How Can You Manage Difficult People
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How Can you Manage Difficult People? At work and in our leisure time we are often confronted by difficult people and awkward situations and they seem to come at us from every angle. How can we cope? People do not change easily. What is a difficult person? In general they are people who demonstrate bad behavior, who don¶t care how their behavior affects others and who even use it to their advantage. Being difficult is effective because it works but in the short term. Long term relationships need a greater complexity of behavior. Difficult people hope that due to their behavior we will either start to give priority to their wishes or that you will leave them alone. Difficult people are not restricted to the workplace. Working relationships have few emotional ties and are more detached whereas within the home environment lurks a complex web of history and emotions. When you deal with difficult people effective listening is very important; you must be able to tune in to what he/she is trying to tell you. A good listening means: to hear the messagegenuinely listen to what is being said; to interpret the message- to take in all aspects of body language, tone of voice and interpret their significance; to evaluate the message; to respond to it. It is not always the people that are difficult but sometimes it is the situation. Working relationships and environments bring together a whole host of situations for which you cannot always prepare. At some point in your career you will have to deal with difficult situations. They come up at the workplace. Difficult colleagues create added pressure. Then, conflict can hardly be avoided. You also have to cope with difficult managers and with difficult staffs. Difficult people and awkward situations are everywhere; therefore, running away is not really an option unless you want to live a hermit for the remainder of your days. So, a far better strategy is to learn to deal with such situations; this does not mean being weak or let everyone take advantage of you; it means having some firm strategies for dealing with people and situations. Advantages: -the ability to work with all people -being known as a person who can get things done -being seen as flexible and someone who can ³deliver¶ whether that be projects or products. Disadvantages: being restricted as to whom you can work with being seen as weak and ineffectual and being given a wide berth(mostly in times of promotion) being thought difficult yourself owing to your inability to work effectively with others.
Answer the following: 1. Where do you encounter difficult people most? 2. How can you achieve a responsible and effective working relationship? 3. Are difficult people at work fixed in your life? 4. Do you find that life will become easier each time you deal with a difficult situation? 5. Who are the people at the top? 6. Is it still possible to bully people into doing what they want? 7. What kind of people are the negativists? 8. How important is body language? 9. Do teams need to celebrate success? 10. How can you win people¶s respect and your own peace of mind? 11. How important is the environment when you deal with difficult people? 12. How important is timing in tackling a situation? Action Points 1. Think of three things that you could do now to make you feel more confident about your ability to tackle the next difficult person or situation which comes along. 2. Make a list of all the people you have difficult working relationships with, then write one thing you like about them beside each name. Try at some point in future to complement them on that one thing- it will build bridges for the future. 3. Reflect on the last time you were criticized by a colleague. How would you handle that if the same thing happens again tomorrow? Are there lessons you have learnt? 4. Think of three people who have displayed difficult behavior in the last month. What did their difficult behavior have in common? 5. Have you ever seen anyone or been involved yourself in a bullying situation at work? What could you have done to help or done differently?
Advertising Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century. It may be described as a science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it. It stimulates debate and sometimes controversy. It has a powerful effect on the human consciousness as it is around us on television, radio, cinemas, newspapers and magazines. The way we dress, talk and behave sends a message to other people. It is about manipulating public opinion and getting a message across to an audience so that they will behave in a particular way. The advertising industry has been in existence since the end of the 17th century when newssheets carried printed advertisements for products and information. Merchants returning from voyages overseas needed to generate markets for the products they imported and so they had to advertise. By the end of the 19th century, advertising was big business. Advertisements dominated the newspapers, posters were commonplace and spawned a whole art form. But the new communication technology gave the industry its biggest boost. Modern advertising exploits every medium of communication. We tend to think of advertisements in terms of the mainstream media but we also have posters, billboards, point of sale displays, direct selling and cold calling by phone and fax, the internet which taps into worldwide audiences. If you work in advertising , you will for sure be part of an influential band of people who can change public attitudes and behaviour. The heart of this industry lies in the advertising agencies. The large ones are multinationals with in such far flung places as Beijing and Buenos Aires. If you work in a small agency, you may be expected to do everything, including account management, client liaison, concept development, creative work. In a larger one, job roles will be more structured. You will have a specific role and a greater chance of more formal career development. Advertising agencies vary in the services they offer. The most familiar names are full service agencies but there are also other companies that specialize in media services or focus on particular areas of advertising, such as recruitment or business to business advertising. Business need to advertise so that we should learn of the existence of different products. Advertising is aimed at conveying information to potential customers and clients. Advertising is used to persuade the public to buy. At the lowest level people need food, shelter, warmth and sex. Then, people begin to think about personal possessions and finally we move on to egocentricity. The ultimate need is for fulfillment. This would come when we have all that the advertisers say we so desperately need. For most of us it seems that that day will never come! Sometimes advertisements are misleading. Advertisers shouldn¶t make untrue statements about their products but they so often do it. They create a demand which would not otherwise exist. Advertising goes far beyond T.V. and hoardings, newspapers and magazines, they enrich our lives.
Answer the following questions: What are the arguments for and against modern advertising methods? Are there any controls which you think should be imposed on advertisers? Glamour and humour are two of the appeals which ads try to make for us. What other appeals do they make? In what other ways, apart from advertising are we persuaded to buy one product rather than another? How do national newspapers benefit from advertising? How can window dressing be seen as forms of advertising? Arguments for advertising It tells consumers about the products that are available, allowing them to make a wider choice. It encourages competition between firms. By creating a wider market for products it makes large scale production and sales possible. Media would be more expensive without it. Arguments against It is expensive. It can be wasteful, sometimes involving the same firm advertising virtually identical products against each other. (eg. washing powder ) It can be misleading. It can exert control over media. It can put pressure upon people to buy products that they don¶t really need or can¶t afford. Advertising media National newspapers Regional newspapers Consumer magazines Business and Professional Directories Press production costs Poster and Transport Cinema T.V, Radio * Banners on Internet sites Television commercials The most effective medium for reaching large numbers of people. They have to be brief. But: They cannot be very informative and display images rather than information. They are selective ± it is hard to reach a particular group of people except for certain programs. Radio -advertising is cheap and can be effective in reaching certain types of people: old people and housewives.
