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Building a positive work-life culture

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Although work-life balance policies are meant to acknowledge the realities faced by dual earner families, existing workplace norms often stigmatize the use of such policies. While employers have started to offer several policies that facilitate better work-life balance, there is scant evidence that they are helping organisations foster a healthier work-life culture. There is also low utilization of such policies despite the widespread demand for such flexibility. The pressure to work long hours along with the career penalties associated with the use of work-life policies are creating workplace cultures where employees have limited choices in terms of managing their work and non-work demands.

Transforming the culture of an organisation to one that encourages a better work-life balance is often very challenging. Although it is debatable whether organisations have a responsibility for work-life balance, evidence suggests that providing support for work-life issues has significant payoffs for the employment relationship. Frequently organisations may offer a range of work-life policies but if not properly implemented these policies may fail to facilitate better work-life reconciliation.

Often effective policy implementation requires a transformation of the workplace culture and underlying assumptions about how work should be organised and how employee performance should be evaluated. Cultures that emphasize long working hours as a symbol of commitment frequently hinder employees from making use of work-life policies. In several organisations, managers focus on rewarding “face-time” rather than actual performance. When managers have subordinates who face work-life conflicts, the best approach is to direct their efforts toward evaluating actual performance rather than presenteeism or “face-time”. Effective role-modeling by leaders who are aware of the importance of work-life balance may also help in building a culture that champions reconciliation of work and nonwork lives while reducing feelings of inadequacies among workers who utilize work-life practices. Likewise, employees should also be encouraged to raise nonwork issues with their managers and should be assured that their employer does not expect them to subordinate their personal or family roles while prioritizing their work roles. Such a culture may allay worker fears about the negative career consequences of addressing work-life issues and also result in a favorable image of their employer as one that cares about their well-being.

About the Author

Shainaz FirfirayShainaz Firfiray is an assistant professor in the Organisation and Human Resource Management Group at Warwick Business School. She received her PhD in management at IE Business School, Spain. Her research interests include work-life balance, social identity, and workplace diversity.

How to Fast-track and Accelerate Your Human Potential Beyond Perceived Limits

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What if through every struggle, adversity, illness or ending in your life you adopted a new, simple, and yet a very powerful tool that helps you identify the root cause of your problems, fears, and disempowered mental states that make you feel as if you are broken and in need of a “fix”?

What if you discovered that by design you were built with a powerful ALARM that alerts you each time you are not aligned to your true essence? What if this inbuilt security system is what activates your switch that turns on your inner light, puts you back on track to accelerate your human potential, and supports you to achieve outcomes that go way beyond your expectations? What miracles would you then create in your life?

Since I can remember, I was curious to know why some people have it all and others spend their entire life suffering, struggling, and make ends meet. I wanted to know why some people die young and others live healthy until very old age. Why some people find it easy to achieve their dreams, heal fast, and easily attract opportunities in their lives and yet others were consumed by their negative self-talk, illness, and blaming others for their misfortune.

By design we are extraordinary, our evolutionary advantage is our brain and our ability to communicate, plan, reason and work together, our survival depends on our collective ability and not on our individual mind. We are connected across all of live spans to one another, through invisible forces that bind us.

To stay present in the midst of adversity, it helps to be deeply rooted within ourselves; otherwise, the mind and our emotions, which have incredible momentum, will drag us into the deepest caves of the wretched solitude along like a wild and uncontrollable river.

I trust by now I have helped you awaken your curiosity and are asking what is it that you can do to accelerate your human potential and achieve extraordinary things in your life.

There are many ways you can do this, what I would like to share with you is the five key principles of TJS Evolutionary Method that I use daily to help my clients that you too can use on your journey to creating and living an extraordinary life.

  1. Acknowledge that support and challenge will always be part of your life. To do that you need first and foremost become aware of the form in which support shows when you are challenged and the form in which the challenge is present when you feel supported.
  2. Question the Rules that hold you back from honouring the infinite wisdom of love and from being centred in your heart. Develop a bold and balanced vision of yourself and of the future of humanity: Cut through to the root of exactly what it is that you want and find the most optimal path to getting there.
  3. Thrive to achieve self-actualisation by focusing inwardly, boosting your mental, physical, emotional and etheric body with knowledge and the wisdom required to immunize itself against many of the life adversities that may come your way. Combine Science and Spirituality to evolve your being.
  4. Make a conscious choice to turn any life struggle that you may be experiencing into seeds of gratitude and fuel for love, great health, and heart based living.
  5. Get connected and pave the way for you to unlock, listen, and use your hearts intelligence to create life miracles, a global coherence that shifts the evolution of mankind towards a more balanced, collaborative and peaceful world.

