Motivations, People / Stories

6 Habits of True Strategic Thinkers

You’re the boss, but you still spend too much time on the day-to-day. Here’s how to become the strategic leader your company needs.

If you find yourself resisting “being strategic,” because it sounds like a fast track to irrelevance, or vaguely like an excuse to slack off, you’re not alone. Every leader’s temptation is to deal with what’s directly in front, because it always seems more urgent and concrete. Unfortunately, if you do that, you put your company at risk. While you concentrate on steering around potholes, you’ll miss windfall opportunities, not to mention any signals that the road you’re on is leading off a cliff.

Adaptive strategic leaders — the kind who thrive in today’s uncertain environment – do six things well:

  1. Anticipate 
  2. Think Critically
  3. Interpret 
  4. Decide
  5. Align
  6. Learn

 

Click Here for the Full Story

Motivations, People / Stories

The Secret Sauce Is People

The Wegmans model is simple. A happy, knowledgeable and superbly trained employee creates a better experience for customers. Extraordinary service builds tremendous loyalty. Where, though, is the profit?

High volume, according to company executives. The chain’s stores are enormous – usually 80,000 to 120,000 square feet – larger than a typical Whole Foods and roughly double the size of a traditional supermarket. And they feature a dizzying array of 70,000 products, nearly twice the number available in a standard grocery store. Across the East Coast, Wegmans supermarkets have the highest average daily sales volumes in the industry.

Employees are omnipresent in stores and do seem knowledgeable. With little prompting, they launch into exhaustive but friendly accounts of where the meat, fish or produce they sell hails from, what each item tastes like and how best to prepare it.

Click Here for the full story on how an East Coast supermarket chain shows that a business can generously train its workforce and profit handsomely

Motivations, People / Stories

Ian Purkayastha, 19-year-old “Truffle Dealer”

In the digital age, most of today’s young, hot-shot entrepreneurs are working in the world of high tech, specifically in social networking. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams come to mind.

Then there’s Ian Purkayastha, a 19-year old international businessman who’s “networking” the old-fashioned way — face to face — and making a big splash selling and promoting one of the world’s most ancient and low-tech products: Truffles. To be sure, there aren’t billions to be made in truffles, at least not yet. But truffles are by far the most-expensive ingredient in the culinary world, fetching up to $5000 per pound for the most desired varieties.

Click Here for his website

Click Here  for the full story

Mentoring

Coaching Others to Improve Performance

One key role of any leader is to coach team members to achieve their best. As a “coach” or mentor, you will typically help your team members to solve problems, make better decisions, learn new skills or otherwise progress in their role or career.
Whilst some leaders are fortunate enough to get formal training in coaching skills, many are not. They have to develop these for themselves.
Now this may sound daunting. But if you arm yourself with some proven techniques, find opportunities to practice and learn to trust your instincts, you can become a better coach, and so enhance your team’s performance.
One proven approach that helps with this it the GROW model. GROW is an acronym standing for Goal – Current Reality – Options – Will. The model is a simple yet powerful framework for structuring a coaching or mentoring session.

Click Here for the full session

Business Ideas, Finance, Motivations

Call for proposals in communications

 

Dear NGO Colleagues,

The NGO Relations would like to bring to your attention to the  first-ever Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE) call for proposals in communications, launched by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which will be funding up to 10 “game-changing” ideas to help solve one of the greatest challenges  faced in the development community: changing the conversation around foreign aid. 

The goal of this challenge is to solicit new approaches to communications that motivate the public in the wealthy countries of the world to change their minds about aid, and take actions to demonstrate their support. The development community has traditionally focused on the “why” of aid. But most people already believe it is the right thing to do.  We must do a better job of explaining the “how” and the “what” (How exactly does aid work? Where does the money go? How is it used? What impact does it have on communities?).

The challenge wants to find revolutionary ways to make these issues matter deeply to the global community,  inspired by projects that allow anyone– no matter where they live or what their background– to take part.
 
You can find the call here: 
http://www.grandchallenges.org/pt .

Anyone with a great idea is encouraged to apply. The submission process is simple, requiring just a two-page proposal. Instructions can be found here: 

http://www.grandchallenges.org/Explorations/Topics/Pages/GHCommunicationsRound9.aspx

The call will close on May 15, 2012. Up to 10 Phase I grants of $100,000 USD will be awarded within just a few months. The Cannes Lions Chimera, a special panel made up of the best talent across advertising, media, and technology, are advising the programme, and will mentor the winners as they develop their projects. (More information on the Chimera can be found here: www.canneslions.com/chimera)

Each of the Phase I grant-recipients will have one opportunity to apply for a follow-on Phase II grant of up to $1,000,000 USD.

