Too Busy to Market? Here are 3 Tips
One of the biggest challenges many solo-professionals and small business owners face, is actually getting their marketing done. Marketing is usually the first thing to get put on the back burner, when business gets busy.After all, if you're swamped with sales and clients, marketing isn't usually your top priority, right?Well, actually, marketing should always be your top priority. It belongs right up there with servicing your clients.Because if there are two things that will make your business successful for the long run, it's happy satisfied clients (they buy more and they refer their friends) AND a marketing system that continuously fills your business with new prospects.So HOW do you stay on track with your marketing, when you get bogged down with running your business?Here are 3 tips ...Tip #1: Make sure you have a Marketing Plan.When you have a marketing plan, you don't have to re-invent the wheel every time you need to implement a new marketing activity. All of the "heavy lifting" is done when you create your plan. This makes implementation much more efficient.Tip #2: Create a Marketing CalendarIn my 10stepmarketing System, we create a marketing calendar where we map out all of our marketing activities for the year. This calendar bec

FHA 101
What is FHAFHA or Federal Housing Administration is a branch of HUD or Housing and Urban Development that works through local mortgage lending agencies to give Federal mortgage and loan insurance for those who wish to own a home or do home improvement projects.It is a government-own corporation that was established under the National Housing Act of 1934 to promote better housing standards and conditions.FHA aids first-time buyers and those who would probably not be able to pay the required down payment for conventional loans through insuring mortgage to private lenders. It also ensures loans for buying mobile or manufactured homes.It also assists in providing low-cost houses for rent through insuring loans land developers and builders who make or improve apartments and other multifamily housing developments.Generally, FHA aims to make available sufficient home financing system by providing insurance mortgages and to make the mortgage market as stable as possible.FHA helped mortgage insurance products that started to make the nation's rate of home ownership to spike to an all time high of 66% on the third quarter of 1997. One of these products is the long time amortizing loan.The following are the programs conducted by FHA to achieve its goals:a. Strea

How to Make the Best of it - Take Your 'Weather with You'
I once worked in a place where there were three lines of words, placed just before employees went from backshop to front of shop. These said:-Smile!Remember - you represent your CompanyDelight your customers. I realised I had choices right here.I could play a great part and have fun - make a customer's day (checkout this article here).I could show my feelings on the day and behave accordingly or...I could be charge neutral - a robot, doing my stuff - passing the time.Which one of those would be the best for me, for my employees and my business. How cool is it to be able to leave my troubles backshop and play my part. How freeing!We can be happy or sad. We can find our daily roles fun, boring or dreadful.It is a choice, and not an imposition. So tomorrow, or whenever you read this - what if I could promise it to be a great day, whatever you are doing? What if you could smile and have fun with everyone you come across? What if you chose differently than maybe you feel?Give it a go and see what happens.And if you feel inclined, seek out the tend to be very expensive in terms of cost per delegate to the participants.

(b) They are actually not very effective in building effective teams when people return to their real life situation.

Teams are about individual PEOPLE and the INDIVIDUAL skills that they bring to the team and how these should be selected and put together to form an effective and lasting entity. All that is needed can be covered in a 1-day seminar/discussion with a group of delegates with no more props than a white board and marker pen. If it is delivered in such a way that the delegates can be coerced to look at themselves and their teams HONESTLY, it can provide effective change in team culture, creating belief and ‘buy in’ from delegates and without imposing high expenses on clients.

The analogy that I use to explain the basic ideas is that of building a wall, and I use two types of wall to explain the contemporary team building model and the alternative one. The contemporary model is likened to a ‘standard’ brick wall and the alternative model is likened to a ‘dry stone’ wall, of the type found in northern fields!

2. The contemporary model and it’s shortcomings!

Visualise a contemporary brick wall: Bricks all the same size, weight and shape. In order to stand up the bricks have to be ‘glued’ together with mortar. Bricks must be aligned exactly in rows vertically and horizontally or the wall will fall down. The mortar has to be replaced periodically, or the wall falls down. If a brick is not exactly the same size as all the others it has to be padded out with extra mortar, or – the wall falls down! The bricklayer has to keep tending the wall – replacing mortar etc. – or the wall falls down! Life of wall is fairly limited due to wearing out of materials, so eventually – the wall falls down! Bricklayer is competent enough, as long as the bricks match and he has an ongoing supply of mortar and the time to effect repairs.

Key:
Bricks = Individuals and their skills
Mortar = support from Team Leader and Human resources (competencies, assessments etc)
Bricklayer = Team leader

Problems often start at the recruitment stage. The recruiter ( Team leader or manager ) tends to put together an all-encompassing job description, instead of isolating specific individual EXPERT skills that are required for the project and are very unlikely to all be expert skills for one person. You only have to look at the average recruitment advert to see the types of skill lists that people ask for from one delegate! Human resources then compile a list of required competencies based on this information that ALL delegates have to fit into – and we are well on the way to selecting our almost identical bricks.

