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Other Added - Sun Zi Art of War - Areas of Strategic Planning and Execution
Your value proposition is a series of statements defining your worth. It is the value you bring to the table – the skills, strengths, core competencies, marketable assets and accomplishments you can declare as your own. Your value proposition describes your uniqueness - your unique gifts. It is what differentiates you from the crowd.Think about some of the statements you can make about yourself that reflect the skills, strengths and competencies you possess. What makes you uniquely you? What is your value, your worth? Begin to jot down some ideas. You might want to ask someone who knows you well what values they see in you. You may be surprised by what they say. Then begin to formulate the best way of stating this.Your value proposition is the cornerstone for all self-introductory communication. It sets the tone. It’s how you make your mark. It is how you describe yourself when you are networking, when you are conducting an exploratory meeting with senior management, and when you are interviewing.Your value proposition should be used as your primary response whenever you are asked these types of questions:• So tell me about yourself?• How are you different from every other candidate?• Why should I consider you for this position?• How do you know you can do the job?• Why do I want to get to know you better?Your value proposition also becomes an integral part of your resume. It is placed at the top, so it sets the tone. It holds tremendous weight as a differentiating tool, swiftly setting you, and your resume, apart from the rest.There is a fundamental difference between your value proposition and your areas of expertise. Your areas of expertise pertain to what you have done, the experiences you have gained over the years. Your value propo
So what about terrain? Well after much thought I think it can be comparable to the market you are battling or catering to. Depending on the market and your strategic focus, the barriers of entry and exit are determined. If you have looked through Sun Zi Art of War, you would have known that when Sun Zi mentioned about terrain, it is most of the time, how easy or difficult one can enter the terrain. For a comprehensive list of barriers of entry or exit, I would recommend Michael Porter’s Competitive Strategy.
4) Effective and Efficient Execution of Orders - Business Systems like inventory management, delivery system and others.
In the fourth sub areas proposed by Sun Zi, it queries whether an army is able to execute orders efficiently and effectively.
In war, if the orders are not clearly passed down to everyone in the army, confusion will prevail and would render the whole army useless and in the end the general would not be able to execute his strategy. So we can see from here is that strategies can be formulated but there would be risk in carrying out the strategy. In Romance of Three Kingdoms, we have marveled at the strategies that were formulated by Kong Ming, or more often known as Zhuge Liang, but if the generals that he delegated the assignment to was not able to execute them well, his strategies would be useless no matter how good it sound on paper.
<You will be spending your money wisely when you have your cards designed and professionally printed. When you have just launched your business you might be short of cash and then there is no harm in printing your cards yourself. But make sure that the finished product looks good.You may want to try having two sets of cards so that you have one set that merely states your company’s name and logo with all the relevant situation details for existing clients as a reference for your details. You may want to give the bank manager or your insurance broker a card or whoever it is that you do business with on a regularly basis. The other set you could keep for distribution to the public. You could print your special offers and discounts on the backs of these cards.Never leave home without your cards as you may just want to give one to someone you meet. You are the president of your own advertising campaign so always be ready to put a card in someone’s hand. Always be friendly when you do this as it makes a good impression. If you do not advertise your business no one will know it exists, only by constantly advertising can you draw the attention of the public to your business.Business cards are an easy way of advertising your business. They are easy to hand out as they are light and portable and no one feels intimidated by them. Always remember your cards are like salesmen and they have to sell your business to your prospective clients.Print them in colour and make them look interesting so that the receiver will want to read what it is all about. You do not want someone to throw away the card before they have even read it. If you are not so good at designing your own cards, ask friends and family to give you their input. Listen to their advice and change them accordingly. If this does not
So which area should the ruler look at before deciding to go to war? Sun Zi proposed these five main areas and they are broken down into seven sub areas.
We can see from the writings that Sun Zi is a very meticulous person because he broke the five points down to the dimensions that one should look out for. For example, he broke down the terrain into whether it is high or low, near or far, wide plains or narrow paths, treacherous or accessible or the weather is broke down into cold or hot, night or day and which season it is in.
