Will You Add? - Business

Radio and Television Ads: Clever Vs. Annoying
Ever heard or seen a radio or television commercial that you really liked and actually looked forward to hearing or seeing again only to be assaulted by another one so annoying it made you want to heave your radio or television out the window?What makes one commercial so enjoyable while others seem to be so abysmal? It’s all in the ability to make the listener or viewer remember the ad in a creative, clever way and I’m about to give you some advice on how to do just that so read on!One of the most successful ways of creating clever ads is to add humor. Unfortunately that’s not an easy thing to do as you have probably heard or seen many commercials try and fail. There is a fine line between writing a spot people will laugh and identify with and writing one that falls flat on its face and unfortunately most spots fall into the latter category. The best advice on using humor in ads that I can give you is this: hire a professional who specializes in writing humorous ads. I say this because the majority of advertisers that attempt to write their own funny ads fail miserably. The main reason is because it takes a trained writer to know how to create an ad that includes not only genuinely funny copy, but also perfect timing and the right amount of copy needed t

e good, and what kinds of diversity should not be fostered? How would you distinguish a 'culturally-competent care strategy' from any other kind of competent care strategy (is it obvious to those that contribute to achieving this goal what a care strategy is exactly?).

Each of these goals share the prolific use of inert words like valuable, input, sustainable, underpin, effective, support, focus, holistic, integrated, excellence, engagement, service, enhance, responsiveness, efficiency, effectiveness (these last two I think must be the most used of all the inert words as building blocks to writing business goals), streamlining, reasonable, foster, diversity, competent and strategy. You can read more fine examples of inert language used in our society in Don Watson's book, Death Sentence: The Decay Of Public Language. You know there are many more inert words that bulk-up our business language - perhaps when you have your next cup of your beverage of choice, you might sit down with your business

Wake Up and Learn Something New
The US Government has just released last month’s job creation figures. It was the lowest number in two years. This is a revealing and disturbing snapshot of what is actually happening in the real economy, not the one artificially created for the headlines. Our US GNP or Gross National Product, is based upon manufactured durable goods. Unfortunately, the manufacturing economy in the US has not yet recovered from the devastating collapse it saw commence in the spring of 2000. The recent improvements in jobs and growth are substantially confined to the service sector. Manufacturing is what drives the US economy and it is suffering.Do you work in this market segment? Are you comfortable? Do you feel stable? Have you yet realized that there is no such thing as job security anymore? That concept is gone. Unlike our parents and their parents before them who could count on working in a selected field for a given employer for life and then retire, we of this generation, working in any aspect of manufacturing have no such luxury. Our job, or even the company we work for, could change overnight or possibly be gone in a heartbeat. The face of the Fortune 500 is drastically different than it was just 10 years ago. Many companies are gone forever or have been acquired other firms or holding compa

Avoiding inert measures that anaesthetise your performance management.

INTRODUCTION

You sit before the monthly report, which might be an inch or so thick, and you contemplate whether it's the best use of your time to paw through the pages to check if there's anything useful in there for you. Past experience tells you that the report is full of many measures graphed in all their splendor, but virtually none of them pique your interest, help you make the decisions you barely have time to give enough thought to as it is...

TYPICALLY, PERFORMANCE MEASURES ARE NOT EMOTIVE ENOUGH

Do you have measures with names like these?

Employee Productivity.

Cost Efficiency.

Product Quality.

Community Engagement.

Customer Relationship.

Financial Sustainability.

Stakeholder Buy-in.

If you do, then there's a good chance that those measures are either not brought to life, or what is brought to life is a poor indicator of the result you are trying to measure. Why? Because when people look at measures that are named like those listed above, they often have no idea what they exactly mean, or have very divergent ideas of what they think they mean, or have no feeling of connection to them. They just look like a list of buzz words or phrases that every one else seems to be tossing around.

If people don't share a single, sharply focused, easily imaginable vision of a result they want to create, any effort to measure that result will waste time. And if you do successfully get some measures established, it's likely they just won't stimulate the excitement and motivation needed to make the result happen.

BECAUSE BUSINESS LANGUAGE IS INERT

If something is inert it means it's incapable of action, it is lifeless. Like the reaction you get when you put a concrete brick in a bucket of water, pretty much nothing comes of it. You just have a concrete brick sitting in a bucket of water. When we talk about business language being inert, it's when the reaction you get to a business goal written down in a plan document is little or no noticeable change to the business. Here are some real examples that have personally left me baffled at what could possibly be meant:

"The outcomes will include valuable input into environmentally sustainable solutions to underpin the many proposed developments on the airport, as well as independent research to assist in making effective management decisions for this growing site." - What does 'valuable input' mean? How would you recognise an 'environmentally sustainable solution' from any other solution? What does a management decision that is effective look like?

