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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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Figure 1: Strategy Management Dashboard

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Curriculum

Balancing Entrepreneurship – Workshop 1 – Priority Identification

1. Priority Identification
2. Self Care
3. Corporate Entrepreneurship
4. Innovation
5. Growing Funds
6. Company Growth
7. Processes
8. Communication
9. Business Focus
10. Culture
11. Profitability
12. Relationships

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.”

If you would like to know more, Click Here

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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.

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