The 5 areas and 7 sub- areas are:
故经之已五，校之以计，而索其情: 一曰道，二曰天，三曰地，四曰将，五曰法。
1) Political leadership of the Ruler (道)
2) The weather where the battle is taking place (天)
3) The terrain where the battle is taking place （地）
4) Generalship, the person commanding the battle （将）
5) Army organization structure and systems （法）
7 Sub areas
a) Political Intelligence of a Ruler （主孰有道?)
b) Capability of General (将孰有能?)
c) Advantage of provided by Weather and Terrain (天地孰得?)
d) Effective and Efficient Execution of Orders (法令孰行?)
e) Equipped level and numerical strength of army (兵众孰强？)
f) Training level of army (士卒孰练？)
g) Administration of rewards and punishment (赏罚孰明？)
Relating to business aspect, these are important factors that determine the successful implementation of a company’s strategy. The key here is to relate these factors to business. There should not be much difficulty in relating these factors from military to business.
a) Employer or top management ability to unite the company or department behind a vision or to achieve certain goals.
b) Capability of Manager or Team Leader.
c) Different Aspects of Market like the culture of people, government set rules and regulation.
d) Business Systems like inventory management, delivery system and others.
e) Technology available to staff.
f) Skill set and knowledge level of staff.
g) Administration of rewards and punishment.
1) Unity: Employer or top management ability to unite the company or department behind a vision or to achieve certain goals
As the heading says, political leadership in war is equivalent to the ability of the top management of the company to unite behind certain goals and vision.
Easier said than done? Sure but I think there are certain guidelines we can follow, first of all, the idea and purpose of the goals and vision should be made as clear as possible to the whole company. How do you do that? Quite easy, in my opinion, involve the whole company in crafting the goals and painting the vision. For those of you who has seen the Apprentice 3, in the graffiti competition, the leader of Magna Corp, was able to consult some of the kids from the street to provide some input to the graffiti that they were painting. In the end, because the focus group that determines the winner was able to identify with the graffiti, (the kids and the focus group came from the same neighborhood), the Magna Corp won the competition.
For those of you from big companies, it is definitely very difficult to involve the whole company. So the top management could decide some macro goals and vision pass it down to the middle management and get them to craft out the goals of their department according to the goals or vision crafted by the top management and so on. What is important is the whole company can relate to the macro goals and vision painted by the top management.
Another important factor is the hiring process. Michael Dell, from Dell Computers stresses that it is important to hire people who is completely in sync with the company’s philosophy and objectives. This person’s thinking must be compatible with company’s value and belief. (Please read Direct From Dell by Michael Dell).
2) Capability of Generals: Capability of Manager or Team Leader (Leadership)
This is more straightforward than the previous sub-area. This is one area that is quite important in my opinion. The reason why I say that is because firstly, a good leader would have been able to unite and command the respect of his army and people of the nation. A wise general would not be leading his army to attack when weather conditions are bad or terrain is unfavorable. Even if he is forced to do so, his wisdom (one of the characteristics for mentioned comparison) would be able make his troops avoid engaging his enemies or turn disadvantages into advantages. Good generals would be able to create a strong organization structure and control in his army through the other four characteristic mentioned for comparison.
The five capabilities that are advocated by Sun Zi are Wisdom, Benevolence, Courage, Discipline and Trustworthiness. Just these five characteristics are definitely not and exhaustive list of the characteristic of a good leader, but in my opinion these five are the most important so that an army, or in business, the project team or department to function properly. And from these five words, there are a lot of things to look out for, which I shall not write here or I would be writing a whole chapter.
3) Advantage of provided by Weather and Terrain: Different Aspects of Market like the culture of people, government set rules and regulation
This is something that is not straightforward, not a lot of people can relate from weather and terrain with respect to which area of business. After reading some books and some thoughts, I would like many to take note of the difference.
For weather, we know that in war, the advantages and disadvantages presented by it can be tremendous and influence is wide ranging. It is one of the factors that we cannot control at all. For business, these could be the trends that are happening in the broad industry. Like certain consumer trends, e.g. Consumers are going for healthier food. Grey-ing market, Current Technology is going the convergent route and so on.
So what about terrain? Well after much thought I think it can be comparable to the market you are battling or catering to. Depending on the market and your strategic focus, the barriers of entry and exit are determined. If you have looked through Sun Zi Art of War, you would have known that when Sun Zi mentioned about terrain, it is most of the time, how easy or difficult one can enter the terrain. For a comprehensive list of barriers of entry or exit, I would recommend Michael Porter’s Competitive Strategy.