National press - it is expensive too but if has a large geographical selectivity and allows detailed information to be given. Magazines and trade press It is a way of reaching a specialized group of customers. There are magazines for almost any interest and for any type of product. Posters and hoardings -Effective if good locations can be found. Sales promotions -They include free gifts, competitions, give away samples, special offers. Sponsorship -Of the arts, public works, sport can be very effective in putting a product or company name before the public. Packaging and display -In shops; they maintain existing sales but also encourage first time buyers. Here are some advertisements. a. ³when you can¶t say good bye!´ b. ³from here to eternity´ c. ³you know the name. It¶s the face you may not recognize´ Enlarge on them. Make an advertisement for: a. a shampoo b. a drink c. a book d. a restaurant e. a sofa
Write some adverts that promise: you¶ll feel happier you¶ll enjoy life more you¶ll have a nice holiday you¶ll be rich you¶ll be famous Make an advert as the one below: Friendly, humourous boy 20, not very good looking but funny, seeks nice girl to go swimming, dancing, walking. Complete the following sentences using your own words: Advertising can help a business to ««««««« A good advertising agency will «««««««« Although newspapers and magazines «««««« One of the weaknesses of human beings is that ««
It is essential that the packing of a product should be ««« This is the information about a job advertisement: Asian Monetary Institute Computer Programmer in the Statistics Division The successful candidate will have A University degree in economics or statistics Work experience in banking and financial accounts Fluent English and Mandarin Applicants should send a C.V., a recent photo and references from previous employers to the Asian Monetary Institute P.O. Box 6707
Answer the following 1. What is Hello: a magazine or a newspaper? 2. Which country in the world spends the most on advertising: U.S.A or Japan? 3. Why is William Caxton famous: he produced the first printed advertisement in England or in U.S.A. ? 4. How did the earliest advertising take place? 5. Who invented paper? 6. How do we promote ourselves? 7. When did TV advertising come to Britain? 8. What is advertising industry entitled to do? 9. What is the difference between small and large advertising agencies? 10. What does modern advertising exploit? 11. What do advertising campaigns bring? 12. What is business to business advertising? 13. What does concept development refer to? 14. How important is timing in advertising? 15. Which are the advantages and disadvantages of advertisements on the internet? Make an advertisement for: 1. Your Town and the Surroundings. 2. A Museum 3. A Car. 4. A Hypermarket 5. A Magazine Enlarge upon the following: ³ More than a watch. A dream that has come true!´ ³ It is not just a broken vase. It is the silence you feel when your shoppings are being protected with the credit card.´ ³ They are the snapshots of a challenge, they are always with us!´
BUSINESS and BUSINESSES Business is a long term, highly repetitious activity, frequently requiring people to do the same thing today, tomorrow, the next day. Many of today¶s well known businesses were started by one or two people and the ownership of those businesses was very simple. It was during the 19th century that businesses wanted to expand and increase the number of owners. To do this they needed to sell shares. To encourage people to buy shares, governments around the world passed laws which gave people limited liability. During the 20th century many people bought shares in sucessful businesses for the following reasons: to have a share in the profit made by the business. the hope that a profitable business would attract more and more people to buy shares and this will make the price rise so that shares could be sold at a profit. The simplest form of business ownership is the sole trader. Here, one person owns the business, takes all the decisions and risks his own money. People enjoy to be self employed and they are happy to have complete control of their own business. But there is no one to share the responsibilities involved in decision making and raising finance is a problem. Sole traders finance their business through a bank loan and the bank will charge a high rate of interest. A bank will ensure that it can get the money back, if the loan is not repaid, by requiring security on the loan. Sole traders are liable for any debts they have, even if they are not the trader¶s fault. A trader may do a job for a larger business; it may be worth 20 000$ but it will not be paid until the job is complete. The sole trader must spend 9 000 $ on equipment, but when the job is complete the larger business closes down and the 20 000$ are not paid; still, the sole trader has to cover the 9 000 already spent as he has unlimited liability. Sometimes, a pair of a small group of people will get together to run a business. This is called a partnership. Partnerships face unlimited liability as sole traders do. Partners may put some money into the partnership in return for a share of the profits but take no part in the running of the partnership, do not work for it and have Äno say´ in any decisions.Under these circumstances, it is only the money that has been invested that is liable to be used in order to apy off any debts. This is a silent partner and he has only limited liability. The technical name for both private and public limited companies is joint stock company. It means that the stock in a company is owned jointly by several people. Some business activity is carried on by the government and this forms the public sector. Profit maximisation may not be the only aim of a busines; in public companies there is a separation of ownership and control, so that directors and managers may run a company in their own interests. Business is the production,buying, and selling of goods and services. A business, company or firm is an organization that sells goods or services. A business may be referred to formally as a concern. Then, it may be referred to approvingly as an enterprise in order to emphasize its adventurous, risk taking qualities and business in general may be referred to in the same way, in combinations such as free enterprise and private enterprise. A business requires tremendous effort to get it going and once going, it requires minimum effort to keep it going. The role of business is to stay in business, providing wages, goods and services into the community and meeting the profit needs of the business and the key stakeholders in the business. The source of funding and capital is considered to be the main
difference between the stakeholders and the shareholders. In the stakeholder model, funding is being supplied through bank loans. This means that they will ask for managerial consideration and response from those running the company. In the shareholder model, stockholders advance capital to managers who act as their agents in pre-authorized ways. Shareholdes buy shares to maximise the return on their investment; the responsibility of the manager in a firm is to engage in activities designed to increase the profits, that is to engage in open and free competition. To create shareholder wealth, the management needs to outperform the expectations shareholders had when they made their investment decisions. In the shareholder model of corporate governance, the focus is on institutional agents monitoring corporate agents in order to enhance the investment prospects of investors. In the stakeholder model, the premise is that a company is more likely to perform well and the shareholders are more likely to benefit, if opportunities are created for the various groups holding an interest in the company to enter into binding relationship. The emphasis in the stakeholder model is the way enterprises are governed while in shareholder model the emphasis is on the way enterprises are managed. The shareholder based entity is more responsive to changes in market conditions. Both approaches take account of the issues of board checks and balances, abuse of authority and power, the role of boards, director rewards and participation in setting standards for accounting, safety, employee relations and risk management. In today´s business world we have to take into consideration the two models. The shareholder model encourages a top down, command and control leadership approach whereas in the stakeholder model a team based, shared decision making, servant leadership approach is more likely. Stakeholder based governance refers to how the organization makes cost effective decisions in terms of wealth creation but with consideration of stakeholders¶ rights. Corporations have multiple responsibilities and need to balance competing conditions, such as long and short term notion of gain, profit and sustainability, cash and accounting concepts of value, democracy and authority, power and accountability. This model is more common in continental Europe and Japan. The micro approach to corporate governance refers to shareholders. This is concerned with maximizing wealth creation for shareholders. Control is linked here to profitability, an Anglo American model. Then business may be referred to as commerce, commercial distinguishing the business sphere from other areas such as government or arts or from non money making activities. Large companies are being referred to as corporations. Corporate is used to describe things relating to a corporation or to corporations. Large companies operationg in many countries are multinationals. Big business can refer to large business organizations or to any business activity that makes a lot of money. Small companies are referred to as small businesses or small firms. When a private company is bought by the state and brought into the public sector in a sell off, it is privatized. The first to be sold in a privatization programme are often the companies responsible for the public supply of electricity, water and gas: the utilities. If a company A owns shares or equity in company B, then A holds a stake, holding or shareholding in B. If A owns less than half the shares in B, then it has a minority stake in B. If A
owns more than half the shares in B, it has a majority stake or controlling stake in B. If you have shares in a company you are a shareholder. A holding or holding company is the one that holds stakes in one or more subsidiaries. If it owns all the shares in a subsidiary, then the subsidiary is a wholly owned one. A holding company´s relationship to its subsidiaries is that of parent company and the subsidiaries´ relationship to each other is that of sister companies. A holding and its subsidiaries form a group. A conglomerate is a group containing a lot of different companies in different businesses. Company A may be attempting to gain control of company B in a takeover bid, maybe by increasing its holding or stake in company B if it already owns shares in B. Company B makes or launches a bid against company A, the takeover target. If company B does not want to be taken ober, the bid is hostile. There are other ways of saying that one company is taking over another one and it means that the company is acquiring another or making an acquisition. In a leveraged buyout or LBO, a company is acquired by a group of investors, often financed by heavy borrowing. The debt is then paid out of the target company´s operating revenues or by selling its assets. The borrowing involved inLBOs is often high risk debt called junk bonds. LBOs financed by junk were frequent in the 1980s and after an absence following the excesses of that period, they are now coming up again. Two or more companies may decide to work together by setting up a joint venture or alliance in which each holds a stake. When two companies combine voluntarily, they merge in a merger. The social role of any business is linked to what we call as serving the future: sufficient profits to satisfy the business and the stakeholders meet today¶s profits needs. But as the expectations increase society has to invest in ideas and technology that expands the economic base and the wealth of the society. An essential requirement is that each and every business strives to achieve profits over and above immediate business needs and the stakeholders¶ needs. Without this Äsurplus profit´ there can be no venture capital. Without venture capital, economic growth will struggle to match population growth and the growth in social expectations. Any business requires true professionalism- the courage to care about people, clients, career. True professionalism means the pursuit of excellence. If you value something, then you must monitor your performance in that area, acept nothing less than excellence and actively work to learn what to do differently every time you fall short of excellence. Firms must provide help and counsel to those who are encountering difficulties in living uo to their standards, in order to help them get back on track. Once professionals have confirmed their core values, they need to design systems which provide consequences for noncompliance. By leaving each individual professional to decide for himself what level to achieve in key value areas, firms say that the company as a society has no standards that must be adhered to. Excellence in such areas become a matter of personal professional choice. Professionals must live by the slogan Ä you are allowed to fail, you are not allowed to give up trying.´ The oposite of the word professional is not unprofessional, but rather technician. These may be highly skilled, but they aren¶t professionals until they demonstrate characteristics such as:taking pride in their work, showing a personal commitment to quality, reaching out for responsibility,getting involved, looking for ways to make things easier for those they serve, listening to the needs of those they serve, being team players, honest, trustworthy, loyal, open to constructive critiques.
