75% = Fail.
If you fail to achieve a mark of 75% with a project study, you will receive detailed feedback from the Certified Learning Provider (CLP) and/or Accredited Consultant, together with a list of tasks which you will need to complete, in order to ensure that your project study meets with the minimum quality standard that is required by Appleton Greene. You can then re-submit your project study for further evaluation and assessment. Indeed you can re-submit as many drafts of your project studies as you need to, until such a time as they eventually meet with the required standard by Appleton Greene, so you need not worry about this, it is all part of the learning process.
When marking project studies, Appleton Greene is looking for sufficient evidence of the following:
Pass with merit
A satisfactory level of program understanding
A satisfactory level of program interpretation
A satisfactory level of project study content presentation
A satisfactory level of Unique Program Proposition (UPP) quality
A satisfactory level of the practical integration of academic theory
Pass with distinction
An exceptional level of program understanding
An exceptional level of program interpretation
An exceptional level of project study content presentation
An exceptional level of Unique Program Proposition (UPP) quality
An exceptional level of the practical integration of academic theory
Preliminary Analysis
Online Article
By H. Yang, L. Zhang, Y. Wu and H Shi,
Frontiers in Psychology,
Oct 29, 2021.
“Benefits and Costs of Happy Entrepreneurs: The Dual Effect of Entrepreneurial Identity on Entrepreneurs’ Subjective Well-Being
Abstract
Entrepreneurship research generally focuses more on the entrepreneurial outcomes of entrepreneurs and less on their entrepreneurial process. To a certain extent, well-being reflects how tired entrepreneurs are during entrepreneurship. Based on conservation of resources theory, this study proposes a double-edged sword model of the effect of entrepreneurial identity on subjective well-being, using the two-dimensional structure of work rumination as a mediator. This study also concentrates on the moderating role of entrepreneurial mindfulness. Multiple hierarchical regression methods are used to analyze and test 882 valid samples. Results suggest that the effect of entrepreneurial identity produces distinctly different outcomes. On the one hand, entrepreneurial identity induces entrepreneurs’ work-related affective rumination to reduce their subjective well-being through the path of resource depletion. On the other hand, entrepreneurial identity stimulates entrepreneurs’ contemplation on work-related problem-solving pondering to enhance their subjective well-being through the path of resource acquisition. In the path of resource depletion, work-related affective rumination produces a “suppressing effect” between an entrepreneur’s identity and entrepreneurial subjective well-being. In addition, entrepreneurial mindfulness weakens the resource depletion path. Entrepreneurial mindfulness negatively moderates the relationship between entrepreneurial identity and work-related affective rumination. Entrepreneurial mindfulness also does not strengthen the resource acquisition path. Mindfulness does not positively moderate the relationship between entrepreneurial identity and work-related problem-solving pondering. The findings further extend the research on the influence of entrepreneurial identity on subjective well-being. They also reveal the mechanisms and boundary conditions of the effect of entrepreneurial identity on subjective well-being.
Introduction
Entrepreneurial well-being is not only a key part of evaluating entrepreneurial achievements but also an important motivation for continuous entrepreneurship after entrepreneurial failure. Entrepreneurial well-being is regarded as a decisive symbol of entrepreneurial success. Entrepreneurs with high well-being can not only better cope with the challenges of work stress and high entrepreneurial failure rate but also show a better level of innovation performance (Stephan, 2018; Yu et al., 2018). For entrepreneurial success, the physical and mental health of entrepreneurs are as important as the development of entrepreneurial enterprises (Uy et al., 2017). However, existing entrepreneurship research focuses more on the economic performance brought about by entrepreneurship and less on whether entrepreneurs are satisfied with their entrepreneurship. Scholars emphasize that entrepreneurship research is more concerned with how high entrepreneurs “fly” and rarely with how tired entrepreneurs “fly” (Yu et al., 2018). Exploring the formation of entrepreneurial well-being can help in understanding not only entrepreneurial results in terms of objective performance but also entrepreneurial success or failure in terms of subjective utility. Previous studies find that compared with employed individuals, entrepreneurs face unstable incomes, high entrepreneurial risks, and great pressure (Uy et al., 2013). Nevertheless, entrepreneurial activities bring well-being to entrepreneurs (Wach et al., 2021). In entrepreneurial practice, some entrepreneurs make a comeback due to failure, whereas others retire at the peak of their careers. What role well-being plays in entrepreneurship needs to be answered by research on entrepreneurial well-being. The subjective well-being of entrepreneurs has attracted attention in academic circles. Scholars define it as entrepreneurs’ overall assessment and subjective feelings about their quality of life, job satisfaction, and personal growth and development during the creation and operation of the business. At present, domestic and foreign scholars find that entrepreneurs’ subjective well-being can be improved by entrepreneurial characteristics (Hmieleski and Sheppard, 2019) and entrepreneurial context (Abreu et al., 2019; Fritsch et al., 2019; Xu et al., 2021).
A systematic review of the literature reveals that previous research on the antecedent variables of entrepreneurial well-being is conducted in two main aspects. First, scholars explore the impact of “whether entrepreneurial needs are met” on entrepreneurial well-being on the basis of difference theory. Relevant research studies entrepreneurial well-being in chronological order from the satisfaction of entrepreneurial expectations, the dissatisfaction of entrepreneurial expectations (e.g., entrepreneurial failure), and the influencing factors of entrepreneurial expectations (e.g., human capital). Second, based on the job characteristic model, scholars explore the impact of family–work conflict and entrepreneurial heterogeneity on entrepreneurial well-being. Most of the existing studies focus on the “result effect” of entrepreneurship to explore the “positive side” of the antecedent variables on entrepreneurial well-being. The “negative side” of the antecedent variables affecting entrepreneurial well-being is rarely explored using the “process effect” of entrepreneurship. Additionally, there is no systematic discussion on whether the antecedent variables have both positive and negative effects. The entrepreneurial process effect emphasizes that entrepreneurs not only pay attention to entrepreneurial results in the entrepreneurial process but also pay more attention to the conditions for the realization of entrepreneurial results. For example, although entrepreneurs encounter entrepreneurial failures, entrepreneurs may gain personal abilities, social recognition, and social network. This greatly reduces or even offsets the impact of entrepreneurial failure on entrepreneurs’ well-being. During entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs usually actively recognize, experience, and evaluate entrepreneurial and internalized entrepreneurial roles to construct and adjust their self-identity of entrepreneurial roles and to be affirmed and recognized by the external environment. This process is named “entrepreneurial identity” (Hekman et al., 2009; Guo et al., 2019). Entrepreneurial identity is the antecedent factor affecting entrepreneurial success and improving entrepreneurial performance. Theoretically, a relationship exists between the identity of entrepreneurs and their subjective well-being. Self-perceptions of entrepreneurial role can enhance entrepreneurial identity aspirations and predict entrepreneurial discovery and exploration behaviors (Farmer et al., 2011). Entrepreneurial identity is committed to entrepreneurial success, and whether or not to start a business can affect an individual’s subjective well-being. In summary, studying the impact of entrepreneurial identity on entrepreneurs’ subjective well-being has great theoretical and practical significance.
Previous studies mainly investigate the influence mechanism of entrepreneurs’ subjective well-being from the perspective of difference theory and self-determination theory. Difference theory suggests that individual satisfaction depends on the difference between actual and predetermined standards. According to this theory, the higher the goals an entrepreneur sets, the harder it is to feel well-being. Some scholars challenge this theory. They find that entrepreneurs with higher expectations of business success have higher satisfaction (Cooper and Artz, 1995). Nonetheless, most research supports the view that “the lower the expectation, the happier they are.” If entrepreneurship fails, does that mean that entrepreneurial expectations have failed? The reality is that some entrepreneurs will be relieved and view it like “euthanasia” after encountering entrepreneurial failure (Yu et al., 2018). Self-determination theory provides a supplementary explanation to difference theory. Self-determination theory suggests that an individual’s well-being is derived from the satisfaction of three main needs: autonomy, competence, and belonging. If entrepreneurs’ needs for autonomy, competence, and belonging are not met before the failure of the venture, then once the entrepreneurship fails, this will exacerbate the negative emotions such as disappointment and stress caused by the entrepreneurs’ psychological fallout and thus affect entrepreneurial well-being (Shepherd and Cardon, 2009). Although corresponding research considers the influence of entrepreneur autonomy on entrepreneurial well-being in the entrepreneurial process, studies focusing on job characteristics still cannot fully demonstrate the important influence of entrepreneurial “process effects” on entrepreneurial well-being. Well-being in the entrepreneurial process emphasizes entrepreneurs’ emotional experience and cognitive evaluation. Although difference theory and self-determination theory describe entrepreneurs’ well-being based on the “result effect” of entrepreneurship, they cannot explain the subjective well-being of the “process effect” of entrepreneurship. Conservation of resources theory can shed light on the mechanism of entrepreneurial identity affecting entrepreneurial subjective well-being from the perspective of entrepreneurial identity to individual internal resource changes. According to conservation of resources theory, individuals always try to obtain and preserve resources (Hobfoll, 2001). Entrepreneurship mainly answers the question related to “who am I” or “whom I want to be.” During self-identity construction and identification, entrepreneurs may stimulate different identity recognition and emotional experience, which will consume more resources and affect their subjective well-being to varying degrees. Work rumination refers to the state of individuals repeatedly thinking about work-related problems and events outside of work (Querstret and Cropley, 2012), which mainly includes work-related problem-solving pondering and work-related affective rumination (Kinnunen et al., 2017). Positive rumination during off-working hours can effectively predict employees’ active behavior and organizational citizenship behavior, which helps improve well-being (Binnewies et al., 2009). Other studies find that high-working ruminant individuals experience more emotional exhaustion (Flaxman et al., 2018) and less well-being (Flaxman et al., 2012). To reveal the impact of entrepreneurial identity on entrepreneurial subjective well-being, based on resource conservation theory, this study uses the two-dimensional structure of work rumination as a mediator to construct a double-edged sword model that affects the subjective well-being of entrepreneurship during the entrepreneurial process. The model includes a “blade of advantage” and a “blade of disadvantage.” The former is the resource gain path in which entrepreneurial identity promotes work-related problem-solving pondering and then affects subjective well-being. The “blade of disadvantage” is the resource depletion path in which entrepreneurial identity induces work-related affective rumination and endangers entrepreneurial subjective well-being. Thus, entrepreneurial identity is likely to be a double-edged sword, which brings benefits and costs to entrepreneurs by inducing different kinds of rumination on their work.”
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Online Article
By D. Sull and S. Turconi,
MIT Sloan,
September 28, 2017.
“How to Recognize a Strategic Priority When You See One
A company’s financial reports can provide critical insights into its strategy — if you know where to look.
As part of our research on strategy for execution, we analyzed how large, publicly traded companies described their strategy in public documents. Our sample consisted of 494 companies included in the 2014 Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (S&P 500) that were still publicly traded at the end of 2015.
To identify a company’s strategic priorities, we examined its filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and other formal communications to investors.
• For each of the 494 companies, we obtained the full text of the 2014 fiscal year Form 10-K report. To identify a company’s strategic priorities, we read through the description of the business in the 10-K (Part 1, Item 1) and management’s discussion of their operations (Part 2, Item 7). These are the two sections of a 10-K where management is most likely to discuss its strategy and corporate objectives. If we did not identify strategic priorities in either of these two sections, we searched through the entire document for any occurrence of the words “strategy,” “strategies,” or “strategic” and other terms (for example, “pillars,” “imperatives,” “focus”) that might indicate strategic priorities, and analyzed the surrounding text for occurrence of strategic priorities. We identified strategic priorities for 239 companies (48% of the 494 companies) in their 10-Ks.
• If we could not find strategic priorities in the 10-K, we obtained the full text of the company’s annual report and read the letter from the chairman and/or CEO and the report’s full text to see if it specified the company’s strategic priorities. We identified strategic priorities for 72 companies (15% of the companies) in their annual reports.
• For the remaining 183 companies, we searched the investor relations section of their websites for presentations to investors, transcripts of calls with analysts, and other official presentations of strategy for fiscal year 2014. We searched the document texts for discussions of strategy or its related terms and analyzed the surrounding text. We identified strategic priorities for an additional 40 companies (8%) in these documents.
• We could not identify strategic priorities for 143 companies (29%) in any of the data sources mentioned, either because the companies did not have strategic objectives or chose not to make them public.
We define strategic priorities as an explicit set of prioritized actions to execute strategy over the mid-term, and we used a five-pronged test to identify strategic priorities in the documents we reviewed. A set of objectives had to pass all five filters to qualify as strategic priorities.
• Explicit set. Rather than inferring strategic priorities from the text, we looked for cases where the company explicitly called out a set of objectives. A group of priorities was considered explicit if it was named. The most common names in our sample were strategies (96 companies), strategic priorities (35), strategic initiatives (14), and strategic objectives (10). A set of objectives was coded as explicit if it was broken out separately from the main body of the text, highlighted in bold or italics, or presented using bullet points or a numbered list. In a small number of cases, priorities were embedded in the body of the text, but we excluded these from our analysis to minimize subjectivity.
• Prioritized. A large company could have tens or hundreds of worthwhile financial, market, operational, human resources, social, and other goals. To qualify as strategic priorities, we looked for a small number of objectives (versus a long list of “strategic” factors) as evidence that managers had prioritized those goals. Of the 351 cases where we identified strategic priorities, 321 (91%) listed six or fewer objectives. We also coded a set of objectives as prioritized, regardless of the number, if the company labeled them with a term that denoted prioritization. Companies could signal prioritization through nouns (for example, priorities, pillars, imperatives, areas of focus) or modifiers (such as big 5, fundamental, key, major, core, primary) used to describe the set of objectives.
• Actions. The objectives are described using a verb (grow, improve, increase) or a gerund (achieving, cutting) to achieve an end. The presence of action distinguished strategic priorities from financial or market-share targets that provided no guidance on the actions that were required to achieve them. We excluded general descriptions of how a company operates (for example, lists of competitive strengths, broad business philosophy), industry trends, and risk factors that did not imply specific actions.
• To execute strategy. We coded priorities as strategic if they described how a company planned to execute its strategy. We coded a set of objectives as strategic if they included the term “strategy” or one of the variants of the term, or if they followed immediately after and referred to a separate and explicit description of the company’s strategy. The most common location for these discussions of strategy were in overview of business or management discussion sections of the 10-K or the Chairman’s letter in the annual report.