4) Effective and Efficient Execution of Orders - Business Systems like inventory management, delivery system and others.
In the fourth sub areas proposed by Sun Zi, it queries whether an army is able to execute orders efficiently and effectively.
In war, if the orders are not clearly passed down to everyone in the army, confusion will prevail and would render the whole army useless and in the end the general would not be able to execute his strategy. So we can see from here is that strategies can be formulated but there would be risk in carrying out the strategy. In Romance of Three Kingdoms, we have marveled at the strategies that were formulated by Kong Ming, or more often known as Zhuge Liang, but if the generals that he delegated the assignment to was not able to execute them well, his strategies would be useless no matter how good it sound on paper.
In a previous life I was a Navy Pilot. Great life, great people to be around. People who were all doing great things around the world flying off great big aircraft carriers. In an environment that complex and dangerous, you need to have teams of people working as one, or bad things begin to happen in large quantities.The people onboard aircraft carriers are divided into two groups, those that make the ship float and those that make the planes fly. Those that make the ship float are known as "ship's company", and those that make the planes fly are with "the airwing". During one tour of duty, I was assigned to the "airwing staff". The airwing staff coordinated the activities of the ten aircraft squadrons deployed aboard the aircraft carrier. It was while working for our Airwing Commander, Captain Jerry Norris, that I would unknowingly learn what has to become my most valued rule as an entrepreneur.Captain Norris was quite the character. A fighter pilot with all the fixings! Tall, handsome, and with enough confident charisma to handle any situation, be that in the air, on land, or at sea. But the truth of it is, none of the eight officers on the staff considered Captain Norris to be the sharpest knife in the drawer.It wasn't that things were not going well for he or the airwing. It just seemed strange that so simple and relaxed an individual could lead so effectively. You must understand that Captain Norris was in charge of the operations of nearly 3000 men and almost 100 of the most complex flying machines on the planet. But fly we did, and did it well. Our airwing was often singled out for acts of excellence.It was during a short visit in Cannes, France that Captain Norris was to give me my lesson. Like so many of life's lessons, the lesson was unintended.If there is one thing that flying
c) Advantage of provided by Weather and Terrain (天地孰得?)
d) Effective and Efficient Execution of Orders (法令孰行?)
e) Equipped level and numerical strength of army (兵众孰强？)
f) Training level of army (士卒孰练？)
g) Administration of rewards and punishment (赏罚孰明？)
Relating to business aspect, these are important factors that determine the successful implementation of a company’s strategy. The key here is to relate these factors to business. There should not be much difficulty in relating these factors from military to business.
a) Employer or top management ability to unite the company or department behind a vision or to achieve certain goals.
b) Capability of Manager or Team Leader.
c) Different Aspects of Market like the culture of people, government set rules and regulation.
d) Business Systems like inventory management, delivery system and others.
e) Technology available to staff.
f) Skill set and knowledge level of staff.
g) Administration of rewards and punishment.
1) Unity: Employer or top management ability to unite the company or department behind a vision or to achieve certain goals
As the heading says, political leadership in war is equivalent to the ability of the top management of the company to unite behind certain goals and vision.
Easier said than done? Sure but I think there are certain guidelines we can follow, first of all, the idea and purpose of the goals and vision should be made as clear as possible to the whole company. How do you do that? Quite easy, in my opinion, involve the whole company in crafting the goals and painting the vision. For those of you who has seen the Apprentice 3, in the graffiti competition, the leader of Magna Corp, was able to consult some of the kids from the street to provide some input to the graffiti that they were painting. In the end, because the focus group that determines the winner was able to identify with the graffiti, (the kids and the focus group came from the same neighborhood), the Magna Corp won the competition.
For those of you from big companies, it is definitely very difficult to involve the whole company. So the top management could decide some macro goals and vision pass it down to the middle management and get them to craft out the goals of their department according to the goals or vision crafted by the top management and so on. What is important is the whole company can relate to the macro goals and vision painted by the top management.
Another important factor is the hiring process. Michael Dell, from Dell Computers stresses that it is important to hire people who is completely in sync with the company’s philosophy and objectives. This person’s thinking must be compatible with company’s value and belief. (Please read Direct From Dell by Michael Dell).
