Before You Sign Them Up: Should They Be On Your Team?

Have you ever wondered why more problems are brought to your desk than solutions? As an entrepreneur, you need to teach your staff to come up with the solutions to the problems they have even before they bring it up. They must be thoughtful and innovative; they must understand what it means to bring solutions to issues in a company without your intervention.

Not every problem must be solved by you as the employer. There are loads of things that are bagged out on your agenda and you don’t want your staff to bore you with silly problems that could be easily resolved.

 

We know though, that employees are the first to find faults and problems within the

organization. They do not feel they have any stake in the business, so why should they think up solutions? They forget that they are a part of the company and the smallest decisions affect them too. By the time you put your staff through the exercise of finding the solution before the problem, you would indeed discover those that have the intelligence or kind of thought process you require.

You would be able to separate the chaff from the wheat. Who needs a dullard these days!

 

Except he knows he’s job depends on proffering solutions to his own problems, he wouldn't take it just as serious as he should.

Gone are the days when employees are been spoon-fed with training and workshops, as much as that is required by organizations, many have budget cuts that it is now left to the employee to keep himself on top of his team at all times.

 

It is important for every individual to sharpen his/her thinking, and intelligence.

Lastly, a non-innovative and non-productive staff is a total loss to a company; and also the major cause of snail-growth or no growth within an enterprise.

It takes a lot of patience to build a dedicated team of innovative minds; the pain, and time is worth it.

Credit : The Street Hawker
Photo credit : photo bucket

TIME MANAGEMENT SKILLS: IT JUST HAPPENS SO FAST

*Ring!* *Ring!!* *Ring!!!*. That was my alarm. I hate it when it makes that annoying sound; I just have to live with it if I want to wake up early. But this time it  interrupted a very interesting dream where I was a co-host for the Grammy’s, rocking the show in my Louis Vuitton swag and…… that’s by the way, I have a bus to catch because I have a veryimportant interview to attend, I spent most of my week preparing for this big day.

By the time I got to the bus station, I was like"seriously! What is going on here?" Everyone was in some sort of rush. I was like an alien in their midst. Really! But it is just 6:30am, there was no sign of ‘gentleness’ in the men dressed up in suits and the ladies were not left out either.

So they have to go through this daily routine so they could keep their jobs. All so they could keep up with time? Can we actually keep up with time? Can we manage time?

I want us to understand something here, your 22-carat gold or your Rolex wrist watch is not time. You can’t buy time neither can you manage it.

There are so many books and lectures on time management. They teach us how to organize our tasks to achieve maximum efficiency and how to juggle our affairs to save as much time as we can. But in this article we are going to learn how to deal with time from an internal point of view and how to develop the proper attitude toward time so that we can enjoy every moment to the fullest.

Like I said earlier, time is not something that can be managed. What we really must learn to do is manage ourselves in the context of time. Time is like a flowing river and we are like ships sailing upon that river. We don’t manage the flow of the river; what we manage is the direction of our sail and rudder to determine our destination.

How can we manage ourselves in time?

The only way we can manage ourselves in time is by setting S.M.A.R.T goals. The same 24hrs you have access to daily, is the same that great guys like Bill gates, Ken Blanchard, Brian Tracy, Les Brown, Mark Victor Hansen, Fela Durotoye, Sam Adeyemi amongst others do too. But they set great S.M.A.R.T goals and managed themselves in a context of time so they can fulfill their dreams in life.

One of the greatest time stealers of all is neglecting to identify the duties we need to perform each day. To wake up each day with no clear cut out plan of action is to invite aimlessness, which is always accompanied by emptiness and confusion.

The simple act of identifying your specific tasks is like placing your hands firmly on the steering wheel of a moving car. By guiding yourself in the direction you wish to travel today, you will be setting a course toward success for tomorrow.

HOW? Set S.M.A.R.T goals.

S-specific, M-measurable, A-attainable, R-realistic, T-timely

Setting S.M.A.R.T goals is a very broad topic which I am going to shed more light on next week.

