Arnold Schwarzenegger provides his 6 secrets to success LISTEN UP.
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Category: Business
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Short the market, but long on you
THE market may be down, but not you. Be bullish about the future. Invest in yourself. And stay hungry. Your stock will rise.
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The Transmutability of Desire
Desire can change from one object to another YOU are most likely familiar with the marketing adage, “Sex sells”. The concept is a fairly simple one. Sex is a topic of interest because humans have a biological and instinctive desire to reproduce. This hard-wired desire is exploited by marketers to attract people’s attention and, at […]
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Do One Thing Every Day That Scares You
Sometimes all you need is a little nudge ARE you holding off on pursuing a new initiative because you’re in your comfort zone? Do you have a friend whose potential is obvious but they spend all of their time talking big, partying and generally goofing around? Sometimes all you need is the smallest nudge to […]
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Here’s to the Crazy Ones
Steve Jobs narrates the first “Think Different” Apple commercial “Here’s to the Crazy Ones”. It never aired.
Too soon? WHEN someone dies it is cruel to make jokes at their expense immediately thereafter. However, not just any crackpot loony has the ability to single handedly plunge an entire nation into abject poverty. Well done Kim! Kim Jong Il, who passed away today (in case you missed the memo) will be fondly remembered along with other […]
MICHAEL Porter is the thought leader in the field of business strategy. He has single-handedly shaped the way in which the world’s top business leaders think about competitive strategy and success. And his concepts like “competitive advantage”, “value chain” and “five forces” form the bedrock for management thinking about complex business issues. Unfortunately, his frameworks are often bastardised, misused and […]
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Are you creating remarkable products?
REMARKABLE products are products that are worth making a remark about. Case in point, the latest version of the NAO humanoid robot. Earlier editions have been sold to researchers for more than $14,600. That being said, I only have one thing to say: “I want one”.
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We need you to lead us
You too can put a ding in the universe THERE are three simple steps to being a visionary leader. That’s it. Just three simple steps. To be a visionary leader, you need to: 1) Learn from everyone, 2) Follow no one, and 3) Look for patterns. So simple and easy to remember. Learn always, never […]
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January 17th, 2012 #OWS
Things just escalated LEADERSHIP has been described as the process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task (Chemers 1997). From a “theory of leadership” perspective, what is interesting about the Occupy Wall Street movement is the absence of any one […]
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Life moves pretty fast
Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it ~ Ferris Bueller THE FRENETIC pace of daily life in Ho Chi Minh City combined with incredible time lapse photography produce a short video that gives you pause for thought (hat tip to Mike Maier for the video). […]
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Do you have an app?
Creating an app is not that hard, for a 12 year old DO YOU have an app? Well, do you? … Many leading companies have already jumped on the app-store bandwagon (e.g. New York Times, Twitter and Facebook) but most businesses can still confidently answer this question in the negative: “no apps here.” Given that the […]
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The Road Not Taken
Which path are you following? TWO ROADS diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better […]
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Steve Jobs – farewell
Trust that the dots will connect down the road, love what you do, and remember that you are going to die TODAY October 5th 2011, we received the sad news that Steve Jobs has departed. We are lucky to have lived during the same age as Steve Jobs, a man who has put a dent in the universe, […]
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Who is responsible for your success?
THIS IS an important question because the answer will affect how you feel about yourself, how likely you are to persist in the face of set backs, and how much enjoyment you gain from the things you do. If you have read any of Seth Godin‘s work then you are probably familiar with the idea of the “linchpin”; […]
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How great are you?
If you think you are beaten, you are. If you think you dare not, you don’t. If you like to win but think you can’t, It’s almost a cinch you won’t. If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost. For out in the world we find, Success begins with a fellow’s will. It’s all in the […]
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Hail to the bus driver man!