2) Capability of Generals: Capability of Manager or Team Leader (Leadership)
This is more straightforward than the previous sub-area. This is one area that is quite important in my opinion. The reason why I say that is because firstly, a good leader would have been able to unite and command the respect of his army and people of the nation. A wise general would not be leading his army to attack when weather conditions are bad or terrain is unfavorable. Even if he is forced to do so, his wisdom (one of the characteristics for mentioned comparison) would be able make his troops avoid engaging his enemies or turn disadvantages into advantages. Good generals would be able to create a strong organization structure and control in his army through the other four characteristic mentioned for comparison.
The five capabilities that are advocated by Sun Zi are Wisdom, Benevolence, Courage, Discipline and Trustworthiness. Just these five characteristics are definitely not and exhaustive list of the characteristic of a good leader, but in my opinion these five are the most important so that an army, or in business, the project team or department to function properly. And from these five words, there are a lot of things to look out for, which I shall not write here or I would be writing a whole chapter.
3) Advantage of provided by Weather and Terrain: Different Aspects of Market like the culture of people, government set rules and regulation
This is something that is not straightforward, not a lot of people can relate from weather and terrain with respect to which area of business. After reading some books and some thoughts, I would like many to take note of the difference.
For weather, we know that in war, the advantages and disadvantages presented by it can be tremendous and influence is wide ranging. It is one of the factors that we cannot control at all. For business, these could be the trends that are happening in the broad industry. Like certain consumer trends, e.g. Consumers are going for healthier food. Grey-ing market, Current Technology is going the convergent route and so on.
So what about terrain? Well after much thought I think it can be comparable to the market you are battling or catering to. Depending on the market and your strategic focus, the barriers of entry and exit are determined. If you have looked through Sun Zi Art of War, you would have known that when Sun Zi mentioned about terrain, it is most of the time, how easy or difficult one can enter the terrain. For a comprehensive list of barriers of entry or exit, I would recommend Michael Porter’s Competitive Strategy.
4) Effective and Efficient Execution of Orders - Business Systems like inventory management, delivery system and others.
In the fourth sub areas proposed by Sun Zi, it queries whether an army is able to execute orders efficiently and effectively.
In war, if the orders are not clearly passed down to everyone in the army, confusion will prevail and would render the whole army useless and in the end the general would not be able to execute his strategy. So we can see from here is that strategies can be formulated but there would be risk in carrying out the strategy. In Romance of Three Kingdoms, we have marveled at the strategies that were formulated by Kong Ming, or more often known as Zhuge Liang, but if the generals that he delegated the assignment to was not able to execute them well, his strategies would be useless no matter how good it sound on paper.
<An exit statement or leaving story helps to protect you from the emotions of a difficult job loss. Even if you left your previous job of your own accord and it was your own decision, you should still make sure you can explain what happened.If there was a redundancy or downsizing that cost you your job, the danger in being reminded of it by an interview question is that the emotions can surface inappropriately leaving you thinking about the whys and wherefores rather than the question in hand.What you need then is an “Exit” statement to which allows you to express positively why you left (or are leaving) your last job.This leaving story or exit statement needs to be phrased in such a way that it: Is unemotional; Is based on facts; Is and should be presented positively; Does not criticise anyone; Doesn't contain any negatives about the previous employment, and Lasts for approximately 30 seconds. You must maintain eye contact throughout. This exit statement or leaving story can also be tagged on to your "career overview" statement to pre-empt the difficult question altogether. The Career Overview is your answer to the 'Tell me about yourself' type of question.Look out for:Some thoughtless interviewers try to put pressure on by asking questions like:"Why did they get rid of you?""Why did they make you redundant?""If you were doing so well, why are you leaving?"You can answer this question with confidence when you've prepared an exit statement that states the facts in a positive light and leaves you in control.Your exit statement might go like this: "Following a difficult year for the business, the directors decided to
For those of you from big companies, it is definitely very difficult to involve the whole company. So the top management could decide some macro goals and vision pass it down to the middle management and get them to craft out the goals of their department according to the goals or vision crafted by the top management and so on. What is important is the whole company can relate to the macro goals and vision painted by the top management.