• Mid-term. Strategic priorities typically require a few years to achieve, and we saw them as distinct from quarterly or annual targets. We collected data on annual goals when available, but excluded them from our analysis.
We then classified the strategic priorities by topic. To ensure consistency in data quality, we limited our analysis to those objectives reported in a company’s 10-K or annual report, and identified 1,508 strategic priorities across 311 companies. To create our initial topics, we focused on four approaches to strategy: dominant logic, market positioning, resources and capabilities, and stakeholder theory. We reviewed the relevant literature to identify concepts commonly associated with each approach to strategy, such as customer intimacy and operational excellence (dominant logic), low price and differentiation (market positioning), brand and intellectual property (resource-based view of strategy), and regulatory compliance (stakeholder theory).1
We independently hand-coded 500 strategic priorities selected at random, adding new categories to accommodate strategic priorities that did not fit into the initial topic classes. The authors discussed and reconciled their coding to create an agreed-upon set of categories for subsequent coding, and added a few new categories as they classified the entire data set. In the end, there were 43 topics (including an “other” category) for nine strategic priorities that could not be otherwise classified. (See “Classification of Strategic Priorities by Topic.”) The authors independently hand coded the 1,508 strategic priorities, agreed on 1,409 (93%) of their classifications, and discussed and agreed to a classification for the remainder.”
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Online Article
By S. Walsh,
Silo Tips,
July 16, 2017.
“Developing A Method For Prioritizing Businessprocess Improvement Initiatives
Abstract
For continuous improvement and innovation in business processes, prioritizing processes is one of the top strategic decision-making tasks for chief information officers and business executives. However, most of the methods for prioritizing process improvement initiatives pay little attention to analysing the characteristics of processes. In addition, in the design process of these methods, the users (e.g. managers, process stakeholders)rarely participate. More importantly, how these methods can be adapted to managers’ decision-making process has not yet been fully explored. This paper addresses the need for a new method supporting managers’ decision making in prioritizing process improvement initiatives. We describe the design and evaluation of a prioritization and categorization method (PCM). The PCM consists of two models, the process assessment heat map (PAHM) and the process categorization map (CM), as well as five iterative activities. The evaluation results from Ericssons how that the PCM can produce a good-quality analysis of processes. It facilitates the decision-making process by eliciting the “collective intelligence” from key process stakeholders and managers. The findings also reveal the implications of improving the PCM to make it more configurable and dynamic. The paper contributes to business process management and proposes a novel method for prioritizing process improvement initiatives.
Introduction
For continuous improvement and innovation in business processes, a main strategic decision-making task is to prioritize the processes that contribute the most to the strategic goals (Harrington1991;Davenport 1993;Dumas et al. 2013). However, due to limited resources, the constraints of organizational capabilities as well politics in prioritization decisions, chief information officers (CIOs) and top/senior managers face tremendous challenges in prioritizing process improvement initiatives. The existing scientific approaches to prioritizing process improvement initiatives focus on the generation of revenue, regulatory or social responsibilities or process strategy alignment (e.g. Bandaraet al.2010; Burlton 2010; Hammer 2007). They mainly provide generic descriptive information on the process performance or conditions; they rarely prescribe how to improve the prioritization process (Burlton 2010). In addition, the users (e.g. managers, process stakeholders) of these methods rarely participate in the design process. More importantly, how these methods can be adapted to managers’ decision-making process has not yet been fully explored. This paper addresses the need for a novel method supporting managers’ decision making in prioritizing process improvement initiatives. We embark on a design science research programme that develops and evaluates the new method, which we refer to as the prioritization and categorization method (PCM). The PCM consists of two models, the process assessment heat map (PAHM) and the process categorization map (CM), as well as five iterative activities. We follow Pefferset al.(2007)design science research methodology (DSRM) in guiding the research. We collaborate with a group of CIOs and senior managers, who are the users of this method, in the design process. The advantages of the research approach are: (1) practitioners can receive reliable and applicable results due to the validity and quality of the method, which is aligned with theories and designed with the “collective intelligence” of a group of CIOs, senior managers and academic researchers; (2) researchers can gain more tactical knowledge and learn about experiences and practices in prioritizing process improvement initiatives and in business process management (BPM) from practitioners, thus greatly improving the applicability of the method to managers’ decision-making process. The results from the evaluation at Ericsson show that the PCM is useful, applicable and easy to use. It facilitates “design thinking” in the decision-making process as well as enabling decisions to be made by eliciting the “collective intelligence” from the key process stakeholders. The evaluation also reveals the implications for improving the PCM to make it more configurable and dynamic in future research. The paper is organized as follows. In section 2, we discuss the relevant literature, which is theoretically aligned with the development of the PCM. In section 3, we discuss the DSRM and our research settings and process. In section 4, we describe the PCM by presenting its components, steps and outcomes. Next, we illustrate the evaluation of the PCM at Ericsson in section 5. Section 6 concludes the paper with a discussion of the lessons learned and future research.”
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Course Manuals 1-12
Course Manual 1: Priority Identification
Priority vs. Procrastination: The Entrepreneur’s Dilemma
What is the most valuable resource you have?
When clients are asked this question, the majority of them say money, but when delving further, they discover that they want more time, not more money.
Time is a valuable asset for a business owner, but unlike money,you cannot earn more. When time has passed, it has passed.
You likely believe that there aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done. However, that is not a valid argument; rather, it is a misunderstanding. Here’s why:
Unfortunately, most of us underestimate the worth of the time we have. We do it in a variety of ways, such as the weekend couch-bludge. We settle in for a Netflix marathon with chips in hand and soda at the ready. When we glance outdoors, though, we discover a wonderful world that deserves to be explored. Then, when we’re busy at work, we look outside and wish for a walk in the woods.
What begins as a means of entertainment or leisure quickly becomes a harmful habit. In business, bad habits are toxic. The argument is that television becomes a non-essential distraction. You must concentrate on the big picture (not the TV screen).
On a daily basis, distractions are around. Indeed, extremely lucrative empires have been founded on the attempt to divert your attention – think social media.
In 2013, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers published their annual Internet Trends study, estimating that users check their phones 150 times per day and that more than 500 million photographs are shared on social networking applications every day, a figure that was expected to treble the following year.
The list goes on and on: social media, text messages, phone conversations, emails, and so on. With the exception of crises or job responsibilities, the majority of what you encounter in a day can be classified as a distraction. We become frustrated and stressed if we allow it to happen, and this has an impact on our production on what genuinely has to be done.
As a result, erase the tweet and call your mother later. Here’s a formula to filter out distractions and get things done.
Begin by asking yourself a series of questions that help you focus and discover priorities over procrastination. These questions are the same every week:
• What aims do I want to achieve?
• What would I be disappointed if I didn’t accomplish?
• What are my main concerns?
• What motivates me to get out of bed every day?
Answering these questions gives structure in your work week and a sense of purpose in your life. With purpose comes motivation, which allows you to reach your full potential.
The next step is to make a schedule for your day. waking up with no plans is great, I f you’re on vacation and can sip cocktails by the pool, but not in business. Lack of planning is a fatal flaw that permits your competitors to acquire an advantage.
You’re behind the eight-ball and playing catch-up if your Monday morning starts with a ‘what needs to be done now’ moment. That’s when distraction sets in, emails take over as the top priority, and the snowball starts to roll. Does this ring a bell?
How devastating can an entire unexpected day be if time can never be replaced? Very, and you won’t make any progress toward your objectives. A haphazardly planned day leads to distraction and, eventually, failure.
But don’t get too worked up about it; not every second of every day needs to be planned with military precision.
Do you recall the couch-bludge example from earlier? We’re all guilty of it, and as long as you’ve planned your spare time and can afford the rest, you’re free to do it. You must make the best use of your time.
To many people, free time means different things, and how you relax is entirely up to you. Make sure that anything you do with your leisure time is still advantageous to the person you want to become and the obligations you have.
It’s uncommon to come across someone who sincerely believes in their own self-worth. You’ll need it in business since the further you advance, the more difficulties you’ll confront. You must learn to communicate to people that your time is precious.
As previously stated, time is really valuable, and you should not waste it. The more you invest in other people’s problems and situations, the more you end up jeopardizing your own needs and desires. This is making deposits into everyone else’s bank account but never putting a penny in your own.
You can tell you’re doing it by the following signs:
Accepting all invitations: You’re putting other people’s priorities ahead of your own by accepting every request (business or social) that comes your way. You must learn to say “no” to people if you want to achieve the goals you’ve set. It’s a familiar scenario: you’re about to start a large project or head to the gym when someone knocks on the office door or calls with priority one on their list. They believe it requires immediate action. You take a break from what you’re doing to pacify others. Interruptions accumulate. Shut the door and switch off your phone at specified periods during the day to block out distractions.
You’re available 24 hours a day, seven days a week: We all know who’s to blame for this: smartphones. We’re expected to respond right away if something comes through, but that’s unacceptably risky. As already stated, turn it off and learn to spend time without the continual buzz.
You give yourself permission to be late: Understand if a client or networker is late for lunch or coffee; but, make sure they are aware that this is not normal or expected. You lose time to work on your goals when others disregard your time.
If this describes you, you must set boundaries and stick to them like a stickler. An email sent at 8 p.m. can nearly always wait, and a 30-minute meeting should be finished at 20 minutes. It will take some time and effort, but others will quickly realize you have more essential things to do.
Unfortunately, the odds are stacked against you as a small business owner. Reclaiming your time and prioritizing how you spend it is a critical step toward achieving your goals. In business, we preach the importance of being more self-centered.
“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live, “ Oscar Wilde said.
No one else should value and respect your time as much as you do. Make the most of it. If you want to achieve your goals and have a lot of success along the way, the trick is to become very selfish with your time. After all, it’s your time. It should be treasured since it is something we will never be able to replace and something we will never be able to reclaim.
“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.” — Charles Darwin
4 Ways for Business Leaders to Improve Prioritization
There are many competing interests clamoring for the attention of business leaders. When you’re dealing with a million shifting elements every day, you learn to master the pivot and adjust to changing situations. Regardless, deciding which priority to focus on at any particular time can be a difficult task.
Determine what the top priorities are for both the firm and yourself in implementing the business plan is one of your most important jobs as a leader. When you’re being tugged in a million different directions, how can you stay focused on the big picture? Members of the Forbes Coaches Council offer expert advice on how business leaders might better create priorities in the section below.
1. Make use of an Urgent-Important Matrix.
Using a 2 x 2 matrix to identify “essential” versus “urgent” things is one technique to think about priorities. The main priority is to deal with the critical and urgent topics in the top right quadrant. It’s also feasible to utilize two 2 x 2 charts, one for oneself and the other for the firm, each with four quadrants. The urgent-important matrix can also be used as a tool for communicating with coworkers. – Thomas Lim, Singapore Public Service, SportSG
2. To move faster, slow down and reflect.
Over the years, as I’ve counseled hundreds of CEOs, I’ve noticed an increase in people working long hours to get things done and be productive. The ability to slow down and take time to reflect is missing. “What are my priorities today that will have a positive impact?” we must ask ourselves on a regular basis. We must slow down in order to move quickly in this era of rapid change. – Wendy Hanson, BetterManager
3. Take a step back and consider your next steps.
When it comes to prioritizing, knowing “when I go slow, I go fast” is helpful. Leaders who are stuck on the hamster wheel are too close to the fire to see the larger picture. Take a step back and consider what should happen next and when. To do this on a regular basis, you must be deliberate, and it is easy to go back into the old habit or use the excuse of being too busy. – Michelle Braden, MSBCoach, LLC
4. Think about which priorities will have the most impact on the most people.
Setting priorities is a continuous process. Leaders should always examine which initiatives will have the greatest influence on the most people, in my opinion. These should be on a leader’s priority list. Second, consider the tasks you can complete to help others unleash their positive efforts. As soon as possible, jump on those. It’s time to reconsider if great people’s efforts have come to a halt because of you! – Susan Madsen, Jon M. Huntsman School of Business
Course Manual 2: Self Care
As An Entrepreneur, The Importance Of Self-Care
We all know that working for oneself can be challenging, and that stress and burnout are real problems. As an entrepreneur, you are frequently confronted with atypical working hours, time constraints, the continual threat of failure, inconsistent cash flow, and minimal social connection.
“The Western workplace culture — exported to many other parts of the world — is practically fueled by stress, sleep deprivation, and burnout. This is profoundly — and negatively — affecting our creativity, our productivity, and our decision making: the very things entrepreneurs need in order to succeed.” Arianna Huffington
The number of new small company owners and entrepreneurs is growing by the day, and prioritizing self-care is an important element of their success. Any voluntary activity that helps you maintain your physical, mental, or emotional health is considered self-care. It can make you feel better, more relaxed, and more prepared to handle your work and duties. Isn’t that something we could all use? H how many of you are practicing adequate self-care to counteract the enormous stress that comes with owning a business?
Why Should Social Entrepreneurs Make Self-Care A Priority?
Entrepreneurship necessitates a thick skin, a virtual immunity to rejection, long hours of planning, and a lot of networking, among other things.
All of this can have a negative impact on one’s physical and mental health, which social entrepreneurs are especially vulnerable to because, in addition to running a successful business, they must also solve environmental, social, and cultural issues.
As a result, self-care is especially important for social entrepreneurs. Creating a self-care strategy, which includes steps to safeguard your mental, emotional, and physical health, can help you maintain a balanced, positive approach and avoid being overwhelmed.
How Entrepreneurs Can Benefit from Self-Care
We tend to reward individuals who don’t have time to sleep and are too busy expanding their empire to rest and unwind in our culture, which celebrates the ‘hustle.’ This is really unhealthy and sets a standard that people are unable to reach. Burnout, stress, health issues, and poor mental health are all consequences. Entrepreneurs can benefit from self-care in a variety of ways:
It Helps To Lower Stress Levels
Stress is a natural physical and emotional reaction to a scary or overwhelming activity or event, but it can have serious effects if not effectively controlled. Stress will play a role in your life, especially if you’re an entrepreneur, so learning how to deal with it is critical. Self-care activates the relaxation response in the body, lowering cortisol and adrenalin levels and so reducing stress!
It Improves Clarity And Creativity
A clear mind, on the other hand, allows for more creativity and inspiration to strike. You aren’t in the greatest mentality to be creative, organized, and effective in your goals if you are overwhelmed and attempting to multitask, doing a million things at once.
It Increases Productivity
So much evidence suggests that taking breaks and exercising self-care can help you be more productive. Even if you are extremely busy, taking 10 minutes away from your computer to practice breathing, stretches, meditations, or go for a walk can be extremely beneficial.