What do you want to do when you grow up? THIS is a tribute to those people whose actions make our lives possible. Think of an ordinary day of your typical city dwelling person. A school student, university student, office worker or senior citizen. It is very likely that they may need to go somewhere, […]
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Slow Dance
Are you dancing too fast? Have you ever watched kids on a merry-go-round, or listened to the rain slapping on the ground? Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight, or gazed at the sun into the fading night? You’d better slow down, don’t dance so fast, time is short, the music won’t last. Do you run through each […]
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Biting Off More Than You Can Chew
12.50pm AUGUST 1st and I was trying to make plans for lunch (priority #1). No problem, I’ll just check my gmail account and use Google Maps to find the address. Gmail, Google Maps, Google.com, Google.com.au and Google.com.hk failed to respond (for at least 20 minutes). There is some chance that there is just a problem […]
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To Whom It May Inspire: Persist
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6 Steps to Blogging #WINNING
YOU may wonder whether you should blog. Stop wondering. You’re either on the Internet or you’re with the trolls. Here are the steps: Search Digest Synthesise (hint: this is were all of the competitive advantage comes from) Polish Publish (hint: this is where all of the value comes from) Repeat #WINNING
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CEO U
BACK in 1997, Tom Peters talked about “Brand You“. Tom told us that big companies understand the importance of brands and that today, in the Age of the Individual, you have to be your own brand. This is absolutely true, but it is only part of the story. You are not a walking brand, you […]
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Finding Yourself
THIS post was initially going to be called “finding your competitive advantage”, but I think it goes further than that. Here are 8 factors to get you thinking, and to help find what you’re looking for: Why do you do what you do every day? What makes you tick? What do you believe in? These […]
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Seth Godin
Seth who? SETH Godin is an American marketing guru born in 1960 in Mount Vernon, New York. Seth is an entrepreneur, author, public speaker and agent of change. Seth is widely regarded as America’s greatest marketer. Seth is always starting new initiatives, some of his more remarkable contributions are highlighted below. Companies Yoyodyne, his first […]
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Are you doing something remarkable?
Loyal customers provide repeat business. Do something remarkable, and they will spread the word CUSTOMER loyalty is an important asset for any business for two reasons. Firstly, loyal customers will give you repeat business, to quote Tom Peters “all business success rests on something labelled a sale”. Secondly, and more importantly, loyal customers are the people who […]
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Warren Buffett
WARREN Buffett is an American investor born in 1930 in Omaha, Nebraska. Buffett is often referred to as the “Oracle of Omaha” and is the world’s most successful stock market investor. Buffett is the largest shareholder and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. He has an estimated net worth of around $US45 billion. In 2010, Forbes ranked […]
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Impossible is Nothing
“IMPOSSIBLE is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. […]
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I love my job! …
… do you? YOU may be one of thousands of people who finished a vocational university degree (engineering, law, accounting etc.) and thought, “I need to get some professional experience to my name … and then I’ll branch out and do what I love!” Two years later and you are still an engineer/accountant/lawyer. You’ve learnt […]
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The 48 Laws of Power
PEOPLE are motivated to succeed in business for different reasons. Some people want to change the world and some just want to make money. If you go to business school or listen to CEOs speak at annual meetings you’ll hear a lot of talk about money: how much money, made by whom, from which activities, […]
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Vinnies CEO Sleepout
THERE are currently more than 105,000 homeless people in Australia. Census figures from 2006 indicate that each night 54% of homeless people seeking supported accommodation are turned away, which means around 56,000 people are sleeping on the street each night in Australia. The problem is that in the wake of the financial crisis the number of homeless […]
A PERSON who wants to work on their leadership ability should work on their self-esteem. The job of a leader is to persuade and inspire. A leader needs to develop and persuasively convey a clear vision of what their organisation plans to do, and to inspire and empower the people who work for that organisation […]
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Target people’s forgotten needs
WE ALL know the old marketing adage, “sex sells”. The marketing approach is quite simple: link sex directly or indirectly with the product or service that you are selling. It may be a certain brand of cola that we end up buying, but it was sex that we were after. Sex is a base level […]
STAND up and dance like nobody’s watching. We are watching though, everyone is, and that’s why being the initiator feels so scary. You are afraid of looking like a fool, we all are. So we wait and watch you dance. Genuine passion is contagious, and as you dance freely and passionately one person sees the […]
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Productivity – Make It Personal
Assigning direct responsibility for productivity improvement makes it much more likely that action will be taken to improve productivity PRODUCTIVITY is important. Every organisation wants to produce more with less. The difficulty is though, that “productivity” is a nebulous term. Who is responsible for this “productivity” you speak of? Assigning direct responsibility for productivity improvement […]
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Focus on the customer
If 30% of your people’s effort is focused on internal affairs and you can redirect it so that only 10% of people’s effort is focused internally, then that is a major boost in productivity.
