Managing the Human Being Behind the Business

It’s a common problem and we’ve all seen it - business owners that are just ‘too busy’ all of the time, and as a result, do not enjoy the success in business they had hoped for. Let’s not kid ourselves, there is a lot to focus on: technology, employees, sales, marketing and so on. These functions are essential and need to be well organised and managed.




But there is a second aspect to business success that is often overlooked – the effectiveness of the person running the show. Businesses are a reflection of the people who run them. If those people are ‘too busy’, stressed, or poorly organised, then these characteristics are reflected back in the business. The underlying behaviour and values of the business owner drive how much control they need, how they will delegate and how they use their time.




Growth of the business and the business owner need to match up
Any business that does not grow will ultimately decline. This may sound black and white but it is true. Growth can mean different things depending on the owner. For some it may be growth in revenues, for others it may be expanding product lines, or increasing the distribution channels. Whatever the definition of growth is, if it is not well thought out and planned, the business will soon become marginal and eventually fail, dragging the owner with it.




If the business is to grow, then the owner has to take the necessary time to learn the new roles and skills that a growing business will demand. Imagine for one moment where you would like your business to be in 5 years time. Then ask yourself: “Is it possible that I can be exactly the same person in 5 years that I am today and fulfil that growth strategy for my business? The answer has to be no. Business owners need to be prepared for new learning and taking on new, different, and bigger responsibilities - without fear or hesitation. The reality is the owner will be the limiting factor in growth - the business can only grow to the extent to which the owner grows.




When owners feel out of sorts, overworked, and like they are running faster and faster, it is almost always because they have fallen victim to the reactive "let's go faster" management approach. They are forced to live from problem to problem, and as a result are unsuccessful and may become unwilling to see their own (lack of) self-management as part of the problem.




The major reasons that business owners don’t manage themselves better are:
Being comfortable - we all do what we are comfortable with – it’s human nature. So we keep doing what we have always done.
Not knowing what else is possible.
Not knowing that there are other ways to do what they are doing.
Actually getting energy (and maybe some identity) from being stressed and overworked.




There are 5 steps to take in the road to better self-management:




1. Clarify personal goals for the future.
Many business owners lose sight of these as they get immersed in the day-to-day running of the business. Articulating your personal goals can reveal any issues about whether these support or conflict with their business goals. These goals need to cover both the immediate and future plans. What do you want to achieve personally in the next 1 to 2 years. And where do you want to be in ten years time?




2. Clarify the business goals.
Having spent some time expressing personal goals for the future, take a look at your business goals and rethink them. Are your personal and business goals working together, or are they working against each other? If they do seem to be mutually exclusive, what choices will you make next? Putting the business goals ahead of your personal ones will inevitably lead to stress and feelings of overwhelm. Determine instead whether the business goals can be re-oriented or modified to support what you would like to achieve personally.




3. Identify the owner's ideal role 3 years from now.
Think about who you want to be - what role you want to have in the business – in 3 years time. Will you still be doing the majority of work? Will you have others doing the work and your capacity is more advisory? Or perhaps you would like to remove yourself completely from the operational parts of the business and focus on product or business development?




Thinking about what you want as an owner in the future can give you great insights into what strategies you may need to put in place now.




4. Conduct a detailed personal time analysis for a one-week period.
This is where the rubber hits the road. If you really are true to yourself when you do this exercise you will learn a lot about where the potential lies for making changes. How are you really spending your time? Break your day down into at least half hour slots and write down exactly what you do in each 30 minutes.




5. Create a plan of action for the next 30 days.
Based on the data from steps 1-4, create an action plan to cover the next 30 days. Your plan should include:
• steps to align personal and business goals
• strategy for moving to the role the owner wants to play in the business in the future
• analysis of the results of the one-week detailed monitoring exercise
• deciding which activities add the most value and planning to spend time on those
• identify how much time is spent on low value activity and planning to delegate or stop doing those things




There is never a better time than right now for planning to do things differently. Take charge of yourself and your business by choosing a direction that allows you to meet both your personal and business goals, and still retain your sanity!

Recruiters are Human Too!

