Project Management Success

Always take the extra time upfront to make sure that the business case has been adequately defined. Often, commercial demands desire to deliver a quick project outcome. Whilst expediting, the project should be firmly part of the agenda, taking the extra time upfront can pay long-term dividends. When projects are rushed the functional purpose of the project is often compromised and important details get overlooked. As the project manager it is important that you steer the client towards doing the necessary due diligence to ensure you have a watertight business case. In the event that the project is deficient in some way, you may be liable to take the blame if important details are overlooked. Costly damage control measures can send the project off course, result in budget blowouts and cause client resentment. Project managers need to have the foresight to take charge upfront and demand that projects are subject to proper due diligence prior to commencement.

Planing

Like anything else in life, having a plan is the best way to succeed. Learn about your company before you start your management plan. Know how everyone's job plays an important role in the company. Find out what the company goal is and look at different strategies you can implement to help obtain the goal. Look at ways you can improve the office. Perhaps your staff needs a new printer, or repairs to computers. Find ways to make improvements that will alleviate added time to another person's shift. Make a plan for different scenarios. Think of the worst possible scenario and devise different plans for resolving it. Talk to your staff about problems that have arisen in the past and how they were resolved, this will give you a little understanding as to how you can change the way you handle situations.

The Responsive ManagerLeader

The Responsiveness Paradigm outlined elsewhere in this newsletter is applicable at a number of levels. For example, it applies to organizations in general, and the ability of the organization to respond to the needs of customers, staff and other stakeholders (eg. politicians, etc). It applies to non-supervisory staff, and their ability to respond to the needs of their managers, customers and co-workers. This month we are going to look at responsiveness as it applied to managers, leaders and/or supervisors.

Leadership - The Link Between Planning & Doing

If you have read the preceding articles in this section on strategic planning, YOU will have a sense that strategic planning involves more than getting together for one day a yearto develop a strategic planning document. Strategic planning is both a logical, rational process, and a process that involves people. It takes more than developing a plan for that plan to be implemented. In this article, we consider that the critical link between planning and doing is leadership.


Traditional Planning Methods :
The traditional way for government organizations to plan is for a group of people, usually executives/management, but sometimes including employees, to get together for some period of time each year. Generally, inadequate time is allocated to the exercise, but if it is completed, it results in a document that contains a mission statement, broad organizational goals, and other elements as is deemed appropriate. Then, the plan is usually hidden away somewhere, never to be seen again. Traditional methods yield traditional results. As a wise man once said "If you keep doing what you have been doing, you will get what you have always got".

It needn't be this way


Leadership - The Key Force:
Those in leadership roles ensure that as many members of the organization as possible buy into the values, mission, and broad organizational goals. There are two components to this function. First, leaders manage the perceptions of staff with respect to the planning process. Remember that most people have experienced the "plan-in-the-drawer" syndrome, where effort expended in planning is seen as wasted when the plan is ignored. Prior to the planning process, leaders must emphasize that THIS TIME, things will be different.

Second, leaders manage the planning process so that staff feel that they have adequate input into the process, that they are heard, and their values and visions are incorporated into the final plan and its implementation. Specifically, leaders arrange things so that the process is open, and conforms to accepted rules of communication. That may mean hiring an external consultant to orchestrate the planning sessions. It will certainly mean that rules get established to guide participation. Everyone who wants to participate should have the opportunity, and even reticent staff should be gently encouraged to involve themselves.

Understanding The Cycle of Change

Managers often make the mistake of assuming that once a change is started, that employees will see that it is going to take place, and get on side. This is rarely the case. Because change causes fear, a sense of loss of the familiar, etc., it takes some time for employees to a) understand the meaning of the change and b) commit to the change in a meaningful way. It is important to understand that people tend to go through stages in their attempts to cope with change. Understanding that there are normal progressions helps change leaders avoid under-managing change or over-reacting to resistance.

As we go through the stages, you will probably find many similarities with the process a person goes through with the loss of a loved one.

Internet Business

Internet business is a rather vague term when you really think about it. While practically every site is an Internet business, each is unique. In the “real world”, Toyota dealerships and florist shops are both businesses, but you certainly wouldn’t run them the same way. Well, at least not for long.