It Is Beneficial To One’s Mental Health
Stress is one of the most significant contributors to mental health issues. Long-term and severe stress can have negative psychological, emotional, and physical consequences, so prioritizing your self-care is critical.
How Can I Include More Self-Care Into My Daily Routine?
Make A Plan For It
It is much easier to finish psychologically if it is scheduled. Anything in life that is scheduled in, whether it be exercise, a work deadline, or your to-do list, is more likely to get finished. So, when it comes to self-care, do the same! People who are very good at this know how to schedule self-care visits just like any other appointment. Throughout the day, they take short self-care breaks. 10 minutes of morning meditation, 15 minutes of tea break, 20 minutes of reading before bedtime, and so on.
Don’t put off self-care till you have more free time. Because, let’s face it, few of us suddenly have a lot of time to devote to self-care, make it a regular part of your routine.
Make A List Of Your Favorite Pastimes
Don’t wait for inspiration to strike; prepare for success by making a list of your favorite self-care activities. Make a list of your ideas in your planner, post it on the fridge, and put it in your weekly journal. My advise is to always have a few short, medium, and long activities on hand, which you may select from depending on how much time you have available on any given day.
A cup of tea, some stretches, and listening to a little mindfulness practice are all short (10 minute) self-care options.
A relaxing bath, a brief walk, or painting your nails are all great medium (30 minute) self-care options.
Getting a massage, coffee with friends, lengthy meditation, and napping are all long (30 minute+) self-care ideas.
Choose A Physical And Mental Activity That You Enjoy
Do you despise running, yoga, or using the stair machine? Reading literature or meditating aren’t your thing? They don’t have to be cool! Physical and mental activities are important for your health because they provide much-needed stress relief, but they won’t help you if you can’t stand them. Instead, discover physical and mental outlets that you enjoy, and set aside time to consider sources of inspiration. This might be anything from adult coloring books to trampolining to taking a beer bath (yes, really!). When you’ve had time to think about your own problems, you’ll be considerably more prepared to deal with the problems of the world!
Get Your Day Off To A Good Start
When you wake up in the morning, you turn over and…check your phone? Many of us are guilty of this, so try utilizing your phone for a beneficial purpose first thing in the morning. Make it a rule that you won’t check social media until you’ve completed your 10-minute meditation session. Perhaps your gratitude list of five items, or 5 minutes of deep breathing and stretching. On my website, I offer a list of over 50 self-care resources and apps. That’s a lot of ways to get a fantastic start to the day with your phone!
Make A List Of All The Things You Don’t Want To Do
Make a list of all the things you don’t want to do.
We appear to have grown accustomed to the addiction of ‘busyness’ in today’s environment, to the point that it is often a source of pride for many.
“Who needs sleep when it’s all about the hustle?”
Does this ring a bell? Instead of wishing for more time, overburdening yourself with tasks, and stressing yourself out, make a ‘Absolute No’ list and begin saying no more frequently.
“The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say no to almost everything.” – Warren Buffett
So, when you sit down to set goals and make your to-do list each week, I encourage you to also make a list of things you will NOT do that week. Don’t check your email beyond a certain time, take tech-free days, don’t say yes to everything, and say no to things that exhaust you.
Allow For One More Significant Self-Care Activity Per Week
Self-care activities are typically spread out throughout the day, allowing for the discharge of mental, emotional, and physical stress. It’s also crucial to set aside one week for a larger self-care splurge. It’s all about putting yourself first, your value, and your needs. It may be getting your nails done, getting a massage, going on a long hike, having lunch with friends, taking an afternoon off work, or taking a break from social media – whatever you require.
That’s all there is to it! I hope this was of assistance. Remember: a healthy, calm, and coping business owner is far superior to one who is stressed! Make yourself a priority and receive the rewards.
Examine Your Values
Do it frequently and early. Your core principles are what first drew you to social enterprise. They’re your life’s work. They establish your vision and objectives. Make sure you have a list of your main values on display. Make a list of them and store them somewhere you’ll see them every day. Write down a handful of your successes and how they supported your fundamental principles each week. This will help you keep focused on your long-term goals and remind you that every day, no matter how modest, you are making progress.
Consider How You’re Coping Right Now And What Obstacles You’re Up Against
Make a list of the specific obstacles to your emotional, physical, spiritual, and mental wellness that you confront. What are your current coping mechanisms for dealing with the stress of those challenges? What’s working and what’s not so much? After you’ve prepared your list, see if you can apply some of your “functional” coping techniques to the most common challenges and frustrations. Make a list of the things that are most important to you in terms of self-care. Some challenges, such as learning to play Mozart’s concertos, may have little impact on your capacity to sustain effective self-care, while others may completely derail it. The goal is to identify and efficiently manage the main hazards to your well-being, rather than to make oneself “perfect.”
Self-care might be difficult for social entrepreneurs, but it’s necessary if they want to contribute to the larger good. Creating a simple self-care strategy would be really beneficial in this regard.
Course Manual 3: Corporate Entrepreneurship
The Four Corporate Entrepreneurship Models
There are four ways for companies to grow their company from within. Each method has its own set of advantages as well as drawbacks.
Markets demand growth, and CEOs talk about it.
Organic growth, on the other hand, is difficult to do profitably. Fewer than 5% of organizations restore growth rates of at least 1% above gross domestic product when their main operations begin to falter, according to studies. One increasingly effective solution is to start new businesses, sometimes known as corporate entrepreneurship. According to a recent poll, organizations that focused more on developing new business models had higher operating margins than their competitors.
But how can established enterprises continue to build successful new businesses? The route is certainly riddled with failures. Sony Corporation should have made the iPod. Everything was in place for the Japanese corporation: legacy, brand, technology, channels, and so on. Apple Inc.’s Steve Jobs, on the other hand, saw that the potential of portable digital music could only be realized by creating a new business, not only by making a better MP3 player.
Researchers conducted a study at approximately 30 worldwide companies to understand how they thrive at corporate entrepreneurship. They were able to develop four essential models of corporate entrepreneurship and identify variables that guide when each model should be used as a result of that research. This framework for corporate entrepreneurship should aid businesses in avoiding costly trial-and-error mistakes while choosing and implementing the optimal program for their goals.
What Is The Definition Of Corporate Entrepreneurship?
First and foremost, what is corporate entrepreneurship? The process by which teams within an established company conceive, nurture, launch, and manage a new business that is distinct from the parent company but leverages the parent’s assets, market position, capabilities, or other resources is defined as the process by which teams within an established company conceive, foster, launch, and manage a new business that is distinct from the parent company but leverages the parent’s assets, market position, capabilities, or other resources. Corporate venture capital, on the other hand, focuses on financial investments in external enterprises. Even though it frequently involves external partners and skills (including acquisitions), it typically requires major resources from the established organization, and projects are typically managed by inside teams. It’s also distinct from spinouts, which are typically built as stand-alone businesses that don’t rely on present corporate activity to fulfill their full potential.
Corporate entrepreneurship encompasses more than just new product development; it can also encompass service, channel, and brand innovations, among other things. Companies have always added value by developing innovations that fit existing corporate roles and operations. After all, why would they create chances that are difficult to commercialize? Unfortunately, this method restricts what a corporation is willing to bring to market if it can even bring it to market. Missed opportunities are frequently caused by a failure to grasp that new products and services may necessitate radically different business strategies. Corporate entrepreneurship programs aim to address these issues.
There Are Four Different Models
Obviously, what works for one company may not work for another. Researchers discovered two dimensions under management’s direct control that regularly differentiate how organizations approach corporate entrepreneurship because of their research. The first dimension is organizational ownership: Who, if anyone, in the organization has main ownership of new business creation? (Note: New company creation responsibility and accountability may be concentrated in a certain group or groups, or it may be dispersed throughout the organization.) The second factor to consider is resource authority: Is there a specific “pot of money” for corporate entrepreneurship, or are new business concepts sponsored on an as-needed basis through divisional or corporate budgets or “slush funds?”
The opportunist (diffused ownership and ad hoc resource allocation); the enabler (diffused ownership and dedicated resources); the advocate (focused ownership and ad hoc resource allocation); and the producer (focused ownership and ad hoc resource allocation) are the four dominant models. Each model exemplifies a different approach to encouraging corporate entrepreneurship. A closer examination of the models reveals how they assist organizations in many ways in developing corporate entrepreneurship.
Four Models
Two dimensions within management’s direct control distinguish how businesses approach corporate entrepreneurship. The first is organizational ownership: Who has primary responsibility for the formation of new enterprises within the company? (Note: This task might be assigned to a specific group or dispersed throughout the organization.) The second consideration is resource authority: Are initiatives funded from a specific corporate fund or on an as-needed basis, such as through business-unit budgets? When the two aspects are combined, a matrix is created with four prominent models: opportunist, enabler, advocate, and producer.
The Opportunist Model
All businesses start off as opportunists. Because there is no specified organizational ownership or resources, corporate entrepreneurship relies on the efforts and serendipity of brave “project champions” – people who toil against the odds, frequently in spite of the corporation, to create new firms.
Take, for example, Zimmer Holdings Inc., a medical device manufacturer based in Warsaw, Indiana. Zimmer has research and development organizations that work on new products, but no institutional organization or committed resources for corporate entrepreneurship. So, when trauma surgeon Dana Mears had a proposal for minimally invasive hip replacement surgery, he offered it to Zimmer manager Kevin Gregg, and they discussed it informally. Top management (including CEO Ray Elliot) then gave their approval for the use of corporate resources for concept development and experimentation. Because the new medical approach necessitated new training methods, the business formed the Zimmer Institute, which by 2006 had trained over 6,000 surgeons in a dozen different types of minimally invasive surgical procedures. As a result of the improved patient outcomes (and thus lower total costs), certain private insurers are willing to pay a premium for certain Zimmer procedures. Despite severe industry pricing pressure, Zimmer has been able to achieve superior overall growth because of this new business.
The Enabler Model
The enabler model’s primary idea is that if provided appropriate assistance, individuals across a company will be willing to generate innovative concepts. Dedicating resources and procedures (but not formal organizational ownership) allows teams to pursue opportunities independently as long as they meet the organization’s strategic framework. Companies provide clear criteria for selecting which opportunities to pursue, application guidelines for funding, decision-making transparency, both recruitment and retention of entrepreneurially minded employees, and, perhaps most importantly, active support from senior management in the most evolved versions of the enabler model.
The enabler model’s poster child is Google Inc. “We’re really an internal ecosystem of entrepreneurs… sort of like the [Silicon] Valley ecosystem but inside one company.” says Keval Desai, a Google program manager. Employees at Google are allowed to use 20% of their time to pitch ideas to co-workers, form teams, investigate concepts, and construct prototypes. Project groups are formed on the fly, based on the needs of the teams themselves. A project manager, technical lead, product marketing manager (for competitive studies, focus groups, market targeting, and so on), user-interface designer, quality-assurance specialist, and an attorney are often included in the initial core team (for privacy, trademark, and other legal input). If the team believes it has a winner, it submits a financing request to the Google Product Council. The firm founders, top executives, and engineering team heads make up this group, which offers broad strategic direction and initial resources. The Google Product Strategy Forum assists successful project teams in developing business models and setting goals. Importantly, no predefined criteria or hurdle rates are applied to the projects by Google. It is possible to continue a project if it appears to have potential and retains the interest of Google personnel.
Google routinely sponsors over 100 new business concepts in various stages of development at any given time, and information about the initiatives is kept in a central, searchable database. According to the managers, roughly 70% of the projects serve the company’s core business in some way, 20% reflect developing business ideas, and 10% follow speculative experiments. If a project is successful, team members may be eligible for large incentives (known as Founder’s Awards), which can be worth millions of dollars.
The Advocate Model
What about situations where money isn’t an issue? In the advocate model, a corporation provides organizational ownership for the formation of additional enterprises while giving the core group very little budgets. Advocate organizations serve as evangelists and innovation experts, assisting business units with corporate entrepreneurship.
Consider the 200-year-old worldwide business E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. In 1999, CEO Chad Holliday realized that the company needed to rethink its strategy since, despite improving margins and returns over the previous six years, growth had slowed. As a result, Holliday asked Robert A. Cooper, a DuPont veteran, to lead a small internal group focused on company expansion, which became the Market Driven Growth program.
Employees can get help with anything from idea conception through commercialization through the program. It contains a four-day “business builder” session, for example, that assists people in generating and prioritizing various company concepts. Following that, a team will normally spend four to eight weeks building a detailed business strategy, which would include a 180-day “contract” with senior management to handle main risks associated with the proposed concept. The team will next present the proposal to business-unit leadership for approval, along with a facilitator from the Market Driven Growth program.
The Producer Model
Several businesses, like IBM, Motorola, and Cargill, encourage corporate entrepreneurship by forming and sponsoring formal groups with considerable allocated money or active influence over business-unit funding. One goal, like the enabler and advocate models, is to foster latent entrepreneurs. The producer model, on the other hand, tries to safeguard new projects from turf wars, stimulate cross-unit collaboration, generate potentially disruptive enterprises, and provide opportunities for leaders to pursue careers outside of their business units.
Cargill Inc., a $75 billion worldwide agribusiness goods and services firm based in Wayzata, Minnesota, has launched an Emerging Business Accelerator to encourage corporate entrepreneurship. “Prior to the EBA, we lacked a clearly defined process for pursuing opportunities that fell outside of the scope of existing business units and functions…. We needed a new approach to complement our business units and Cargill Ventures [an internal venture group].” says David Patchen, the group’s founder and managing director.
Managers frequently don’t know what to do with new ideas that don’t fit into an established firm, and incentives often make it difficult for them to bear short-term losses. The Emerging Business Accelerator can help with that. When Cargill’s de-icing business unit discovered a new de-icing technology, it realized it might not be the best place to develop and commercialize it. The invention, an epoxy overlay that prevents ice formation, was supposed to be a high-end product marketed to road builders all over the world for important applications like bridges. However, Cargill’s de-icing business section largely provides commodities items to North American transportation departments. As a result, the new technology was transferred to the Emerging Business Accelerator, which was responsible for bringing the product to market.
As a result of these achievements, Cargill’s Emerging Business Accelerator has become a global clearinghouse for new concepts and value propositions. The organization maintains a Web site where people from both inside and outside the company can submit suggestions. When a good opportunity arises, the Emerging Business Accelerator creates a high-level plan, does due diligence, hires personnel, and, if approved by the group’s board of directors, offers financing, and oversees the project’s progress. Project teams work on improving their concept, business model, and market offerings in the early stages. To do so, they invest a lot of time talking to potential clients to see if there is a demand for their products or services. Projects that receive real-world validation are promoted to current or new business units.