Professionalism is an attitude not a set of competences. A true professional is a technician who cares. And if finding people with technical skill is usually easy, finding people who are filled with energy, drive, enthusiasm personal commitment to excellence is hard. Because real professionalism has little to do with which business you are in, what role within that business you perform, how many degrees you have. It implies a pride in work, a commitment to quality, a dedication to the interests of the client, a sincere desire to help. Traditional definitions of professionalism are filled with references to status, educational attainments, noble calling. Now, we refer to attitude and character. So, firms should hire people for attitude and train for skill. Being a professional asks for treating people as professionals that is invest in them. Then professional success requires more than talent, it asks for initiative, involvement, enthusiasm, commitment.Being good at business development involves nothing more than a sincere interest in clients and their problems and a willingness to go out and spend the time being helpful to them. Success in business life means not only good professionalism but effective functioning of the firms, positive outlooks.
THE COMPANY A company is a very special form of business. It is owned by the shareholders but has a separate legal existence from the people who own it. The shareholders elect a board of directors to run the company on their behalf. If the company has 2- 50 shareholders it is a private one. The liability is limited to the money that the shareholders have used to buy shares. If the shares are traded on the stock exchange we have a public limited company. Members of the public can buy these shares by going through a stockbroker or bank. In business we must create for ourselves a set of attitudes and values that balance the conflicting factors, enabling us to act effectively with integrity, dignity, understanding. So we¶ll have better relationships with our partners and our life becomes richer. Emotional containment ensures then that the business values are not undermined by other values from our society, such as we perhaps learned early in life. We then have to know that there is no social health without economic wealth; the role of business is to stay in business, providing wages, goods and services into the community and meeting the profit needs of the business and the key stakeholders in the business. The business does not operate in a vacuum; there are competitors, there is a level of economic activity, there is rapidly changing technology. The visions we have for our businesses are what makes them and us really successful. Setting goals and objectives will help us achieve our vision. The key to success and happiness in life is to create a positive vision, to remain true to one¶s own spirit, to have the energy of challenge. But running a business is never easy. It¶s a ride through a range of hazards and difficulties but one thing is sure: life will rarely, if ever, be dull. If you do not enjoy running your business, you can¶t expect to do it well. Some ways to make a business successful are the following: 1. Ideas- bad or good- are important as the lifeblood of business and vital to its long term success. Ideas are vital to develop new or existing products or services or even to take the first step into a new business. 2. Choosing professional advisers is essential and they can make or break your business. 3. Finding and keeping clients must form an integral part of your planning if you want to grow your business. 4. Research your target companies does take time, but it¶s well spent. If knowledge is power, then researching a company can give you a much better understanding of what they do and help you to prepare a successful bid. 5. Brand your business and you¶ll be set apart and enable you to introduce a wider range of products and services more easily. 6. Team up with another business to enhance yours and be competitive on the market. 7. Consider a project based working which has many advantages for the employer and employee. This means working for just one or two employers at any time. 8. Be creative, have an open mind philosophy and a ³I can do´ attitude. Any business can benefit from using it creatively. 9. Focus on creating a win/win situation.
10. Use your time wisely, as it is not elastic and it will not magically expand to accommodate all we have to do. 11. Keep your employees happy and remember that a happy workforce is a productive one and will contribute to the performance and profits of your business. 12. Make powerful presentations by a good planning and preparation. Exhibitions can be invaluable marketing exercises for any business. 13. Event management is important: organizing gatherings, conferences, seminars, training courses. 14. Networking for success is a way to meet new people, exchange information and get new business. 15. Master the media and you may get rewards by being attentive to the interviews. 16. The success of a business will depend on how well you sell products and services. How do you persuade people to buy the product? The more work you put into planning and developing your sales strategy, the easier it will be to close and develop a loyal customer base. 17. Lasting customer relationships are very important as profitable business starts and ends with the customer. So it¶s worth giving them the attention they deserve. 18.Ensure that success will come from a website but be careful to a sound strategy. Ecommerce revolution is on its way and the staff has to be well trained in this respect. 19. Maintain a positive flow of money in your business by realistic forecasting which will only be of benefit if it is checked and reconciled on a regular basis. 20. Enter into partnership agreement and make sure that your partner can contribute to the business and will strengthen it. In business life time is important to be taken into consideration as it is our most precious resource. We have to maintain a balance, we have to give ourselves time and opportunity to do things right; we do not get a second chance with time, so we must do our best to make every minute purposeful and enjoyable. Then our goals are set as we want them to be and we can reward ourselves for gains. A business is a coordinated effort to achieve certain ends summarized in the profit and loss. Joining a business means embracing some part of that at least. The assumption is that everyone wants to be successful and for this within a company it is important to: * consolidate the aims of the team, the team spirit. * understand the team¶ effort to strive for achievements. * focus on creating a team climate. * understand the energy of challenge. * be aware on one¶s responsibility. Desire or will is the very essence of success. Without this intensity the actions of success have a hollowness, the hallmark of ³but I tried´. Successful business asks for good leadership and this is not some mystical act performed by the few and only able to be performed by them through some luck of upbringing or genetics that made them natural leaders. We can become better leaders than we are; to achieve this means that we need to do the right things at the right time more often than we usually do and we also need to examine ourselves. We also need to have a clear idea of what to do in order to gain the best possible result from others. The actions identified must be the appropriate actions in what is broadly called ´western society´(North America, U.K., Europe, Australia, New Zealand).
Leadership is to be taken into account whenever we have in view any business; there are some steps to be followed: 1. The agreement to success for every team member. Everyone wants to be successful as far as goals are clear and business processes are far from being clumsy. Everyone has positive and negative thoughts in their minds most of the time. We know how easy it is for the negative thoughts: the company is not good, the boss is bad«We represent the positive assertively in our mind- ³work is rewarding´. But we select our thoughts and they influence us. If a person has negative thoughts about the job and the company, work performance is suffering. The negative impact can make the team output less than it should otherwise be. But we are responsible for our own thoughts, so what a manager can do is to point out the consequences. It is clear that when the team becomes focused, gets people organized, celebrates success, then bad attitudes disappear. Defining success entails the idea of challenge which energizes people. The team leaders and managers must live as exemplary models of how they expect others in their team to act. Each management team member is expected to be an ³ inspiring player.´ The team effort has to be understood properly. The team spirit must be a consequence of doing other things well. Coordinating the effort is to be achieved by the profit profile with each team member being accountable for some number on the profile and this will define success for a team. People have seen now the standards required. Identifying the behaviours of success. As the goals have been agreed, the steps to be followed are to make clear what actions were most likely to bring about the goals. In the goal-action principle, the idea of action becomes clear now, we have those behaviours that will best fulfill the goal, derived from the goal and belonging to it. It is important to find the balance between two things in conflict as a crucial act of insight and creativity for the manager and the team. If the issue is finding sales tactics, then the problem is one of creativity for the team to brainstorm possible tactics and then select one or several that best achieves the balance of the required result. Provide monitoring and feedback on progress and performance. The main concern among the teams was to provide useful guidance on what should be changed to improve the results. Better reports were being sought, better information. Celebrate success, large and small. Teams celebrate success as people have risen to the challenge. Team results were evident. The progressive build up of life satisfaction was something that occurred beneath the daily flux and it should increase each year. It was seen as related to goals and work had the potential to be a major component. Teams will remain the core of the business. Before demanding better performance one have to be sure that this can be achieved. So, for every goal there are tasks that must be acted out if the goal is to be achieved. Everyone succeeds if the team succeeds. It is important to recognize individual performance, but from within the framework of the team. A management team should be a team, not a collection of individuals with personal accountability. This means that every team member understands that they can win only if the team wins and the team wins by achieving the targeted operating profit. Within that, each person has his or her role and tasks within this role. If people can fully perform their own jobs and have