The same holds true for Internet businesses, so we are going to throw out some different scenarios and talk about particular issues with each. Some articles will cover the entire build and market aspect of a site while others will just focus on a specific subject. If you don’t see your particular business area, give similar types of businesses a look. For instance, most sites offering services will have similar themes regardless of the specific service offered. Let’s get to it…

Internet Business

Sales From Your Site

Building a web site often can lead to interesting deviations caused by practicalities and changes in perspective. This is okay so long as you keep things simple for prospects.
Many business owners unintentionally erect barriers between themselves and their customers when it comes to the site sales process. Simple mechanisms can be put in place to remove these barriers. A business owner that is always looking for new ways to connect with potential customers often finds his or her efforts paying off many times over. Some of the most common web sales barriers are lack of contact methods, payment methods, and delivery methods. To bridge these potential barriers, a business owner can provide more options to crossing each of these barriers.

Sale Process-6

When choosing a sales force automation solution, keep in mind your clients and your sales force. Without flexibility to meet their needs precisely, you are likely to lose efficiency in the sales process. Choosing a flexible option will ensure your system will grow with your company.

Sale Process-5

Before opting for any SFA software, research your options. A good sales force automation solution should have features such as multiple sales processing options and the ability to use multiple information sources. It should help in providing automation of customer assignments and field accessed decision support.
A sales force automation solution that is web enabled is at a huge advantage to those that are not. Web capability allows access to information and forms anywhere, anytime and also tools for accurate sales and demand forecasting. There must be strong security and flexibility to support new data and functionality without a large scale redesign of the system.

Sales Process-4

SFA can help sales people to manage customer interaction throughout the sales cycle, from primary contact through post-sale service. SFA applications serve two different users within a company, sales managers and sales representatives, who have changeable requirements. Sale force automation is essential in those industries where the direct field sales force tends to be high and account management is important. Pharmaceutical companies and manufacturing industries have obtained significant returns on sales force automation investments

Sales Process-3

Currently there are a number of SFA software solutions on the market. These software solutions help sales people take better care of their customers. They change routine aspects of sales and marketing functions such as lead assignment, contact follow-up, and opportunity reporting. Good SFA electronically manages all sales activities within a company. It is a methodology that enables sales personnel to concentrate on selling by providing tools to obtain very efficient information exchange in the sales cycle. Earlier sales force automation software installations were designed for the desktop or laptop and were not easily accessible by hand held devices. With the advancement in web based SFA technology, sales representatives can use Pocket PCs to record orders on the spot. These order details can be sent back to the system in real time over a network such as GPRS.

Sales Process-2

SFA is almost like Customer Relationship Management (CRM) which covers a vast array of topics, including areas of sales effectiveness, customer service, and marketing management. Certainly in business, each second is valuable and you can’t waste it searching for information. You can save time and money as Sales Force Automation provides optimized communication services. You also get complete management capabilities for applications and users. SFA helps you in improving customer satisfaction and it also increases sales force productivity.

Sales Process – What Can You Automate

1.In the current complex and competitive market, managing the sales process is an important factor for most businesses. By automating a company’s sales process and efforts, one can increase its productivity.
Sales Force Automation, or SFA, is a technique used in marketing and business that automates the business tasks of sales. Sales tasks that can be automated might include contact management, order taking and fulfillment, information sharing, inventory monitoring, sales forecast analysis, and employees’ performance evaluations. Using SFA improves the efficiency and effectiveness of a sales team by streamlining and speeding up processes and eliminating errors. Through this technology, a sales force can have access to the latest information regarding customers' accounts and pricing.

PREVENTION

The future is not somewhere we are going. It is something we are creating. Every day we do things that make some futures more probable and others less likely.


Global warming already disrupts millions of lives daily in the forms of destructive weather patterns and loss of habitat. What is already happening is only the tip of the melting iceberg, for it is our children and grandchildren who will suffer the greatest from the impacts of global warming. Hundreds of millions of people will be exposed to famine, water shortages, extreme weather conditions and a 20 - 30% loss of animal and plant species if we don't reduce the rate of global warming and reduce GHG emissions. This article outlines some ways that you can act to help prevent the Earth's atmosphere from warming further. While humankind has the ability to destroy the planet, we also have the capacity to protect and sustain it.

Reducing your carbon and greenhouse gas emissions will not only make your personal living space more sustainable but it will save you money in both the short and long term. Global warming is occurring more rapidly than it was originally expected to -- only forty years ago, the big worry was global cooling. Even if you remain a cynic, however, and believe that the majority of scientists are wrong, you'll benefit from reduced pollution, a healthier lifestyle and increased savings from enacting these simple activities that will not reduce the quality of your life.

GREENHOUSE GASES IN THE ATMOSPHERE

The greenhouse effect was discovered by Joseph Fourier in 1824 and was first investigated quantitatively by Svante Arrhenius in 1896. It is the process by which absorption and emission of infrared radiation by atmospheric gases warm a planet's lower atmosphere and surface.

