Thursday, August 24, 2017

Effective Habits that will help you to be become more successful

Success can mean different things to different people but one common thing is that Success starts with you. Everything you do today is a result of your personality, your motivations, and your habits.

So it follows that, if you adopt a certain set of habits in life, you can make yourself be successful. Getting into the right mind-frame and having the right attitude will help you get there.

1. PLAN while others are playing.

2. SMILE while others are frowning.

3. BEGIN while others are procrastinating.

4. COMMEND while others are criticizing.

5. SAVE while others are wasting.

6. STUDY while others are sleeping.

7. DECIDE while others are delaying.

8. LISTEN while others are talking.

9. PREPARE while others are daydreaming.

10. WORK while others are wishing.



Thursday, August 17, 2017

When you have passion, anything is possible

Anything is possible if you have the passion. Turn on your speaker please.

#gritpower


Source: internet

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Growth mindset for building grit

In education, the one thing we know how to measure best is IQ. But what if doing well in school and in life (or work) depends on much more than your ability to learn quickly and easily?


A research team going around asking private companies, Who is successful here and why? Which of these salespeople is going to keep their jobs? And who's going to earn the most money? In all those very different contexts, one characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success. It wasn't good looks, physical health, and it wasn't IQ. It was grit.

Grit is passion and perseverance for a very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality.

Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint.

The most shock thing about grit is how little we know, how little science knows, about building it. "How do I build grit in my team members? What do I do to teach team members a solid work ethic? How do I keep them motivated for the long run?" The honest answer is, I don't know. What expert do know is that talent doesn't make you gritty. Their data show very clearly that there are many talented individuals who simply do not follow through on their commitments. Their data also revealed that grit is usually unrelated or even inversely related to measured of talent.

So for, the best idea about building grits in team members is something called "growth mindset". This is an idea developed at Standford University by Carol Dweck, and it is the belief that the ability to learn is not fixed, that is can change with your effort. Dr Dweck has shown that when people read and learn about the brain and how it changes and grows in response to challenge, they're much more likely to persevere when they failed, because they don't believe that failure is a permanent condition.

So growth mindset is a great idea for building grit. But we need more. And that's where I'm going to end my remarks because that's where we are. That's the work that stands before us. We need to take our best ideas, our strongest intuitions, and we need to test them. We need to measure whether we've been successful, and we have to be willing to fail, to be wrong, to start over again with lessons learned.

In other words, we need to be gritty about getting ourselves, our team members grittier.

Source: Angela L Duckworth


Here are 7 tips to foster grit for adults who aspire to grittiness, how to grow your own grit.

Tip #1: Encourage Practice

Even better, encourage challenging practice. Practice shouldn’t rehash a skill in which you’re already competent; aim for something one step above your current abilities. Practice makes perfect.

Tip #2: Praise Effort, Not Outcome

When we praise someone with, “Perfect!,” or “Great job,” their exertion dries up—there’s nowhere left to go. Instead, praise effort: “That must have taken a lot of work to be so great.” Or, “You worked really hard on that!”

Tip #3: Teach That Frustration and Confusion are Signs of Progress

The thoughts, “Frustration means it’s time to quit,” or “Since I’m confused, I probably can’t do it,” should be replaced with. “Getting frustrated is a normal part of learning something hard,” or “If I’m confused, that means I’m figuring it out.” Offer these re-frames when you hear those first exasperated sighs and grumbles of frustration.

Along the same lines, offer support, but don’t swoop in to rescue someone at the first sign of struggle. As long as eventual success is within reach, allow that person to labor over those stubborn logics or troublesome formula, and reinforce the struggle as a part of learning.

Tip #4: Teach Courage

Courage is closely aligned with grit. Courage isn’t merely doing challenging things--it’s being afraid, and then digging in your heels and trying anyway. In other words, fear is a prerequisite to courage. Right Cik Dayah?

To apply this, when your team member say they’re scared, tell them, “You can do scary things.” Then, the next time you need to submit that manuscript or get that mammogram, tell yourself the same.

Tip #5: Encourage Long-Term Commitment

The specific activity—accounting, bookkeeping, animation, JAVA coding —doesn’t matter as much as the effort. Let team member try out different activities until they find one they love and want to stick with. And by ‘try out,’ I don’t mean one lesson: ask them to hang in there for the season or the semester. If, after that, the activity really isn’t a match for them, don’t re-register--but do ask them to try something else. Right Mr Sim?

Tip #6: The Growth Mindset

This concept has been all over popular psychological science recently, but it bears repeating.