Choosing the Correct Model
Changing from an opportunist model to a more deliberate style of corporate entrepreneurship usually starts with a growth mandate and a wide, well-expressed vision. When a company’s growth goal is too restricted, it will most likely end up with incremental ideas, but a larger vision encourages everyone to think beyond the box. DuPont, for example, coined the phrase “beyond the molecule” to indicate its ambition to expand its capabilities beyond raw chemicals and include services and information.
Course Manual 4: Innovation
Boards Should Make Innovation A Top Priority. So, Why Isn’t It Working?
Corporate directors and executives alike know that the pace of change is increasing, and that companies must innovate to stay ahead of the curve. Are boards, on the other hand, doing enough to encourage innovation as they should? To discover out, we polled over 5,000 board members from all over the world.
Overall, we discovered that the majority of boards do not consider innovation to be a top strategic concern. Although some directors are more conscious of the prospect of disruption than others, the pervasive lack of board-level involvement in innovation processes could be a huge blind hole and a possible liability.
Setting Priorities
We discovered that most directors prioritize other issues over concerns about innovation. Only 30% of respondents to the study believe that innovation is one of the top three obstacles their firm has in attaining its strategic goals, and only 21% believe that technology developments are a key strategic challenge. After more traditional issues like acquiring and maintaining top people and the regulatory environment, innovation is ranked fifth.
When compared to their other activities, boards’ ability to support innovation is clearly lacking. When researchers asked directors how effective their board’s processes for fostering innovation were, 42 percent said they were outstanding or above average. In contrast, 70% of respondents believe their boards have excellent processes for maintaining current on the firm, 69 percent for compliance, 66 percent for financial planning, and 55 percent for risk management – however risk management is an important issue when pursuing innovation. Nonetheless, the fact that board members regard risk management higher than innovation is telling.
When researchers looked at the responses by industry, they discovered that directors in the health care and IT and telecom sectors were the most likely to see innovation as a key strategic problem for their companies. These companies also have higher-rated innovation processes. Given the intensity of innovative activity in these areas, this isn’t surprising, but directors in similarly impacted industries should take heed. Only 13% of energy and utilities directors see innovation as a major strategic problem, but the rapid rise of renewable energy businesses and advances like the use of drones to monitor oil and gas production demonstrate that no industry is immune to the forces of innovation.
Researchers also discovered that greater emphasis on innovation is associated with longer-term time horizons. In comparison to organizations that are primarily focused on attaining short-term outcomes, companies that are organized around producing and enhancing value over the long term are more likely to have boards that prioritize innovation. A forward-thinking mindset is required throughout the organization and the board to lay the groundwork for innovation.
Overall board performance is favorably connected with the effectiveness of board practices for fostering innovation. In other words, boards with robust innovation processes are more likely to perform well across the board.
The Priorities Of The Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship And SMEs In Europe
Elbieta Biekowska, the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship, and SMEs, lays out her priorities here, including her views on social innovation.
Elbieta Biekowska is the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship, and Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SME). She is in charge of revising the strategy for completing the single market for goods and services, including expanding the list of items recognized across the European Union (EU). She must also strengthen the internal market’s robust and high-performing industrial foundation by stimulating investment in modern technology to improve the business environment. Identifying new potential job sources, with an emphasis on high-value jobs in start-ups, as well as helping EU Member States to create efficient defense markets, is another important aspect of her work.
Providing Assistance To The Shipbuilding And Other Industries
The European Commission considers the shipbuilding industry to be a competitive and dynamic industry. It is certainly significant from an economic and social standpoint, but it is also linked to other areas such as transportation, energy, security, research, and the environment. While shipbuilding is a critical industry in a number of EU countries, it confronts stiff international competition from China and South Korea. In the words of the European Commission, we now have a better understanding of the problem.
The Commission established a plan for the recovery of European industry early in her tenure, focusing on competitiveness in the formulation of trade agreements and policy initiatives. In addition, the Commission developed policies and industrial plans aimed at encouraging growth, innovation, and competitiveness in industries such as shipbuilding and industrial products, automobile manufacturing, and commodities markets.
Securing The Future Of Small And Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs)
In her role as SME Ambassador, the Commissioner also focuses on her responsibilities to SMEs, including contributing in the development of laws to manage the Digital Single Market. The European Commission announced in February 2019 that it will protect the online business environment for small businesses that may be subjected to unfair trading practices, particularly structural issues on online platforms that can stifle SME innovation through arbitrary account suspension, a lack of transparency in platform rankings, and a more meaningful dispute resolution method involving mediators. This project, which is aimed at all EU online platforms, is based on the Commission’s May 2016 Communication on Online Platforms and implements President Juncker’s 2017 State of the Union speech.
Biekowska explained her approach philosophy as follows:
“Our new rules are especially designed with the millions of SMEs in mind, which constitute the economic backbone of the EU”.
“Many of them do not have the bargaining muscle to enter into a dispute with a big platform, but with these new rules they have a new safety net and will no longer worry about being randomly kicked off a platform, or intransparent ranking in search results.”
Because creativity leads to innovation, you and your company must embrace it if you want to succeed.
“There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns.” — Edward de Bono
In 2016 and beyond, Researchers go so far as to state that creativity is a top four resource for all entrepreneurs, and that they must start leveraging it to their advantage if they want to succeed in business. Consider how the presence of Uber has irrevocably altered the taxi industry, and how Airbnb has altered the lodging sector as we know it. Both of these businesses saw a gap in the market and creatively filled it with customer convenience. You may use this approach to your own industry as well, but you must execute effectively, because without execution, your innovative notion will remain just that – an idea. To plan for the future, you must disrupt the market with inventiveness.
Just ask Divya Nag, who leads the ResearchKit team at Apple, how vital innovation is in her line of work. Her product is a toolkit that enables users to store and exchange health data, allowing doctors and researchers to design apps that make medical research more efficient. She was able to use her imagination to aid others and advance studies. That’s what They call putting your creativity to good use.
Félix Lajeunesse is another person who employs creativity on a daily basis. In 2013, Felix and Paul Raphael cofounded Felix & Paul Studios. They’ve taken virtual reality and turned it into a lovely experience for the rest of us. They even secured a partnership with Facebook-owned Oculus in 2015, so we may expect to see more of their work in the future.
These are just two examples of innovation, but we can guarantee that pushing limits and thinking outside the box can help your business flourish. If you’re looking for more work-related examples of creativity, here are 98 more. You must prioritize innovation in any industry you work in.
Course Manual 5: Growing Funds
Whether you want to establish a business or expand an existing one, you’ll need money to get started. However, determining what sources of capital are accessible to you as a business owner is more difficult than it appears.
Debt and equity are the two basic types of funding available to small businesses. These, as well as other sources of funding, are discussed here. This article will assist you in navigating these many sources of finance, covering the benefits and drawbacks of each funding method as well as the appropriate stage of business for each.
1. Loans For Small Businesses
Traditional business loans, if you can get them at a fair rate, are still a good method to get money for your firm, especially if you’re currently making money. Remember that any loan is a form of debt financing that you must repay (companies like LearnBonds also compare payday loans online). Before you take on any debt, carefully research any agreements you agree to and, if possible, try to identify alternate sources of funding.
2. Loans For New Businesses
The Startup Loans Scheme is a government stimulus package that allows you to borrow money at a low interest rate. The program is a great method to start a new business or expand an existing one. The financing also includes a free 12-month mentoring program, which is extremely beneficial to new business owners.
For individuals just getting started, up to $10,000 is usually available, and for those trying to expand, up to $25,000. In comparison to regular lenders, the terms are usually very favorable, but keep in mind that a startup loan is personally payable by the entrepreneur who takes it out, not the company. Many business owners overlook this detail, so read the paperwork carefully.
3. Grants For Small Businesses (Government And Private)
Small enterprises can get money and grants from the government, local governments, and private organizations all around the country. These awards are often given to new or current firms that are aiding economic growth in a certain area or throughout the country by developing technology in a specialized field or assisting the underserved.
You must meet the program-specific criteria to be eligible for a small business award. After that, you’ll need to apply and go through a vetting process. The most significant advantage of grant financing is that it is practically free money that you do not have to repay.
Grants, on the other hand, aren’t always the best option for supporting your company. Some have very specific eligibility criteria, and others have a lengthy application process. Think about whether you can afford to waste the time it takes to apply for a grant if you don’t get it.
4. Accelerators For Businesses
A business accelerator is a program that provides budding entrepreneurs with a little investment in exchange for equity, as well as mentorship, office space, and network access that will help them become long-term sustainable and self-sufficient. Once entrepreneurs have finished the accelerator program, they will have access to potential investors through this initiative.
Business accelerators can help you scale your startup quickly. However, keep in mind that the failure rate after the accelerator program is extremely high; many businesses struggle to move from the high level of support provided throughout the program to complete autonomy.
5. Overdrafts For Businesses
Business overdrafts are essentially a loan that may be set up in a matter of minutes. When your balance reaches zero, you can continue to make payments up to the facility limit specified by your bank.
If your business operations contain seasonal activities that may result in short-term cash flow constraints, having an overdraft facility is a valuable choice. If your company requires a constant lending function in order to trade, these are most certainly the best option.
Keep in mind that this sort of financing typically has higher interest rates than traditional loans. Furthermore, in addition to interest, many banks levy an overdraft fee. The bank may also demand that you pay back the entire amount due at any time, implying that this financing choice is fraught with danger.
6. Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding platforms enable you to raise funds through a series of tiny donations from a large number of individual investors or buyers. You can either operate an equity-based or a reward-based crowdfunding campaign, in which your investors receive perks or incentives in exchange for their money.
Kickstarter, Seedrs, Crowdcube, and IndieGoGo are all useful platforms for crowdsourcing a project. Because you’re effectively driving pre-sales to support your product, crowdfunding doubles as effective promotion.
Keep in mind that creating and running a successful crowdfunding campaign usually takes a significant amount of planning and promotion. With that in mind, it’s a great way for small businesses to get some extra cash.
7. Angel Investors Are Those Who Invest In Businesses
Business angels are private investors that invest in startups and small businesses in exchange for a 10-20% equity stake. They are mainly former entrepreneurs or rich individuals. Business angels are a great approach to get seed money for a project since they can provide advise, coaching, and mentorship.
If you’re going to work with an investor, make sure you’re certain that you’ll be able to create a strong working connection with them because you’ll be doing business together for a long time. Their investment in the project determines how much power they will have over the company.
Business angels have an advantage over banks since they are usually willing to take significantly greater risks. If the venture fails, there is also no responsibility to repay the money invested.
8. Invoice Finance
Invoice finance is a wonderful approach to improve your cash flow and get funding rapidly if your firm is trading and generating income, especially for service businesses that have extended invoice payment terms of 30, 60, or 90 days. Invoice finance refers to when a third party purchases your company’s outstanding bills. They’ll pay you up to 85% of the invoice’s value right away and the rest after the invoice is paid to them, less a fee.
Invoice financing is an excellent approach to bridge cash flow gaps when customers pay late or have long payment terms. Furthermore, many agreements safeguard the business from becoming in debt if customers fail to pay their bills.
To get invoice financing, you’ll need proof that your business generates a lot of money and that your customers pay their bills on time. Before buying your invoice as debt, financiers will want to examine full records, so make sure your finances are in order. It’s also worth noting that invoice discounting and factoring are two different types of this type of financing.
9. Venture Capital
Venture capitalists often spend significantly more capital than angel investors in startups or expanding businesses with substantial growth potential and traction. Professional investors, known as venture capitalists (VCs), are responsible for funding and expanding some of the world’s most inventive firms, such as Facebook, Spotify, and Airbnb.
If your startup fails, there’s no commitment to repay the investment, just like with angel investors. Venture capitalists are appealing because they may provide extensive business knowledge, large sums of money, and generally take far greater risks.
A larger payoff is expected when there is a higher risk. VCs will be looking for high returns and a clear exit strategy, such as acquiring or selling shares. These are experienced investors, so they’ll expect to see a well-thought-out business strategy and accurate financial records.
Typically, this form of finance is reserved for more established technological companies. It’s usually more complicated since large sums of money attract more hands-on investors who want more control over their investment, and hence over your company.
10. Asset-Based Lending
Asset-based lending is a type of asset finance that allows a company to borrow money against its current assets. If you’re having trouble making loan payments on an asset you already own, you can sell it to an asset finance firm for a lump sum payout. After that, you’ll lease the asset from the provider for a specific amount of time.
If your company has a variety of assets, such as real estate or vehicles, you can use them as security, or collateral, to receive a somewhat large business loan, depending on their worth. Asset refinancing is the term for this strategy. Asset-based loans are similar to mortgages in that they require businesses to put up tangible assets as collateral in order to obtain a loan from an asset finance company.
11. Hire Purchase
Another type of asset finance is hire purchase, which allows businesses to spread the cost of a certain asset over a longer period of time. An asset finance provider agrees to acquire the item outright for the company in exchange for a deposit, which is typically 10% of the purchase price. The remaining asset value must then be repaid in monthly installments, with a final payment due at the conclusion of the lease period. Following this final payment, the asset is transferred to the firm.
HP is a good source of cash for businesses that don’t have enough money to buy what they need. Even if the asset depreciates in value, you’ll have to pay for the full worth of the asset at the time of purchase over time. During the lease time, hire purchase assets will appear as an asset on your balance sheet, while the hire purchase amount, less any HP payments you’ve already made, will appear as a liability. As a result, it’s important to examine if you’ll need the asset in the long run; if not, leasing may be a better option.
When employing hire buy, repayment choices are frequently varied in terms of amount and frequency. The payment period is usually between one and five years.
12. Finance Lease
A financing lease is a good alternative for businesses who don’t have the funds to buy the assets they need and only need them for a short length of time. A finance provider agrees to buy an asset, same like with hire purchase. Rather than paying an upfront charge and repaying the full worth of the asset, the corporation leases the asset for a specific length of time, only covering the asset’s value during that time.
The major distinction between hire purchase and lease purchase is that the firm never owns the item. The asset finance provider intends to sell the asset at the end of the lease period in the case of a finance lease. In rare circumstances, the finance company may offer the company a percentage of the asset’s sale price.
A lease is appropriate for larger assets that your organization requires for a limited time. You don’t have to include the asset on your balance sheet because you don’t officially own it. This means you can deduct your property or land rental charges from your profit, which can result in a large tax benefit.