Existence of the greenhouse effect as such is not disputed. Naturally occurring greenhouse gases have a mean warming effect of about 33 °C (59 °F), without which Earth would be uninhabitable. On Earth, the major greenhouse gases are water vapor, which causes about 36–70% of the greenhouse effect (not including clouds); carbon dioxide (CO2), which causes 9–26%; methane (CH4), which causes 4–9%; and ozone, which causes 3–7%. The issue is how the strength of the greenhouse effect changes when human activity increases the atmospheric concentrations of some greenhouse gases.

Human activity since the industrial revolution has increased the concentration of various greenhouse gases, leading to increased radiative forcing from CO2, methane, tropospheric ozone, CFCs and nitrous oxide. Molecule for molecule, methane is a more effective greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, but its concentration is much smaller so that its total radiative forcing is only about a fourth of that from carbon dioxide. Some other naturally occurring gases contribute very small fractions of the greenhouse effect; one of these, nitrous oxide (N2O), is increasing in concentration owing to human activity such as agriculture. The atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and CH4 have increased by 31% and 149% respectively since the beginning of the industrial revolution in the mid-1700s. These levels are considerably higher than at any time during the last 650,000 years, the period for which reliable data has been extracted from ice cores. From less direct geological evidence it is believed that CO2 values this high were last attained 20 million years ago. Fossil fuel burning has produced about three-quarters of increase in CO2.

Causes

The Earth's climate changes in response to external forcing, including variations in its orbit around the Sun (orbital forcing), volcanic eruptions, and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. The detailed causes of the recent warming remain an active field of research, but the scientific consensus is that the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases due to human activity caused most of the warming observed since the start of the industrial era. This attribution is clearest for the most recent 50 years, for which the most detailed data are available. Some other hypotheses departing from the consensus view have been suggested to explain the temperature increase. One such hypothesis proposes that warming may be the result of variations in solar activity.

None of the effects of forcing are instantaneous. The thermal inertia of the Earth's oceans and slow responses of other indirect effects mean that the Earth's current climate is not in equilibrium with the forcing imposed. Climate commitment studies indicate that even if greenhouse gases were stabilized at 2000 levels, a further warming of about 0.5 °C (0.9 °F) would still occur.

GLOBAL WARMING

global warming

Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-twentieth century and its projected continuation.

The global average air temperature near the Earth's surface rose 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) during the hundred years ending in 2005.[1] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes "most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations" via the greenhouse effect. Natural phenomena such as solar variation combined with volcanoes probably had a small warming effect from pre-industrial times to 1950 and a small cooling effect from 1950 onward. These basic conclusions have been endorsed by at least thirty scientific societies and academies of science, including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries. While individual scientists have voiced disagreement with some findings of the IPCC, the overwhelming majority of scientists working on climate change agree with the IPCC's main conclusions.

Climate model projections summarized by the IPCC indicate that average global surface temperature will likely rise a further 1.1 to 6.4 °C (2.0 to 11.5 °F) during the twenty-first century. The range of values results from the use of differing scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions as well as models with differing climate sensitivity. Although most studies focus on the period up to 2100, warming and sea level rise are expected to continue for more than a thousand years even if greenhouse gas levels are stabilized. The delay in reaching equilibrium is a result of the large heat capacity of the oceans.

Increasing global temperature will cause sea level to rise, and is expected to increase the intensity of extreme weather events and to change the amount and pattern of precipitation

REDO YOUR BEDROOM

Make your bedroom more sleep-friendly.If noise from adjacent room keepings you,move your bed to another wall.Replace a sagging mattress and defalted pillows.
If you must keep a computer switched on in the bedroom,cover the green light on the monitor's switch with black electrical tape.
If you insist on falling asleep with the TV on,use a timer.Eliminate clutter,another possible anxiety inducer.
And adjust the AC:The best sleeping temperature for most people is comfortably cool but not cold.Breus recommends 20 to 22 degrees.

3.FOLLOW THE 20-MINUTE RULE.

If you can't fall a sleep in about 20 minutes,whether at bedtime or after awakening in the night,go into another room and do something else until you get dorowsy."The bedroom needs to be associated with sleeping not with being restless,"says Clete Kushida,MD,director of a US centre for human sleep Research.Estimate the 20 minutes;don't use a clock or watch,which causes alternatess and possible stress.Avoid things requiring concentration,such as video games;stimulating activities,like vigorous exercise or cleaning;or anything upsetting,like watching the news or paying bills.Try light reading or listening to music.

Blogger Buzz: Blog List, Scheduled Post Publishing on Blogger in draft

Blogger Buzz: Blog List, Scheduled Post Publishing on Blogger in draft