the mental, emotional and physical energy to assist others, and if the others accept and appreciate the assistance, then those people should be encouraged and celebrated within the team. A management team operates within the framework and policy prescribed by the strategic plan and is accountable for creating sales revenue and converting it into operating profit. To develop a manager means to develop the person. That is, to improve business management or business leadership is not merely an act of adding some skills or some knowledge to the person; knowledge alone is not power; only if it is backed by the ability and willingness of how, the judgement of when to use that knowledge is power. Intellectual honesty is an important quality that must be taken into consideration. That means being truthful with yourself and not only. We have wishes and dreams, sensitivities about ourselves; so often we do not want to think poorly of ourselves; it is easier and more comfortable to find reasons beyond us for the unfortunate things that happen or for results that should have been . Such emotional forces can and do push us to think in certain ways. Then, intellectual honesty comes to help us: a process of conceiving the factors accurately as a scientist might, without the comfort of the excuses. It allows us to avoid giving up too early and this is one of the hallmarks of all champions. There are some situations we meet within a company There are all kinds of reasons for wanting to be your own boss. Some people like the idea of there being no one in authority over them, telling them what to do, saying their work is not up to standard, turning down their ideas, or insisting on methods that seem pointless. Others are attracted by the thought of deciding their own hours, or days, of work. Running your own business gives you the status of being self-employed, perhaps also of being a company director. There is the general feeling of independence, and that your income - and perhaps even your way of life - is in your own hands. Some are attracted to the idea of starting a small enterprise and making it grow, much as a gardener tends his plot and makes a number of plants come to maturity, each in turn creating further growth. If you are your own boss, say some people, work is so much more pleasant. You can get someone else to do the less interesting jobs and you are not bogged down in annoying details. Work becomes easier, too, because you can get someone else to do the more difficult tasks. Many others want to set up a little business of their own to occupy their spare time, and as a pleasant way of earning extra money from work they like doing. These are just a few of the reasons commonly given. Some have good sense behind them; others are based on completely false ideas. Most contain some element of truth which gets magnified out of all proportion, and seized upon without it being borne in mind that there are other points to consider as well. As with so much else in life, running an enterprise of your own entails disadvantages as well as advantages. It is surprising how rarely people stop to consider in real detail just what the drawbacks are, yet this is an essential first step for anyone thinking about whether it is even practicable for him to be his own boss. An important reason why there is such glamour about being in charge of your own business is that when you are working for someone else, many of the petty irritations of life, as well as the chore of often having to get down to work that you do not feel like doing at that particular time, become associated with being an employee. There is a feeling that, if only you were your own boss, life would immediately become infinitely pleasurable and free from irksome detail. This is almost entirely misleading. Many of the little annoyances probably have nothing to do with being an employee: being interrupted when you have at last immersed yourself in some disagreeable task, missing the bus when you are in a hurry, feeling tired or in other ways not really up to working hard at the moment, and so on. These occur just as much when you are your own master. In fact, they tend to happen much more often, while at the same time, their effects can be far more upsetting.
There are very real drawbacks to running your own business, though for the right kind of person, immeasurable benefits also. A company has two ways of delivering value to clients: either the clients obtain just the accumulated wisdom and talents of the specific professionals who are servicing their work, or the clients can get this, ³plus´ all the relevant accumulated wisdom, experience, tools, methodologies of the rest of the firm. What does it mean for a company to have value above and beyond the talents of individual professionals? What can a firm do that will help a professional to be more successful than he or she would be at a halfway decent competitor? Maybe: - provide professionals with the benefit of shared skills and experiences within the practice group. - facilitate access to the skills of others in different disciplines. - establish procedures to produce well trained junior professionals. - achieve a high level of cross selling and access to clients of other professionals. - provide superior support staff and systems. - instill a system of supportive challenging, coaching to bring out the best in each professional - create an emotionally supportive friendly environment. - provide for diversification of personal risk. - establish a powerful brand name that makes marketing easier. Interesting but more and more in our concern the firm, the company has to be viewed in future. The strategic challenge for professional firms is not to forecast the future, but to ensure that the firm is effective at adapting to already observable market changes. Most professional firms are resistant to change. Old ways of doing business suffer from inertia and few firms are either willing or able to implement significant changes in the way they manage their affairs. Major trends are being identified and big schemes are announced as responding to them. But a professional firm is not completely at the mercy of unknowable fates. You can make things happen if you want to. Why plan in an unpredictable world? Because you can make sure that the way you run your affairs makes you more adaptable and adaptive. Through a combination of planning and reexamination of current management practices, firms can become better at listening to the environment and picking up its change signals early. They can also become better at ensuring that they have numerous experiments going on to test new ideas and approaches. Firms should be testing what the market will and will not respond to. They must avoid complacency, be adaptive by constantly asking:´ is there a better way to do what we do?´ Firms are very good at figuring out what they want their people to do differently. They are not so good at figuring out management systems to get them to do it. So, planning means managing in new and different ways. Many companies miss a central truth: if you haven¶t changed your measures and rewards, you haven¶t changed your strategy. A firm has to be better than the competition in the following ways: Aggressive listening to the market.- good tactics: focus groups, feedback survey, client panels, formal market research.. Using market intelligence: each practice is actively gathering market intelligence and is devising new things to do for clients. Raising the level of innovation- the management¶s job is to stimulate experiments and encourage innovation.
Sharing new knowledge- firms must become good at sharing the results of their experiments. Pressure for personal growth through professional performance counseling and practice leadership. Management behaviour- management must be perceived as leaders of a changed effort; stimulating new ideas, willingness to provide seed capital for those who wish to try new things. Measuring success not only by the volume of work performance but by the type of work it brings in.
What do you think about the following: 1. Visionary companies share a common subset of correct core values 2. Visionary companies require great charismatic visionary leaders. 3. The most successful companies exist first and foremost to maximize profits. Visionary companies are great places to work for everyone 4. Highly successful companies make their best moves by brilliant and complex strategic planning. 5. Companies should outside CEOs to stimulate fundamental change. 6. The most successful companies focus on beating competition. 7. The only constant is change. 8. Flexibility means drafting several possible scenarios for the future. 9. Companies employed bottom up planning.
Enlarge upon: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. The Firm of the Future is so Close to us! How Can You Manage Your Clients´ Projects? When does a Professional Company Merger Make Sense? What Should a Firm Be Tolerant about? How will the Adaptive Firm measure its success?
Dialogue
Mr. Norman General Manager of a large company is meeting Mr. Cleary a reporter who wants to be informed about the success of the B&Y Company. Mr.Cleary: Good morning Mr. Norman and thank you for the time you have allowed to me. Mr.Norman: It is my pleasure and I do not mind sparing some minutes with you!
Mr. Cleary: I would like to write a few lines about your company in the ³Capitalul´ magazine. Mr. Norman: Our business has increased and as you may be acquainted with, we have deemed it advisable to open more branches in the country. Mr.Cleary: What kind of investment would you care for? Mr. Norman: We deal with textiles. We enlarged our business by getting new partners and we expect higher dividends. The quality of our products has been maintained at a high level. So, wool prices are excellent and the revenue too. If we refer to the profit and loss account, an increase of more than 20% is to be taken into consideration. Mr.Cleary: How did you manage that? Mr. Norman: By working with a well trained team, by finding good partners, by having a stroke of luck, by keeping with the new market trends. Mr. Cleary: I do have some questions if you don¶t mind. Such as: - How quickly can one hope to climb the promotion ladder to partner level? - What are salaries based on as your career progresses? - How long do most people stay in your company? - How successful is the company? - Are you enthusiastic about the development of the company? - Do you spend money on staff training? - Where do you intend to expand the sales? - What persons do you work with? Mr. Norman: The best are being promoted to partners; unless you make partner by the age of 35, you will basically never make it. Salaries reflect the assessment of the employees. Over a ten year period, less than 40% of those hired are to be retained by the company. - The shareholders are content as the loss is small. - Yes, as far as the turnover has increased and we have subsidiaries all over the world. - There are full and part time courses, most of them being paid by our company. - In Eastern Europe. - Those experienced on the sales side, with first class technical knowledge, young, full of energy and new ideas; those who know what competition means.