"Support and focus [our] educational mission to undergraduates in a manner that is increasingly known for its holistic and integrated academic programs, its striving for excellence in all endeavors, and its engagement with the wider community through service and learning." - Increasingly known by whom? How do you imagine what a 'holistic and integrated academic program' looks like? Is it really all endeavors? Does everyone have the same idea about what 'engagement with the wider community" means?

"[Our Council] will increase its responsiveness, efficiency and effectiveness in delivering high quality services. Emphasis will continue on streamlining core business and customer processes. Services will be provided in the most efficient manner possible at a reasonable cost while meeting environmental needs" - Responsiveness to what specifically? Efficiency of what, and what would people notice if it were happening? Isn't effectiveness so broad that it could mean 23 different things to 7 different people? If something is streamlined, how is it different? Reasonable cost from whose perspective?

"Lead initiatives that foster diversity of staff and create culturally-competent care strategies supporting the local and international patients we serve." - When you are fostering, what are you actually doing? What kinds of diversity are good, and what kinds of diversity should not be fostered? How would you distinguish a 'culturally-competent care strategy' from any other kind of competent care strategy (is it obvious to those that contribute to achieving this goal what a care strategy is exactly?).

Building a Better Client Base: Five Easy Steps
So, it is that time. You are a working designer who has built a solid portfolio. You are as experienced generating concepts as you are comfortable sending them to print. You have carefully weighed your options and are finally ready to begin working for yourself. Congratulations! Now what do you do?Assuming you are equipped to handle the administrative functions of trekking out on your own (which is another article in itself), the next step is to begin building a client base. However, if you want to be successful in this highly competitive profession, you must not only build a client base, but you must build a solid client base. To help you on your way, I have complied five tips for building and improving your client base that I have found useful in my own work: Form Partnerships with Other Vendors.When I was first getting started, my company was able to secure a contract with four major print centers which referred all of their clients who needed graphic design and typesetting work to us. In turn, we would complete the project and send the job back to the center to be printed. Not only did this provide us with a steady workflow, but we also established valuable relationships with new clients who would trust us with work in the future.I h

measure. Why? Because when people look at measures that are named like those listed above, they often have no idea what they exactly mean, or have very divergent ideas of what they think they mean, or have no feeling of connection to them. They just look like a list of buzz words or phrases that every one else seems to be tossing around.

BECAUSE BUSINESS LANGUAGE IS INERT

Get Your Own Coffee Makers And Start A Franchise
If I’d had my act together I could have been a millionaire by now! Coffee shop franchises are big busy and I wish I had figured this out before someone else did. You have to act or else someone else will start without you! Someone else having the same idea can beat you to it if you don’t act fast. You might have a great idea right now, but if you don’t act you’ll never see results. There is no better time than now to act on your great ideas.So you either love Starbuck’s Coffee or you hate it. It is the largest franchise out there and maybe the only people who hate them are the competition. This is not the case. There are a lot of individuals who hate Starbucks and aren’t in the coffee business. My father hates them because they don’t support the troops and the war. He could care less that they serve a great brew and have the best coffee makers, he thinks that since they don’t support the troops they shouldn’t be in business. Usually Middle America doesn’t support businesses that don’t support the troops. I on the other hand disagree. I want to have lots of money, but don’t want to work hard. Just because a company has lots of money doesn’t mean they have to support something they don’t want to support. Even if you are the biggest coffee franchise it doesn’t mean you h

n the reaction you get to a business goal written down in a plan document is little or no noticeable change to the business. Here are some real examples that have personally left me baffled at what could possibly be meant:

How Much Drama Do You Need In Your Job?
I know a lot of people who simply can’t hold down conventional jobs.Ok, many are artists of one sort or another; painters, actors, designers, writers, and speakers.To them, a typical nine-to-five gig looks like a set from “Dawn of The Dead.” Actually, it’s worse, because there’s at least some excitement, some mystery, some juiciness in a setting where the undead feed on the living.In a typical office, there are no “living,” according to my friends.They need more from what they do. They need drama, for lack of a better word.Drama can come in many forms.For example, you can be a salesperson and have lots of drama. A realtor never knows when she’ll get her next listing, or close her next sale, but when she does, she cashes in, big time!That’s dramatic.A waiter can earn big and small tips and no tips at all. He can serve the rich and famous or the down and out. There’s some excitement in that, and especially on those evenings when the chef is throwing knives around because his pet cat hasn’t come home in four days.I co-hosted a radio show the other day, for an hour. It was dramatic, because I was in the studio, and we had to handle calls, squeeze in news, weather, and traffic, and pay for it all by running commercials. Happily, al

nd integrated academic program' looks like? Is it really all endeavors? Does everyone have the same idea about what 'engagement with the wider community" means?