In short, in a fixed mindset, people believe that their intelligence or abilities are set traits that render them successes or failures, regardless of effort. However, in a growth mindset, adult learn that their intelligence or abilities can be developed through—you guessed it—gritty hard work and perseverance.

So, teach your team member that the brain is like a muscle: the more you use it, the stronger it gets. Initial failures and struggles are just the brains pumping iron on the way to success.

Tip #7:  Grit Won’t Apply to Every Situation

Adults won’t be particularly gritty at something they hate. So don’t overstate grit as the cure for hating English lesson or hating accounting —grit is about hanging in there for the passion, not about, “you’re going to do it no matter what, and you’re going to like it.” Passion increases grit, but grit allows adults to pursue their passion. What is your passion Pasti Nyalain?


Friday, August 11, 2017

Respond less to negative people

Difficult people are not aware of the negative impact that they have on those around them. To deal with difficult people effectively, you need an approach that enables you, across the board, to control what you can and eliminate what you can’t. The important thing to remember is that you are in control of far more than you realize.

THEY SET LIMITS:

Negative people face plenty of problems and fail to focus on solutions. They only want to seek people’s attention. Smart people should set limits. No need to give sympathy. If they’re smoking near you, no need to inhale it, just distance yourself. A great way to set limits is to ask the person how they intend to fix the problem. They will either quiet down or redirect the conversation in a productive direction.

THEY RISE ABOVE:

At times difficult people drive you crazy. They are so irritating, all you need to do is ignore their humor and behavior. Be more mature than the others, have the courage to achieve greater things and you will rise above. Distance yourself from such people. Sooner or later they’ll get away from you when they’ll see no response coming.

THEY STAY AWARE OF THEIR EMOTIONS:

Sometimes you’ll find yourself where you’ll need to choose the best way forward. You need to buy yourself some good time. Always be the stronger and bigger person in the work setting, always be the one that others can talk to within the work setting, without your own personal emotions being brought into the situation.

THEY USE THEIR SUPPORT SYSTEMS:

Always know who you have to lean on, whether it be a parent, friend, counselor, teacher, etc. Everyone needs to vent about things sometimes and you should feel comfortable with, whomever that may be.

THEY ESTABLISH BOUNDARIES:

This is the area where people set boundaries. Know what you are capable of, just because you are working on a project with others and they are at a lower level than you, do not stoop down to their level, make them work harder and work to your level.

THEY DON’T FOCUS ON PROBLEMS—ONLY SOLUTIONS:

Where you focus your attention determines your emotional state, you create a sense of personal efficacy that produces positive emotions and reduces stress. Always look ahead, know what the problem is but move right along to the solution to get the problem solved.

THEY DON’T FORGET:

Smart people are quick to forgive, but that doesn’t mean that they forget. They will always remember what you did to them, so be nice.

THEY SQUASH NEGATIVE SELF-TALK:

Negative talk won’t bother smart people. They have much more to worry about in life than what bad things you have to say about them. Negativity sends you into a downward emotional spiral that is difficult to pull out of. You should avoid negative self-talk at all costs.

THEY GET SOME SLEEP:

Don’t stress so much about something that you lose sleep. That is a problem within itself that people often deal with and it’s a bad problem to have.  You need rest and you must rest. A good night’s sleep makes you more positive and creative.

THEY DON’T DIE IN THE FIGHT:

Smart people know how important it is to live. When you read and respond to your emotions, you’re able to choose your battles wisely and only stand your ground when the time is right. They know how to deal with conflict and not let their emotions get to them.

Thursday, August 10, 2017

Building a More Profitable Construction Business

The objective of this article is to illustrate that the goal in a Construction Business is not to work more, but to work more effectively, and improve your company's bottom line as you go. There is also some points to learn and applied it to an IT company like ours.

Estimating Profit

Creating a detailed, accurate estimate for work you propose to do is the first step toward achieving real profitability.

Overhead. Understanding overhead is important. Think of overhead as costs that would remain even if your crew didn;t do any work for a week. you would still need to pay your Account staff, telephone, insurance, rental, and utilities - as an example.

Risk. It is important to include risk factors in each estimate - contingency line - rather than just a padding here and there.

Job Costs. Labour can be the riskiest and most difficult part of the estimating process. IIn order to prepare an accurate estimate, you must know how long each task will take and how much each task will cost - and that depends on the relative efficiency of your personnel. Without understanding the true productivity of your field staff, you cannot create accurate and reliable estimates.