Additional Vocabulary: chartered company- companie înfiin at pe baza unei Carte Regale joint stock c.- societate pe ac iuni unlimited c.- societate cu r spundere nelimitat limited c.- societate cu r spundere limitat parent c.- societate mam wholly owned c.- societate în propietate integral unincorporated c.- societate neînregistrat winding up of a c.- încetarea activit ii unei societ i greenfield c.- societate la început de drum bogus company- societate fictic
close c.- societate închis dormant c.- societate inactiv company funds ± capital al firmei company identity- imagine de marc to stay afloat- a se men ine pe linia de plutire shareholder-ac ionar shares- ac iuni, titluri de valoare preference shares- ac iuni privi egiate deferred shares- ac iuni cu plata dividendului dup satisfacerea celorlalte outstanding shares- ac iuni în circu a ie share capital- capital social, în ac iuni share market- burs de ac iuni share prices- curs share index- indice share split- divizare a ac iunilor to share the profit- a împ r i profitul to share one¶s views- a împ rt i p rerile cuiva to share one¶s experience- a împ rt i experien to assess-a evalua assessment- evaluare assessed- evaluat turnover- cifra de afaceri loss-pierdere, deficit to run at a loss- a lucra în pierdere loss ratio- rata pierderilor relocation- mutare core business- activitate de baz break up- lichidare liable- responsabil de
Answer the following: 1. Where do you encounter difficult people most? 2. How can you achieve a responsible and effective working relationship? 3. Are difficult people at work fixed in your life? 4. Do you find that life will become easier each time you deal with a difficult situation? 5. Who are the people at the top? 6. Is it still possible to bully people into doing what they want? 7. What kind of people are the negativists? 8. How important is body language? 9. Do teams need to celebrate success? 10. How can you win people¶s respect and your own peace of mind? 11. How important is the environment when you deal with difficult people? 12. How important is timing in tackling a situation? Action Points 1. Think of three things that you could do now to make you feel more confident about your ability to tackle the next difficult person or situation which comes along. 2. Make a list of all the people you have difficult working relationships with, then write one thing you like about them beside each name. Try at some point in future to complement them on that one thing- it will build bridges for the future. 3. Reflect on the last time you were criticized by a colleague. How would you handle that if the same thing happens again tomorrow? Are there lessons you have learnt? 4. Think of three people who have displayed difficult behavior in the last month. What did their difficult behavior have in common? 5. Have you ever seen anyone or been involved yourself in a bullying situation at work? What could you have done to help or done differently?
Advertising Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century. It may be described as a science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it. It stimulates debate and sometimes controversy. It has a powerful effect on the human consciousness as it is around us on television, radio, cinemas, newspapers and magazines. The way we dress, talk and behave sends a message to other people. It is about manipulating public opinion and getting a message across to an audience so that they will behave in a particular way. The advertising industry has been in existence since the end of the 17th century when newssheets carried printed advertisements for products and information. Merchants returning from voyages overseas needed to generate markets for the products they imported and so they had to advertise. By the end of the 19th century, advertising was big business. Advertisements dominated the newspapers, posters were commonplace and spawned a whole art form. But the new communication technology gave the industry its biggest boost. Modern advertising exploits every medium of communication. We tend to think of advertisements in terms of the mainstream media but we also have posters, billboards, point of sale displays, direct selling and cold calling by phone and fax, the internet which taps into worldwide audiences. If you work in advertising , you will for sure be part of an influential band of people who can change public attitudes and behaviour. The heart of this industry lies in the advertising agencies. The large ones are multinationals with in such far flung places as Beijing and Buenos Aires. If you work in a small agency, you may be expected to do everything, including account management, client liaison, concept development, creative work. In a larger one, job roles will be more structured. You will have a specific role and a greater chance of more formal career development. Advertising agencies vary in the services they offer. The most familiar names are full service agencies but there are also other companies that specialize in media services or focus on particular areas of advertising, such as recruitment or business to business advertising. Business need to advertise so that we should learn of the existence of different products. Advertising is aimed at conveying information to potential customers and clients. Advertising is used to persuade the public to buy. At the lowest level people need food, shelter, warmth and sex. Then, people begin to think about personal possessions and finally we move on to egocentricity. The ultimate need is for fulfillment. This would come when we have all that the advertisers say we so desperately need. For most of us it seems that that day will never come! Sometimes advertisements are misleading. Advertisers shouldn¶t make untrue statements about their products but they so often do it. They create a demand which would not otherwise exist. Advertising goes far beyond T.V. and hoardings, newspapers and magazines, they enrich our lives.
Answer the following questions: What are the arguments for and against modern advertising methods? Are there any controls which you think should be imposed on advertisers? Glamour and humour are two of the appeals which ads try to make for us. What other appeals do they make? In what other ways, apart from advertising are we persuaded to buy one product rather than another? How do national newspapers benefit from advertising? How can window dressing be seen as forms of advertising? Arguments for advertising It tells consumers about the products that are available, allowing them to make a wider choice. It encourages competition between firms. By creating a wider market for products it makes large scale production and sales possible. Media would be more expensive without it. Arguments against It is expensive. It can be wasteful, sometimes involving the same firm advertising virtually identical products against each other. (eg. washing powder ) It can be misleading. It can exert control over media. It can put pressure upon people to buy products that they don¶t really need or can¶t afford. Advertising media National newspapers Regional newspapers Consumer magazines Business and Professional Directories Press production costs Poster and Transport Cinema T.V, Radio * Banners on Internet sites Television commercials The most effective medium for reaching large numbers of people. They have to be brief. But: They cannot be very informative and display images rather than information. They are selective ± it is hard to reach a particular group of people except for certain programs. Radio -advertising is cheap and can be effective in reaching certain types of people: old people and housewives.
National press - it is expensive too but if has a large geographical selectivity and allows detailed information to be given. Magazines and trade press It is a way of reaching a specialized group of customers. There are magazines for almost any interest and for any type of product. Posters and hoardings -Effective if good locations can be found. Sales promotions -They include free gifts, competitions, give away samples, special offers. Sponsorship -Of the arts, public works, sport can be very effective in putting a product or company name before the public. Packaging and display -In shops; they maintain existing sales but also encourage first time buyers. Here are some advertisements. a. ³when you can¶t say good bye!´ b. ³from here to eternity´ c. ³you know the name. It¶s the face you may not recognize´ Enlarge on them. Make an advertisement for: a. a shampoo b. a drink c. a book d. a restaurant e. a sofa
Write some adverts that promise: you¶ll feel happier you¶ll enjoy life more you¶ll have a nice holiday you¶ll be rich you¶ll be famous Make an advert as the one below: Friendly, humourous boy 20, not very good looking but funny, seeks nice girl to go swimming, dancing, walking. Complete the following sentences using your own words: Advertising can help a business to ««««««« A good advertising agency will «««««««« Although newspapers and magazines «««««« One of the weaknesses of human beings is that ««
It is essential that the packing of a product should be ««« This is the information about a job advertisement: Asian Monetary Institute Computer Programmer in the Statistics Division The successful candidate will have A University degree in economics or statistics Work experience in banking and financial accounts Fluent English and Mandarin Applicants should send a C.V., a recent photo and references from previous employers to the Asian Monetary Institute P.O. Box 6707
Answer the following 1. What is Hello: a magazine or a newspaper? 2. Which country in the world spends the most on advertising: U.S.A or Japan? 3. Why is William Caxton famous: he produced the first printed advertisement in England or in U.S.A. ? 4. How did the earliest advertising take place? 5. Who invented paper? 6. How do we promote ourselves? 7. When did TV advertising come to Britain? 8. What is advertising industry entitled to do? 9. What is the difference between small and large advertising agencies? 10. What does modern advertising exploit? 11. What do advertising campaigns bring? 12. What is business to business advertising? 13. What does concept development refer to? 14. How important is timing in advertising? 15. Which are the advantages and disadvantages of advertisements on the internet? Make an advertisement for: 1. Your Town and the Surroundings. 2. A Museum 3. A Car. 4. A Hypermarket 5. A Magazine Enlarge upon the following: ³ More than a watch. A dream that has come true!´ ³ It is not just a broken vase. It is the silence you feel when your shoppings are being protected with the credit card.´ ³ They are the snapshots of a challenge, they are always with us!´