Another important factor is the hiring process. Michael Dell, from Dell Computers stresses that it is important to hire people who is completely in sync with the company’s philosophy and objectives. This person’s thinking must be compatible with company’s value and belief. (Please read Direct From Dell by Michael Dell).
2) Capability of Generals: Capability of Manager or Team Leader (Leadership)
This is more straightforward than the previous sub-area. This is one area that is quite important in my opinion. The reason why I say that is because firstly, a good leader would have been able to unite and command the respect of his army and people of the nation. A wise general would not be leading his army to attack when weather conditions are bad or terrain is unfavorable. Even if he is forced to do so, his wisdom (one of the characteristics for mentioned comparison) would be able make his troops avoid engaging his enemies or turn disadvantages into advantages. Good generals would be able to create a strong organization structure and control in his army through the other four characteristic mentioned for comparison.
The five capabilities that are advocated by Sun Zi are Wisdom, Benevolence, Courage, Discipline and Trustworthiness. Just these five characteristics are definitely not and exhaustive list of the characteristic of a good leader, but in my opinion these five are the most important so that an army, or in business, the project team or department to function properly. And from these five words, there are a lot of things to look out for, which I shall not write here or I would be writing a whole chapter.
3) Advantage of provided by Weather and Terrain: Different Aspects of Market like the culture of people, government set rules and regulation
This is something that is not straightforward, not a lot of people can relate from weather and terrain with respect to which area of business. After reading some books and some thoughts, I would like many to take note of the difference.
For weather, we know that in war, the advantages and disadvantages presented by it can be tremendous and influence is wide ranging. It is one of the factors that we cannot control at all. For business, these could be the trends that are happening in the broad industry. Like certain consumer trends, e.g. Consumers are going for healthier food. Grey-ing market, Current Technology is going the convergent route and so on.
So what about terrain? Well after much thought I think it can be comparable to the market you are battling or catering to. Depending on the market and your strategic focus, the barriers of entry and exit are determined. If you have looked through Sun Zi Art of War, you would have known that when Sun Zi mentioned about terrain, it is most of the time, how easy or difficult one can enter the terrain. For a comprehensive list of barriers of entry or exit, I would recommend Michael Porter’s Competitive Strategy.
4) Effective and Efficient Execution of Orders - Business Systems like inventory management, delivery system and others.
In the fourth sub areas proposed by Sun Zi, it queries whether an army is able to execute orders efficiently and effectively.
In war, if the orders are not clearly passed down to everyone in the army, confusion will prevail and would render the whole army useless and in the end the general would not be able to execute his strategy. So we can see from here is that strategies can be formulated but there would be risk in carrying out the strategy. In Romance of Three Kingdoms, we have marveled at the strategies that were formulated by Kong Ming, or more often known as Zhuge Liang, but if the generals that he delegated the assignment to was not able to execute them well, his strategies would be useless no matter how good it sound on paper.
<1) Ask everyone to arrive five to ten minutes early. This gives everyone time to socialize, obtain coffee, or organize materials before the meeting. It also ensures that everyone is present at the scheduled starting time. Make this part of the agenda.2) Discuss sensitive issues with the key participants before the meeting. Use this as an opportunity to listen and gather information on the issues. From this you will understand the different views, needs, and histories. This information can help you prepare the agenda and conduct the meeting. In addition, you may be able to facilitate solutions or strategies for solutions before the meeting. In either case, the result will be a more efficient meeting.3) Plan small meetings that focus on a single issue. People work more effectively over short periods of time (such as 45 minutes). This also allows you to match experts with issues for more productive meetings.4) Send copies of the minutes to everyone who could have been invited for informational purposes. They can read the minutes in a small fraction of the time that they would have been spent in the meeting.5) If the chairperson seems to have allowed the meeting’s intent to drift, ask: “What do you want to achieve?” or “How can we help you?” or “How will we know when we are done working on this?” These questions can help focus the meeting on a goal.6) If a meeting seems out of control, suggest adjourning and reconvening at a later time. This will allow you to clarify goals, prepare strategies, and better understand the issues.7) Summarize the content of key points. This ensures that everyone has the same understanding of the key point. Although this is one of the chairperson’s responsibilities, it can be filled by anyone else in the meeting.8) Prepare a list of questions, ideas
The five capabilities that are advocated by Sun Zi are Wisdom, Benevolence, Courage, Discipline and Trustworthiness. Just these five characteristics are definitely not and exhaustive list of the characteristic of a good leader, but in my opinion these five are the most important so that an army, or in business, the project team or department to function properly. And from these five words, there are a lot of things to look out for, which I shall not write here or I would be writing a whole chapter.