Spirit-based principles and practical, do-them-in-the-moment tools shared in both books are there to help you bring into your own life the hidden miracles of your true essence, equilibrate your mind and amplify your intuition and rebalance your inner being that is required for you to be extraordinary.

Lastly, remember, you are the call for love, the solutions people need to redefine themselves in the face of life’s greatest challenges and the light they need to help them get on a path that shifts them towards love, wisdom, wealth and making a greater impact in the world.

Use these five vital principles daily, they will help you build the skills, tools and the knowledge required to overcome the physical ramifications of loneliness, accelerate your human growth, and help you live an epic life.

About the Author

Tony J. SelimiTony J. Selimi is internationally known as a human behavior, cognition and emotional intelligence expert. He is a keynote speaker, entrepreneur and the creator of the TJS Evolutionary Method. Tony is an award-winning and international best-selling author of A Path to Wisdom – How to Live a Balanced, Healthy and Peaceful Life and Loneliness: The Virus of the Modern Age. He teaches people the tools and the knowledge required to face life’s greatest adversity head on and live life in a specific state of self-mastery that helps them accelerate their human growth, potential and impact. For more information, visit www.tonyselimi.com.

When is Internet Marketing Worthwhile?

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Generally, the answer to this question is “always”, but the answer is much more involved. Sure Internet marketing is worthwhile but as with any type of marketing it is only worthwhile if it is done well. For example, you can spend thousands of dollars on a television marketing campaign but if no one sees your commercials or your commercials do not reach your target audience and generate sales, the advertising and the money that you spent was a waste of time and effort. So perhaps a more appropriate answer to this question would be that Internet marketing is worthwhile when it works. This is a rather vague statement, I know. But I will try to explain what I mean further and show you how you can make Internet marketing work for your business.

One of the most basic and most important principles of marketing is to make sure you reach your target audience. This is important because your target audience are the people who are most likely going to be interested in purchasing your products or services. It is much easier to sell your products or services to those who already have an interest in the products and services you have to offer. Much easier than it is to convince those who are not interested in your products or services at all. As an example consider a business who sells fishing rods. You will want to market your products to those who enjoy fishing either competitively or as a leisure activity because among this audience you are likely to find people who may be interested in purchasing a new fishing rod. It would make sense to place an advertisement for your business on a website selling bait and tackle or a website which organizes fishing trips in exotic locations. Conversely it would not make sense to place your advertisement on a website selling telescopes because you are not likely to reach a large target audience here. There may be some stargazers with an interest in fishing but your advertising dollars and efforts would be better spent placing advertisements with websites more closely related to your business.

Another factor to consider when purchasing advertising space on another Internet website is traffic the amount of traffic the other website receives. This is significant because you want to place your advertisement on a website which is closely related to your own and likely to attract a similar audience but you also want your advertisement to receive a large amount of attention. For this reason, it is important for your advertisement to appear on a website which receives a great amount of traffic each month. This will help to ensure your business is getting a great deal of exposure through this advertising.

When it comes to Internet advertising, there is a fine line between great advertising and spam. Some business owners get carried away trying to get as much exposure as possible and can sometimes go overboard and wind up being considered spam. Internet users who see your advertisement in a couple of key locations will likely notice the advertisement and may be compelled to visit your website immediately or may keep your website in mind for future use. However, Internet users who see your advertisement everywhere they look are likely to view your advertisement as spam. This can be harmful because they are not likely to visit your website because they expect it to not be worthwhile.

In any Internet marketing campaign, it is important to carefully monitor the results of your marketing efforts and make changes to your campaign as necessary. This is important because you want to make sure your marketing efforts are paying off and the best way to do this is to evaluate the results of your advertising carefully. One way to do this is to place specially coding in each one of your advertisements so you will know which advertisements are generating business for you and which ones are not. You can use this information to decide whether you should modify the ineffective website or stop running these advertisements. If you decide to modify these ads, you will want to continue to monitor the results to determine whether or not the changes made the advertisements more effective.