13. Commercial Mortgages
Consider a business mortgage if you’re looking for money to invest in real estate. You can borrow up to 75 percent of the property’s worth, or 65 percent if the property generates rental income.
Interest rates for commercial mortgages are greater than on personal mortgages. Because they’re deemed high-risk, a commercial mortgage is a secured loan that uses the property as collateral. If you are unable to make your mortgage payments, you will lose possession of your home to the lender.
Commercial mortgages are more appealing than business loans since they have lower interest rates and can be deducted from taxes. You can also rent out the house to help pay down the mortgage. If interest rates rise, you can adjust the rent you charge on the property to reflect this.
Obtaining a commercial mortgage can be a difficult task. Many mortgages demand that you put up additional collateral in the form of other fixed assets. A mortgage broker can assist you in determining the optimal loan to value ratio (LTV) for your business and ensuring that you completely comprehend all payment arrangements.
14. Tax Reliefs
Tax relief is an indirect source of funding for small businesses. Reducing your tax burden frees up monies that can be put to better use in your company. The Employment Allowance, which allows eligible employers to reduce their National Insurance liability up to a certain threshold, and the Annual Investment Allowance (AIA), which allows you to deduct the value of eligible items from your profits before tax, are two tax relief options available to SMEs.
Specific tax relief schemes can also assist you in attracting individual investors to your company. For example, the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) provides significant tax benefits to investors who purchase shares in your company. Through SEIS, you may usually get up to $150,000 in funding.
Course Manual 6: Company Growth
Entrepreneurial Businesses Can Achieve Greatness With Smart Growth
One of the most discussed topics in the entrepreneurial world is company growth. Unfortunately, most of that discussion is based on incorrect assumptions or preconceptions about business expansion.
What comes to mind when you think of business expansion? Growth is beneficial; in fact, enterprises must either grow or die. Yes, and growth is a lovely linear function that is heavily influenced by a company’s strategy. And getting bigger is usually a good thing.
Those are widely held ideas. What information do we have on them? We know that those notions have no scientific foundation and that they are not always true in the economic world. They are, at best, half-truths. They are, at worst, pure fabrication.
Myths About Growth
Growth can be beneficial or detrimental. It is debatable. Growth can create value, but if it isn’t handled effectively, it can also destroy it. Growth that surpasses management capacity, stresses quality controls, stresses financial controls, dilutes a company’s customer value proposition, and propels it into a different competitive arena where it will compete against better financed, more efficient competition will destroy value.
The business adage that all businesses must “grow or die” appears to have originally been published in a Time magazine article headlined “The New Magic Word in Industry” on June 28, 1954. It has had the impression of being a natural law of business since that day. There’s just one problem with that: there’s no scientific basis for it. In some instances, a company is equally as likely to “grow and die” as it is to “grow or die.” Yes, a firm must generate sales to keep up with inflation, but if it consistently enhances its customer value proposition and does it better than its rivals, it may exist successfully for decades.
Growing larger isn’t necessarily a good thing. Indeed, as firms grow larger, they become more complex, necessitating more bureaucracy, rules, administrative and management personnel, and information systems, all of which have the potential to kill the “small company entrepreneurial essence.” And, as a company grows in size, it becomes more complex, necessitating more professional management. A company’s managerial capabilities can outgrow them.
Finally, people believe that company growth should be a continuous and linear process, particularly in public markets. What conclusions can we draw from research? Continuous public company growth, on the other hand, is the exception rather than the rule. That finding is supported by at least six studies. There is no scientific evidence that a company can develop in a continuous, linear fashion.
Many businesspeople are surprised to learn that biology and complexity theory are significantly better at modeling business growth than economics or finance theories. Company growth is more likely to follow a zigzag pattern, with plateaus and dips thrown in for good measure. Is linear growth possible? Yes, during the scaling process. However, linear development isn’t the norm: all scaling growth bursts eventually level off and fall.
Mother Nature is a good analogy for growth. Hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, and earthquakes are examples of how she may be both wonderful and destructive.
Entrepreneurial Lessons
A few years ago, 54 high-growth private enterprises from 23 states decided to take part in a research project aimed at illuminating the common management issues that arise while expanding an established entrepreneurial business.
Those businesses had an average of 9.6 years in business and a revenue of $60 million, with a range of $5 million to $350 million. Some were essentially product businesses, while others were predominantly service businesses, and still others were hybrid businesses. This investigation yielded a number of surprising results, which are mentioned below.
Are You Ready To Expand Your Horizons?
Existing personnel, procedures, and controls will be put under strain as a result of growth. Furthermore, growth necessitates a fundamental shift in the entrepreneur’s role: from sole proprietor to entrepreneur and manager, and finally to manager and leader. Growth profoundly alters what and how an entrepreneur does his or her job on a daily basis. Those changes are difficult for most first-time entrepreneurs. Some people dislike them. Many business owners believe that expansion is merely more of the same. That is not the case. Almost everything in a company changes as it grows.
These realities can be better controlled if the following questions are answered: Are we prepared to expand our horizons? Are the proper personnel, processes, and checks & balances in place? What do we need to do to get ready for expansion? What are the dangers of our expansion? How will we deal with those dangers? How much should we expand our horizons? What are the early indicators that we’re growing too much or too fast?
Assessment Tool for Growth Risks
1. Why should we continue to develop?
2. How will we advance?
3. How much should we expand our horizons?
4. How much expansion can we bear?
5. Is there a sufficient number of people?
6. Are we working with the proper people?
7. Do we have procedures in place for hiring and training?
8. Do we have sufficient financial controls in place?
9. Do we have suitable quality control measures in place?
10. How will growth pose a threat to…
• Culture?
• Customer service?
• Customer experience?
• Cash flow?
• Supply chain, raw materials and suppliers?
• Distribution and delivery?
11. What steps will we take to lessen such dangers?
12. Do we have enough daily data to keep track of those risks?
13. Who will assist us in monitoring, managing, and correcting those risks or outcomes?
14. Is it necessary to slow down growth?
The “Acceleration” Strategy For Growth
When navigating the turbulence of development, it’s important to prepare ahead and make sure you have the correct people, procedures, and controls in place. Or, if growth is unavoidable, slow it down to allow your company’s people, procedures, and controls to catch up. This lesson was taught by successful entrepreneurs whose first company crashed as a result of taking on too much growth too quickly. They talked about the “acceleration” strategy to growth: ease off on the accelerator to let your people, processes, and controls to catch up. People are similar to engines in that they can only handle so much stress before deteriorating in quality or performance. One cannot “red-line” an entrepreneurial enterprise in the same way that one cannot “red-line” an engine.
Growth Is More Than Just A Strategy
Many entrepreneurs believe that having a sound strategy is all that it takes to manage growth. Yes, having a targeted approach that targets a specific significant client category and delivers a compelling, differentiated value proposition is critical. Every company need clear answers to the “3Ws”: What will I sell? What is the identity of the purchaser? What makes them think they’ll buy from me?
In the entrepreneurial game, strategic focus and a compelling, differentiated consumer value proposition are prerequisites. However, while they are required, they are insufficient to ensure success. Operational excellence and continuous improvement are required for success. Businesses must be customer-centric and have highly engaged, high-performing personnel in order to succeed. Remember that the majority of businesses are people-to-people transactions. Many entrepreneurs overlook the critical role that people play in their businesses.
Continuous expansion necessitates an internal enabling system that generates the ideal atmosphere for employee behaviors that result in customer-centricity and high performance, in addition to having a good plan. Growth necessitates the establishment of the appropriate culture, structure, HR rules, measures, and rewards to drive the behaviors that result in the desired growth.
Furthermore, the talents and techniques required to expand a business differ from those required to start one. In reality, research revealed that many entrepreneurs had ineffective hiring and onboarding processes, struggled with challenging dialogues with workers, overestimated the importance of culture, and made numerous hiring blunders while assembling a growth-management team.
Why is it vital to put an emphasis on people? Because it takes people to grow a business in the majority of circumstances, and success necessitates an entrepreneur delegating and trusting others to deliver outcomes. Hiring the right people, including them in the pursuit of their aspirations, and providing meaning to the employees who are growing the company require talents that are distinct from those required to begin a company.
Creating an internal, aligned growth system isn’t something that happens by accident. It necessitates a culture that communicates consistent, seamless messages, as well as leadership behaviors, measurements, and rewards (financial and emotional). The following are some key takeaways from the research:
1. Growth necessitates continuous improvement, which necessitates people who enjoy learning and change.
2. It is critical to hire for cultural fit. Slowly hire and rapidly fire. Customer relationships and operational excellence are hampered by high personnel turnover.
3. You can choose between a team or a star culture.
4. For your staff, emotional rewards are just as vital as cash benefits.
5. Make your work more meaningful.
6. Do not grow arrogant or complacent.
7. You’ve started the decline when you think everything is fine.
Upgrading
Another noteworthy discovery was that when a business developed significantly, the people, procedures, and controls that functioned at early phases of the business life cycle typically failed to work. People, processes, and controls that worked at $5 million in revenue were unlikely to operate at $25 million. This, according to the entrepreneurs, was unexpected. People, procedures, and controls must frequently be upgraded as a business grows to handle the increasing complexity of the business. These adjustments are expensive, time-consuming, and emotionally and culturally stressful. This is especially true when it comes to upgrading personnel who have a history of high performance and loyalty but are unable to perform at the required level.
If a business continues to grow, it will never achieve a position of steady state. These demands were disconcerting and frustrating for many entrepreneurs.
Reaching The Initial Growth Halt
When a company is ready to scale—to do a lot more of what works well—it enters a high growth phase. Scaling is the process of a company’s rapid expansion. It takes a lot of effort to get to that position. This can only happen successfully if the entrepreneur has laid the groundwork—has put in place the necessary people, processes, and controls that allow for growth without losing quality or financial stability.
Because scaling produced tremendous turmoil, several businesses reported being consumed during this phase. Because dealing with the turbulence took so long, many people were caught off guard when the scaling trajectory plateaued or even dropped altogether. They then had to consider how to re-ignite growth in a strategic manner.
How to Grow in Four Ways
Improvements, innovations, scaling, and strategic acquisitions are the only four methods to grow a corporation.
Improvements imply becoming better, faster, and/or less expensive. Improvements are the “blocking and tackling” of company, and they include things like bettering your products and services, as well as your business procedures and customer experience. In reality, you can improve your work in every department of your company.
Doing something fresh for your company is what innovation is all about. It is not necessary for innovations to be one-of-a-kind. In reality, one-of-a-kindness is unlikely. For your firm, innovation entails doing something completely new or different. The majority of inventions take place in one of two ways. To begin, one can innovate by combining or rearranging existing items. Second, one can innovate by moving ideas or processes from one industry to another or by replicating best-in-class ideas or processes from competitors or other companies.
The third approach to grow, scaling, which has already been mentioned.
Making minor strategic purchases is the fourth way to grow. Acquisitions of new geographic markets, client segments, products, services, or capabilities that you can grow through your existing customer base or existing offerings are known as strategic acquisitions. The goal of strategic acquisitions should be to expand your company’s scaling capabilities.
Growing through improvements or scaling is riskier than growing through innovation and smart acquisitions. Strategic acquisitions necessitate skills and competencies in due diligence, funding, and merger integration that most small businesses lack. According to research in the public company market, the majority of purchases do not result in value creation for the acquirer.
The Case For Organic Growth
Most public companies grow in the same ways and in the same order, according to research. This discovery can be used to develop a strategic growth checklist for a private company.
1. Expansion into new areas
2. Existing clients are introduced to complimentary products.
3. With existing items, reach out to new customer categories.
4. Customers who already have a relationship with you can benefit from additional services.
5. Prioritize cost-cutting measures.
6. In the supply chain, logistics, and manufacturing tasks, put a premium on technological productivity.
7. Add or acquire key new products, consumer segments, or services (typically on a small scale).
8. Shift your focus from selling products to selling solutions.
While following this checklist does not guarantee that a firm will grow, it does assure that when it does, it will develop smartly in every way.
Course Manual 7: Processes
4 Ways to Effectively Prioritize Your Company’s Operations
It might be difficult to get everyone in the organization to agree on which initiatives and programs to prioritize. There will be periods when the strategic objectives are hazy, if not completely absent. There would occasionally be a disconnect between these goals and the numerous business units, departments, or functions.
Office management is necessary for a firm to run smoothly. Hierarchy of Purpose, a framework that executives can use to prioritize strategic initiatives and projects, is one way to accomplish this. Answering a few questions, as outlined by the Harvard Business Review, is the first step in the Hierarchy of Purpose.
• What is the goal of the organization? What steps are being taken to pursue it? What is the strategic vision that it is based on?
• What are the organization’s priorities now and in the next two to five years, given its mission and vision?
• Which projects, based on the responses thus far, are the most strategic and should be resourced? Which of them is in line with the mission, vision, and goals? Which should be discarded?
• Who are the most qualified individuals to carry out the projects?
• What are the outcomes-based goals that will be used to assess real success and value creation?
When the criteria for a good solution are known, but the relative importance is undefined or uncertain, such as when deciding whether or not to purchase new equipment or when picking a supplier, the Hierarchy of Purpose can help you make the appropriate judgments.
If you’re not sure how to smooth out your company’s operating path, here’s a step-by-step guide.
Business Operations Types
An organization must have a set of business processes in order to perform efficiently. You can have at least five key processes, depending on the size and nature of your firm. As it expands, the number will inevitably rise as more procedures are necessary.
The following are the usual business processes for small businesses:
• Marketing and Sales
• Information Technology and Accounting
• Product or Service Quality and Delivery
• Management, Human Resources, and Finance
• Development of New Products
On the other hand, big corporations might have the following:
• Customer Relationships and Strategy/Marketing
• Employee Satisfaction and Development
• Quality, Process Improvement, and Change Management are all important factors to consider.
• Management of financial analysis, reporting, and capital management Responsibility
• Product Development Product/Service
• Delivery Customer Acquisition/Sales
• Accounting Administration
• Management of Technology
Apart from knowing each process, understanding the classifications is critical since it aids in the development of effective business architecture, or the description that describes the process’ category and details.
1. Primary or Core
These are end-to-end, cross-functional processes that directly give value to external clients and liaisons and are critical to attaining the business’s goals and objectives. They also make up the value chain, which is a collection of high-level, interconnected activities that add value to a product or service before it is delivered to customers.
