Once again, I have overlooked a major market for my consulting services.
Fom the Los Angeles Times:
The Los Angeles Housing Department has paid thousands of dollars to a Zen Buddhist priest from Hawaii for management training that includes teaching breathing with sphincter control, learning "how to stand" and playing with wooden sticks.
Norma Wong, a former Hawaii state legislator and leadership consultant, has been paid $18,819 since 2005 to conduct at least four training sessions for executives and other staff. The most recent one was last week.
Read the entire article here.
[HT: Sue Quan ]
4 comments:
Michael, I've been tagged in the leadership training program at my work to be the "CEO" of our small group. We have to develop a business plan. I've done such things in college, but any advice on exceeding expectations of the management?
Thanks!
Pawnking,
Since there are plenty of guidelines on business plan content, I'll simply, but strongly, suggest these things:
1. Have a serious discussion of what business you are really in. Is Starbucks in the coffee business? Not really.
2. Be extremely wary of falling in love with the virtues of your product or service without a thorough consideration of its drawbacks.
3. Be even more wary of optimistic, "And then every tenth person will want to buy it" expectations/projections. Most businesses fail. Your plan should have reasonable expectations and tight focus.
4. As the leader, make sure that you don't close off discussion of dissent. Be especially concerned when there is rapid agreement on a major item. As Dwight Eisenhower said, "Let's not be in a hurry to make our mistakes."
5. It is a plan and so will have to be flexible enough to survive hard tackles by reality. Keeping it simple will help flexibility.
6. Finally, it all gets back to Drucker's rule: You've got to be able to create a customer. I've seen some groups/plans where everything is beautiful except the customer creation part.
Good luck!
Thanks for the feedback, Michael!
You're welcome! One other thought: It's a lot easier to find a market and then produce a product than it is to produce a product and then search for a market.
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