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Ten years gone by
TEN years ago, what were you doing? For me, I was just entering my final year of high school and gearing up to sit the final exams called the Higher School Certificate. Expectations were high! Our teachers told us that these were the most important set of exams that we would ever take because “a […]
There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does DANIEL Pink puts forward the idea that there is currently a mismatch between what science knows and what business does. Pink presents the Candle Problem, an experiment invented in 1945 by Karl Duncker. The experiment works as follows: I bring you into a room […]
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TEDx Emerald City
LAST night I attended my first independently organised TED event, TEDx EmeraldCity. The event was organised by the ever dynamic and always delightful Melissa O’Young. The name of the event sounds pretty random, and it is, but it is also quite clever. Since this was an Australian TED event the thinking was as follows: Australia – […]
There are six strategic principles which are relevant to any company that wants to be profitable online IN AN article entitled “Strategy and the Internet” published in the March 2001 edition of the Harvard Business Review, Michael Porter outlined six principles that he believes companies need to […]
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Finding and retaining talent
THE ability to find and retain talented employees is vital to sustained business success. Attractive remuneration, stock options plans, medical benefits, and other incentives are attractive enticements for any employee. But what factors are important in attracting, focusing and retaining the most productive and talented workers? Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, in their international bestselling […]
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Business Mutualism
Business Mutualism MUTUALISM, a concept from biology, refers to a relationship between two species or organisms in which both benefit from the association. Following on from the ideas put forward in a recent talk by Robert Full, we can apply this idea to the world of business by considering the idea of “Business Mutualism”. We […]
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Looking beyond the adequate
WHEN posed with a business problem, there is always a temptation to accept the first solution that adequately addresses the problem. However, the “adequate” solution is usually not the only solution, and often not the best one. Adopting the first solution that “works” may get us from A to B and, once we have a […]
GIVEN my lack of time lately, I thought that writing a short post on worker productivity would be amusingly appropriate. I am working 10/11 hour days, studying for the CFA, and writing this blog, among other things. Fun times! I recently stumbled across an idea called the “Hawthorne Effect”, which I thought it would be […]
1. The golden ratio THE golden ratio is believed to have aesthetically pleasing properties. The golden ratio is a naturally occurring number that has been the subject of interest since ancient Greek times, and has been used in architecture, art, books and music since at least the time of the Renaissance. For example, artists have […]
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Great managers select for talent
I am in the process of reading “First Break All the Rules” by Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman. The book makes the insightful point that great managers understand the difference between skills, knowledge and talent: Skills are abilities that may be acquired by training. For example, a mathematics teacher must be skilled in arithmetic, a […]
IN MAY 2008 the McKinsey Quarterly spoke to Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, notable for his work on behavioural finance and hedonic psychology, about quality control and improving the decision making process. 1. The decision factory Kahneman says that you can think of an organisation as a factory for producing decisions. The organisation might produce other […]
THIS post, part 4, considers the principles developed by Sun Tzu on strategies for effective leadership. It is the 4th and final part in a series looking at how Sun Tzu’s military precepts provide a timeless guide to modern business leadership. Part one looked at the qualities of successful leaders. Part two considered principles for organising […]
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Sun Tzu on dealing with rivals (part 3)
PART 3 of 4 considers the principles developed by Sun Tzu for dealing with business rivals and follows on from part one which looked at qualities of successful leaders, and part two considered the principles for organising your business affairs. I have summarised Sun Tzu’s principles into four simple categories: Qualities of a successful leader; […]
PART 2 considers the principles developed by Sun Tzu on organising your business affairs, and follows on from part one which looked at qualities of successful leaders, I have summarised Sun Tzu’s principles into four simple categories: Qualities of a successful leader; Oranising your business affairs; Dealing with rivals; and Strategies for effective leadership. 2. […]
Background to The Art of War SUN TZU wrote The Art of War in approximately 490BC in the Kingdom of Wu, China, and became a general for the King of Wu in 512 BC. For the next 39 years his precepts were followed and the Kingdom of Wu was victorious. And then, they forgot … […]