Humans are animals and animal behaviour is hard wired and mostly predictable. One behaviour in particular:

People always choose the easiest way to get what they need. Which doesn’t mean our needs can’t be complex or irrational or altruistic. Just that given a choice we always choose the easiest path.

Now job seekers who have had 40 unreturned phone calls would argue, but recruiters are human beings. They will find and choose the easiest path to make the money to feed their kids and to support their favourite charity.

The point of this Rant is to look at the way most employers work with recruiters: They brief 3 recruiters for the same job.

What the recruiters then do is totally predictable: All 3 focus on the low hanging fruit, the active job seekers who are doing the rounds of recruiters and applying to ALL the online job ads. They are easy to find, and each firm races to put ads up so they can find them first. The screening can be quite perfunctory as the race is to get their resumes in first.

Why is it predictable that they do this? They are all on contingent fees, so get your agency brand onto the person who is hired and it is $20000, lose the race and it’s a big fat nothing.

That’s the first hard wired, predictable behaviour. The second is the bit that seems to baffle many employers and HR managers.

None of the 3 recruiters will invest the 3 to 4 days of hard work to dig out some high hanging, quality fruit as they have only about a 20% chance of getting paid for their efforts.

Why just 20%? Because after a week of talking to candidates, other agencies have heard of the role, and they have talked to some other low hangers. And because there is sometimes an internal candidate who gets the job or perhaps the position is restructured.

As pointed out in last week’s Rant, any experienced recruiter can dig out candidates if they put the time in. Predictably they won’t bother if you brief more than one firm. Would you in their shoes? Employers think they are ‘testing the full market’ or ‘keeping the recruiters honest’.

No. Just predictably not getting value. And wasting a lot of their time looking at candidates who only barely match the brief but have been put forward because the agency wants that $20000

TUMBLE OF THE STOCK MARKET

Many have writing to profer reasons why the current tumble in the Nigerian stock market. All the analysis may be correct, and it is not subject of this article to dwell on how correct or otherwise those articles are. It is without doubt that the operators are less than honest-every body agrees the stocks are being manipulated. Even the above assertion like the mathematical or financial analysis before it overlooks one of the fundamental reasons- the law of impermanence of all things. It is rather strange that Nigerians spend great deal of their time in churches and mosques yet they fail to comprehend or are not prepared to obey the law of life. As a result we are too physical, ''it is do or die'' to borrow OBJ's threat. It is for the same reason that once there is a small traffic build up on our roads, many will resort to driving one way without a single thought on the families they left at home. It also for the same reason that a man will steal millions of naira from government coffers, why because he does not understand the law impermanence of all things and foolishly assumes he could perpetuate wealth, he and his generations after him would live happily ever after. Everything in life is subject to this law, success or failure, riches or poverty. that was what Solomon taught in the book of Ecclesiastes ''there is a time for everything under the sun, time to be born and time to die.....'' He went further to declare that ''all is vanity, running after the wind.'' That is also what the Great ZIK taught us , '' No condition is will ever be permanent''.
If we understand that, how can somebody who is sane expect the prices of stock to continually be on upward trajectory? Is it not common knowledge that if an object of whatever kind continues to grow without limit it will become a monster and destructive. What is cancer? Cancer is the division or multiplication of cells. Is there anything wrong with cells growing, NO, but it becomes destructive when the growth is out control. Do they ever realize what would have happened to the real sector of our economy if the prices of stock continue to increase with out end? As people sold their houses to invest in stocks, more would have sold their businesses to join the stock market party to detriment of our long time economy interest. During the boom, every stock broker became an expert, ZENITH shares will rise, so it rose, GTB shares will rise,so it did, amala plc shares will rise, and so it rose. Like every thing in Nigeria, buying and selling of shares become buzz word. An igbo proverb had warned that ''anything that is so sweet, in it is contained the seed of destruction''. Go to the offices of many stock brockers today, they have become palaces of gloom. Why, because they have forgotten what Solomon taught several centuries ago, that both birth and death are two side of the same coin, separated only by time. Failure is woven in every success just as seed of every failure is also seed of success.

