Archive for Business

30 Dec 2010
Business

Manage Energy

Allocating energy may be more important and a better way to be more productive than by trying to manage time. The Harvard Business Review’s Management Tip of the Day shared these four tips as ways to replenish your energy, work smarter and prevent burnout:

Take brief but regular breaks. Step away from your desk every 90 to 120 minutes. Take a walk, get a drink, or just stretch your legs.

Say thank you. Being positive boosts your energy level. Regularly express appreciation to others.

Reduce interruptions. Perform tasks that need concentration away from phones and email. Instead, designate specific times in your day to respond to messages.

Do what you love. Understand where your strengths lie and what you enjoy doing. Find ways to do more of those things and less of what tires you out.

Can we help you say thank you to some of your favorite customers? Can we do what we love, helping you with your marketing and mailing, that will allow you to spend more time doing what you love?

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13 Dec 2010
Business • Saving Money

Information Workers Are Resourceful

The Harvard Business Review’s Daily Stat reported that more than one-third of U.S. information workers use technologies their companies have not sanctioned, according to Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler of Forrester Research, authors of Empowered. These people are researching and finding solutions to solve problems and make their jobs easier and faster.

According to Wikipedia a knowledge worker is valued for his or her “ability to act and communicate with knowledge within a specific subject area. They will often advance the overall understanding of that subject through focused analysis, design and/or development. They use research skills to define problems and to identify alternatives. Fueled by their expertise and insight, they work to solve those problems, in an effort to influence company decisions, priorities and strategies.”

We hope you consider us as one of your resources for marketing and direct mail.

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08 Dec 2010
Business • Economic News

Why Corporate Headquarters Are So Desired

The ability of any city to attract or retain the headquarters of an average-size company is worth $3 million to $10 million per year in public contributions to local nonprofits, in a recent post from the Harvard Business Review. The effect seems to be due to the number of wealthy individuals present in the region rather than to the company’s direct contributions. A new headquarters yields, on average, some 275 additional individuals with income over $100,000.

This supports a statement from Local First Arizona about how a much larger percentage of money spent with a locally owned business will stay in the local economy.

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23 Nov 2010
Advertising • Business

Slow Company?

A post that appeared on BNET offered some examples of how companies are gaining success by being slow. Slow goes against so much tradition and experience but the article offered two examples of companies that seem to be successful because they do things slowly. Perhaps a slower more deliberate approach is more appropriate for the issues faced by most businesses today because the challenges are deep and complex, not especially susceptible to quick fixes.

The leaders of five major magazine companies have come together to sponsor a campaign called, “Magazines, The Power of Print“. In one ad, they asked, “Will the Internet kill magazines? Did instant coffee kill coffee?” in another ad they stated, “We surf the Internet. We swim in magazines.” Then they share two very interesting statistics, WOW numbers, during the 12 year life of Google, magazine readership actually increased 11 percent. In the coffee ad, they state “even the 18 to 34 year old segment continues to grow… typical young adults now read more magazine issues per month than their parents.”

Numbers and statistics continue to support the facts that a quick fix and reliance on one media for marketing communication may not be the answer. Direct mail makes sense now more than ever before, because it is able to target exactly and it gives reliable feedback to continue to improve.

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11 Oct 2010
Business

Small Business Failure Rate is 90% Wrong

The 90 percent failure rate statistic is a myth.

BNET posted an article to share some truth about this American legend. 70 percent of new firms that have at least one employee survive for at least two years. Roughly half go on for five years.

And even the 30 percent failure rate after one year may be an overstatement. That’s because other studies have shown that most firms that close their doors were profitable at the time.

One alternative to starting a business is getting a job. It turns out that going to work for someone else is roughly as likely to be short-lived as going to work for yourself. The Bureau of Labor Statistics looked at American workers’ average tenure on the job and found that, even when considering only more stable, older workers, 31 percent of the jobs they took ended in less than a year.  Not only that, but 65 percent of the jobs ended in fewer than 5 years. The future seems equally uncertain.

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08 Oct 2010
Business

Foster Creativity

Newsweek published an article titled “Forget Brainstorming”. Brainstorming  became popular in 1953 with the publication of a business book, Applied Imagination.  But it’s been proven not to work since 1958, when Yale researchers found that the technique actually reduced a team’s creative output: the same number of people generate more and better ideas separately than together.

In fact, according to University of Oklahoma professor Michael Mumford, half of the commonly used techniques intended to spur creativity don’t work, or even have a negative impact.

So what does work?

Tell people “Do something only you would come up with—that none of your friends or family would think of.”

This can double the number of creative responses.

Get moving.

Almost every dimension of cognition improves from 30 minutes of aerobic exercise, and creativity is no exception. The type of exercise doesn’t matter, and the boost lasts for at least two hours afterward.

Take a break.

This is not multi-tasking. More projects get completed on time when you allow yourself to switch between them if creative solutions don’t come immediately.

Reduce screen time.

According to University of Texas professor Elizabeth Vandewater, for every hour a kid regularly watches television, his overall time in creative activities—from fantasy play to arts projects—drops as much as 11 percent. With kids spending about three hours in front of televisions each day, that could be a one-third reduction in creative time—less time to develop a sense of creative self-efficacy through play.

Explore other cultures.

Those who have lived abroad outperform others on creativity tasks. Creativity is also higher on average for first- or second-generation immigrants and bilinguals. Just studying another culture can help.

Follow a passion.

Kids do best when they are allowed to develop deep passions and pursue them wholeheartedly—at the expense of well-roundedness. “Kids who have deep identification with a field have better discipline and handle setbacks better,” she noted. By contrast, kids given superficial exposure to many activities don’t have the same centeredness to overcome periods of difficulty.

