Building a business is a journey. Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan were all great adventurers who took extended journeys. These journeys were explorations into the unknown parts of the world to seek new lands, exotic spices, fame and fortune. These explorers were also businessmen and they all began with a vision. The vision was the dream. The journeys also had a mission, the purpose, of the trip. Columbus wanted to prove that the world was round. The successful journeys had a plan, which detailed important actions to take to make the venture a success.
This book, written by an experienced Fortune 500 executive and a small business expert, can be called a ?business thinker?. There is a new breed of business owners in the market place today. These business owners are either starting up new businesses or reinventing established businesses. These individuals are intensely passionate and strategic. They are very competitive and they care about people, the environment and their community. They do not run their businesses casually. They are professional entrepreneurs.
There is also another type of entrepreneur, the accidental entrepreneur, who is finding himself and considering self-employment for the first time in his life. Many have experienced first-hand the down-sizing of corporate business and are now ready to act on their own business ideas.
In today'sworld, business is complex, resources are limited and time is of essence. There is no room for making mistakes. Business owners cannot know it all and cannot do it all by themselves.
This book shows why you must have a written plan. You know where you are going. But without a written plan, it is always subject to change. There is magic in the written word, especially when they?re your words about an idea that you have been thinking and talking about for some time. Somehow the process of writing initiates the transformation from an idea to a reality. It also makes things clearer when you write. Thoughts begin to develop into images and images turn into key words and short phrases.
In short, this book tells you to develop a business plan that guides the building of your business and then use your business plan as a map to keep you on the track to your destination. It tries to provide a fresh approach to business planning and is designed to act as a catalyst for your ideas. It may prove helpful for building and managing a business in the 21st century.
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The 25 Best Time Management Tools & Techniques, Pamela Dodd & Doug Sundheim, Macmillan India, Ltd, pp 134, Rs 198.00
AS has been well said, ?Life is short and art is long?, there is so much for us to do that one lifetime is not enough. We all want to be more productive, have more fun and enjoy more of life, but we all find that we don'thave enough time for doing it all. Everyone gets only 24 hours a day?no more, no less. What is the irony of life is that time cannot be borrowed, begged, stolen or saved, but what can be done is to utilise it constructively by managing it effectively.
We do manage time as the events of our life, including the tangible and the intangible ones, prove but we do not use time to its full extent. People who manage their time well,
o get more done
o feel less stressed out
o have better relationships
o feel better about themselves and their lives
o have spare time to do what they want.
Since it is impossible to remember and carry everything around in our head, time- management experts recommend writing down all that is important?our values, vision, goals, projects, appointments, people to contact, etc.
It is better to maintain a time log by keeping track of everything we do by recording every activity carried out every five minutes of the seven days of the week. This would include socialising, daydreaming, fantasising, sleeping, etc. before the total time spent is added by finding how much is spent on which activity and how much is used constructively.
Here the author suggests identification of your values as it will help to make your life to flow. The author says, ?Life shifts from push to pull when you identify, own and begin living from your own values.? Then you need to create a vision of how you want to lead your life as it is your blueprint for effective time management for a more fulfilling life. Your life has to be planned as it is a good indicator of your relationship to results before setting your goals subsequently.
What Doug Sundheim and Pamela Dodd have to say is very relevant and acquire importance as both are experienced persons in their respective fields with Sundheim serving as an organisation and development consultant while Dodd is engaged in dynamics of work groups and is an organisational psychologist.
(Macmillan India Ltd., 2/10 Ansari Road, Darya Ganj, New Delhi-110 002.)
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