We hope you will be encouraged to possibly  participate.

Good luck!!
Best regards and best wishes
Yours Sincerely,

NGO Relations, DPI
United Nations
http://www.un.org/dpi/ngosection

Calendar, Mentoring, Social Entrepreneurship

Sankalp Summit

The annual Sankalp Summit is one of Asia’s largest collaborative platforms to bring together social enterprises, impact investors, policy makers, academicians, and other market makers. Initiated in 2009 with the vision of catalyzing impact investments into social enterprises globally, the forum today has evolved into a community of over 350 social enterprises, over 300 investors and 300 sector stakeholders. Sankalp’s 4 key round-the-year services are designed to address scale-up challenges that social enterprises face regularly i.e. Access to Finance, Capacity Building, Knowledge and Talent Gap. In 3 years, over 150 social enterprises have benefited from our services.

Apart from programmatic diversification, Sankalp in 2012 will expand to include path-breaking models from South East Asia. This year, the summit will also delve deeper into the evolution of urban business models in South Asia, and what it means for under-served urban markets.

Sankalp’s key success also lies in sourcing a strong deal flow pipeline year on year, through the Sankalp Awards. Vetted by the best investment houses globally, 30 investible, high-impact enterprises from India and South East Asia will be showcased at the forum. The annual Summit that witnesses over 700 participants will be held from April 11-13, at Taj Land’s End, Mumbai, this year.

Click Here for the website

Motivations, Networking, News, Resources

10000 WOMEN ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

Launched by Goldman Sachs, 10,000 Women is a global initiative that will increase the number of under-served women entrepreneurs receiving a business and management education. This initiative is built on the premise that partnerships between education, development, and business experts can help bring about significant change through improved business education for women entrepreneurs.

PARTICIPANT PROFILE
To ensure that the initiative benefits the most deserving candidates, the program targets businesses and businesswomen that satisfy the following criteria:

  • The business is owned or co-owned by the applicant
  • The business has been in existence for at least a year
  • The business has the potential to grow through the infusion of management techniques and know-how
  • The revenue turnover of the business is between Rs.5,00,000 and Rs.75,00,000 per annum
  • The entrepreneur who runs the business is proficient in English
  • The entrepreneur is preferably not a post-graduate in business or a PhD in any discipline
  • The entrepreneur is underserved in terms of family income and family circumstances

Click Here for the full details

 

Finance

3 Numbers All Entrepreneurs Should Know

To make good decisions, you need good data. That’s a given, right? But in a start-up, what data should you be looking at?

In the early days of a startup, sometimes there isn’t much to measure. A comparison of this year’s sales compared to last year’s isn’t all that helpful if you’ve only been around for eight months. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t start collecting data right away.

Check out these 3 major figures

1. Pipeline coverage

2. Sales per employee

3. Customer payback period

Click Here for full details

Mentoring, Motivations, Resources

Business Incubators and Facilitators in India

The main goal of most business incubation programmes is to produce companies that create jobs and wealth in their communities. Business incubators nurture the development of entrepreneurial companies, helping them survive and grow during the start-up period, when they are most vulnerable.

Once established, model business incubation programmes commit to industry best practices such as structuring for financial sustainability, recruiting and appropriately compensating management with company-growing skills, building an effective board of directors, and prioritising management’s time to place the greatest emphasis on resident assistance.

Click Here for the full list of India’s Best Incubators, with their contact details, including those from IIMA, IITB, NID, etc.

Legal, News, Resources

Setup your company online

CompaniesInn makes Company Incorporation and Limited Liability Partnership Incorporation easy for entrepreneurs. CompaniesInn professionally registers Private Companies, Public Companies and Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs) faster than anyone else. CompaniesInn is headquartered in Bangalore with satellite operations around the country.

CompaniesInn India is the first Online Company Registration and LLP registration portal committed to help entrepreneurs and small business owners to learn about online Incorporation and its benefits, as well as helping them easily and affordably undertake this important business step without sacrificing quality. Apart from Incorporation Services, CompaniesInn provides Corporate Law Compliance Services, Book Keeping and Accounting services and Tax Compliance Services.

Why CompaniesInn

CompaniesInn is the right and trusted choice for online Company Registration, LLP Registration and other business setup services. Our professional team, comprehensive services and exceptional value make CompaniesInn your ideal partner – not only for incorporation services, but for the support you need throughout the life of your business.

Click Here for the website