What tends to happen now is that you have a team of good ‘all rounders’ but few people with exciting expert skills in any one thing. So what you get is a team that is competent but not outstanding and this has become the normal model that people tend to have become used to. This type of team conforms to all of the standard corporate ‘norms’ and is much easier to deal with for a ‘team leader’ that is also possibly not a truly expert and exciting ‘leader’.

Remember – ‘if you do what you have always done – you get what you have always got!’ Over the years I have experienced too many of these types of teams ( and team leaders ) and I know it can be done much better!

The problem is then compounded by the fashion for ‘competencies’ and ‘Annual assessments’. Managers and team leaders are told to assess their team members annually and to concentrate on improving their ‘weaknesses’! WHY?

Firstly – any team leader that waits a year to point out a problem to one of their team should not be doing the job! Communication and feedback between the leader and all team members should be continuous and open at all times.

Next – why concentrate on improving their weaknesses – all you are going to do is end up with a collection of ‘cloned’ bricks again! What you should be doing is emphasising the team members’ positives and constantly improving their strengths – the very skills you hired them for in the first place. If you have someone who is a brilliant programmer, then you want to help them be an even better programmer for the sake of the project and the team – someone else in the team probably has good report writing skills or whatever. Different people are good at different things – use it, don’t suppress it!

3. The alternative model – not new but it works!

Visua

emporary model and it’s shortcomings!

Visualise a contemporary brick wall: Bricks all the same size, weight and shape. In order to stand up the bricks have to be ‘glued’ together with mortar. Bricks must be aligned exactly in rows vertically and horizontally or the wall will fall down. The mortar has to be replaced periodically, or the wall falls down. If a brick is not exactly the same size as all the others it has to be padded out with extra mortar, or – the wall falls down! The bricklayer has to keep tending the wall – replacing mortar etc. – or the wall falls down! Life of wall is fairly limited due to wearing out of materials, so eventually – the wall falls down! Bricklayer is competent enough, as long as the bricks match and he has an ongoing supply of mortar and the time to effect repairs.

Key:
Bricks = Individuals and their skills
Mortar = support from Team Leader and Human resources (competencies, assessments etc)
Bricklayer = Team leader

Problems often start at the recruitment stage. The recruiter ( Team leader or manager ) tends to put together an all-encompassing job description, instead of isolating specific individual EXPERT skills that are required for the project and are very unlikely to all be expert skills for one person. You only have to look at the average recruitment advert to see the types of skill lists that people ask for from one delegate! Human resources then compile a list of required competencies based on this information that ALL delegates have to fit into – and we are well on the way to selecting our almost identical bricks.

What tends to happen now is that you have a team of good ‘all rounders’ but few people with exciting expert skills in any one thing. So what you get is a team that is competent but not outstanding and this has become the normal model that people tend to have become used to. This type of team conforms to all of the standard corporate ‘norms’ and is much easier to deal with for a ‘team leader’ that is also possibly not a truly expert and exciting ‘leader’.

Remember – ‘if you do what you have always done – you get what you have always got!’ Over the years I have experienced too many of these types of teams ( and team leaders ) and I know it can be done much better!

The problem is then compounded by the fashion for ‘competencies’ and ‘Annual assessments’. Managers and team leaders are told to assess their team members annually and to concentrate on improving their ‘weaknesses’! WHY?

Firstly – any team leader that waits a year to point out a problem to one of their team should not be doing the job! Communication and feedback between the leader and all team members should be continuous and open at all times.

Next – why concentrate on improving their weaknesses – all you are going to do is end up with a collection of ‘cloned’ bricks again! What you should be doing is emphasising the team members’ positives and constantly improving their strengths – the very skills you hired them for in the first place. If you have someone who is a brilliant programmer, then you want to help them be an even better programmer for the sake of the project and the team – someone else in the team probably has good report writing skills or whatever. Different people are good at different things – use it, don’t suppress it!

3. The alternative model – not new but it works!

Visua

ead of isolating specific individual EXPERT skills that are required for the project and are very unlikely to all be expert skills for one person. You only have to look at the average recruitment advert to see the types of skill lists that people ask for from one delegate! Human resources then compile a list of required competencies based on this information that ALL delegates have to fit into – and we are well on the way to selecting our almost identical bricks.

What tends to happen now is that you have a team of good ‘all rounders’ but few people with exciting expert skills in any one thing. So what you get is a team that is competent but not outstanding and this has become the normal model that people tend to have become used to. This type of team conforms to all of the standard corporate ‘norms’ and is much easier to deal with for a ‘team leader’ that is also possibly not a truly expert and exciting ‘leader’.

Remember – ‘if you do what you have always done – you get what you have always got!’ Over the years I have experienced too many of these types of teams ( and team leaders ) and I know it can be done much better!