BUSINESS and BUSINESSES Business is a long term, highly repetitious activity, frequently requiring people to do the same thing today, tomorrow, the next day. Many of today¶s well known businesses were started by one or two people and the ownership of those businesses was very simple. It was during the 19th century that businesses wanted to expand and increase the number of owners. To do this they needed to sell shares. To encourage people to buy shares, governments around the world passed laws which gave people limited liability. During the 20th century many people bought shares in sucessful businesses for the following reasons: to have a share in the profit made by the business. the hope that a profitable business would attract more and more people to buy shares and this will make the price rise so that shares could be sold at a profit. The simplest form of business ownership is the sole trader. Here, one person owns the business, takes all the decisions and risks his own money. People enjoy to be self employed and they are happy to have complete control of their own business. But there is no one to share the responsibilities involved in decision making and raising finance is a problem. Sole traders finance their business through a bank loan and the bank will charge a high rate of interest. A bank will ensure that it can get the money back, if the loan is not repaid, by requiring security on the loan. Sole traders are liable for any debts they have, even if they are not the trader¶s fault. A trader may do a job for a larger business; it may be worth 20 000$ but it will not be paid until the job is complete. The sole trader must spend 9 000 $ on equipment, but when the job is complete the larger business closes down and the 20 000$ are not paid; still, the sole trader has to cover the 9 000 already spent as he has unlimited liability. Sometimes, a pair of a small group of people will get together to run a business. This is called a partnership. Partnerships face unlimited liability as sole traders do. Partners may put some money into the partnership in return for a share of the profits but take no part in the running of the partnership, do not work for it and have Äno say´ in any decisions.Under these circumstances, it is only the money that has been invested that is liable to be used in order to apy off any debts. This is a silent partner and he has only limited liability. The technical name for both private and public limited companies is joint stock company. It means that the stock in a company is owned jointly by several people. Some business activity is carried on by the government and this forms the public sector. Profit maximisation may not be the only aim of a busines; in public companies there is a separation of ownership and control, so that directors and managers may run a company in their own interests. Business is the production,buying, and selling of goods and services. A business, company or firm is an organization that sells goods or services. A business may be referred to formally as a concern. Then, it may be referred to approvingly as an enterprise in order to emphasize its adventurous, risk taking qualities and business in general may be referred to in the same way, in combinations such as free enterprise and private enterprise. A business requires tremendous effort to get it going and once going, it requires minimum effort to keep it going. The role of business is to stay in business, providing wages, goods and services into the community and meeting the profit needs of the business and the key stakeholders in the business. The source of funding and capital is considered to be the main
difference between the stakeholders and the shareholders. In the stakeholder model, funding is being supplied through bank loans. This means that they will ask for managerial consideration and response from those running the company. In the shareholder model, stockholders advance capital to managers who act as their agents in pre-authorized ways. Shareholdes buy shares to maximise the return on their investment; the responsibility of the manager in a firm is to engage in activities designed to increase the profits, that is to engage in open and free competition. To create shareholder wealth, the management needs to outperform the expectations shareholders had when they made their investment decisions. In the shareholder model of corporate governance, the focus is on institutional agents monitoring corporate agents in order to enhance the investment prospects of investors. In the stakeholder model, the premise is that a company is more likely to perform well and the shareholders are more likely to benefit, if opportunities are created for the various groups holding an interest in the company to enter into binding relationship. The emphasis in the stakeholder model is the way enterprises are governed while in shareholder model the emphasis is on the way enterprises are managed. The shareholder based entity is more responsive to changes in market conditions. Both approaches take account of the issues of board checks and balances, abuse of authority and power, the role of boards, director rewards and participation in setting standards for accounting, safety, employee relations and risk management. In today´s business world we have to take into consideration the two models. The shareholder model encourages a top down, command and control leadership approach whereas in the stakeholder model a team based, shared decision making, servant leadership approach is more likely. Stakeholder based governance refers to how the organization makes cost effective decisions in terms of wealth creation but with consideration of stakeholders¶ rights. Corporations have multiple responsibilities and need to balance competing conditions, such as long and short term notion of gain, profit and sustainability, cash and accounting concepts of value, democracy and authority, power and accountability. This model is more common in continental Europe and Japan. The micro approach to corporate governance refers to shareholders. This is concerned with maximizing wealth creation for shareholders. Control is linked here to profitability, an Anglo American model. Then business may be referred to as commerce, commercial distinguishing the business sphere from other areas such as government or arts or from non money making activities. Large companies are being referred to as corporations. Corporate is used to describe things relating to a corporation or to corporations. Large companies operationg in many countries are multinationals. Big business can refer to large business organizations or to any business activity that makes a lot of money. Small companies are referred to as small businesses or small firms. When a private company is bought by the state and brought into the public sector in a sell off, it is privatized. The first to be sold in a privatization programme are often the companies responsible for the public supply of electricity, water and gas: the utilities. If a company A owns shares or equity in company B, then A holds a stake, holding or shareholding in B. If A owns less than half the shares in B, then it has a minority stake in B. If A
owns more than half the shares in B, it has a majority stake or controlling stake in B. If you have shares in a company you are a shareholder. A holding or holding company is the one that holds stakes in one or more subsidiaries. If it owns all the shares in a subsidiary, then the subsidiary is a wholly owned one. A holding company´s relationship to its subsidiaries is that of parent company and the subsidiaries´ relationship to each other is that of sister companies. A holding and its subsidiaries form a group. A conglomerate is a group containing a lot of different companies in different businesses. Company A may be attempting to gain control of company B in a takeover bid, maybe by increasing its holding or stake in company B if it already owns shares in B. Company B makes or launches a bid against company A, the takeover target. If company B does not want to be taken ober, the bid is hostile. There are other ways of saying that one company is taking over another one and it means that the company is acquiring another or making an acquisition. In a leveraged buyout or LBO, a company is acquired by a group of investors, often financed by heavy borrowing. The debt is then paid out of the target company´s operating revenues or by selling its assets. The borrowing involved inLBOs is often high risk debt called junk bonds. LBOs financed by junk were frequent in the 1980s and after an absence following the excesses of that period, they are now coming up again. Two or more companies may decide to work together by setting up a joint venture or alliance in which each holds a stake. When two companies combine voluntarily, they merge in a merger. The social role of any business is linked to what we call as serving the future: sufficient profits to satisfy the business and the stakeholders meet today¶s profits needs. But as the expectations increase society has to invest in ideas and technology that expands the economic base and the wealth of the society. An essential requirement is that each and every business strives to achieve profits over and above immediate business needs and the stakeholders¶ needs. Without this Äsurplus profit´ there can be no venture capital. Without venture capital, economic growth will struggle to match population growth and the growth in social expectations. Any business requires true professionalism- the courage to care about people, clients, career. True professionalism means the pursuit of excellence. If you value something, then you must monitor your performance in that area, acept nothing less than excellence and actively work to learn what to do differently every time you fall short of excellence. Firms must provide help and counsel to those who are encountering difficulties in living uo to their standards, in order to help them get back on track. Once professionals have confirmed their core values, they need to design systems which provide consequences for noncompliance. By leaving each individual professional to decide for himself what level to achieve in key value areas, firms say that the company as a society has no standards that must be adhered to. Excellence in such areas become a matter of personal professional choice. Professionals must live by the slogan Ä you are allowed to fail, you are not allowed to give up trying.´ The oposite of the word professional is not unprofessional, but rather technician. These may be highly skilled, but they aren¶t professionals until they demonstrate characteristics such as:taking pride in their work, showing a personal commitment to quality, reaching out for responsibility,getting involved, looking for ways to make things easier for those they serve, listening to the needs of those they serve, being team players, honest, trustworthy, loyal, open to constructive critiques.
Professionalism is an attitude not a set of competences. A true professional is a technician who cares. And if finding people with technical skill is usually easy, finding people who are filled with energy, drive, enthusiasm personal commitment to excellence is hard. Because real professionalism has little to do with which business you are in, what role within that business you perform, how many degrees you have. It implies a pride in work, a commitment to quality, a dedication to the interests of the client, a sincere desire to help. Traditional definitions of professionalism are filled with references to status, educational attainments, noble calling. Now, we refer to attitude and character. So, firms should hire people for attitude and train for skill. Being a professional asks for treating people as professionals that is invest in them. Then professional success requires more than talent, it asks for initiative, involvement, enthusiasm, commitment.Being good at business development involves nothing more than a sincere interest in clients and their problems and a willingness to go out and spend the time being helpful to them. Success in business life means not only good professionalism but effective functioning of the firms, positive outlooks.
