How To Make Easy Money From Home On Your Own Time

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How to Audit Your Business Strategy

Why conduct a business strategy audit?

Nearly all the major initiatives undertaken by corporate executives today are called “strategic”. With everything having high strategic importance, it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between the many priorities and imperatives that are initiated in organisations. When everything is clearly strategic, often nothing strategic is clear. When everything is designated as a high priority, there are, in reality, no priorities at all.

However, when the overall strategic direction is clearly understood by everyone in your organisation, the following benefits occur:

organisational capabilities will be aligned to support the achievement of your strategy
resources will be allocated to different business processes in priority order – according to the importance of that process and its contribution to competitive advantage
your company or organisation can excel in the market place or in its business/commercial sector.
The purpose of a strategy audit is to arm managers with the tools, information, and commitment to evaluate the degree of advantage and focus provided by their current strategies. An audit produces the data needed to determine whether a change in strategy is necessary and exactly what changes should be made.

Defining a Strategy Audit

A strategy audit involves assessing the actual direction of a business and comparing that course to the direction required to succeed in a changing environment. A company’s actual direction is the sum of what it does and does not do, how well the organisation is internally aligned to support the strategy, and how viable the strategy is when compared to external market, competitor and financial realities. These two categories, the internal assessment and the external or environmental assessment, make up the major elements of a strategy audit.

The outline that follows is derived from The Business Strategy Audit (see References). It’s intended to give you a clear idea of how to set about conducting a self-assessment audit in your own organisation, without the need for any additional training or external consultancy support. But note that this outline does not include the range of Questionnaires and Checklists and the detailed guidance to be found in the full, 124-page Audit.

Part 1 ~ The External Environmental Assessment

A conventional corporate mission is to provide distinct products and services to customers at a value superior to that offered by competitors. Without a strategy, valuable resources will be diluted, the work of employees will be unfocused, and distinctiveness will not be achieved. The external environment assessment provides any business with a critical external link between its competitors, customers, and the products/services it offers.

The fundamental reason for examining an organisation’s environment in the process of clarifying strategy can be summarised thus:

Ensure that the company is meeting the needs evident in the environment
Prevent others from meeting those needs in a better way
Create or identify ways to meet future or emerging needs.
The success or failure of a company often depends on its ability to monitor changes in the environment and meet the needs of its customers and prospective customers.

An organisation’s business environment is never static. What is viewed as uniqueness or distinctiveness today will be viewed as commonplace tomorrow as new competitors enter the industry or change the environment by modifying the rules by which companies compete. Consequently, an effective strategy will do more than help a company to stay in the game. It will help it to establish new rules for the game that favour that company. Successful companies do more than simply understand their environments. They also influence and shape the circumstances around them. Companies that fail to influence their environments automatically concede the opportunity to do so to their competitors.

Steps in conducting an environmental assessment:

Step 1: Understand the external environment at a macro level

The first step in the environmental assessment is to develop a basic understanding of the trends and issues that will significantly change, influence, and affect the industry. The overall industry understanding comes from looking at the elements that influence the environment.
These elements include:

Capital markets
Industry capacity
Technological factors
Pressure from substitutes
Threat of new entrants
Economic factors
Political factors
Regulatory factors
Geographic factors
Social factors
A useful framework to understand these issues comes from answering the following questions. They should be posed directly when used in an interview, and indirectly when analysing data:

What is the long-term viability of the industry as a whole, and how do capital markets react to new developments?
What trends could change the rules of the game?
Who are the industry leaders? What are they doing? Why?
What are the key success factors in the industry?
What developments could allow a company to change the rules of the game?
Five years from now, how will winners in the industry look and act?
What is the reward (and/or cost) of being a winner/loser within the industry?
Where has the industry come from?
Step 2: Understand the industry/sector components in detail
Industry/sector components are normally broken down as follows: competitors, customers and stakeholders. Questions that should normally be asked of each key competitor include:

BUSINESS REVIEW

Strategy Issues:

What is the strategy of each competitor? Where do they appear to be heading?
What is their business emphasis?
Do they compete on quality, cost, speed or service?
Are they niche or global players?
Capabilities:
What do they do better than anyone else?
Where are they weaker than others?
Where are they the same as others?
Business Objectives:
Who are their primary customers?
What types of business do they not do or say no to?
Who are their major partners? Why are they partnering? What do they gain from it?
What are they doing that is new or interesting?
FINANCIAL REVIEW

Financial Strength – Internal:

How much cash does each competitor generate annually?
What are the drivers behind their financial success (from a cash perspective)?
How do they allocate resources (funds)?
How fast are they growing and in what areas?
Strength as Perceived by Capital Markets:
Are competitors resource constrained or do they have strong financial backing?
Is this perception consistent with the internal analysis? Why or why not?
How has the company performed in the financial markets? Why?
What constraints/opportunities do they have with respect to financial markets? Why?
ORGANISATION REVIEW

Top Management:

Has management kept the company at the forefront of the industry? Why or why not?
Are the key players seen to be moving the company forward?
Organisation:
Is the company centralised or decentralised?
Does the corporate parent act as a holding company or as an active manager?
Is the organisation perceived as being lean and able to get things done?
People:
How many people are employed? Is the company over-or under-staffed?
Are people managed to achieve mainly business objectives, human objectives or some of both? How does this affect the company?
What skills are emphasised during recruitment?
Culture:
Is the culture results-oriented?
Bureaucratic?
Flexible?
Similar lists of questions should be developed for customers and stakeholders (or see the full Audit for ready-made questionnaires).

Step 3: Integrate the components into an environmental picture

Once the findings of the stakeholder analysis, customer analysis and competitor analysis (above) have been collected, audit team members should step back and integrate the data. Integrating the different components will help the team to understand the overall environment in which the business operates.

This integration should take place at two levels: assessing where the industry is heading and the likely impact of that direction on the company, and combining the organisational assessment with the environmental assessment.

The Business Strategy Audit offers a detailed framework for analysing this data. In brief, it should highlight significant changes in the environment, and the impact of those changes on the company’s competitive position within the industry. It should address the fundamental question of how the company can influence its environment in the future, and what the business will need to look like if it is to thrive in the future.

In addition, the analysis should highlight the requirements and capabilities that are needed within the company to meet external demands. These requirements and needs should then be matched up with the current capabilities outlined in the organisation assessment. This will enable the team to determine the overall alignment of the company’s strategy to its environment.

Part 2 ~ The Organisational Assessment

Once the company’s environment has been examined and analyzed, managers should consider the qualities and characteristics of the organisation itself that influence what can be accomplished in terms of strategy. This section is about organisational assessment. The steps shown here will provide insights into the effectiveness of the company’s current strategy, and provide guidelines for increasing strategic effectiveness.

Strategy Clarification. Strategy clarification helps the leadership team determine what business they are in, the direction of the business, and framework or criteria for making strategic decisions in the future. If people at any level of a business are unclear about any of these three areas, it is difficult for them to focus their attention, cooperate with other teams, and organise their efforts to gain competitive advantage in the marketplace.
Viability and Robustness. Measuring viability and robustness helps a leadership team test strategies and ideas against future world scenarios to determine whether the strategies can be achieved and sustained. By looking at both market and financial viability and robustness in different scenarios, a management team can see what will create advantage in the future and what key measures need to be implemented to monitor changes in business conditions.
Business Processes. The term business process refers to the overall work flow within a company and includes elements such as product design, manufacturing, and delivery. A good process analysis will help a leadership team to see what must be done given the company’s strategy, and how those processes can be improved.
Capabilities. Capabilities are bundles of separate skills required to deliver the products or services that give a business competitive advantage. There are two parts of a capability assessment. First, the capabilities needed to execute the strategy must be determined. Second, the current level of ability in terms of those capabilities must be assessed. Without knowing what capabilities should be focused on and improved, competitive advantage will be difficult to achieve.
Organisation Design and Resourcing. This part of the analysis looks at alignment issues between the environment, the strategy, the skills required to achieve that strategy, and the organisation structure. During this step, a management team can design an organisation that aligns systems in a way that will allow them to execute a strategy. Unless the systems within a business are aligned to improve effectiveness or efficiency, strategy statements are merely plaques on the wall that are seldom realised.
Culture. Culture refers to the set of shared values that influence behaviour and direction over time. The style of management and the beliefs and assumptions commonly held by people in the organisation must be determined in order to ensure alignment and execution of the strategy.
Having completed each of these assessments, they must be integrated by the audit team. In this process, audit team members should attempt to answer one fundamental question: Is our strategy in alignment with the external environment?