3) Advantage of provided by Weather and Terrain: Different Aspects of Market like the culture of people, government set rules and regulation
This is something that is not straightforward, not a lot of people can relate from weather and terrain with respect to which area of business. After reading some books and some thoughts, I would like many to take note of the difference.
For weather, we know that in war, the advantages and disadvantages presented by it can be tremendous and influence is wide ranging. It is one of the factors that we cannot control at all. For business, these could be the trends that are happening in the broad industry. Like certain consumer trends, e.g. Consumers are going for healthier food. Grey-ing market, Current Technology is going the convergent route and so on.
So what about terrain? Well after much thought I think it can be comparable to the market you are battling or catering to. Depending on the market and your strategic focus, the barriers of entry and exit are determined. If you have looked through Sun Zi Art of War, you would have known that when Sun Zi mentioned about terrain, it is most of the time, how easy or difficult one can enter the terrain. For a comprehensive list of barriers of entry or exit, I would recommend Michael Porter’s Competitive Strategy.
4) Effective and Efficient Execution of Orders - Business Systems like inventory management, delivery system and others.
In the fourth sub areas proposed by Sun Zi, it queries whether an army is able to execute orders efficiently and effectively.
In war, if the orders are not clearly passed down to everyone in the army, confusion will prevail and would render the whole army useless and in the end the general would not be able to execute his strategy. So we can see from here is that strategies can be formulated but there would be risk in carrying out the strategy. In Romance of Three Kingdoms, we have marveled at the strategies that were formulated by Kong Ming, or more often known as Zhuge Liang, but if the generals that he delegated the assignment to was not able to execute them well, his strategies would be useless no matter how good it sound on paper.
<The size of your ad is a vital decision, for if you try and squeeze too much into a small space to save money then you run the risk of having fewer people read your ad, and dramatically reducing your response rate. Conversely, if you use a quarter page to say what could have drawn as much attention with an eighth, then you are wasting money.So the first thing to consider on the road to a correctly sized ad is your message. What exactly are you selling, and how many benefits and features do you really need the advertisement to carry. Ask yourself the following questions: Must I really list all the benefits for this particular audience? Do I need to show a photograph or illustration of it, or does everybody know what it looks like? How many of my competitors are going to be advertising on the same page? What must I do differently to be sure of getting noticed? Once you have answered all the questions above, you are then in a better position to begin sizing your ad.As a rule of thumb, whatever size you come up with as a minimum advertisement size, you will need to enlarge it by a size. If you are planning a classified box ad, allow at least 2 capital letters, of whatever size print you are using, to fit in the margin on all sides. So, once you have laid out your ad in the way you want it, that will give you the recommended width of your margin.
So what about terrain? Well after much thought I think it can be comparable to the market you are battling or catering to. Depending on the market and your strategic focus, the barriers of entry and exit are determined. If you have looked through Sun Zi Art of War, you would have known that when Sun Zi mentioned about terrain, it is most of the time, how easy or difficult one can enter the terrain. For a comprehensive list of barriers of entry or exit, I would recommend Michael Porter’s Competitive Strategy.
4) Effective and Efficient Execution of Orders - Business Systems like inventory management, delivery system and others.
In the fourth sub areas proposed by Sun Zi, it queries whether an army is able to execute orders efficiently and effectively.
In war, if the orders are not clearly passed down to everyone in the army, confusion will prevail and would render the whole army useless and in the end the general would not be able to execute his strategy. So we can see from here is that strategies can be formulated but there would be risk in carrying out the strategy. In Romance of Three Kingdoms, we have marveled at the strategies that were formulated by Kong Ming, or more often known as Zhuge Liang, but if the generals that he delegated the assignment to was not able to execute them well, his strategies would be useless no matter how good it sound on paper.