Managing Job Production for Profit

Once you're awarded a job, it's crucial to perform the work in the most cost-effective way possible if you expect to make a profit. While that may be easy in theory, it can be another matter altogether in practice. To effectively manage a job, keep these important factors in mind;

Change Order. Too many contractors lose money on change orders because they don't systematically track costs and don't take the time to bill for the change work they perform. Ironically, change orders can be an excellent source of additional profit because you have no competition for the work. In order to better track and manage change orders, you must create procedures to record changes in the field, turn those changes into work orders, and obtain sign-off on approved work for billing purpose.

People productivity. As Ben Franklin said, "time is money", and it's especially true in construction. For example, if you run a job exactly as budgeted, but it took two weeks less to complete than expected, you have added profit directly to your bottom line.

Keep everyone informed. Both employees and subcontractors need to know the job schedule. Subcontractors appreciate early notice of schedule changes and will be more willing to help you out.

Accounting for Profit

True job cost accounting can increase your profitability by helping you understand the actual costs associated with each job. A proper accounting system needs to accomplish two things:

One, effectively meet your daily accounting and bookkeeping needs and two, meet your specific requirements as a contractor. That means streamlined processing and an effective way to manage workers’ compensation, liability insurance, bonding and other issues of concern to you.

Remember that an accurate construction accounting system must distinguish between overhead costs and direct job costs. You must also be able to systematically compare your budgeted costs to your actual job costs to measure estimating effectiveness, labor productivity and use of materials.

Assigning the right responsibilities to the right people will help make your accounting system work for you. To accurately assign costs to a job, your project manager needs to be the one who codes the bills. If left to your bookkeeping staff, they may assign costs incorrectly since they are not close to the actual construction work being done. The result is that any report that compares actual to budgeted costs by cost code will be inaccurate and therefore meaningless.

Purchase orders can also help keep your costs in order. Using purchase orders will ensure that the project manager codes expenses at the time of order, not the bookkeeper, when the bill is received.

And without using a PO, you could end up paying more than your supply house originally quoted if they make a billing mistake. This could happen because your bookkeeper can’t spot the overcharge without a PO showing what the correct price should have been.

Contractors spend too much time and energy on accounts payable—and without a workable system in place, the quantity of incoming invoices will overwhelm your office. Just as important, if you do not send receivable invoices in a timely fashion and fail to follow up on them, you’ll quickly
find you don’t have the cash to take care of the bills.

Analyze for Profit

Many contractors make the mistake of thinking of each job as an independent project—with a start and a stop. As a result, they rarely take the time to analyze each job and assess the overall success of the business. If you think of your projects as circular rather than linear, you will find effective ways
to reduce costs and increase profits.

Contractors often have trouble ending jobs because they are more focused on starting the next one.

Yet it’s important to remember that you won’t get paid until you successfully complete the project punch list—and the sooner you do, the sooner you’ll receive payment on the final invoice, as well as the retention.

A thorough review should be built into your closing process. Look for unbilled amounts still outstanding from vendors. Look for unbilled change orders.
Another important part of the review process is to compare your actual costs to your budget. Based upon what you learn, you can make needed adjustments, which will help you be more profitable on future jobs.

Understand the Profit cycle

Since we’re half-way through the “Steps” let’s review the construction business profit cycle again. Within the first 4  Steps, there are multiple strategies to pursue. Decide which of them would provide the most ROI (return on investment) for your company and implement these.


Define Goals and Set Expectations 

You may wish to take some time to seriously consider and define your goals for your business. This will be your roadmap to follow. Once you’ve defined your own goals, then you’re in a good position to guide your employees’ and clients’ expectations and behavior to serve your vision and theirs.

Define Goals. Really take some time to consider what you want to achieve in your business. Do you define success by your bottom line? By company growth? Spending more time with family?

Here are some important things to keep in mind as you define success.

Too many companies define success in the short-term—an error that may ultimately damage your business. An emphasis on long-term planning and relationships over short-term gains will help ensure the ongoing success of your company.

We recommend some practical ways to define your goals that include use of a mission statement and complete business plans. Crafting a mission statement will help you systematically identify your values, your focus and what you hope to achieve. Business plans, on the other hand, require you to set realistic, detailed long-term management, financial and marketing goals and enable you to measure your success against them.

Set Expectations. Setting expectations will influence the behavior of your clients and your employees and result in more productive, long-term relationships. Consequently, you will be in a better position to achieve your own goals.

Clients. Repeat clients and referrals not only reduce your marketing expenses, but can dramatically increase your business volume and profitability. That’s why it’s so important to set expectations to influence your customer’s view of your work.

Here are some important tips for setting expectations:
Your clients need to know in advance that it’s typical to have additional costs 10% to 25% more than the original contract from change orders. A client who has a realistic expectation of change orders and resulting costs will be far more willing to work with you during the job—and pay for the additional work you do.

