Do Business Well

I met her on a plane, my seatmate for a few hours on a flight out West. We’d been chatting for a while when she found out I was writing about emotions at work. Then her story spilled out: “We do safety testing for the chemical industry, assessing their materials and how they handle them for risks like combustibility. We verify that their procedures for handling these substances meet federal safety standards. But my boss doesn’t care if the report is accurate; he just wants it done on time. His motto is, Get the job done quick as you can and get the money. Continue Reading »

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A healthy partnership is based on one crucial understanding: Neither partner is perfect. If potential partners are afraid to admit their imperfections, or are trying diligently to correct them, or are reluctant to ask for help, neither will be on the lookout for a productive partnership. They will be nervous of confessing to too many faults and suspicious of anyone who offers.

Strangely, most companies actively encourage this kind of behavior. Job descriptions, for even the simplest roles, run to two or three pages, presumably in hopes of capturing every minute task that the perfect incumbent should be able to perform. Training classes and development plans target those few behaviors where you consistently struggle. Everyone talks of the need to “broaden your skill set.” Continue Reading »

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10. Limit the supply of protective and special clothing

A number of companies supply special clothing such as jackets, overalls, gloves and shoes, all of which have a practical use outside the factory. It is also easy for special or protective clothing to be taken from a factory or office by simply wearing the outfit and walking out through the door.

11. Monitor scrap and reject materials properly

This is a frequent and effective method for transferring high value items through the factory gate or office door. Each scrap or waste bin should be thoroughly inspected by a senior person for each department who should also insist that no item is put in the scrap or waste bin without his approval in the first place. A further check on the content of scrap bins should be made by the security staff at the gate and spot investigations should take place as necessary. Careful watch should be kept on the contents of scrap bins as they are weighed in on entering the factory premises. Scrap bins containing water show a high dead weight reading which can result in a lower tonnage of the contents being recorded when the skip is full and the water has been emptied. Continue Reading »

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Another important aspect of the change in your company from survival oriented to management oriented is the way in which you establish goals and monitor them. The following questions are designed to take you through a process of developing a new set of goals for your company:

1. What do you want the company to do for you in the next twenty years? Ten years? Five years? Twelve months? Are you primarily interested in the income stream that can be generated? Is wealth building as opposed to income generation your most important desire? Possibly you’d prefer a lighter work schedule, even if it meant less income. Will you be happy if you aren’t growing? Is it a high priority for you to broaden markets?

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How to use the Power of Conscious Thinkingto achieve the results you desire.

If there is one factor that sets man apart from other animals, it’s the ability to choose. Birds operate on a genetic code embedded deep within their brains. Mammals operate on instinct and conditioning. Only humans have the gift of conscience and consciousness. The problem, though, like all other gifts, is that we may have the gift but we don’t use it. And so the gift loses its power. In this session we will show you how to leverage the gift of Self-Awareness. We will demonstrate the Power of Choice and Conscious Thinking. And finally we will show you how to help others do the same. Continue Reading »

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The key criteria for building a Brand Identity are: appeal to prospects, relevance, the right personality for the market, user friendliness and the offer of an important benefit that is not currently being made by the competition.

A good brand is easily recognizable and its name must be easy to pronounce. Simplicity is the key to success. Consumers must remember it easily. This is what branding is all about: occupying the number one spot in a consumer’s mind to ensure repeat sales. Another important consideration is whether the brand name can be protected or not. Intellectual property must be registered as soon as possible and must be difficult to copy. Generic names are difficult to register (for example, The Coffee Place is a generic name whereas Joe’s Coffee Place is attached to a name and easier to protect). A good brand name cannot be copied easily (think Compaq, Intel, Coca-Cola and Nike). Continue Reading »

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The issue of digital trademark and copyright protection has become a hornet’s nest since the commercialization of the World Wide Web. You need to register a domain name if you want to do business on the World Wide Web. Network Solutions, which handles the registration of domain names, has been doling them out on a first-come, first-serve basis, regardless of who owns the trademark. But now that companies are waking up to the commercial potential of the Web, they are screaming foul if the name they want has been taken by someone else, especially if they have a federal trademark protecting the name. Continue Reading »

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Because it’s so easy to capture, store, process, and redistribute digital information, it is becoming almost impossible to police trademarkand copyright infractions on the Internet. Consider for example, the problem of the Digital Fan.

The digital fan: Let’s say you own a major rollerblade hockey team, the Hanover Hippos. Your team has won the world championships three times in a row, and made you millions of dollars selling merchandise and information about the Hippos. You’ve created your official Hippo Home Page, and receive more than a million hits a week. But something is amiss. Many of your fans are starting to set up their own online fan clubs. They’re plastering the Hippo logo all over their pages and posting statistics and player profiles downloaded from your site. As well, fans of your archrivals, the Neustadt Nimrods, have set up anti-Hippo sites filled with lewd images which they have made by digitally altering your logo. Continue Reading »

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We will now consider more specifically the benefits and drawbacks of ethics to online marketing:

Ethical benefits

• Online marketing has the potential to remove prejudice and barriers, as transactions are carried out via disembodied computer screens.

The lack of need for a physical presence in a particular place allows the inclusion of people whose physical needs make working in an office environment difficult.

Internet-based business activities are opening up markets, thereby improving information provision and freedom of speech about different products, including non-corporate information (see Hamelink 2000: 139-164). For example, typing ‘Nike’ into a search engine also finds sites about Nike products alleging human rights abuses by the company. Continue Reading »

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It is not at all unusual for newcomers to franchising to go into a state of shock when they first realise the complexity of a typical franchise t agreement. But whilst efforts to draft franchise agreements in plain English, thereby enhancing their user-friendliness, are laudable, attempts to keep them “short and sweet” are generally doomed to failure. The reason for this is that unlike other legal agreements that will deal with one specific transaction, a franchise agreement has to cover an entire portfolio of commercial arrangements of varying complexity that may appear to be almost unrelated, yet, by virtue of the fact that they are part of one specific franchise arrangement, they are in fact closely intertwined.

To illustrate this point, let us look at just one of the areas that are dealt with in a typical franchise agreement, namely the grant of the franchise.

The Grant

A franchise is granted, never sold. Typically, franchisees will be licensed to operate one unit of the franchise, either at a specific address or within a clearly defined territory, using the system’s brand name(s) and corporate mage, sometimes known as the get-up, as well as its know-how as described in the franchise agreement and the operations and procedures manual. Continue Reading »

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