To answer this broad question, the following issues should be addressed:

Do our capabilities match our customer requirements?
Do we offer something required by our customers that is better than the offerings of our competitors?
How are customer demands changing?
How are competitors changing?
How are our internal capabilities evolving to keep pace with those changes?
Depending on the answers to these questions, the team can implement the changes dictated by the audit. In making these changes, three issues should be considered:

Structure follows strategy – This means that current organisational boundaries and structures should not be allowed to determine the selection of a competitive strategy. Rather, the environmental and organisational assessments that you have just conducted should determine and drive strategy selection.

Plans for change must be widely owned – Those people ultimately responsible for implementing strategy (typically front-line employees) should be consulted for their ideas about what changes should be made and how they should be made. Otherwise, very little change is likely to happen.

Implementation should start with what is core to gaining advantage – In other words, start with core business processes, ‘pick the low hanging fruit’ first, make those changes that will make the most visible difference.

In addition, it may be useful to know that the following are the most common mistakes made by teams conducting business strategy audits:

Expecting all data to be equally useful
Do nothing with the audit findings
Failing to link other support systems (rewards, administration, etc.) to strategy
Not thinking strategically about what processes and capabilities to keep in-house and what to outsource
Failing to prioritise those core processes that must be world-class
Failing to match internal capabilities with customer requirements
Failing to communicate audit findings and strategy changes to people throughout the organisation is a clear and simple language.

Appointments – Lessons Learned Early in My Career

Often times we look back at our careers and we start seeing things we could have done better, habits that we could have developed that would have given us a better output and winning outcomes. One of the things I have learned over the years is that time management on its own is a myth. What works is life management and when that is in place you will develop principles that will determine what you do; when you do it: and how well you will do it. One of these principles I now embrace as a result of this insight is that making appointments and demanding that others do the same when dealing with you will make you more productive. I did not arrive at this place in one day. It was a gradual journey.

One of the disadvantages I had early in my career was having an office in the Harare Central Business District in Zimbabwe where I come from. While it was a convenient location for business, it was also tempting and convenient for anyone who wanted to drop in and say “hi” during business hours. I soon realized that I was also guilty of dropping in on friends for social visits at their workplace too because, at the time, I didn’t feel there was anything wrong with it. This practice was disruptive to work as there are only eight hours to work in a day. Equally, I used to receive personal phone calls and also make personal calls on the work landline speaking endlessly to friends about anything and everything. This was before the wide usage of cellphones came into being. The alternative was the now antiquated phone booth. Blame it on youth, ignorance, whatever, it was just unacceptable to entertain social in-person calls or phone calls at work. Something had to give as I was falling behind on important deadlines and work tasks. It was at that point that I decided to keep socializing outside working hours.

Lessons learned from this experience:

1. Developing life principles will determine your time management principles. It helps you with what you should prioritize at any given time.
2. There must be a clear separation between home and work. Keep your social life separate from your work life especially during your work shift.
3. Even now with cellphones in widespread use, discipline yourself to make private calls during scheduled breaks only.
4. Treat others the way you expect to be treated. If you find it inconvenient to have friends visiting you at work, chances are they also find it distracting when you do it but they may not have the guts to tell you.

The other challenging experience finding myself in many meetings at work and I was lagging behind on my high-payoff activities which my actual performance was measured on. You may agree with me that sometimes the meetings at work do not end. One must decide which meetings to prioritize. The performance review at the end of the year does not focus on all these things but the “key deliverables”. I am sure many of us identify with this. I attended a personal development seminar where we were taught that we should spend at least 80% of our working time focussing on high pay-off activities, that is, those activities that bring the results that we are aiming for in the place of employment. The other 20% would account for menial, less important but necessary activities. disciplined time

Lessons learned from this experience:

1. There are meetings at work that add value to what you do and there are others that would be nice to attend but don’t contribute much to your output. Discern which ones are absolutely necessary to attend.
2. Always keep a diary. This helps you prioritize. You cannot rely on your memory and it is true that what gets written down gets done.
3. Do an audit of how much time you are spending in meetings and ask yourself how many of these are contributing directly to your “key deliverables”.
4. I learned to say “no” to meetings I had not agreed to in advance. This helped free up a lot of time.
5. How we handle and plan for meetings affects productivity whether one realizes it or not.