The Psychological Explanations of Social Phenomena

The various aspects of social psychology could be examined within the wide concepts of intelligence, gender, advertising, consumer culture, stress and psychological issues that define society. Considering consumer behaviour, social psychology uses convincing theories to explain addictive consumption, the influence of advertising and the phenomenon of purchasing. Advertising is seen as a subtle psychological manipulation as it creates desires and anxiety in the potential consumers (Papers4you.com, 2006). Advertising can have both psychological and commercial aspects including misattribution, bias, suggestibility, and could be studied from global or local perspectives. Organisational consumption is seen as different from individual consumption although generic psychological theories of human motivation such as that of Maslow and Freud can explain consumer behaviour. However consumer behaviour can also be studied in terms of the notion of quality and its relation to customer satisfaction (Silva et al, 2005). The objective measures of customer needs, pricing and expectations of the customers may have to be analysed within Service Quality or Expectations models. Hogg and Garrow (2003) highlighted on the psychological aspects of gender and the influence on consumption of advertising. Advertising has been found to be processed and interpreted differently according to gender schemas and perceptions. This would in turn relate to psychological theories of gender such as the theory of biological determinism, Freudian theory of personality development, cognitive-developmental theory, and feminist theories. Bridging the gap between gender studies and gender differences in consumption could provide us with new insights on social and psychological aspects of consumer behavior. Orth (2005) indicated that consumer behaviour largely depends on consumer personality and susceptibility to interpersonal influence, consumer situational disposition such as risk taking and curiosity, purchasing behaviour and purchasing frequency and demographic variables such as age and gender. Contemporary consumer culture could be studied in relation to an excessive emphasis on beauty and appearance and an obsession with youth, a phenomenon that has seen an increased dependence on cosmetic surgery. The increased importance of the body in the consumer culture could be studied along with the significance of appearance in modern society, the role of marketing and advertising images, and the psychological need for self-expression (Papers4you.com, 2006).

Social psychology is however focused not just on consumption and public attitudes on advertising, but also on group behaviour, general individual and collective attitudes towards various social issues including war, work, violence and quality of life. This would in turn explain how individuals deal with stress, and focus on the psychological consequences of stress. Although psychological disorders may in some cases be a direct result of social stress, deviant behaviour in society could be explained with the help of several theories such as the theory of subcultures by Parker, the structural strain theory by Merton, or the theory of conformity. Social psychology is thus focused on explaining a wide range of issues from advertising and consumer behavior to public attitudes on social issues and antisocial behaviour.

Abnormal Psychology - Human Behaviour

Common psychologists simply describe the psychological diseases and their manifestations. However, through dream interpretation you have a clear explanation of why your disease appeared in your psyche and more importantly, how you can be cured and stop having abnormal behaviour.What is normal is not always what is balanced and really good for each person, but abnormal behaviour is certainly far from the known behavioural patterns and causes damage to the person and their environment.A wild and violent conscience is inherent in the human psyche . I discovered this when I continued Carl Jung's neglected research in the dark region of the psyche through dream interpretation. The human being cannot have a balanced behavior, even when one follows the common behavioural patterns of society, which are considered normal.When we observe abnormal behaviour and we try to understand its psychology and how we can eliminate what causes problems, we observe that the wild conscience invades the human part, with several strange ideas, sensations and feelings. This is how the craziness inherent in the primitive conscience starts causing violent behaviour in the human side, and the person becomes aggressive.This invasion can have many forms and appear camouflaged in many guises. The first signs of the invasion are usually the appearance of fear and suspicion. Neurotic patients are afraid of other human beings.The craziness existent in the anti-conscience is a result of the disorganized development of the conscience since its formation. In order to reach a stage where the conscience would be happy, it would have to work very hard and organize its reactions, but it has not been programmed and it was developed without planning, which is why the result was the formation of chaos.The unconscious psychic sphere that creates dreams is a completely developed human conscience that reached sanctity and can cure us from the craziness inherent in our psychic spheres. Once cured, we will develop all our capacities, be peaceful and always do what is good for us and our community.The wild anti-conscience and the wise unconscious are constantly fighting in our psyche. The anti-conscience wants to destroy our human conscience, while the wise unconscious tries to save and develop our human conscience to the fullest, so that we may live free of the horrors of craziness.Psychological health, balance and wisdom can be found only in goodness, forgiveness and piety. However, the human being doesn't forgive one's enemies and is totally cruel in front of those who need support and help.The behaviour that is considered normal is actually not healthy because we are selfish, and selfishness is pure craziness. The wild anti-conscience manages to influence and invade the conscience using the person's ego as a channel.Only when the human being learns how to be sensitive and reasonable will one live peacefully and happily, having a truly balanced and wise behaviour.We need guidance to cultivate sensitivity and develop all the psychological functions, since three of them do not function as they should and only one psychological function dominates our psychic spheres. The wise unconscious knows exactly how to help us and this is why it sends us messages through dreams.These messages are incomprehensible for the conscience because they could be distorted by the anti-conscience. This fact proves that there are two parts in the human conscience and one of them shall not understand what the unconscious tells the human part because these are instructions about how to transform the wild part in human.If the wild conscience learned what the unconscious explains to the human side, it would distort these messages. This is why you have to learn how to interpret your dreams, in the same way you learn how to translate one language to another.I greatly simplified Carl Jung's method of dream interpretation, which is the only accurate one, and now you can easily learn how to decipher the mysterious messages of your dreams, so that you'll be able to develop all your capacities and live happily, having a balanced and wise behaviour.

