Countdown for your New Year Strategic Thinking Business.

The beginning of a new year is a great time to get a checkup on the fitness and health of your business as strategic preparation for the year ahead. Business owners and their management team have the opportunity to perform an annual “checkup” on every aspect of their business, get rid of the “unhealthy" behaviors and performances and address the “unhealthy” things in their businesses, and start with a fitness plan to ensure a prosperous new year.

Here are ten top tips to ensure a healthy start to the new year from your strategic thinking business coach.

+ Review your business performance. An honest review of the business over the past year can show what worked well and what didn't. By looking at the successes and the failures over the past year will put you in a far better position to plan effectively for the new year.

+ Begin your strategic thinking and planning. Review the past year performance, set the goals that you want to accomplish in the new business year and develop a strategic action plan to achieve your goals.

+ Commit to being more organized in the new year so that time is not wasted looking for things you need and to improve work flow.

+ Clear your desk and eliminate clutter. Discipline yourself to keep relevant information on your desk when needed so you can improve your concentration on the task at hand and not be distracted by other items that makes your mind wander.

+ Clear your computer. Delete all spam and junk emails that you do not need. Act on any urgent messages and organize the rest in appropriate files.

+ Back up your business records to guard against a potential devastating impact on your business. You could back up your data onto a disc, or use a professional data back up company to store it for you

+ Develop a system, if one does not exist, and commit to a follow-up system with your accounts to manage your accounts receivable.

+ Commit to good cash flow management. Develop strategies to consider alternative methods of funding, which can guarantee your business has a flexible and ongoing supply of working capital, enabling you to put your business plans into action.

+ Commit to creating an environment that encourages the professional development of your staff.

Your strategic thinking business coach encourages you to take a close look at your business and its performance during the past year. Use the new year to develop a fresh outlook, renewed enthusiasm and ambition for the year ahead. The start of the new year is the right time for you to review your strategic plan, business plan, marketing plan, and other plans and then develop the appropriate strategic action plan to position you and your business for a very healthy business year.

By: J. Glenn Ebersole, Jr

Here Come the Holidays!

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Achieving Goals Immediately

Some people may think that goals have a definite timeline to accomplish. In part, this is true, but there are certainly ways on how you can hasten the process. You can achieve more great things by focusing on the current job and getting it done, without any compromise. Here are some guidelines from the experts that you can use yourself.

Step One: Forming a Team

Things can be accomplished more quickly if you rely on other people and assign tasks accordingly. When forming a team, it is important that you choose individuals whom you can trust and are truly competent in the fields you assign them to. Teams need to be supervised to ensure that you get the results you want. You can also create a hierarchy or create pairs so that one can look out for the other, thereby saving you time when reviewing work.

Forming a team gives you the benefit of practicing your leadership skills. You will find that later on, you also get to finish tasks more quickly alone, since you've already created an effective system that will provide a smoother flow of various jobs. Make sure you also get the appropriate number of people for the job, or else you risk having too many to watch over, wasting precious time in the process.

Step Two: Finding Shortcuts

Some goals actually have shortcuts that you can use to reach more quickly. These are not quick fixes, but can help the entire system respond in a more conducive manner, thereby boosting the process. For example, there are no short cuts to permanent weight loss, but you can do some techniques that will hasten the fat loss. Some of the approaches include using HIIT or high intensity interval training, instead of the traditional cardiovascular exercise. HIIT is done only in 20 minutes tops, and burns more fat and raises your metabolism higher and for longer periods of time. Your body will respond to the exercise faster.

To know about the shortcuts, always stay updated with changes and developments in technology and professional programs. Stay connected in a network of people related to your goals. Joining forums and online seminars are ideal. You can also talk to experts, so you can compare processes and determine if a certain approach is truly effective.

Step Three: Extra Hours

Consistency, discipline and dedication always give you faster and better results. If you want to finish things faster, you may have to put in extra hours and work longer than the usual. The more important thing is that you keep stress levels down afterwards by relaxing and giving yourself enough time to rest. This way, you can move on to the next goals to be achieved. Overtime should also be well-planned. You cannot expect to work effectively beyond your usual time if you're still tired the night before or do not have enough equipment to work with.