The production and development of the product or service, marketing and transfer to the consumer, and after-sale support or customer feedback are all key operations. As a result, fundamental processes are strategically vital and have a large impact on the firm, making them critical to its success.
2. Support
The second category supplies the resources and infrastructure that the fundamental processes require. Internal consumers benefit from support procedures, which include the delivery of IT, financial, and HR services, as well as goods and services. They may be linked to certain business functions and may have a lifecycle.
Support processes, unlike core operations, do not provide value to customers. They are, however, necessary since they have a direct impact on the performance of the fundamental ones.
3. Management
The processes necessary to create, determine, observe, and control company activities fall into this category. Both core and support processes must meet operational, financial, regulatory, and legal standards in order for the business to function effectively and efficiently.
Prioritize Your Business Process in These Ways
Now that you have a better understanding of the processes, you can start working on a plan to prioritize or improve your current business processes.
1. Examine the Present Process
The first step is to assess your current technique to determine which areas need to be improved. This also allows you to have a complete understanding of each process and set realistic goals for your business. When conducting your analysis, keep the following questions in mind:
• What are the steps that need to be corrected?
• Which steps cause stumbling blocks?
• Which step will take the most time to complete?
• Which phase is the most time-consuming?
• Which phases result in an increase in costs or resources?
• Which steps result in a decrease in quality?
Determine who gets to prioritize and why, in addition to these—perhaps some of your employees already have the expertise or experience to make better decisions. This avoids the issue of too many people being involved in the decision-making process.
2. Create a Plan
Developing a prioritization approach necessitates developing a value model that explains why a project or process is beneficial and should be prioritized. It should account for time sensitivity and risk variables so that the organization can respond before it’s too late.
3. Make A List Of Your Goals And Objectives
Concentrate on developing clear goals that will help you achieve long-term success. This begins with determining the resources required to finish the job. When deciding what you want to achieve with your projects and strategy, keep the following in mind:
• Timetables for the Different Projects
Schedule your tasks and milestones accordingly, since this will ensure that you not only meet your deadlines, but also that you get the most out of your resources.
• People Management and Staffing
Scheduling the right people at the right time and for the correct job should be a priority. When you put employees on a project with the same goal in mind, you can manage and maximize their output.
• Setting Up Your Success Metrics
Goals and objectives must be linked to precise metrics when they are set. This will allow you to track your production and efficiency and see if you’re on the correct track. Make the measurements as specific as possible; control them so you’ll know if you need to intervene to get things back on track.
4. Aggressive Management
Many businesses demand a consistent project management culture, possibly to ensure the success of their strategic initiatives. Management offers birth to a powerful implementation of strategic mindfulness, which will show out in performance.
Aggressive management also enables you to focus and refocus on your most important areas of influence, long-term strategy, and resource alignment for the best results.
Prioritization’s Advantages
It should be obvious by now that prioritizing your strategic projects might improve their chances of success. However, it has a slew of other benefits.
1. Alignment
Most initiatives and programs are better aligned with the company’s strategy when prioritizing is adopted company-wide through good communication. It improves strategic communication from executives to the rest of the organization, allowing priorities to become ingrained in the company’s culture.
2. Increasing Adoption
Alignment also means that instead of competing with one another, the various departments of your organization collaborate for the benefit of your consumers and partners.
3. Integration of technology
Process improvement enables you to use software programs that are most suited to your organization’s needs, from data input to employee collaboration tools. HR software can assist you in resolving reoccurring HR challenges. This will enable you to concentrate on core operations in order to attain important objectives.
4. Enhances Workplace Quality
Employees won’t have to worry about insignificant tasks that are repetitious and consume too much time if technology is integrated into the business process. Their knowledge is put to better use on more critical duties, allowing them to focus more on them, resulting in improved performance and, to some extent, employee happiness.
5. Transparency
Process management and prioritizing also improve transparency by providing visibility into how the organization runs, how data is produced and consumed, what products and services are produced as a result, where customer interactions exist, and what organizational risks exist.
This leads to better decision-making since it helps to contextualize decisions in terms of their influence on corporate operations.
The Most Important Takeaway
Organizations manage a large number of projects and initiatives, and it can be difficult to align them to strategic goals. However, merely ensuring that the most important ones are entirely aligned with the company’s goals will be quite beneficial.
Priorities will most certainly shift as well, but a terminated position might still provide an opportunity for the business to learn. A small shift in priority, when managed carefully, can radically impact the business. Recruit the help of a managed services firm so you may concentrate on your organization’s top priorities.
Course Manual 8: Communication
Why Do The Best Leaders Prioritize Excellent Communication?
Skillful communication determines whether a company succeeds or fails in navigating a crisis, completing a merger, avoiding regulatory missteps, or running day-to-day operations.
When well-laid plans go astray, CEOs typically blame “poor communication.” In the philosophy and practice of corporate leadership, however, communications is an underestimated and underappreciated profession.
In one case, a multinational company that was once seemingly invulnerable gradually plummeted toward near extinction. Poor communication played a key role in exacerbating — and even generating — execution, control, and culture issues. Hard truths from the front lines had to grind their way through layers of bureaucracy, causing cutting messages to soften into a skewed reality before reaching the CEO, assuming they even got there. Simultaneously, the CEO bemoaned the fact that his comments about the company’s issues never made it past the top echelons of management. Employees, on the other hand, complained that there was no clear communication about the company’s strategy or what was expected of them.
The corporation used safe, hollow corporate-speak in its external communications, conveying the appearance of a wounded giant huddled in a bunker, out of touch with reality. Large groups of individuals convened for hours in successive sessions to devise communications plans and techniques for handling the company’s crisis, with no decision-making and just a hazy understanding of what senior management was actually doing.
In short, poor communication efforts contributed to the problem, which resulted in the CEO’s resignation. That paved the way for the company’s salvation under the leadership of a new CEO, whose commitment to effective communication was one of his greatest assets.
An Inability To Interact
There are numerous cases of business misunderstanding. In one case, a CEO’s unwillingness to communicate with the press sparked a firestorm that might not have otherwise destroyed his company.
Another example: the leaders of a renowned financial institution compounded their business problems by communicating vaguely and complacently, both openly and internally. This shattered their credibility, resulting in their dismissal and the loss of the company’s independence.
However, there have been many first-hand accounts of communications’ positive impact, such as the CEO who transformed from a communications neophyte to a master practitioner in a matter of weeks, a pivotal factor in saving that leader’s company from an aggressive, communications-savvy organization that was hell-bent on destroying it.
And then there was the new CEO, who basically saved a vast worldwide firm from his predecessor’s misdeeds — and near-bankruptcy — by talking honestly, directly, and regularly with employees, customers, and “The Street.” His predecessor had never used a tactic like this.
Despite the obvious importance of communications, the tired cliché that the discipline is rarely among the top priorities of CEOs and other executives has some truth to it. The main reason for this appears to be because CEOs and others consider communications to be too “soft,” with no well-defined, measurable criteria or outcomes.
To be fair, communications is a distinct area of expertise and a rarity among traditional business talents, and determining its worth to organizational performance is tricky at best. Its significance necessitates a great level of tolerance for ambiguity, contradiction, and nuance (i.e., softness). Perhaps this is why, even in this social media-driven age where practically every word and deed of any institution and its people is more susceptible to public scrutiny and instant worldwide broadcast, many top executives do not fully embrace communications as a vital discipline.
To be honest, the communications field and its practitioners are equally to blame for being slow to adopt cutting-edge analytical tools like neuroscience, behavioral economics, and statistics. These fields of study could aid in the development of more exact, predictive, complex, and demonstrably valuable communications.
It’s also vital to note that communication entails far more than just words. Nonverbal influences such as conduct, attitudes, product quality, design standards, imagery, and symbols are constantly, and often silently, at work. As a result, a large number of people might have an unwitting impact on an organization’s perceptions and reputation. CEOs and their management teams, including chief communications officers, realize this in a general sense, but do not manage communications in a complete way. They see organizational communication as a narrowly defined discipline with traditional roles like media relations and employee communications, among others.
A Tool for Strategic Planning
If a CEO wants communications to be everything it can be — a tool for strategic and tactical navigation — there are many steps to take, some of which are unusual:
1. Send the message that excellent communication is critical for corporate success and career growth clearly and repeatedly, using both words and actions: Everyone should be aware that the CEO takes communications very seriously. This is an important and compelling message. It does, however, necessitate continuous, hard-nosed follow-through, as well as monetary incentives that encourage excellent communication.
2. Incorporate science into your communications strategy: In addition to the best polling and statistical approaches, neuroscience and behavioral economics have opened up enormous new areas of knowledge that communications professionals can employ to boost their credibility and the effectiveness of their messaging. For generating tactics and messages that motivate individuals to take desired behaviors, sophisticated research based on science is a useful instrument. For example, it has demonstrated exceptional outcomes in assisting individuals in making informed decisions about their saving and spending habits, as well as in establishing a trust-based company culture and forecasting customer behavior.
3. Obtain a comprehensive review of your organization’s current communications situation: Don’t limit yourself to the standard concept of “communications” in this evaluation. Examine how the organization’s varied activities project a picture of itself in both vocal and nonverbal ways. Include a review of all internal and external stakeholders who pose risks and opportunities to the organization. Examine how it builds relationships with those constituencies, from a customer service agent’s body language to the treatment of laid-off employees, to positions on sensitive public-policy issues, to product and service design, to the CEO’s public presence, and so on. Remember that communication is a two-way street, so assess the organization’s capacity to detect problems and opportunities and then consistently communicate that information up the hierarchy, all the way to the CEO, using feedback channels. Furthermore, the evaluation process should be done in a holistic manner, with strategic leadership from the top, rather than being divided into multiple sections. An examination like this is an important part of risk management.
4. Ensure that anyone in charge of communication (verbal or nonverbal) at any level is capable of doing it effectively: The CEO should gain a firm understanding of what defines appropriate communication practices and demand training initiatives to guarantee that employees can effectively carry out their communications responsibilities. The CEO should lead by example, honing his or her own communication abilities.
5. Increase the breadth, depth, and sophistication of the typical top communications job: Senior communications executives should be expected — and allowed — to take a truly holistic approach to their roles, with responsibility for monitoring and improving verbal and nonverbal communications across their enterprises. Due to a lack of thorough strategic control of a company’s communication methods, undetected vulnerabilities, missed opportunities, and unpleasant surprises await senior management.
6. Focus communications on a small set of clear, honestly endorsed ideals in order to develop the organization’s culture: Consistent investment in good, well-communicated values is invaluable insurance against all types of future losses. Trust and the freedom to question authority are great options for forming the foundation of a company’s value system. Both of these characteristics are unquestionably important in a healthy communications environment, where individuals can adapt to constant change, collaborate, and not be afraid to speak up about ethical and other issues they encounter. If these two ideals are neglected or betrayed, cynicism, a survivalist attitude, the suppression of unpleasant realities, the rationalization of poor behavior, and a circle of “yes men” around the CEO can result.
Communications as a management competency should be taken far more seriously by CEOs than it is currently. They should lead a comprehensive reconsideration of what communications can and should do, and then transform Twitter into the helpful force it can be. We live in the twenty-first century, yet communications is still based on the twentieth. This substantially limits its ability to provide full value in a variety of company endeavors.
Course Manual 9: Business Focus
Developing Organizational Focus Strategies
We often consider how successful firms such as Shopify, HootSuite, and Airbnb maintain their focus. These businesses are all made up of brilliant, creative, and passionate teams (made up of smart, creative, and passionate individuals) with common goals. They efficiently communicate, coordinate, and agree on priorities, resulting in the development of products and services that we use every day.
Consider that each of these organizations used to be made up of only a few people, each with their own distinctive manner of getting things done and the ability to get those things done pretty quickly and without much friction. However, as the company grew, they needed to get everyone on the same page. How did they manage to expand while maintaining the focus of a two-person team? Perhaps you’re in this situation yourself: unsure of what will happen next, or trying to figure out how to get your team to focus.
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” – African Proverb
Developing organizational focus, whether you’re in charge of a small creative team, a large division, or an entire company, may be difficult, especially when you’re dealing with several competing deadlines and objectives. Your purpose, vision, and values may be crystal clear, and your goals and objectives may be crystal obvious, but how do you persuade your staff to regularly focus on them?
It’s beneficial to consider what you do on a personal level and then expand those activities out at a macro level. Here’s a list of suggestions for motivating your team to keep their sights on the prize.
1. Concentrate On Fewer Things
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” remarked Lao Tzu, an ancient Chinese philosopher. Rather than attempting to complete everything at once, carefully prioritize your tasks. Select a small number of mission-critical projects to work on. Apply the Pareto Principle: concentrate on the 20% of your labor that produces 80% of the results.
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” – Steve Jobs
Teams make the mistake of taking on more than they can handle. It might be paralyzing to comprehend the full extent of work ahead of you when you’re faced with a stack of must-dos. It has the potential to disperse everyone’s attention. However, when your squad only has a few objectives, it becomes much easier to concentrate.
2. Make A To-Do List For Yourself
Everyone has their own method for determining what to do and when. Sticky notes are used by some, whereas agendas are used by others. Some people rely on their memories, while others rely on their calendar. You can’t go forward with projects without a centralized to-do list that highlights your team’s priorities, no matter what tools individuals in the organization use for themselves.
“Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.” – Henry Ford
3. Simplify The Most Important Things (And Then Simplify Again)
Getting ideas off the ground involves meticulous planning, and having a strategy in place increases your chances of success. However, there’s always the risk of sliding into an idea-stifling trap: over-planning. Too many details can be overpowering, and they may lose their meaning with time. Prioritizing priorities at the team level can likewise be a time-consuming procedure.
It’s about moving forward as swiftly as possible without losing sight of long-term initiatives and goals, according to Noah Weiss (VP of Product at Foursquare). Weiss devised a prioritized roadmap that could be used by all teams. He devised a streamlined procedure based on three simple timelines: #now, #next, and #later.
#Now deadlines should be set within a month (more or less).
#Next deadlines should be assigned to items due within 1-3 months. It helps to think in terms of quarters when it comes to #next deadlines.
#Later deadlines should be set for things that are more than 3 months out. These deadlines form a pool that you can pull from to become #later and eventually #next deadlines.
These deadlines are especially useful for large undertakings that necessitate extensive planning. Sure, you have to be meticulous with these projects because there are so many complexity and dependencies at work. Just make sure that the time and effort required to coordinate your efforts doesn’t slow you down. There’s a strong possibility you’ll be alright with #now, #next, and #later deadlines to keep the momentum going.