THE COMPANY A company is a very special form of business. It is owned by the shareholders but has a separate legal existence from the people who own it. The shareholders elect a board of directors to run the company on their behalf. If the company has 2- 50 shareholders it is a private one. The liability is limited to the money that the shareholders have used to buy shares. If the shares are traded on the stock exchange we have a public limited company. Members of the public can buy these shares by going through a stockbroker or bank. In business we must create for ourselves a set of attitudes and values that balance the conflicting factors, enabling us to act effectively with integrity, dignity, understanding. So we¶ll have better relationships with our partners and our life becomes richer. Emotional containment ensures then that the business values are not undermined by other values from our society, such as we perhaps learned early in life. We then have to know that there is no social health without economic wealth; the role of business is to stay in business, providing wages, goods and services into the community and meeting the profit needs of the business and the key stakeholders in the business. The business does not operate in a vacuum; there are competitors, there is a level of economic activity, there is rapidly changing technology. The visions we have for our businesses are what makes them and us really successful. Setting goals and objectives will help us achieve our vision. The key to success and happiness in life is to create a positive vision, to remain true to one¶s own spirit, to have the energy of challenge. But running a business is never easy. It¶s a ride through a range of hazards and difficulties but one thing is sure: life will rarely, if ever, be dull. If you do not enjoy running your business, you can¶t expect to do it well. Some ways to make a business successful are the following: 1. Ideas- bad or good- are important as the lifeblood of business and vital to its long term success. Ideas are vital to develop new or existing products or services or even to take the first step into a new business. 2. Choosing professional advisers is essential and they can make or break your business. 3. Finding and keeping clients must form an integral part of your planning if you want to grow your business. 4. Research your target companies does take time, but it¶s well spent. If knowledge is power, then researching a company can give you a much better understanding of what they do and help you to prepare a successful bid. 5. Brand your business and you¶ll be set apart and enable you to introduce a wider range of products and services more easily. 6. Team up with another business to enhance yours and be competitive on the market. 7. Consider a project based working which has many advantages for the employer and employee. This means working for just one or two employers at any time. 8. Be creative, have an open mind philosophy and a ³I can do´ attitude. Any business can benefit from using it creatively. 9. Focus on creating a win/win situation.
10. Use your time wisely, as it is not elastic and it will not magically expand to accommodate all we have to do. 11. Keep your employees happy and remember that a happy workforce is a productive one and will contribute to the performance and profits of your business. 12. Make powerful presentations by a good planning and preparation. Exhibitions can be invaluable marketing exercises for any business. 13. Event management is important: organizing gatherings, conferences, seminars, training courses. 14. Networking for success is a way to meet new people, exchange information and get new business. 15. Master the media and you may get rewards by being attentive to the interviews. 16. The success of a business will depend on how well you sell products and services. How do you persuade people to buy the product? The more work you put into planning and developing your sales strategy, the easier it will be to close and develop a loyal customer base. 17. Lasting customer relationships are very important as profitable business starts and ends with the customer. So it¶s worth giving them the attention they deserve. 18.Ensure that success will come from a website but be careful to a sound strategy. Ecommerce revolution is on its way and the staff has to be well trained in this respect. 19. Maintain a positive flow of money in your business by realistic forecasting which will only be of benefit if it is checked and reconciled on a regular basis. 20. Enter into partnership agreement and make sure that your partner can contribute to the business and will strengthen it. In business life time is important to be taken into consideration as it is our most precious resource. We have to maintain a balance, we have to give ourselves time and opportunity to do things right; we do not get a second chance with time, so we must do our best to make every minute purposeful and enjoyable. Then our goals are set as we want them to be and we can reward ourselves for gains. A business is a coordinated effort to achieve certain ends summarized in the profit and loss. Joining a business means embracing some part of that at least. The assumption is that everyone wants to be successful and for this within a company it is important to: * consolidate the aims of the team, the team spirit. * understand the team¶ effort to strive for achievements. * focus on creating a team climate. * understand the energy of challenge. * be aware on one¶s responsibility. Desire or will is the very essence of success. Without this intensity the actions of success have a hollowness, the hallmark of ³but I tried´. Successful business asks for good leadership and this is not some mystical act performed by the few and only able to be performed by them through some luck of upbringing or genetics that made them natural leaders. We can become better leaders than we are; to achieve this means that we need to do the right things at the right time more often than we usually do and we also need to examine ourselves. We also need to have a clear idea of what to do in order to gain the best possible result from others. The actions identified must be the appropriate actions in what is broadly called ´western society´(North America, U.K., Europe, Australia, New Zealand).
Leadership is to be taken into account whenever we have in view any business; there are some steps to be followed: 1. The agreement to success for every team member. Everyone wants to be successful as far as goals are clear and business processes are far from being clumsy. Everyone has positive and negative thoughts in their minds most of the time. We know how easy it is for the negative thoughts: the company is not good, the boss is bad«We represent the positive assertively in our mind- ³work is rewarding´. But we select our thoughts and they influence us. If a person has negative thoughts about the job and the company, work performance is suffering. The negative impact can make the team output less than it should otherwise be. But we are responsible for our own thoughts, so what a manager can do is to point out the consequences. It is clear that when the team becomes focused, gets people organized, celebrates success, then bad attitudes disappear. Defining success entails the idea of challenge which energizes people. The team leaders and managers must live as exemplary models of how they expect others in their team to act. Each management team member is expected to be an ³ inspiring player.´ The team effort has to be understood properly. The team spirit must be a consequence of doing other things well. Coordinating the effort is to be achieved by the profit profile with each team member being accountable for some number on the profile and this will define success for a team. People have seen now the standards required. Identifying the behaviours of success. As the goals have been agreed, the steps to be followed are to make clear what actions were most likely to bring about the goals. In the goal-action principle, the idea of action becomes clear now, we have those behaviours that will best fulfill the goal, derived from the goal and belonging to it. It is important to find the balance between two things in conflict as a crucial act of insight and creativity for the manager and the team. If the issue is finding sales tactics, then the problem is one of creativity for the team to brainstorm possible tactics and then select one or several that best achieves the balance of the required result. Provide monitoring and feedback on progress and performance. The main concern among the teams was to provide useful guidance on what should be changed to improve the results. Better reports were being sought, better information. Celebrate success, large and small. Teams celebrate success as people have risen to the challenge. Team results were evident. The progressive build up of life satisfaction was something that occurred beneath the daily flux and it should increase each year. It was seen as related to goals and work had the potential to be a major component. Teams will remain the core of the business. Before demanding better performance one have to be sure that this can be achieved. So, for every goal there are tasks that must be acted out if the goal is to be achieved. Everyone succeeds if the team succeeds. It is important to recognize individual performance, but from within the framework of the team. A management team should be a team, not a collection of individuals with personal accountability. This means that every team member understands that they can win only if the team wins and the team wins by achieving the targeted operating profit. Within that, each person has his or her role and tasks within this role. If people can fully perform their own jobs and have
the mental, emotional and physical energy to assist others, and if the others accept and appreciate the assistance, then those people should be encouraged and celebrated within the team. A management team operates within the framework and policy prescribed by the strategic plan and is accountable for creating sales revenue and converting it into operating profit. To develop a manager means to develop the person. That is, to improve business management or business leadership is not merely an act of adding some skills or some knowledge to the person; knowledge alone is not power; only if it is backed by the ability and willingness of how, the judgement of when to use that knowledge is power. Intellectual honesty is an important quality that must be taken into consideration. That means being truthful with yourself and not only. We have wishes and dreams, sensitivities about ourselves; so often we do not want to think poorly of ourselves; it is easier and more comfortable to find reasons beyond us for the unfortunate things that happen or for results that should have been . Such emotional forces can and do push us to think in certain ways. Then, intellectual honesty comes to help us: a process of conceiving the factors accurately as a scientist might, without the comfort of the excuses. It allows us to avoid giving up too early and this is one of the hallmarks of all champions. There are some situations we meet within a company There are all kinds of reasons for wanting to be your own boss. Some people like the idea of there being no one in authority over them, telling them what to do, saying their work is not up to standard, turning down their ideas, or insisting on methods that seem pointless. Others are attracted by the thought of deciding their own hours, or days, of work. Running your own business gives you the status of being self-employed, perhaps also of being a company director. There is the general feeling of independence, and that your income - and perhaps even your way of life - is in your own hands. Some are attracted to the idea of starting a small enterprise and making it grow, much as a gardener tends his plot and makes a number of plants come to maturity, each in turn creating further growth. If you are your own boss, say some people, work is so much more pleasant. You can get someone else to do the less interesting jobs and you are not bogged down in annoying details. Work becomes easier, too, because you can get someone else to do the more difficult tasks. Many others want to set up a little business of their own to occupy their spare time, and as a pleasant way of earning extra money from work they like doing. These are just a few of the reasons commonly given. Some have good sense behind them; others are based on completely false ideas. Most contain some element of truth which gets magnified out of all proportion, and seized upon without it being borne in mind that there are other points to consider as well. As with so much else in life, running an enterprise of your own entails disadvantages as well as advantages. It is surprising how rarely people stop to consider in real detail just what the drawbacks are, yet this is an essential first step for anyone thinking about whether it is even practicable for him to be his own boss. An important reason why there is such glamour about being in charge of your own business is that when you are working for someone else, many of the petty irritations of life, as well as the chore of often having to get down to work that you do not feel like doing at that particular time, become associated with being an employee. There is a feeling that, if only you were your own boss, life would immediately become infinitely pleasurable and free from irksome detail. This is almost entirely misleading. Many of the little annoyances probably have nothing to do with being an employee: being interrupted when you have at last immersed yourself in some disagreeable task, missing the bus when you are in a hurry, feeling tired or in other ways not really up to working hard at the moment, and so on. These occur just as much when you are your own master. In fact, they tend to happen much more often, while at the same time, their effects can be far more upsetting.