Relating this to business, I think the most prominent thing that a company should go for is to improve the business systems in his company. Business systems could be logistic/supply chain systems, sales processing systems, HR systems and many more. As most companies, operate or expand, they should aim to improve their systems. Make it more convenient and effective for the staffs that are using it. Sometimes, as the companies expand too fast, like catering to several overseas market or relocation of some functions of the company to other countries and so on, some requirements that were needed could be redundant and new requirements & regulations or technology must be added to improve it.
So how do you improve the systems in your company? Well, need I say more, ask the people who are using the system. For example, for sales processing system, ask your salespeople, admin staff for the system. You may include your IT personnel to see if there could be some cost effective automation integrated into the process.
All in all, give your staff the necessary resources and convenience to carry out their task effectively and efficiently.
5) Equipped level and numerical strength of army - Technology available to staff
Now in war the equipped level and the numerical strength of the army plays and important part in victory. Because the larger the army, the more you can strengthen you positions or attack more places to distract your enemy. The next best thing would be to equip your army with the best armor and weapon so that they have the advantage over the enemy’s army. This advantage, no matter how small or little, will be important during war. Because as I said in war, it is either live or death, for the nation as a whole.
So how does this relate to business? We can easily interpret this as the equipped level of your staff in carrying out their jobs. For instance, an employee cannot do much if you only provide her with a typewriter. All she can do is fill out forms or file a report. But if you provide her with a computer, now that is a totally different thing. She can do calculation of account, enter accounts and so on.
Each and every staff should be equipped with the bare necessities to help improve their work rate. We have seen how Wal-Mart is using the latest technology, RFID, to help improve their logistics and sales. By using technology, you would be able to provide your staff with real time data so that they can make quick decision and clinch sales easily. Of course all these have to be weighted against the costs of buying and installing the technology. Be well versed with the latest available technology, note their development and once it is advantageous to equip your staff with it, go ahead to buy it.
6) Training Level of Army – skill set and knowledge level of Staff
When we say equipped level, most people would quickly relate to technology available to staff, we tend to overlook the software which is the skill set of the staff. We need to send our staff to attain more skills and knowledge. Knowledge of the industry to feel the pulse of it, new developments in their field like sales and marketing, knowledge of maximising the efficiency of the technology available and so on. A computer is nothing if one does not have the knowledge to use. Now another point I want to mention here is that most employer would send their employees to pick up skills that are needed immediately but this often does not provide a company with a competitive edge, what employers should look out for is sending staff to obtain skills that are needed in the future so that you are well equipped to handle the new opportunities that you foresee coming and reduce the reaction lag as mention in Porter’s Competitive Strategy.
Now a lot of people worry that if you send these people to improve their skill sets, they would leave for greener pastures when they are poached for that skill. I would suggest that you make this clear to the employee and ask that he be contracted for a period of time or at least require the staff to pay part of the training fees, not substantially of course.
7) Administration of Rewards and Punishment
Here I would like to stress the importance of rewards and punishment. Han Fei Zi, a great politician during the Warring States Era stressed the importance of administering rewards and punishment, writing two chapters on it. He said that the administration of it is so important it actually determines the survival or demise of the nation. And equate the administration power of rewards and punishment of the ruler to the fangs and claws to a tiger. Without the power, the ruler would not be able to administer the affairs of the state well. Would anyone listen to their supervisor if it lacks the power to administer rewards and punishment? Of course not, because he has lost authority on you.
One of the two chapters written by Han Fei Zi, is about setting the rules and condition for rewards and punishment and the next chapter on how to administer it. The reason why a chapter was written on the administration is because during those days and even till now, we tend to reward more to people that we know and love and excuse our relatives or friends from punishment when they make a mistake. Why is this so? This is because firstly, we are human beings thus we have feelings and secondly is because these friends affect our social life. We do not want to offend them.
So it is important in the modern business that they structure their reward and punishment correctly so that their work is aligned with that of the business strategy and culture. For example if you reward base on individual sales, it is very likely you would not be promoting teamwork. If you reward base on individual product department performance, it is very unlikely that cross selling would not occur.
Besides aligning with the business strategy and culture, the administration of rewards and punishment plays a big part in talent management strategies as well. In business, the pay you give to your staff is always compared to one that is similar job scope and preferably in the same industry to make a good comparison. Beside the pay being compared with other similar jobs, it is also compared with inflation as well. Employee may feel shortchanged, especially in times of high inflation, when income increase cannot be in tune with inflation.
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