The only thing that would make you different is the kind of goals you set and the work you put towards accomplishing them. Don’t just be a day dreamer.

We are in a touch-feely age of nice that you would be so carried away by the technological advancements if you don’t manage yourself in time

Act on your freedom to identify and execute the duties that must be performed in order to reach your goals in all areas of your life. Don’t get caught up in spending years of your life without taking a close look at where your actions are taking you.

On a last note, live each day as if it were your last. Cherish every hour of the day for it can never return neither can you deposit ‘today’ in the bank to be withdrawn tomorrow. Stop procrastinating.

Each minute of the day is priceless. A dying man can never purchase a minute of the day no matter how wealthy he might be.

Time is not money. No man can buy nor manage time, it just happens so fast but you can manage yourself in a context of time.

I hope you were inspired by this piece. I would love to hear your views on it too.

Feel free to share with your friends by hitting the share button below.

Thanks

Sadiq Daniel (@ayamtheone on twitter)

WHAT QUITTERS ARE AFRAID TO DO

“Where is my inhaler?” I asked myself. I am used to losing little things like this. The other time, they were my keys. You never can tell of what importance little things like these can be in your life until you lose them (might even cost you your job).

Okay! Here I am still in search of my ‘inhaler’ when I stumbled on a book I bought some years back covered in dust. I must tell you, the book changed the way I think and if you haven’t read it, you should.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People written and inspired by late Stephen Convey, who died this year; May his soul rest in peace.

The book is a very good book. It inspires and motivates you to be proactive and follow your dreams, but ‘Big daddy’ omitted one habit, PERSISTENCE. Yeah! Persistence, without persistence, we wouldn’t have great men like Thomas Edison, Brian Tracy, Joe Girard, Ken Blanchard and even Stephen Convey.

Many people fail to achieve because they quit before the desired results have been obtained. Every effort we make produces a result, yet seldom do our initial efforts yield the end results we seek.

No great achievement, or great failure, for that matter, has ever been attained without persistence. There are many reasons why people fail to persist but we shall only examine two; their causes and how to avoid them and also discuss how to develop persistence and why it is an indispensable quality of a highly effective person (someone that gets what he/she wants out of life).

FAILURE: one thing quitters don’t know about failure is that it is never failure until it becomes accepted as such. Remember Thomas Edison, after thousands of attempts to create the electric light, he (Edison) didn’t consider any of his unsuccessful attempts as failure. 

In your search for success, many obstacles will stand between you and your goal. Don’t abandon your goals; instead consider altering the path you are taking to reach them. If you persist, eventually you will find the road to success.

FEAR OF REJECTION: rejection is a natural by product (except you are introvert) in life. Persistence is the only protection you have from the painful effects of rejection, for you can’t waste time licking your wounds when you are busy pursuing your prey. Like a bull, develop a thick horn not easily penetrated by the blades of rejection, but be intelligent enough to identify and charge the real target rather than the empty excuses that are sometimes used to divert you.

Persistence is one of the greatest principles of success; if you persist long enough you will win and I am sorry for the ‘quitters’ who are afraid to persist.

As a person who thirsts for success, you must possess a fierce initiative that allows you to make things happen. Do not possess a sheep’s mentality, waiting around until someone else prompts you to act; be the lion and take care of yourself.

Quitters have settled for something different from their dream just because they are afraid to persist. The road to success is not smooth; you can only make it so with persistence. Without persistence, you can never get what you want out of this life.

The blow that tumbles the oak tree is not the final blow, but a collective blow. Because of man’s impatient human nature, we often have little appreciation for the number of blows that have come in between.

Instantaneous efforts seldom produce long term benefits; it is the efforts we make over time that usually produce the most permanent results. In this way, every effort you make will produce a result even though it may not be immediately noticeable.

NOTE: whatever becomes engraved in your subconscious mind will eventually become a reality in your life.
If you are inspired by this piece, I would be glad to read your comments and respond to them likewise.

                                                                                                                            Sadiq Daniel