What does this have to do with the importance of making appointments and keeping them? I would say everything. Making and keeping appointments is an important factor in any business, career, or even personal things we need to do. We spend more time in meetings than we realize. It is even more important in times like these when we work from home and we have to self-supervise and self-manage. These skills do not come naturally but can be learned. I hope I have helped in some way to put you on a path that will make you more organized and effective.

Fitzgerald Mujuru, a fusion of Business Consultant, Marketing Strategist, Sales Zealot, Speaker, Effectiveness Coach, and brand builder, with over twenty years in marketing and sales for globally known brands. He has vast commercial experience at management level in various sectors. His strengths include marketing, brand building, sales, business development, business strategy, management, and equipping leaders and teams with strategies for personal and team effectiveness. He has handled various consultancy assignments for companies in professional services, media, communications, training and development, non-profit organizations. He has released 4 books and published more than 200 articles online.

7 Productivity Hacks to Grow Your Business Fast

As an entrepreneur, you juggle many tasks at once. So, productivity is crucial. However, you may not realize how minor changes can improve your workflow efficiency significantly.

Successful business owners have their own trusted productivity hacks. Here are 7 top ones to grow your business fast.

1. Focus or Fail

As a business owner, you need to have laser focus to be productive and successful. It’s not just about what you’ll focus on, but it’s also about what you’ll do despite the distractions. It’s all about focus, focus, and focus!

2. Time Management

The driving force of productivity and success is how you manage your time. This is the raw material for businesses. With many pieces every day, a business owner must focus on what’s urgent and important.

3. Innovation

Risk taking, bootstrapping and innovation are the hallmarks of businesses. However, some crucial management aspects like productivity, profits, and systems are overlooked by many business owners in the quest for success.

Sometimes business owners ignore productivity, citing the need for innovation. But in a resource-starved business world, higher productivity translates to better use of limited resources. So, innovation and productivity can go hand in hand if they’re incorporated in the company structure in a non-confrontational way.

4. Delegate, Delegate, Delegate

When growing a business, it’s common for most business owners to multitask. But this hampers their productivity because they end up doing many tasks which they can delegate. Raising funds can deter someone from focusing on their core operating areas.

To improve your productivity and grow your business, learn to delegate tasks to your employees as per their abilities and skills. Delegating is not running away from your responsibilities. Rather, it helps to get more things done in less time – improving your productivity and success.

5. Bundle Tasks Together

Rather than jumping from one task to another, group similar tasks together. For instance, schedule all calls for specific times, and do all admin tasks together. Doing this will help you save time and it’ll reduce the mental energy it takes to switch from one thing to another. As a result, you’ll do every task faster and more efficiently, which will improve your productivity.

6. Find Your Golden Hours

Some people are more productive in the morning. Others are more productive at night. Stop worrying about managing your time of input and focus more on managing your energy. Take on daunting tasks during your personal “golden hours.” Doing this will improve your productivity and you’ll be able to grow your business fast.

7. Use Apps to Boost Productivity

There are many apps that can help a business owner save time. They have templates that cut down repetitive work. It’s good to explore some of these apps and also use time-tracking apps to know how you spend most of your time.