4. Accept Limitations
“Work expands so as to fill the time allocated for its completion” according to Parkinson’s Law. To give your staff a sense of urgency, consider working in short spurts.
Creator of 43 Folders Merlin Mann offers some advice: select a modest goal for the day, just to get the ball rolling. This method is referred to as “dashes,” and there are three types: time-based dash, unit-based dash, and combination dash.
Time-Based Dash: Give yourself a deadline for completing the assignment (for example, “I’ll stop working at 2 p.m.”). This is your “last destination.” If you finish your assignment before this point, that’s fantastic. If you don’t, you’ll have to quit working on it when the timer runs out.
Unit-Based Dash: Choose a number of tasks to perform (for example, “I will complete 30 tasks today”) or a set number of deliverables for each activity (for example, “I will write 5 pages of this report”). You’re good to go if you can get to this unit-based end-state.
Combination Dash: Establishing both a time-based and a unit-based end state, and then terminating your work dependent on which one you achieve first, can be helpful.
5. Use Meetings Wisely (Or Avoid Them Altogether)
Meetings are rarely the best way to improve organizational focus. In fact, they can be harmful by diverting attention away from the task at hand. There are a few tried-and-true methods for properly using meetings to benefit everyone in your organization:
If You Don’t Have To Meet, Don’t Do It.
Determine why you’re meeting and whether it’s required. Consider that if you have an hour-long meeting, you’re losing not just an hour of company time, but the hour multiplied by the total number of people in attendance. Meetings should only be convened once an agreement has been achieved on the need for one. A meeting may be required for one of two reasons:
Conflict: Stakeholders can discuss the decisions, present alternatives, suggest changes, or voice their concerns. The decision should be made at the end of the meeting.
Coordination: Stakeholders can assemble to coordinate an action plan if a choice requires complex collaboration from multiple persons, teams, or departments.
Set Strict Time Constraints For Your Meeting.
One-hour meetings should never be scheduled. When you include travel time, as well as the idea of “ego depletion,” which states that the average human’s ability for paying attention declines rapidly after 90 minutes, it’s easy to understand how one-hour meetings might throw your entire day off. Instead, set a time limit of 15 or 30 minutes. Schedule 37.5-minute meetings at the most.
The exact time will quietly signal to attendees that the meeting (whomp whomp) must end for a cause. When organizing meetings, keep Parkinson’s Law in mind: “Work expands so as to fill the time allocated for it.” Keep your meetings to a minimum.
Instruct People To Prepare For Meetings Ahead Of Time.
In most meetings, three persons speak for 70% of the time. You’ve met this individual before; they’re typically the last one to speak. You might easily be that person without even realizing it!
Meetings should not be utilized for brainstorming or to catch people off guard. The best meetings are those that inspire, bring people together, and create value. To expedite this process, send out questions, subjects, and reading material far ahead of time so that your time together is more effective.
Avoid Status Meetings At All Costs. .
Make a deal with your staff that you won’t arrange status meetings any longer, given that they can eat up 300,000 hours a year and do very nothing. The majority of status meetings consist of a sequence of forgettable comments, with diminishing returns proportional to the total number of attendees. Make sure you schedule a functioning meeting the next time you schedule one. Anything else should be avoided if at all possible.
Bring Your Team Together.
When it comes down to it, an organization is nothing more than a group of people who have common interests. In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes nails the concept of organizations. The Leviathan, a metaphor for the state, is defined as an artificial person whose body is made up of all the bodies of its citizens, who are the Leviathan’s physical parts. Organizations, like states, are made up of a variety of organizational elements, including people, procedures, and systems.
“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” – Aristotle
It’s in your best interests to think about how your team, no matter how big or little, can work together more effectively. Employ the same strategies you’d use on an individual level for the bigger organization to build concentration and alignment.
Course Manual 10: Culture
Entrepreneurial Culture Definition
There are numerous definitions of entrepreneurship culture. To simplify the explanation of this complex term, some authors have broken it down into the two words that make it up: “entrepreneurial” and “culture.”
The term entrepreneurial, as defined by Wickham (2006, quoted in Browson, 2013), is an adjective used to describe how an entrepreneur goes about doing what they do. The term entrepreneurial denotes a specific approach to what entrepreneurs undertake.
Brownson (2013), on the other hand, mentions the term culture, which is defined as the attributes, values, beliefs, and behavior that an individual learns or acquires from one generation to the next, and is passed down from one person to the next. The transfer of these key attributes, values, beliefs, and behaviors demonstrates the purpose to establish a specific culture.
As a result, the union of these two terms has been defined as:
A society that enhance the exhibition of the attributes, values, beliefs and behaviors that are related to entrepreneurs (Brownson, 2013).
The entrepreneurial culture’s direct efforts, while propagating a set of values, beliefs, ideologies, habits, practices, conventions, and behaviors, are aimed at encouraging the entrepreneurial spirit and demonstrating the benefits of entrepreneurship to the general public (Observatorio Nacional del Emprendedor, 2015).
It takes time to build an entrepreneurial culture, according to the OECD (2009, as referenced in Sánchez & Martnez, 2017).
It necessitates collaboration among the actors involved, with the entrepreneurial culture in particular aiming for high-impact firms. The entrepreneurs’ social image, success and effect, and incentive to establish a firm are the primary factors used to assess entrepreneurial culture (Sánchez & Martnez, 2017).
Why Should Your Company Have an Entrepreneurial Culture?
The competition for talent is severe in today’s ever-changing corporate environment. Professionals are less likely to stay with the same employer for several years. Instead, they’ll change professions or careers until they discover the right fit. Paychecks and job titles aren’t the only things that motivate people to change. Employees want to work for a company that values their contributions. They want to be able to advance in the organization and have a real influence. They will seek to enhance their skills elsewhere if the organization does not provide this chance.
The company culture is critical in attracting and retaining these talented employees. Companies that have a flexible and entrepreneurial mindset have an advantage over their competitors. We’ll discuss the importance of having an entrepreneurial culture and how to develop it in your own firm.
An Entrepreneurial Culture’s Importance
Companies must be able to adapt and react swiftly to new opportunities and developments in today’s world. Instilling the right culture will aid in the company’s long-term survival and growth. Employees will not like their work if there is no business culture in place. As a result, firms will see a drop in performance and a high rate of employee turnover.
Many new businesses have embraced an entrepreneurship culture. Employees see themselves as entrepreneurs in this environment. This enables them to spot opportunities, assess risks, and make decisions. In this form of organizational culture, a strong sense of ownership and empowerment is a driving force of innovation.
Establishing an Entrepreneurial Culture
Several characteristics of the entrepreneurial ecosystem influence entrepreneurial culture.
The entrepreneur’s objectives serve as the driving force behind his or her decision to start a business, to be risk averse, and to be ambitious enough to create a company. Furthermore, society has its own perceptions about entrepreneurship, which can influence entrepreneurial activity and whether it is an appealing career path to pursue directly or indirectly.
The status accorded to entrepreneurs, the tolerance and acceptance of failure, and the amount of people considering becoming entrepreneurs are all factors that influence the entrepreneurial culture.
When a society’s opinion of entrepreneurship improves, more entrepreneurs, investors, and organizations are willing to accept the risk of starting a business and supporting entrepreneurs (Observatorio Nacional del Emprendedor, 2015).
When a person is motivated to find themselves, according to Hofstede (1980, referenced in Brownson, 2013), they can be embraced to act in an entrepreneurial way within an organization and in other aspects of life. This demonstrates that the individual will be a member of a distinct cultural group, as his entrepreneurial actions will set him apart from others.
An Entrepreneurial Culture Has Three Levels
As shown in the next picture, Kundu (2009, referenced in Brownson, 2013) categorized culture into three stages that all contribute to its formation.
The Invisible Level
Attributes and values are two components of the unconscious and invisible level.
The entrepreneurial characteristics are important natural and fostered indications of persons who have the potential to become entrepreneurs. This group of attributes has been identified as a motivator for understanding and encouraging entrepreneurship.
The importance of entrepreneurial characteristics stems from the fact that they are a major element in influencing an individual’s decision to establish a business. It is necessary to influence the creation and realization of company concepts in order to stimulate entrepreneurial qualities.
If it is wanted to affect the amount of people who can become entrepreneurs, attention should be paid to their characteristics. However, the entrepreneur must be nurtured with the necessary knowledge and experience to help them develop their entrepreneurial abilities (Brownson, 2013).
Entrepreneurial values are conceptions, which may be verbal or implicit, and which, in this situation, are unique to entrepreneurs, and which demonstrate a desire to choose between several courses of action.
These principles serve as the foundation for making decisions. They are a mirror of the entrepreneur’s conscious viewpoint, prompting him to take action. The values demonstrate how humans act.
Entrepreneurs’ values reveal not only what decisions they will make, but also how they will approach a new enterprise.
According to academic research, the presence of entrepreneurial values in an individual influences the rate of the formation of new firms. As a result, governments seeking to expand the number of jobs should prioritize shaping human values toward entrepreneurship (Brownson, 2013).
Autonomy, the flexibility to act autonomously, innovativeness, freedom of experimentation, risk taking, ability to take initiative, and competitive aggressiveness are all values connected with entrepreneurship, according to Mourdoukoutas and Papadimitrou (2002, quoted in Brownson, 2013).
On the other hand, regardless of the entrepreneur’s cultural origins, Morris and Schindehutte (2005, cited in Brownson 2013) claimed that when beginning a business, entrepreneurs share values such as independence, innovation, honesty, and hard work.
The Semi-Invisible Level
The entrepreneurial attitude is found on the second level of semi-visible or semi-consciousness.
The entrepreneurial mindset is the attitude with which an entrepreneur reacts to a specific object, either positively or negatively, based on an acquired propensity.
The foundations for human conduct to be driven and experience personal accomplishment are attitudes.
The experiences that an individual has had, as well as how he thinks and feels about what he has gone through, have influenced and have been influenced by entrepreneurial mindsets.
Individuals’ experiences at this event may have an impact on their perspective toward entrepreneurship if they have participated in government initiatives and policies aimed at fostering cultural entrepreneurship (Brownson, 2013).
Hatten and Ruhland’s study of students’ views about entrepreneurship in a Small Business Institute program (1995, cited in Brownson 2013) discovered that they had a positive shift in their attitudes toward entrepreneurship, which increases their ambition to be future entrepreneurs.
Despite the fact that this was a small sample of students, research has indicated that students who participate in various entrepreneurial programs with a well-structured strategy are more likely to develop a rich entrepreneurial culture (Kumara & Sahasranam, 2009).
The Visible Level
Entrepreneurial behavior is observable at the visible level.
The act of starting a new firm is referred to as entrepreneurial activity.
According to Williams (2010), entrepreneurial behavior is described as a series of behaviors taken by the entrepreneur that are constantly updated and defined in order to position and accept the opportunity in the market.
This step has resulted in the establishment of a new company.
Entrepreneurial Attributes, Skills, and Behaviours
The entrepreneurial culture is the context in which entrepreneurs’ characteristics, values, mindsets, and behavior are formed.
In this atmosphere, entrepreneurs must make judgments on whether or not to take a risk and establish a business.
The foundation for developing entrepreneurs is a set of strong cultural characteristics.
The importance of cultivating an entrepreneurial culture in general must be emphasized throughout society.
And there are certain habits, qualities, and talents that should be cultivated in order to support entrepreneurship.
Course Manual 11: Profitability
What should I prioritize in order to maximize profits?
There was a piece on an entrepreneur several years ago. He had been extremely selfless and had not maximized his gains to himself, despite his drive. He realized he was sacrificing himself for the sake of others. Although this is part of being an entrepreneur’s service, it will not make you a long-term entrepreneur. What you’re doing isn’t sustainable if your highest values aren’t being met and you’re not monetarily viable or lucrative. And you’ll most likely burn out while doing it.
It is prudent and necessary to ensure that your firm is well-structured so that you may maximize your service and revenues. You are unlikely to generate a profit if you do not place a value on it.
Many entrepreneurs have discovered that if they don’t take money off the top and put a portion of it into savings right away, their ability to save will be eroded in the long run. It’s a good idea to take care of yourself first. If you pay yourself last, you may not have enough money to save.
Some entrepreneurs believe that if they make or have a little extra money, they will begin to save. However, saving and investing money in advance is preferable to waiting for it at the end. It is better to start saving and investing right away, as you will have more money to manage. You get more money to manage when you manage your money correctly. As a result, it is prudent to place a high priority on maximizing your revenues and savings. Without this critical step, your money will not begin to stabilize and operate for you in your principal business.
It’s a good idea to pay for items in order of importance. All of your disbursements including all moneys to you, staff, taxes or anything… are to be paid intelligently by priority. Pay the most important bills first, and the least important bills last. And if you pay things in order of importance, money will be drawn to where it will be wisely handled, and if you manage money correctly, you will have more money to manage. Because you’re more effective and efficient, you’ll attract more customers. You are a top priority.
The most important people will be disincentivised if they are paid last. The importance of those who produce the most is greater than that of those who produce the least. It’s a good idea to put your money and energy into the people or things that matter the most. It’s not a good idea to deprive critical employees of incentives or to pay someone who isn’t performing at the expense of someone who is. You want to make sure that productivity is maximized and that efficiency is rewarded.
When new CEOs take over a company, it is obvious. Their values begin to pervade the organization. The profit margins of that company will then be adjusted based on where the earnings are in the new leader’s value system. There are companies with a lot of volume but poor margins, and others with a lot of volume but high margins.
One entrepreneur made two million dollars a month while sitting in his underwear at his computer. He was an expert at using the internet and marketing to find the most crucial goods that people were looking for. He also found high-quality service or product providers on the internet who could fit those niches, and he was putting these consumers and providers together, earning a percentage of each transaction through an affiliate scheme. He made a lot of money. He had himself and his computer, and that was the price he had to pay. That’s a business with a high profit margin and low overhead.
In another scenario, a manufacturing firm had a 5% profit margin and annual sales of $300 million, but it was extremely stressful every year. Any small dip in the market would put the company’s existence in jeopardy. Both of these extreme cases have something to do with the CEO’s value system in charge of the company.
It’s a good idea to plan how you can make your company more productive and efficient while also increasing earnings. It’s a good idea to keep an eye on how you can restructure your company to make it more effective. If you don’t keep up with efficiencies and expectations, other competitors will come in and take your consumer niches. A predator/prey game exists in the corporate sector. Predators are constantly attempting to seize control of your niche. You can’t keep doing what you’ve been doing for the past five years. You’ll be in charge of constantly improving it.
