How To Determine The Price You Are Willing To Pay

May 5th, 2008 by Klaus Wiedemann

Photo courtesy of orangeacid

Every decision you take has a price tag assoicated with it. That’s even more true for your time management decisions. It’s not necessarily a price tag in US-dollars or Euros, it is quite often a price tag in “time not spent with others”.

I’m not sure whether I mentioned already that I do not really like the term “time management” - as time is nothing you can really manage, you can not increase (or decrease) the amount you have available at any given day (although quit smoking might give you a few bonus days - but -hey- you’ll never know…).

You only can decide how to allocate your time: how much time you want to spent at work, how much time you dedicate to your spouse or kids. Quite often, it’s a tough call. But - as Dave Navarro points out in his article Wake Up, Damn It! You Won’t Get A Second Chance make sure you do not postpone all your “valuable” time with kids or family until later. Because later might never come…

So, how do you determine the price you are willing to pay in your professional career? I can not give any advice here. A rule of thumb I usually use is:

“компютри втора употребаIf I would die tommorrow, would I regret my time allocation during the last month?”

If your answer is a screaming YES, you might consider changing something.

--> Posted at May 5th, 2008

Brand Yourself in a Crowded Market

April 23rd, 2008 by Klaus Wiedemann

Branding in a crowded market isn’t just a necessity for companies. Thinking about it, branding is a burning issue (no pun intended) for each single individual.

Almost everybody is working today in a crowded market: no matter whether one works as a carpenter, as freelance writer or business consultant. Chances are, there are tons of other people offering the same service as you do.

Like for products, where a brand helps to differentiate a product from similar offerings (as Gordon Graham puts it in his presentation), a brand can help to distinguish yourself from the crowd as well. Sounds strange? Well, in this context, branding is just another word for reputation.

But while reputation is something which is the result of your past (either positive or negative), branding is forward-looking.
Branding is about the reputation you want to have five years from now.

You better start thinking about it.

--> Posted at April 23rd, 2008

Areas to consider when planning your long term goals

April 16th, 2008 by Klaus Wiedemann

Dustin Wax over at Lifehack.org mentions a few interesting aspects to consider when contemplating your “Where do I want to be in 5 years from now?”-question.
He uses the business approach of an “individual development plan” and applies this thinking also to the private/personal space.

When you plan the conccrete steps how to reach your goals step by step, he suggests to consider these areas in your planning:

• Courses and workshops: From formal university instruction to extension classes to one-off events like seminars.
• Reading: Books, magazines, websites, newsletters, trade journals.
• Networking: Don’t neglect the value that building
  connections within your current niche or your desired one can bring.
  Figure out who in your field is worth following, and how to get close
  to them.
• Mentoring: A special kind of networking; consider asking a leader in your field to “take you under their wing”.
• Ride-alongs/shadowing: Hands-on experience is
  invaluable. Ask to spend a day with someone whose knowledge and skills
  you admire, learning their work from their perspective.
• Outreach: Form or join a group devoted to your topics.
• Reassignment/move to a new job: Ask your employer
  to shift you into a different department or position, or find work that
  better matches where you want to end up.

I just would add you should reserve the required time well in advance to avoid your short-term priorities are dominating your calendar. Budgeting time and scheduling time-slots in your calendar can help you with that.

--> Posted at April 16th, 2008

Why Professionals Need to Compete Globally

April 14th, 2008 by Klaus Wiedemann

The answer is simple: if you don’t, you will be in trouble.

Get me right: I am not saying that you as an individual professional need to chase business all over the world. But, you need to be aware of your global competition. With high-speed Internet, well educated and trained people are available and reachable all over the world. Unlike last century, where low paid blue-collar work tended to be outsourced (or off-shored) to developing countries such as India or China, this is happening in the 21st century with white-collar job as well.

For example, More than 75 Percent of Financial Companies [are] Now Offshoring, Saving $9 bln a year.

Seems like tough times ahead, especially if you consider some of the aspects presented here (a pretty nice presentation, but lacks in my opinion a proper citation of the sources. Anyway, some good food for thought, if you take it with a grain of salt):

So, what to do? In my opinion, the outlook is not as bleak: Although competition is global, professionals have an invaluable advantage when competing locally against global competition: Trust, reputation and transaction costs.

What do I mean by that? Outsourcing and offshoring comes with transaction costs for your customer: more travelling to set up remote operations, more controlling and supervision. Because your customer does not know your fellow competitors from another continent yet: He is not familiar with their culture, he can not judge easily on their reputation. He still needs to build up trust to lower his transaction costs. This is the main (if not the only) entry barrier professional from a different country or continent face (no matter where they reside).

Therefore, in the 21st century, it is essential for a professional to focus on a few things:

• Reputation: This is what helps a customer to decide. In the knowledge business most professionals are in, this is probably the most important factor. Knowledge is not tangible, and selling a service is just a promise for a future delivery. But it’s not only reputation about your knowledge. I would rate the reputation about your (business) ethics as even more important. We believe that the ethics of the ancient Samurai can provide some guidance here.
• Professionalism: Once you got the contract, make sure you deliver what you promised: on time, in budget, in quality, and in a professional way.
• Your personal and professional network: This is where your reputation ressonates, and this is also where your potential customers refer to in order to get recommendations for service providers: “Do you know somebody good at… ? Can you recommend me someone who…?” Here, they know, they get services for the lowest transaction cost: recommendations from people they trust.

Trust is the currency of the 21st century, and your network is your bank.

Treat it wisely.

--> Posted at April 14th, 2008

Not For Slaves Time Management

March 11th, 2008 by galina

Surfing the Internet, I found a very interesting (german) article by Roland Kopp-Wichmann on time management from a psychological point of view.

His main theses are:

• You can´t manage time
  Time is not an object you can influence, time happens.

• Your values are reflected by your dealing with time
  If something is important to you, you spend time on it. Why would you do otherwise?
• Time is not money
  “Having more time for myself” is a desire independent of money.
• There are no factual constraints
  There are only situations and consequences. Or, as I would put it: there are decisions to make and prices to pay. If you are willing to pay a certain price, then there are no constraints.
• You always have a choice
  This is not a matter of true or false, but a matter of attitude. Not For Slaves!
• If you want something, you find ways. If you don´t want something, you find reasons.
  Be honest to yourself: If you did not do something, then perhaps because you did not really want it to do…
• If you want to have time, you have to say no.
  Freeing your agenda is as easy as that.

As we put it here: not for slaves!

--> Posted at March 11th, 2008