Movie Industry Asks Grandpa for $600,000 for Four Movies

A 67-year-old man was sued by the movie industry for his 12 year old grandson’s movie downloads. Apparently, the kid downloaded four movies – three of which they already owned. For this, the movie industry asked for a settlement of four thousand dollars. When the man refused, mainly because he didn’t have four grand, they then sued for $600,000 to make an example of the poor old guy. Personally, I think it is an outrage that legal technicalities would be placed above human beings. Hollywood is always big on raising taxes to support the poor, but download their movies and they’ll take grandpa and grandson out. I know they don’t want people watching their movies for free, I get that, but hopefully reason will prevail in this case and grandpa will be let off the hook. If not, Hollywood has just taken up tactics reminiscent of the Nazi Gestapo.It has been reported that illegal downloading costs the movie industry an estimated $5.4 billion a year, but I don’t see how. The quality that I’ve seen in the past on movies that my friends downloaded is so bad I really don’t see the point. I have spent a lot of money to have a big screen high definition television set. Why would I download a blurry movie? I mean if you are going to spend the money for a fancy TV, it’s a pretty big waste not to have the store bought high quality DVD of your favorite movie. Most downloaded movies are caught by a camcorder in theatres. So you have to imagine the guy doing the recording is wavering back and forth the whole time. You also have to deal with noises from the audience. If you ask, me it’s too nerve wracking to even sit through that.As much as I empathize with Hollywood on protecting their turf, attacking their potential customers is not the way to go. Producing great products is the most logical course. Hollywood’s movie box office slump this year is not caused by a bunch of 12 year olds downloading movies on the net. DVD sales, after all, are still very high. People want to watch movies on their big screen TV at home at their leisure. Besides, you pay the same amount to take your family to the movies as you do to buy a DVD you can watch over and over again. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Either you sell a product to your audience in the theatres or for their home use. The movie industry can’t expect to have people paying to see all their movies at the theatre and turn around and buy the DVD too, unless the movie they are selling is of superior quality like a “Passion of the Christ”, “Batman Begins”, “Star Wars”, etc. An increasing number of people are not going to rush to the theatre to get the same experience they can get at home.

Home Based Business Success is Within Your Reach

Are you tired of your office job? Ready for the chance to be your own boss? Or perhaps you want to find a way to work from home so you can spend more time with your family. Home-based businesses are the way to go. More and more people are discovering the freedom, enjoyment and monetary rewards of working from home.However, it can be tricky to determine which home based business opportunities are legitimate as well as which industries are right for your skill set and interests. It can be overwhelming to sift through information online to find what you are seeking. Whether your objective is to track down a list of home based businesses or you just want to learn how to make your dream business a reality, it makes sense to consider a few important things before you embark on your home business journey.As with any business opportunity, there are people out there who prey on individuals who want to start their own businesses. Some of these not-so-truthful companies or people will make promises of big money without the work, or ask for large sums of money to help you start your business.The truth is while no work big pay is an attractive thought, it is just not reality. These are red flag situations to avoid, or at least should lead you to research the business thoroughly prior to handing over your hard-earned money.The Better Business Bureau Online (bbbonline.org) provides information helping you to find out if a particular company has received complaints. The online site also offers a list of home based businesses meeting BBB Online standards, so you can hop on the site and determine which businesses are worthy of your trust.Searching online can also help you to determine what particular industry is right for your home business. You can learn more about the business that are working for other people like you as well as which businesses utilize the skills and knowledge you possess. A simple online search can reveal top home business ideas or the most popular or lucrative home businesses. Such research makes it easier to identify legitimate work at home opportunities.You may find that you need support and guidance once you have narrowed down your search to a particular business industry. Seek out online communities, message boards, and forum groups to join. These are places online where people with similar business interests and goals come together to network and learn from each other. Here, you’ll find people who are in the same boat as you, as well as professionals and even experts who know the ropes and can offer you valuable advice.Another important are to research involves affiliate opportunities and marketing programs, which can help you to make the most of your business efforts and increase your chances for making money. The existing opportunities are seemingly endless. In order to avoid becoming a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none, start small. Identify a couple of opportunities and give your focus and time to them. Soon you will begin to feel comfortable and reap the rewards, and then you can move on to try different opportunities to build your business.Above all else, remember to stick with it and don’t give up. It may sound cliché, but you really can learn valuable lessons from your failures, and even some of the most well-known success stories began with a person who was at the bottom of the pack and rose to greatness. Continue to educate yourself through online tools and sites related to your niche, and stay connected with online communities. In these ways, you can find the support you need to remain encouraged and reaching for your goals.