You will stagnate if you do not place a value on refining. And you won’t be able to compete in the globe for your specialty. So you must first devote your life to assisting others, but you must also devote yourself to improving and maximizing the efficiency and revenues of your organization. So make a habit of paying yourself first, prioritizing your tasks, and helping a larger number of people more efficiently.
Prioritize Growth For Startups (But Not At The Expense Of Profitability)
In the last year and three years, the indexes of the top 20% of companies by growth and the 20% of companies with the slowest growth, were divided. Following that, we looked at the multiples of these data sets.
Above: Source: CapitalIQ
As shown in the graph, the top 20% of expanding companies had a large increase in their value. For example, the top 20% growing companies in the NYSE Software and Services index were valued at 7.1 times their revenues in the last three years, while the slowest growing companies were valued at 80% of their revenues.
However, as crucial as growth is to a company’s worth, it isn’t the only factor to consider. All efforts to promote growth should be guided by the ultimate goal of generating profits, which is what investors and other shareholders are left with at the end of the day.
Shareholders are often ready to turn a blind eye and invest in firms even when they are losing money because they feel the companies are sacrificing short-term profits to invest in technology and processes that will enhance and accelerate their long-term growth and market dominance. Investors, however, must see a route to long-term profitability notwithstanding their readiness to “forgive” momentary breaches in profitability (even in promising enterprises).
Amazon.com is a good example of such a corporation (refer to the five-year share price performance graph below).
Above: Amazon 5-year share price performance. Source: Yahoo Finance, Jan. 2015.
The stock rose significantly as long as Amazon’s revenues grew at a rate of 20 to 40% per year, and many investors were ready to overlook the company’s margin difficulties. Now that the company’s growth has slowed, many investors are reconsidering the company’s profit margins, which remain extremely low (less than 1 percent of operating margin). The company’s revenues were over $85 billion and its losses were over $200 million in the 12 months ended September 2014.
Despite massive revenues, the stock price has dropped by about 25% since the beginning of the year, as shown in the Yahoo Finance graph above.
So, what effect does profitability have on a company’s valuation?
The table below illustrates how revenue growth and profitability affect valuation. (EBITDA margin):
Above: Source: CapitalIQ
We used the same NYSE Software and Services information as before and looked at the EV/REV multiples for different growth rates and EBITDA margins over the last three years.
Profitability, as you can see, has an impact on valuation, but only for companies with slower growth rates. Companies that grew between 5% and 15% in the last three years, for example, were valued at just 1.4 times their revenues when their EBITDA margin was below 10%, compared to 3.5 times their revenues when the EBITDA margin was over 20%. In companies with rapid expansion, such as Amazon, this size is less feasible.
To summarize, it’s a good idea to strive for rapid expansion for your business, but once you reach scale, you should constantly endeavor to be “lean and mean” in order to achieve significant profitability. This will be especially critical if your growth rates begin to slow.
Course Manual 12: Relationships
What makes a “contact” different from a “relationship?”
A contact is someone who may accept your LinkedIn invitation, whereas a relationship is someone with whom you can seek guidance, support, and assistance. They’re also someone you can lean on for support, advice, and connections. A relationship is more meaningful than a transaction.
As An Entrepreneur, Relationships Are Crucial To Your Success
It can be quite tempting as an entrepreneur or small business owner to believe that the service or product you have to sell is what will lead to your success.
Consider that for a moment. The fantastic idea you have for launching a new app that will change how people fill prescriptions and have them delivered to their homes before they even leave the doctor’s office is a gold mine.
As a result, you devote all of your time and money to developing your ideal app, making an outstanding website, and even blogging — something you never thought you’d do — in order to spread the word about your product.
Meanwhile, you’ve been ignoring your angel investor’s emails for the past three weeks and have five voicemails to respond. Last week, you canceled a possible client meeting with a large group of local doctors that may have resulted in a marketing opportunity because you were focused on the app UI, and you have yet to reschedule.
Because you haven’t paid attention to one of the most important building blocks of every successful business — relationships — these ties and your reputation are swiftly being destroyed.
Set Some Time To Connect
You can never spend enough time creating and maintaining a network of active connections that you can call on, whether you’re a rookie small business owner or a seasoned veteran. This isn’t a shady approach to establish a list of individuals to sell a product to, nor is it a means to just contact people when you need assistance. Instead, think of it as a type of social currency that is exchanged back and forth.
Set aside a specified amount of time each week to network. This could be as simple as spending a few hours online on LinkedIn or another platform reaching out to thought leaders in your field. Investigate similar Facebook Groups, Slack channels, and private forums to see if you can locate people who share your interests. Also, go beyond your business to see who is making waves and who has fantastic ideas that they are willing to share with their peers.
Don’t stop there, though. Look for in-person networking opportunities hosted by your local chamber of commerce, business group, or co-working facility. Try to attend one of these every few months, even if you despise small talk. Consider it an investment in the long-term viability of your company.
This could be a wonderful time to work on your active listening skills, which are important for developing empathy and solid relationships, as well as refining your elevator pitch. You never know who will show up at these events, and even if the fashionable marketing consultant with the cool arm sleeve tattoo isn’t relevant to you right now, you never know what might happen later. It’s possible that in a few months she’ll connect you to a potential client, or that you’ll find yourself in need of a marketing strategy and know who to call.
Empathy Is A Valuable Skill To Have, And It May Help You Build Trust
Relationships are two-way streets, and you must be able to build trust in order to form solid ties. This may appear to be a difficult task, but it is actually a simple procedure.
Consider what qualities you would seek in a mentor, business partner, or coworker. Do they follow through on their promises? Are they punctual and well-prepared when they arrive? Do they continuously offer assistance and go above and beyond while collaborating with others? If you responded yes to any of these questions, you now have a plan for building trust with your contacts.
Consider how you may showcase these attributes and lay the groundwork necessary to indicate that you appreciate the relationship. It’s possible that you’re an expert in a particular field and offer to analyze a technical paper and provide a few recommendations for free. Perhaps you’ve had a wonderful talk with a graphic designer and know someone who can assist them take their company to the next level. Connect the two and take a step back.
Evaluate the value of empathy and the ability to connect on a human level — one outside of business and work — as you consider how you may demonstrate your interest in a relationship.
Understanding and appreciating shared experiences, as well as the emotion that may accompany them, is a crucial life skill that can benefit you in any relationship. Small discussion about dogs and puppy training may seem insignificant to you, but to someone else, it could mean the world. Empathizing with others’ emotions is at the heart of what it means to be human, and we can all benefit from it.
Do What You Say You’re Going To Do
Nothing will ruin a relationship faster than a lack of follow through or a failure to honor a pledge on either party’s behalf. If you promised a customer that you’d send a follow-up email with a link to a relevant article before the end of the day, follow through.
Similarly, if you’ve reached a major project obstacle and know you’re going to miss your deadline, let everyone know right away and come up with a plan to fix or solve the problem. It’s possible that you’ll find time in your schedule to complete the assignment on time, or you’ll provide a discount.
Return emails promptly, call people after they leave you a voicemail within one or two business days, and show up for appointments and meetings. Time is extremely valuable, and you want to demonstrate that you appreciate and cherish both your own and others’ in a consistent and courteous manner.
Though these activities may appear insignificant, they go a long way toward establishing trust and demonstrating your dependability. If people believe you can’t handle the simple stuff, they’ll rapidly infer that larger aspects of your firm, such as that fantastic software, are likewise out of your reach.
Relationships are an important part of your business, and if you manage them properly, they may open a lot of doors and lead to new chances. Take the time to actually invest in them through official and informal channels that aren’t necessarily focused on a specific outcome, but rather on learning more about them. Empathy should be practiced, trust should be built, and action should be taken. These advice will get you far in both job and life, but the true work and investment you make is up to you.
Create A Network Of Interconnections (Not A Static Network)
These are overlapping friends, colleagues, and contacts who, when strategically stitched together, have a significant impact and can assist you in achieving goals such as fundraising. Every single individual in your “circle of connections” is deserving of connection, compassion, depth, and consideration. They provide your network and community more depth and life. Commit to become a better connector by making simple actions that demonstrate your concern and value as a resource. Send an article, a post, or a greeting card to someone who has received a promotion or a birthday.
Look Into Your Contacts And See What You Can Do To Assist Them
Consider your company’s aims and values to see who you can assist and who can assist you in growing. Determine how you may broaden your social circle beyond those who look and act like you, and collect as much information as possible about your new acquaintances from all angles and sources. One of your mantras should be to aid them. Find out whether they serve on any boards, if they have a family, and if they volunteer outside of work. Find a shared objective or passion, or a mutual interest you uncovered, and utilize it to give the new contact a reason to remember you.
You can also help your new contact by taking notes on the first call and following up as soon as feasible. This will build trust, making you more reliable and dependable.
Finding out your new contact’s chief differentiating element, or the secret sauce that makes them distinctive, is another method to stand out and be helpful. In my experience, if you can clearly reflect on your contact’s distinctive attributes, they will be eternally thankful, and the door will always be open to you. You will create real interest and trust by thinking about how you can help others rather than what you can get out of the connection. A meaningful relationship is built on this foundation.
Workshop Exercises
Priority Identification Exercises
01. Priority Identification: Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
02. Self Care : Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
03. Corporate Entrepreneurship : Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
04. Innovation : Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
05. Growing Funds : Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
06. Company Growth : Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
07. Processes : Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
08. Communication : Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
09. Business Focus : Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
10. Culture : Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
11. Profitability : Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
12. Relationships : Explain in your own words how this process will directly impact upon your department?
SWOT & MOST Analysis Exercises
01. Undertake a detailed SWOT Analysis in order to identify your department’s internal strengths and weaknesses and external opportunities and threats in relation to each of the 12 Priority Identification processes featured above. Undertake this task together with your department’s stakeholders in order to encourage collaborative evaluation.
02. Develop a detailed MOST Analysis in order to establish your department’s: Mission; Objectives; Strategies and Tasks in relation to Priority Identification . Undertake this task together with all of your department’s stakeholders in order to encourage collaborative evaluation.
Project Studies
Project Study (Part 1) – Customer Service
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Priority Identification process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Priority Identification
02. Self Care
03. Corporate Entrepreneurship
04. Innovation
05. Growing Funds
06. Company Growth
07. Processes
08. Communication
09. Business Focus
10. Culture
11. Profitability
12. Relationships
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 2) – E-Business
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Priority Identification process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Priority Identification
02. Self Care
03. Corporate Entrepreneurship
04. Innovation
05. Growing Funds
06. Company Growth
07. Processes
08. Communication
09. Business Focus
10. Culture
11. Profitability
12. Relationships
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 3) – Finance
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Priority Identification process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Priority Identification
02. Self Care
03. Corporate Entrepreneurship
04. Innovation
05. Growing Funds
06. Company Growth
07. Processes
08. Communication
09. Business Focus
10. Culture
11. Profitability
12. Relationships
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 4) – Globalization
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Priority Identification process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Priority Identification
02. Self Care
03. Corporate Entrepreneurship
04. Innovation
05. Growing Funds
06. Company Growth
07. Processes
08. Communication
09. Business Focus
10. Culture
11. Profitability
12. Relationships
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 5) – Human Resources
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Priority Identification process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Priority Identification
02. Self Care
03. Corporate Entrepreneurship
04. Innovation
05. Growing Funds
06. Company Growth
07. Processes
08. Communication
09. Business Focus
10. Culture
11. Profitability
12. Relationships
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 6) – Information Technology
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Workshop Subject process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Priority Identification
02. Self Care
03. Corporate Entrepreneurship
04. Innovation
05. Growing Funds
06. Company Growth
07. Processes
08. Communication
09. Business Focus
10. Culture
11. Profitability
12. Relationships
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 7) – Legal
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Priority Identification process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Priority Identification
02. Self Care
03. Corporate Entrepreneurship
04. Innovation
05. Growing Funds
06. Company Growth
07. Processes
08. Communication
09. Business Focus
10. Culture
11. Profitability
12. Relationships
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 8) – Management
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Priority Identification process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Priority Identification
02. Self Care
03. Corporate Entrepreneurship
04. Innovation
05. Growing Funds
06. Company Growth
07. Processes
08. Communication
09. Business Focus
10. Culture
11. Profitability
12. Relationships
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 9) – Marketing
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Priority Identification process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Priority Identification
02. Self Care
03. Corporate Entrepreneurship
04. Innovation
05. Growing Funds
06. Company Growth
07. Processes
08. Communication
09. Business Focus
10. Culture
11. Profitability
12. Relationships
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 10) – Production
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Priority Identification process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Priority Identification
02. Self Care
03. Corporate Entrepreneurship
04. Innovation
05. Growing Funds
06. Company Growth
07. Processes
08. Communication
09. Business Focus
10. Culture
11. Profitability
12. Relationships
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 11) – Logistics
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Priority Identification process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Priority Identification
02. Self Care
03. Corporate Entrepreneurship
04. Innovation
05. Growing Funds
06. Company Growth
07. Processes
08. Communication
09. Business Focus
10. Culture
11. Profitability
12. Relationships
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Project Study (Part 12) – Education
The Head of this Department is to provide a detailed report relating to the Priority Identification process that has been implemented within their department, together with all key stakeholders, as a result of conducting this workshop, incorporating process: planning; development; implementation; management; and review. Your process should feature the following 12 parts:
01. Priority Identification
02. Self Care
03. Corporate Entrepreneurship
04. Innovation
05. Growing Funds
06. Company Growth
07. Processes
08. Communication
09. Business Focus
10. Culture
11. Profitability
12. Relationships
Please include the results of the initial evaluation and assessment.
Program Benefits
Management
- Time management
- Defined responsibilities
- Executive oversight
- Resource leveraging
- Performance accountability
- Standardized costs
- Streamlined estimating
- Streamlined purchasing
- Standardized processes
- Project tracking
Marketing
- Market research
- Value proposition
- Defined expertise
- Ideal client
- Brand awareness
- Market share
- Marketing strategy
- Streamlined sales
- Sales tracking
- Social proof
Financial
- Reducing costs
- Cash flow
- Streamlined forecasting
- Automated reporting
- Trend analysis
- Budget monitoring
- Budget controls
- Systemized book-keeping
- Systemized accounting
- Systems redundancy
Client Telephone Conference (CTC)
If you have any questions or if you would like to arrange a Client Telephone Conference (CTC) to discuss this particular Unique Consulting Service Proposition (UCSP) in more detail, please CLICK HERE.