The problem is then compounded by the fashion for ‘competencies’ and ‘Annual assessments’. Managers and team leaders are told to assess their team members annually and to concentrate on improving their ‘weaknesses’! WHY?

Firstly – any team leader that waits a year to point out a problem to one of their team should not be doing the job! Communication and feedback between the leader and all team members should be continuous and open at all times.

Next – why concentrate on improving their weaknesses – all you are going to do is end up with a collection of ‘cloned’ bricks again! What you should be doing is emphasising the team members’ positives and constantly improving their strengths – the very skills you hired them for in the first place. If you have someone who is a brilliant programmer, then you want to help them be an even better programmer for the sake of the project and the team – someone else in the team probably has good report writing skills or whatever. Different people are good at different things – use it, don’t suppress it!

3. The alternative model – not new but it works!

Visua

better!

The problem is then compounded by the fashion for ‘competencies’ and ‘Annual assessments’. Managers and team leaders are told to assess their team members annually and to concentrate on improving their ‘weaknesses’! WHY?

Firstly – any team leader that waits a year to point out a problem to one of their team should not be doing the job! Communication and feedback between the leader and all team members should be continuous and open at all times.

Next – why concentrate on improving their weaknesses – all you are going to do is end up with a collection of ‘cloned’ bricks again! What you should be doing is emphasising the team members’ positives and constantly improving their strengths – the very skills you hired them for in the first place. If you have someone who is a brilliant programmer, then you want to help them be an even better programmer for the sake of the project and the team – someone else in the team probably has good report writing skills or whatever. Different people are good at different things – use it, don’t suppress it!

3. The alternative model – not new but it works!

Visualise a ‘dry stone wall’ of the type often used for field boundaries. Stones are all different shapes and sizes – they are selected from what is available, in the right order so that they overlap and fit with each other perfectly to provide a solid fit.

This means that no stone is the ‘wrong’ size as long as you find others to fit around it. It doesn’t matter if all the stones are perfectly aligned as long as they all mesh together to give the wall stability.

There is no mortar used in the wall, it’s all down to the skill of the bricklayer selecting the correct stones in the first place so that the individual stones all support each other in the complete wall. The wall doesn’t fall down for centuries!

The wall doesn’t look as uniform and pretty as the brick wall on the surface but actually performs its’ task far better. The bricklayer has to have a real skill in selecting the right shaped stones to make sure they all fit together well in the first place, but once he has done that, maintenance is minimal!

Key:
Stones = Individuals and their skills
Mortar = support from Team Leader and Human resources (competencies, assessments etc)
Bricklayer = Team leader

The first thing that is needed before you can recruit and build a team for you project is an expert ‘brick layer’ or REAL Team LEADER! ( Not a manager/coordinator or facilitator). This doesn’t mean someone who happens to have been in the company the longest and is thought due for promotion. It doesn’t mean someone who can write good reports and do all the administration properly – it means someone who can LEAD PEOPLE! This is someone who can control, cajole, coerce and do anything necessary to get people to perform at their own best whenever it is required, at the same time gaining respect from those around them that they have to deal with. They don’t bully, shout or ‘use their position’ to get things done, people respond to them naturally and TRUST them. It’s NOT a promotion, it’s another type of skill and you should look for this type of person in all levels of the organisation.

You can teach anyone to play the piano, but not everyone can be a top concert pianist – it is just a skill that some people have and not others. Leadership is exactly the same – you can send someone on a ‘Team Leaders’ course and they will be able to go through the motions of team leading, but what you should look for is a ‘natural’ – someone who has the ability to really LEAD people.

If no one of your present employees stands out as having this ability – look outside for someone. It is not worth compromising on this all important position – remember you need someone to put that wall together effectively to get the best results!

The team leader should then be tasked with putting together the team – selecting the strengths that are needed from individual people and making sure that their weaknesses are covered by other people in the team, so that you are putting together the ‘stone wall’ with all the members supporting each other. As the team is growing, all of the team members should take part in the recruitment and interviewing process – after all they will have a feel for how someone will fit in with the rest of them. Giving everybody some responsibility for how the team is put together gives them all a stake in its success.

From the start there should be honest and open communication between all of the team members and the team leader. There should be no need for ‘Annual assessments’. The Team leader should be aware at all times how their team members are performing in various areas, and in an honest and open environment the team members themselves should be aware of any shortcomings and work towards solving them. A good team actually need very little maintenance input from the Team Leader and should very quickly become self-supporting, just like the stone wall.

Summary

So, if you are considering building a new team, try approaching it in a different light. Think of the people, the skills you want individuals to have – not the skills they don’t have, the overall skills that you want the whole team to have and how they all fit together to give you a solid foundation. Choose a proper ‘Team LEADER’ to maintain it and put contemporary ideas of ‘assessments’ and ‘competencies’ behind you! (Don’t tell your HR manager this, unless they are lying down in a darkened room!)

Team Building part 2 – Honesty is the Key! Will focus on the running of the team once it is built and will be published