Prepare and strategize by coming up with small objectives and actions steps to be done in sequence. Having information prior to your overtime can help greatly and save you lots of idle time. You may also ask someone to work with you during overtime to accomplish more. Try to incorporate all the three steps above and see for yourself how much more you can boost the process.
Bad Traits to Avoid If You Wish to Achieve Your Goals

A lot of people stay unsuccessful or have alternating experiences with success and failure, simply because they do not know that they have many bad traits. Bad traits pertain to habits and personal characteristics that ultimately lead to failure. Some of the things you've been so used to doing for several years may be the main reason why you struggle much.


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Inside Larry and Sergey’s Brain

New Book from the GOOGLE Guys

Richard L. Brandt wrote a book titled “Inside Larry and Sergey’s Brain”, and it’s now available on Amazon. Amazon’s descriptions says the book “skips past the general Google story and focuses on what really drives these men and where they will take Google in the future. Richard L. Brandt shows the company as the brainchild of two brilliant but individual men and looks at Google’s business decisions in light of its founders’ ambitions and beliefs.” Richard answered a couple of my questions via email.

Q: What inspired you to write this book?

I worked on this book off and on for four years. I first became interested in writing about Google before the IPO.
When I was at Business Week in the mid 1980s I had a chance to write a book about Microsoft. I just knew Microsoft was destined to become a huge force in the computer industry. For various reasons I never did the book.
Google was the first company that I felt as strongly about as I did Microsoft in its early days. I started following its business model, and knew it had the right formula. This time, I knew I had to write a book. It was delayed for a few years while I was busy with other things, then had trouble finding an agent who believed I could say something new about Google. A year ago I found one, sold the proposal and wrote the book. There was no other book I wanted to do. The book is only as good as my passion for writing it.
I knew it was an exceptional company that had many things to teach entrepreneurs. Every time there’s a paradigm shift in technology, one or two companies figure out how to really exploit the new technology and become powerful leaders. Microsoft did that in software, Intel in hardware. (Apple is a different case; its strength is design, not business strategy.) Google is it for the Internet, the successor to Microsoft not in business strategy, but in leading the new generation of companies tapping into the zeitgeist of the Internet.
Whereas Bill Gates saw the potential of the microprocessor and the need for standards in his day, positioning Microsoft to control them, Larry and Sergey understood the open nature of the Internet, the power of its interconnected nature, and knew that it would be extremely important to help people tap its potential.
Bill Gates was an idealist about getting a computer on everyone’s desk because he wanted one himself and knew that millions of others would as well. He also smelled money. Larry and Sergey were idealists about the importance of the internet to change people’s lives. They simply worked harder to create the best search engine they could, even willing to knock advertisers down a peg or two in importance, because this was too important to the world to screw up. Idealism goes a long way on the Internet.
I’m fascinated with corporate ethics and like the fact that Google is not driven by the need to maximize shareholder value every quarter. They refuse to mess up search results with ads. They push openness, free products, and do everything they can to get more people online. Because the Internet offers so much competition, only the true idealists get it right.

Q: Was it hard to get to interview Larry or Sergey for the book? How long did you talk to them?

Larry and Sergey are extremely private individuals and are shy of the press. I could not get official interviews with them. But I used every opportunity I could to run into them. Since I recognized the incredible nature of the company, I invested in the IPO, buying stock at $85 (I sold it all before writing the book, at about $500.) As a stockholder I got to attend all the shareholder meetings. I listened to them there and asked questions. (In the early shareholder meetings, reporters were not invited [...] so I got exclusives.) I went to Google parties and used every excuse I could to visit the Google campus, talking to them whenever I ran into them. I blogged about Google and listened in on every conference call I could. I picked up bits and pieces over the years. But I only had short conversations with them, never an interview.
Google then gave me access to anyone I wanted EXCEPT Larry and Sergey. So I interviewed friends, Google execs, former Google execs, professors and colleagues. With every source, I focused on their impressions of Larry and Sergey and why they did things the way they did.
After years of observing them and evaluating their moves against the view I had developed of their passion and idealism, I felt I knew them as well as any outsider could. Since I don’t know them personally, there are certainly limitations to my knowledge. They are hugely ambitious and are still discovering what they’re capable of. They’re still evolving and will continue to surprise all of us. When I told Eric Schmidt I wanted to get inside their brains, he said, “Good luck.” But I tried to get deeper into their brains than anyone else had.
The last thing is that I’m impressed by their idealism. It’s real, and it keeps them ahead of the competition. They’re good guys. And hugely ambitious.

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