How To Resign Gracefully
Once a new job has been accepted, you need to consider the timing of your resignation. Since two weeks’ notice is considered the norm, make sure your resignation properly coincides with your start date at the new company.Try to avoid an extended start date. Even if your new job begins in 10 weeks, don’t give 10 weeks’ notice; wait eight weeks and then give two weeks’ notice. This way, you’ll protect yourself from disaster; in the unlikely event your new company announces a hiring freeze a month before you come on board. By staying at your old job for only two weeks after you’ve announced your resignation, you won’t be subjected to the envy, scorn, or feelings of professional impotence that may result from your new role as a lame-duck employee.Some companies will make your exit plans for you. I know a candidate whose employer had the security guard escort him out of the building the moment he announced his intention to go to work for a direct competitor. Fortunately, he was still given two weeks’ pay.Your resignation should be handled in person, preferably on a Friday afternoon. Ask your direct supervisor if you can speak with him privately in his office. When you announce your intention to resign, you should also hand your supervisor a letter which states your last dat

And that's largely the effect of inert words in our business language - it's often hard to really understand what they mean. For example, it's far easier for you to imagine in your mind what it would be like to feel energetic all day and be able to site and move comfortably and pain-free and think clearly and enjoy eating fresh foods like apples and carrots and sleep soundly at night, than it is to imagine having "health improvements". When our language helps us vividly and in detail imagine the result it describes, it moves us, motivates us and almost programs us to make that result a reality. Sometimes it can even move us to realise that it's not the result we really want, and we can avoid wasting effort traveling in that direction.

Particularly in business, 'language that moves us' is critical if you are going to design the right kind of measures to give you feedback about your progress toward your goals.

MEANINGFUL MEASURES COME FROM 'LANGUAGE THAT MOVES'

You simply can't measure a result that is described by inert language. Measures are data that we have analysed to give us some evidence of the degree to which a particular result is occurring. Like the measure of employee absenteeism is data about individual employees' attendance at work that has been analysed to give us some evidence of the degree to which employees are available for work. Evidence is something that is based in the physical world, the world of our 5 senses: sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. So if a goal or result is to be measurable, then it must be able to be described in terms of what someone would see, hear, feel or do, taste or smell if that result were occurring.

Some fairly reasonable examples of organisational goals that get beyond the typical inert language are:

From the Workers Compensation Board of British Columbia, "Improve decision making throughout the WCB, ensuring consistency with the legislation (proportion of issues leading to overturned decisions at the review or appeal level dues to WCB error in law or policy)." - This goal has made an attempt to explain what improved decision making means quite specifically, and therefore quite measurably.

From Oxfam's Strategic Plan, "Fewer people will die, fall sick, and suffer deprivation as a result of armed conflict or natural disasters." - This goal makes it very explicit what result they want to achieve, and people dying or falling sick is a very tangible result. Perhaps 'deprivation' could be more concretely explained, though.

From the United Nations, their first goal is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, part of which is to "Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day." - Very specific. Goals like this, that are incredibly sharply focused on a single result, are very powerful motivators. The UN use three indicators to measure this goal (find out more at http://millenniumindicators.un.org/unsd/mi/mi_goals.asp).

In each of these cases, you can more easily visualize what achieving the result would be like, than for those examples on the previous page. This 'language that moves us' is often comprised of sensory based language, because it describes the experiences we have through our physical senses: what we would see, hear, feel or do, taste or smell if that result were occurring. The Workers Compensation Board of British Columbia would hear fewer of their decisions being overturned at the review or appeal level on account of their own error. Oxfam would see that armed conflict would be causing less people dying or falling sick. The United Nations would see that more people are living on more than $1 a day. And all these things are countable, and therefore measurable.

So the effect of sensory based language? You can more easily imagine in your mind what it would be like if the goal or result was happening, and then you can more easily pi

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An Advertising Specialty imprinted with a promotional message is known as Imprinted Advertising Specialty. The usage of Advertising Specialties is extremely popular in the corporate world as gifts for their clients and employees as well as other high-profile people. These Imprinted Specialties are also regarded as promotional products, giveaways and ad-incentives. These specialties are a popular product even amongst non-profit organizations like schools, clubs etc.

The funny thing about mutual respect is that you can’t control it. Sure, you can control whether or not you exercise on a regular basis, whether you control your temper, or whether or not you express respect to others, but mutual respect implies that two or more persons have respect for each other, and as unfortunate as it may seem at times, you can never control when and where others decide to show you respect. So, perhaps the question should be: “How can I encourage mutual respect?”

Can your non-profit organization benefit from hiring a Virtual Assistant? These dedicated professionals can halp your productivity and save you money. These 7 reasons will show you how.

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Will You Add? - Are You Measuring Something Meaningful?

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