Ditch the suggestion box.

Formalized suggestion protocols, actually stifle innovation because employees feel that their ideas go into a black hole of bureaucracy. Instead, employees need to be able to put their own ideas into practice.

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06 Oct 2010
Business

The Value of Touch

The Harvard Business Review Management Tip of the Day talked about how powerful an appropriate pat on the back can be with employees. They reminded us about an abundance of studies demonstrating the power of touch on everything from Rhesus monkeys to students in a classroom.

A pat on the back or a brief touch on the shoulder can express support and reassurance, making the recipient more willing to take risks and improving his decision making. Often times, contact can be more powerful than words. Use touch sparingly though, and don’t linger; it only takes a brief moment of contact; any longer can feel creepy.

This reinforces how powerful touch can be in other areas too, especially marketing. Can we help you to maintain a tactile relationship with your customers by sending something in the mail?

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04 Oct 2010
Business

Secret to Building a Stronger Business

Just the title got our attention. BNET posted an article with this title that made us want to pass along the key ideas.

Ultimately success and effectiveness comes down to people, and more specifically: you. As chief executive, you impact every aspect of your business.  Even when you delegate, your personality and decisions influence everything. It stands to reason that leaders who are psychologically in tune — meaning resilient, agile, and aware — are not only more effective, they also bring an unmatchable competitive advantage to their businesses.

How can you make that happen?

Many leaders — even those who run businesses with people-centric cultures — tend to prefer a straight-ahead, hit-the-ground-running, just-make-it-go approach to managing people. The alternative is an inside-out — rather than outside-in — view of managing people. When an employee makes a mistake or a bad decision, your first question should be “Why did he do that?” not “What can we do about it?” If you want to motivate someone, you better understand first what motivates her.

What to Do:

Strengthening your business by investing in “psychological capital,” doesn’t happen overnight. But here are two key pointers to get you started:

1.    Understand that we all naturally assert the tendency to try to keep things the same, notwithstanding good intentions and recognized imperatives to make things different.

First step: Identify the issue — say, become a better listener, feel more confident at board meetings, get your SVP to micro-manage less, understand why morale is low.

Next: Start thinking about what the issue is made of, not how to change it.  Talk about your ideas with a spouse or trusted colleague, confidante, or consultant.

Remember, dismantling and reconfiguring entrenched systems requires time, thoughtful attention, and heavy lifting.

2.    Change isn’t about finding easily opened doors. Whatever your desired outcome, what’s most crucial to getting there is identifying and unraveling the tangle of ingredients, understanding how and why they got there, and then putting something new in motion.

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30 Sep 2010
Business

Richard Branson’s Success

Richard Branson recently shared his answers to successfully building businesses in Entrepreneur Magazine.

These are his tips in his words.

No. 1: Enjoy What You Are Doing.

Starting a business is a huge amount of hard work, requiring a great deal of time, you had better enjoy it. For me, building a business is all about doing something to be proud of, bringing talented people together and creating something that’s going to make a real difference to other people’s lives. A businessman or businesswoman has to get every single little thing right when first setting up in business in order to succeed. However, unlike a work of art, the business is never finished. It constantly evolves.

No. 2: Create Something That Stands Out.

Whether you have a product, a service or a brand, it is not easy to start a company and to survive and thrive in the modern world. In fact, you’ve got to do something radically different to make a mark today. Look at the most successful businesses of the past 20 years. Microsoft, Google or Apple, for example, shook up a sector by doing something that hadn’t ever been done and by continually innovating. They are now among the dominant forces.

No. 3: Create Something That Everybody Who Works for You is Really Proud of.

Businesses generally consist of a group of people, and they are your biggest assets.

No. 4: Be a Good Leader.

As a leader you have to be a really good listener. You need to know your own mind but there is no point in imposing your views on others without some debate. No one has a monopoly on good ideas or good advice. Get out there, listen to people, draw people out and learn from them. As a leader you’ve also got to be extremely good at praising people. Never openly criticize people; never lose your temper, and always lavish praise on your colleagues for a job well done. People flourish if they’re praised. Usually they don’t need to be told when they’ve done wrong because most of the time they know it.

No. 5: Be Visible.

A good leader does not get stuck behind a desk. I’ve never worked in an office – I’ve always worked from home – but I get out and about, meeting people. It seems I am traveling all the time but I always have a notebook in my back pocket to jot down questions, concerns or good ideas.

If I don’t write them down, I may remember only one the next day. By writing them down, I remember all 10. Of course, I try to make sure that we appoint managing directors who have the same philosophy. That way we can run a large group of companies in the same way a small business owner runs a family business – keeping it responsive and friendly.

When you’re building a business from scratch, the key word for many years is “survival.” It’s tough to survive. In the beginning you haven’t got the time or energy to worry about saving the world. You’ve just got to fight to make sure you can look after your bank manager and be able to pay the bills. Literally, your full concentration has to be on surviving. Obviously, if you don’t survive, just remember that most businesses fail and the best lessons are usually learned from failure. You must not get too dispirited. Just get back up and try again.

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18 Aug 2010
Business

Advice for New Ventures May Help Established Businesses Too

The Harvard Business Review offers great short tips in its “Management Tip of The Day”.

These were offered as tips for new fragile ventures. They suggested that knowing these three things would help to manage through this precarious time.

  1. How many days you have to live? Businesses fail because they run out of cash. Knowing exactly how many months or days you have to live can help you better manage costs and your funding strategy.
  2. Why you are doing this. Success requires hard work and constant attention. If you don’t know exactly why you should make the effort, neither will your funders.
  3. The top two critical issues. Be precise about which two issues deserve the highest priority. These may not be the most urgent, but are the ones that matter most to your venture’s success.
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