THE ROLL OF CHILDREN

BEFORE I PROCEED TO MAIN POINT, I WOULD LIKE TO APOLOGISE FOR MY INABILITY TO POST FOR FEW DAYS NOW,IT WAS HILLNESS AS A RESULT OF STRESS.
WHAT CAN I OFFER FOR TO DAY'S POST, WELL YOU WILL OBVIOUSLY BE WANDERING WHAT I WOULD OFFER FOR TODAY OR PROBABLY YOU ALREADY KNEW WHAT I WOULD BE TREATING FOR TODAY. WELL FOR TODAY, I WOULD LIKE TO TAKE A LOOK INTO THE ACTIVITIES OF TODAY'S CHILDREN OR THE LEADERS OF TOMORROW. IF WE ARE OBSERVANT, WE WOULD DISCOVER THAT MOST CHILDREN OF TODAY PREFERS MOSTLY NOT TO TAKE GOOD CARE OF THEIR OLD PARENTS SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY [PARENTS]DIDN'T CATER FOR THEIR[CHILDREN] NEEDS WHILE THEY WERE YOUNG. BASE ON THIS, CHILDREN PREFERS TO TAKE THEIR OLD PARENTS TO THE OLD PEOPLES HOME. HONESTLY I'M NOT AGAINST SUCH DECISION BECAUSE THE OLD PEOPLES HOME IS NOT BUILT FOR GOATS OR ANY OTHER ANIMALS. THE TRUTH OF THIS POST IS THAT THERE'S NO BETTER WAY WE CAN REWARD OUR PARENTS FOR BRINGING INTO THE WORLD. PERMIT ME TO MENTION NAMES HERE, WHAT WOULD MR. BILL CLINTON BECOME IF THE MOTHER HAD ABORTED HIS PREGNANCY WHILE HE WAS STILL A FOETUS. WHAT WOULD SENATOR BARACK OBAMA BECOME IF THE HAD ABORTED HIS PREGNANCY. HONESTLY THERE'S NO OTHER WAY WE CAN REWARD THEM FOR WHAT THEY HAVE DONE FOR US ESPECIALLY THE MOTHERS THAT CARRIES THE BABY IN THEIR WOMB FOR NINE MONTHS. IF YOU REMEMBER THE DAY YOUR FATHER FAILED TO PAY YOUR SCHOOL FEES, TRY TO REMEMBER THE DAYS YOU URINATED ON HIS BODY WHEN YOU WERE STILL A BABY WITH OUT HIM DOING ANYTHING TO YOU. REMEMBER THE DAYS YOU EAT AND FATHER OR MOTHER DIDNOT EAT ANYTHING. REMEMBER THE MOTHER FASTED ALL BECAUSE OF YOU. REMEMBER THE DAYS FATHER WOULD BE IN THE RAIN WORKING ALL IN THE OF CHILDREN. PLEASE I WOULD LIKE TO STOP HERE FOR NOW AS I WILL COME BACK TO LOOK INTO THE ISSUES OF PARENTAL CARE ONCE AGAIN.