Don’t forget to ask for referrals. Use your company signs at each job. Inform the neighbors that you’ll be working in the area. Use each contact as an opportunity to do direct marketing for your business.

Sometimes, as difficult as it is, you may need to fire a bad client. Miserable clients, who have unrealistic expectations, make for unsatisfactory and highly unprofitable jobs.

Employees. Your employees also need to know your goals and expectations. Employees who have shared goals will be more effective in performing their jobs. Sharing profits can go a long way toward creating shared vision and goals. Find out what makes each of your employees happy—better wages? increased responsibilities? fewer work hours?—and use that information
as you work with them. Some employees are content to do the same job year in and year out.

Others look for additional responsibility. Let your employees know what advancement path is available to them—and encourage them to succeed at it.
Employees are far more satisfied when they are held accountable for tasks they can control. Be clear about who is responsible for what, and then hold those individuals accountable. For example, it is difficult to make the bookkeeper responsible for coding invoices to the correct cost codes if he
or she is not the project manager.

Create Performance Rewards

Money isn’t the be-all and end-all of motivation…but it certainly helps!
Creating performance rewards for your employees will motivate them to watch out for the bottom line. Here are three good ways to get started:

Setting profit-sharing goals based upon job responsibilities will help your employees feel in control over their contribution. Field personnel, for example, could be measured on job costs against budget, while office staff could be rewarded for decreased overhead costs.

Establish a range for bonuses. Setting a pre-determined percentage for all employees does not allow you to reward exemplary behavior. Employees will then have pocketbook feedback on how their work is viewed and evaluated.
Just because someone works really hard doesn’t mean they are working well. We all know the person who stays late every night and works every weekend, yet never seems to get all the work done. Don’t be fooled by effort—instead, look at each employee’s results.

Train Good Staff

Good training can improve process and profitability, which is why it’s crucial to remember that the right training is an investment, not an expense.

Why? Because replacing employees is expensive. Studies show that the costs associated with advertising, interviewing time and training can add up to almost half of that employee’s annual wages. The bottom line? You want to keep good employees right where they are—working for you.

Education helps everyone. Encourage your employees to look for sources of training and learning opportunities.

Create Written Procedures

Written procedures within a company are key to business profitability. Typically, companies create written procedures only after they lose money because something wasn’t done right. The better way is to create written procedures ahead of time and avoid the failures altogether.

Written procedures will provide a roadmap to new employees on how and when to do their work.

Defined procedures will save you time and money and will increase your profitability—not to mention save you training dollars. Consider these examples:

It only takes one instance of an incomplete lien release to understand how much money you can lose. Each state has different laws, and you must know the laws that affect you so that you can pass the knowledge along to your employees.

“Internal controls” is an accounting practice that can limit the risk of embezzlement. The bank statement must be opened by the owner. And someone other than the bookkeeper should reconcile the statement each month.

Since so much money is at risk on change orders, it is essential to have a good change order management procedure to ensure change orders are as profitable as they should be. Have written procedures for how each change order is started, completed and billed. Collecting time cards daily is essential to measuring your employees’ productivity. Remember that a weekly time card due on Monday morning will typically be filled out all at once on Monday morning—and will probably not be accurate.

Create a system that tracks the expiration of your subcontractors’ workers’ compensation. Why? Because if you pay a sub without it, you will be held liable for those dollars. Consider the story of the contractor who verified liability coverage before the subcontractor started the job, but by the time it
came to paying the sub, the policy had expired. The result: the contractor had to pay large sums of money to cover the sub.

Communicate

On most projects, there are several groups with whom you need to maintain regular contact.

Depending upon which group you fall into, these might be clients, general contractors or builders, subcontractors, employees, bonding agents, architects, engineers and inspectors. When you make communication with the various groups involved with your projects your top priority, you greatly increase the likelihood of having successful and profitable projects.

Communication with your employees, for example, is both valuable and necessary. Having regular staff meetings and recognizing and rewarding good work will help keep the lines of communication open. But be careful—you must also value your employees’ time by making staff meetings both short and powerful. Remember, too, that employees will often assume the worst when they are not informed. Job security creates commitment among your employees, which in turn, can lead to greater profitability.

To improve communications with various parties outside of your company, you should develop a system for producing and documenting professional-looking reports and notices. Providing documented reports, including approved change orders, bonding reports, job cost summaries, subcontractor notices, and lien releases will provide clear communication and prevent against any misunderstandings long after the job is completed.

Source: L Shiner

.