Good luck and happy advertising!

About the Author

John MontanaJohn Montana has been a successful salesman since 1990. He currently lives with his wife and travels between Chicago and Los Angeles. He created his site – ABMSNOW to offer tips and ideas on how to become better at selling… no matter what your product is.

Strategize Your Way to Success

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Strategy and execution are essential to be successful long-term. They require thinking and action. Most people know Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Few people know what Aristotle said later, “The unplanned life is not worth examining.” It’s important to set aside think-time to take a bird’s eye view of where you are at and where you want to go. But if you fail to plan how to get there, all that thinking will be a waste of time. Here are three critical components to proper examining and planning for a business and life of authentic joy.

Think-time and Proper Delegation

Do you have a set time either daily or weekly where you simply think? This is an essential practice in order to prevent getting caught up in the day-to-day projects and tasks. Properly delegating all the tasks and projects that can be completed well by someone else lets you focus on what you do best.

I work with one executive who gauges how successful his day is by how long it takes before someone interrupts him with a question after he begins his workday. If he is interrupted, he analyzes why and strategizes how to prevent it from happening again. His primary talent is innovation. The better he delegates, the more time he has to think. The more time he thinks, the more he innovates.

Willpower

When many people think of willpower, the first thing that comes to mind is food. According to a recent study we make well over 200 food-related decisions each day! But these are not the only willpower battles we wage. We need willpower or we simply won’t execute. Here are three tips to increase your daily willpower reserves:

1. The first battle of the will is your alarm clock. It seems silly, but it’s true. We know from research that willpower is like a muscle. It can become fatigued with heavy use. Many successful people (Jobs, Einstein) wore the same thing every day because it was one less decision to make.
2. Plan your day the day before. Do so preferably by the hour. If you decide on the spur of the moment or let the day push you where it will, you will likely end up far from where you wanted to be.
3. Calendar it. If it’s not on your calendar, it’s not going to get done. Period. Whether it’s time to meditate, time to think or time to make positive strides in a project, get it in ink on your calendar. Treat that appointment like you would any other that can’t be missed. No willpower required. Simply do what’s on your calendar.

Virtue

In order to be happy in business and in life it’s not simply a matter of making more money or beating the competition. It’s not only the “what” of strategy and execution and the “why” of purpose and mission. The “how” is just as critical. Aristotle said happiness is excellence in virtue.

Most of us have read about executives who have cheated to win by misrepresenting revenues. Sure, the returns were there on paper, but the lack of integrity eventually caught up with them. The most important virtue is love. Contrary to what most people say, love is not an emotion. Love can be influenced by emotion but it is primarily an act of the will. A decision. It’s about willing the good of another person.

At work, this translates into strategizing on how to help those around you to excel. What further education or skill development do they need? What are their goals? How can you best mentor them to reach their potential? What objective surveys have you administered to determine what their innate talents are? Are you playing to their strengths? Ultimately, to succeed, the first step is to truly love the people around you by putting their needs and goals above your own. You succeed when others succeed.

The key to living an authentically joyful life is to set aside time to think, use your willpower to execute and don’t forget that the “how” is every bit as important as the “what” or the “why.”

About the Author

Doug KisgenDoug Kisgen is a serial entrepreneur, organizational consultant, and author of Rethink Happy. Doug’s current company, Kisgen Group, works with entrepreneurs and executives to help them get what they want through the use of a short survey that validly measures seven work-related traits. His former company, Daydream Senior Care, dba Home Instead Senior Care, was a two-time Inc. 5000 fastest-growing company. Follow Doug on Twitter @dougkisgen.

Organizational Accountability – Evaluating Organizational Culture, part 3

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StrategyDriven Organizational Accountability ArticleWhen evaluating an organization’s culture, it is important to understand that variations likely exist vertically among personnel levels and horizontally across divisions, departments, and workgroups. Consequently, it’s important to establish the degree of alignment between the various organizational levels and business units to the cultural characteristics being evaluated in order to fully understand the cultural adaptation and adherence within the organization.

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Additional Information

For additional information regarding organizational alignment and aligning mechanisms see:

Return to the Organizational Accountability Forum

About the Author

Nathan Ives, StrategyDriven Principal is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.