There are very real drawbacks to running your own business, though for the right kind of person, immeasurable benefits also. A company has two ways of delivering value to clients: either the clients obtain just the accumulated wisdom and talents of the specific professionals who are servicing their work, or the clients can get this, ³plus´ all the relevant accumulated wisdom, experience, tools, methodologies of the rest of the firm. What does it mean for a company to have value above and beyond the talents of individual professionals? What can a firm do that will help a professional to be more successful than he or she would be at a halfway decent competitor? Maybe: - provide professionals with the benefit of shared skills and experiences within the practice group. - facilitate access to the skills of others in different disciplines. - establish procedures to produce well trained junior professionals. - achieve a high level of cross selling and access to clients of other professionals. - provide superior support staff and systems. - instill a system of supportive challenging, coaching to bring out the best in each professional - create an emotionally supportive friendly environment. - provide for diversification of personal risk. - establish a powerful brand name that makes marketing easier. Interesting but more and more in our concern the firm, the company has to be viewed in future. The strategic challenge for professional firms is not to forecast the future, but to ensure that the firm is effective at adapting to already observable market changes. Most professional firms are resistant to change. Old ways of doing business suffer from inertia and few firms are either willing or able to implement significant changes in the way they manage their affairs. Major trends are being identified and big schemes are announced as responding to them. But a professional firm is not completely at the mercy of unknowable fates. You can make things happen if you want to. Why plan in an unpredictable world? Because you can make sure that the way you run your affairs makes you more adaptable and adaptive. Through a combination of planning and reexamination of current management practices, firms can become better at listening to the environment and picking up its change signals early. They can also become better at ensuring that they have numerous experiments going on to test new ideas and approaches. Firms should be testing what the market will and will not respond to. They must avoid complacency, be adaptive by constantly asking:´ is there a better way to do what we do?´ Firms are very good at figuring out what they want their people to do differently. They are not so good at figuring out management systems to get them to do it. So, planning means managing in new and different ways. Many companies miss a central truth: if you haven¶t changed your measures and rewards, you haven¶t changed your strategy. A firm has to be better than the competition in the following ways: Aggressive listening to the market.- good tactics: focus groups, feedback survey, client panels, formal market research.. Using market intelligence: each practice is actively gathering market intelligence and is devising new things to do for clients. Raising the level of innovation- the management¶s job is to stimulate experiments and encourage innovation.
Sharing new knowledge- firms must become good at sharing the results of their experiments. Pressure for personal growth through professional performance counseling and practice leadership. Management behaviour- management must be perceived as leaders of a changed effort; stimulating new ideas, willingness to provide seed capital for those who wish to try new things. Measuring success not only by the volume of work performance but by the type of work it brings in.
What do you think about the following: 1. Visionary companies share a common subset of correct core values 2. Visionary companies require great charismatic visionary leaders. 3. The most successful companies exist first and foremost to maximize profits. Visionary companies are great places to work for everyone 4. Highly successful companies make their best moves by brilliant and complex strategic planning. 5. Companies should outside CEOs to stimulate fundamental change. 6. The most successful companies focus on beating competition. 7. The only constant is change. 8. Flexibility means drafting several possible scenarios for the future. 9. Companies employed bottom up planning.
Enlarge upon: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. The Firm of the Future is so Close to us! How Can You Manage Your Clients´ Projects? When does a Professional Company Merger Make Sense? What Should a Firm Be Tolerant about? How will the Adaptive Firm measure its success?
Dialogue
Mr. Norman General Manager of a large company is meeting Mr. Cleary a reporter who wants to be informed about the success of the B&Y Company. Mr.Cleary: Good morning Mr. Norman and thank you for the time you have allowed to me. Mr.Norman: It is my pleasure and I do not mind sparing some minutes with you!
Mr. Cleary: I would like to write a few lines about your company in the ³Capitalul´ magazine. Mr. Norman: Our business has increased and as you may be acquainted with, we have deemed it advisable to open more branches in the country. Mr.Cleary: What kind of investment would you care for? Mr. Norman: We deal with textiles. We enlarged our business by getting new partners and we expect higher dividends. The quality of our products has been maintained at a high level. So, wool prices are excellent and the revenue too. If we refer to the profit and loss account, an increase of more than 20% is to be taken into consideration. Mr.Cleary: How did you manage that? Mr. Norman: By working with a well trained team, by finding good partners, by having a stroke of luck, by keeping with the new market trends. Mr. Cleary: I do have some questions if you don¶t mind. Such as: - How quickly can one hope to climb the promotion ladder to partner level? - What are salaries based on as your career progresses? - How long do most people stay in your company? - How successful is the company? - Are you enthusiastic about the development of the company? - Do you spend money on staff training? - Where do you intend to expand the sales? - What persons do you work with? Mr. Norman: The best are being promoted to partners; unless you make partner by the age of 35, you will basically never make it. Salaries reflect the assessment of the employees. Over a ten year period, less than 40% of those hired are to be retained by the company. - The shareholders are content as the loss is small. - Yes, as far as the turnover has increased and we have subsidiaries all over the world. - There are full and part time courses, most of them being paid by our company. - In Eastern Europe. - Those experienced on the sales side, with first class technical knowledge, young, full of energy and new ideas; those who know what competition means.
Additional Vocabulary: chartered company- companie înfiin at pe baza unei Carte Regale joint stock c.- societate pe ac iuni unlimited c.- societate cu r spundere nelimitat limited c.- societate cu r spundere limitat parent c.- societate mam wholly owned c.- societate în propietate integral unincorporated c.- societate neînregistrat winding up of a c.- încetarea activit ii unei societ i greenfield c.- societate la început de drum bogus company- societate fictic
close c.- societate închis dormant c.- societate inactiv company funds ± capital al firmei company identity- imagine de marc to stay afloat- a se men ine pe linia de plutire shareholder-ac ionar shares- ac iuni, titluri de valoare preference shares- ac iuni privi egiate deferred shares- ac iuni cu plata dividendului dup satisfacerea celorlalte outstanding shares- ac iuni în circu a ie share capital- capital social, în ac iuni share market- burs de ac iuni share prices- curs share index- indice share split- divizare a ac iunilor to share the profit- a împ r i profitul to share one¶s views- a împ rt i p rerile cuiva to share one¶s experience- a împ rt i experien to assess-a evalua assessment- evaluare assessed- evaluat turnover- cifra de afaceri loss-pierdere, deficit to run at a loss- a lucra în pierdere loss ratio- rata pierderilor relocation- mutare core business- activitate de baz break up- lichidare liable- responsabil de
