Unleash the Power of Enthusiasm

If you are not fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm in every aspect of our life, every moment of our life is a must. Enthusiasm makes the simple mundane tasks special and rewarding.

Enthusiasm at work motivates employees to go that extra mile to accomplish their tasks and shoulder more responsibilities without feeling the stress. But still one finds that enthusiasm is so scarce and rare to find.

To get people around you to be more enthusiastic, we need to be enthusiastic and active ourselves. Results always come in proportion to the enthusiasm applied. Enthusiasm is contagious, so be a carrier.

Below are 5 tips to unleash the power of enthusiasm within you

1. To become enthusiastic, start by learning more about the things you are not enthusiastic about. Study deeply about the things that don't interest you but are a part of you life. Knowledge about the thing will create interest in it.
   
2. Pep it up: Add life, vigor in to everything you do. When you shake hands with anyone, just do it with a big smile and say "Good to see you". You will make his day more brighter for sure.
   
3. Do not hang out with unenthusiastic and negative people. Unenthusiasm is also contagious, stay away from it.
4. Don't just like what you do, love it. Add that extra bit of care, affection and personal touch in everything you do.
5. Be in the company of enthusiastic people. Participate in
   

Happiness at work is my responsibility !

Happiness in work place is not something which you feel when you are getting paid well or you have a posh office, its a matter of choice. You need to choose to be happy at work. When you are happy at work, the same happiness radiates ion to your family and social life. The impact of happiness at work is more, because we spend most of our waking hours at work.

So from today lets repeat the below everyday till it becomes our nature -

1. I choose to be happy at work
2. Will spread happiness: I will be the carrier of happiness and infect others. Unhappiness is also infectious, but I choose not to spread that virus.
3. I will create happiness today: Not tomorrow, Not next week or next month. Its Now.
4. I will learn to say "NO"
5. Letting my BOSS know what makes me happy at work is my responsibility.
6. Letting my colleagues know what makes me happy at work is my responsibility.
7. Happiness at work makes me more healthy, happier and completely stress free.
8. I understand its OK to have a BAD WORK DAY.
9. I will share my knowledge with others and appreciate others work as well.
10. I am my BEST when I am Happy! Happiness makes me be creative, productive and successful.

Lets pledge from today at the start of the waking hour that- I choose to be HAPPY AT WORK !

Hidden cost of Workplace Complexity

Real problem is not more volume but extra complexity.

When we have more work volume from existing customers, we have to adapt to increase in volume which in turn adds to the resource cost. However, when the customer is new, their is recruiting cost and since their needs are different from the existing customers, the complexity and cost increases.

Even though the new customer is only slightly different than the existing customer, costs go up because the small change also breaks the routine and requires the manager intervention to handle the new requirements.

Stopping the work and starting it again incurs cost. Communication and miscommunication between extra people incurs time drain and hence cost. The gap and cost increases further when the work is put aside for someone else's instructions or for more clarity on customer feedback. All these costs are steep and shocking because most of the time they go unaccounted.

If this communication is across departments, offices and timezones, the result is unimaginably bad.

Increase in work volume, leads to marginal new customers and profit, but add significantly to the managerial complexity.

Management and managers both get a high from increased complexity as it interests and challenges their intellect. Hence, management and managers keep managing and encouraging complexity till it becomes unmanageable and goes completely out of control.

Alas, the cost of complexity is far more than the benefits of increased volume.

Business Volume is not all bad

Business volume and market share are important and valuable. Extra volume also helps us to spread the fixed costs. Volume also helps us in making a good sales pitch and creates confidence to approach big customers.

Business volume changes the way the world perceives your business. There is more acceptance and feel good environment. More people are hired to handle the extra volume. And the moral of the existing employees is high to see the company in the growing gear. You become a part of the preferred employer list for a lot of good talent, who earlier wouldn't even consider you worth sending their profile.

Its a feel-good environment everywhere, till the balance sheet is presented.

The bottom line still doesn't change why does high volume fail to translate in to high profits.

Why do businesses have to pay the price of shrinking margins when targeting more business volume or market share.

What can be the cause of increasing costs? More business should be more profits and the cost to profit ratio should remain the same, ideally. Converse is true though.

Real problem is not more volume but extra complexity.

Simple Week

Last entire week, I focussed on bringing clarity to each and every facet of my work life. Believe me, it was a long hard week, with very little to brag about.

In the pursuit of simplifying the environment of my office, I have focussed my attention this week on various areas:

1. Simplifying the work allocation to team members. Seeing to it that my managers do not keep shuffling their duties based on management and customer pressure. Simplifying the instructions and duties assigned to my designers and developers. Bring more clarity in making them understand our and customers' expectations from them.
   
2. Working with my marketing team to simplify and reduce the long list of pending quotations. Leads get generated and keep piling each day in the inbox of my marketing team as they do not get cleared the same day. Training sessions were scheduled with them on how to attend to leads and send initial quotes to their requests.
   
3. Studying the last 6 months sales data to assess the trend of business. More on this in the next post.
4. Working with the each individual and helping and making him focus on his work and make him use the free time to sharpen his/her skill. Average age of my team is 24-25, making them to focus and realize the importance of enhancing their skill requires sheer persistence.