When business is conducted globally, we often have to travel long distances to launch projects, meet with partners, negotiate deals, address crises, manage customer relations, and engage in a variety of other activities on the behalf of our organizations. And if you have to cross time zones, it can wreak havoc on the circadian process that regulates sleep, leaving you feeling tired and groggy just when you need to be your most productive.

It may be tempting to assume that you can tough your way through jetlag. However, this belies the powerful physiological mechanisms at play. The circadian process utilizes a 24-hour clock-like cycle, and conforms to this cycle relatively precisely. On average, the cycle can adjust by about one hour per day(a little less when going East rather than West, as I’ll explain below.) However, when traveling across more than one time zone, the circadian rhythm becomes mismatched with your activity schedule. In other words, you will have a hard time sleeping when you want to sleep and a hard time staying awake when you want to be awake.

The greater the time change, the greater the mismatch. As a result, subjective energy levels suffer, and you’ll also suffer cognitive and performance decrements. So when you’re making difficult decisions during a negotiation in India, you will be cognitively impaired. When you’re trying to develop new customer relations in China, you will be irritable and more easily frustrated. Managing arduous tasks and intercultural interactions are already tricky enough; doing so while in a diminished cognitive state only adds to the difficulty.

Fortunately, the research literaturesuggests some smart strategies for ameliorating these effects. One approach is to at least partially pre-adjust your own activity schedule while you’re still in your home time zone, in order to prepare for the time zone you are traveling to. This is much easier when you are traveling East than West; going to sleep a few hours early is usually very difficult, but staying up a few hours later is typically more feasible. So if you live in New York and have an important trip in San Francisco, moving your bedtime and wake time an hour later each day during the three days leading up to the trip can give you a head start. You can try the same in the opposite direction, but try a smaller change each day (20 minutes instead of an hour). A similar strategy would be to arrive one or more days early in order to give your body more time to adjust to the new time zone.

If this is not feasible, then do your best to help your body adjust to the new time zone as fast as is reasonable. I sleep on the plane if it is at the time of day people would normally be asleep in my destination time zone. If I land in London at 9am local time, but my body is still on Boston time and it feels like 4am, I may be tempted to go to sleep. But a good strategy could be to stay up for the day. Walking outside and exposing yourself to sunlightcan help suppress melatonin production — a key promotor of sleep — minimizing feelings of sleepiness and encouraging your body to shift to the new time zone.

You and Your Team

If you are trying to sleep in the new time zone, you may want to try the opposite. If I land in New York at 10pm local time and am departing from Seattle, it makes sense to try to get to sleep on the East Coast schedule as soon as is reasonable. Light manipulation can play a role in this process. Blue lightthat’s emitted from your digital devices and most lightbulbs, in particular, suppresses melatonin. That’s why, when I travel, I bring glasses that filter out blue light. I wear them at night a few hours before I want to go to sleep at a local time that is earlier than it would have been in my home time zone. Using this strategy to block blue light from electronic devices and lightbulbs minimizes melatonin inhibition, thus promoting sleep. Some people may choose to take melatonin supplements to help even further.

These strategies can be effective, but will be limited in the degree to which they can move your circadian process in the desired direction. Moreover, for some short trips, you may decide that it is not worth it to get your circadian process in alignment with the local time — especially because you have to go through the difficulties of switching back when you return.

In such cases, there are two strategies left. One is to try to be strategic about your schedule in the new time zone, optimizing your work activities for your own circadian rhythm. To a lesser degree, you may be able to do the same in the new time zone. Find out when your peak periods of energy and alertnesswould be in your home time zone, and try to schedule the most important activities in your temporary time zone to line up with your own energy levels. For example, when I travel from Seattle to Singapore, I try to schedule the most important activity for 8am Singapore time, which is 5pm Seattle time, when I would typically be at a high energy level. Waiting until 3pm in Singapore would feel like midnight to my body, and I know I would be more tired. I may still be working at that time, but hopefully I have switched to less important activities by then.

The last ditch strategy you can use is caffeine. Caffeine masks many of the feelings of sleep deprivation and circadian misalignment — primarily by blocking adenosine signals that tell your body you should be feeling tired. Caffeine does not fully eliminate the effects of jetlag, but it will lower the likelihood that you have to struggle to stay awake when you want to be awake. But beware; not only does caffeine persist in your system long after you drink it, making it harder to fall asleep later, but the more you drink caffeine the more you will come to depend on it.

None of these strategies is ideal. It’s not realistic to assume that you will be able to fully adjust to local time right away, or completely eliminate the effects of circadian misalignment. However, the greater the degree to which you can use these strategies, the more likely you will be able to perform well on your trip. Tilt the odds in your favor as much as you can.

Thanks to HBR, and have a nice reading

IMAGE: Getty Images

If there’s a mental skill to develop over the course of a lifetime, it’s knowing how to deal with stress. Many of us aren’t naturally very good at it, so we tend to buckle under stress, instead of managing it. And since stress is a fairly certain part of life, it’s helpful to be able to cope with it on multiple levels.

For those of us who are not so good at it naturally, here are some strategies that have been shown to help people cope with psychological stress. Making a point of doing as many of these as you can is a good idea. But like any habit, it will take some practice before they become reflexive.

1. Remember life isn’t all about work

“Balance” is a hackneyed phrase, but there’s definitely something to it. People who have blinders on for their work will probably do well professionally – but their lives may be pretty bleak socially or psychologically. And this can reduce your coping reserves.

“If you aim for harmony,” says psychologist Deborah Serani, “your aim is to integrate – or fit – all that matters to you in meaningful ways. So it’s not an either-or way of living, it’s a ‘let’s get the pieces to fit’ way of living.”

So make time to enjoy life: Hobbies, entertainments, volunteering, and, of course, spend time with the people who you’re working so hard for in the first place – your family. All of this is ultimately what makes life fun to live in the first place, with the added benefit of being a huge stress relief. So when stressors pop up, you’re more able to deal with them.

2. Make time to be social, even when you don’t want to be

Even if you don’t feel like being social, get yourself out once a week: Being around people will help your stress level, since we’re fundamentally social creatures and need those ties to keep us sane. Humans don’t function well in isolation, and when stress hits, isolation is even more counterproductive.

“Just about the first thing to go when we are busy or under stress is spending time with good friends,” says psychologist Heidi Reeder. “And yet even a quick hour with a friend, going for a walk or having lunch, can do a great deal for our mental and physical health. It’s like a little vacation that you don’t have to pack or plan for. Successful people know that time with friends is an important investment, particularly during times of stress.”

3. Find a practice to focus your mind

Our minds can be our worst enemies when stress hits, or at any given time, for that matter. So a practice to rein in the “monkey mind” – like meditation or yoga – is smart. Companies like Google, Huffington Post, Target, Aetna, Apple, and Nike all encourage their employees to take time to meditate and/or offer classes. In fact, Google even has its “Jolly Good Fellow” position, filled until recently by Chade-Meng Tan, who taught employees mindfulness-based emotional intelligence, as well as serving as their general guru of well being.

These practices bring us out of the past and future, which we spend most of our time ruminating about, and into the present. Choose a simple meditation to start: Focus on your breath, and when your mind wanders, just note it, and return your focus to your breath, as many times as it takes.

4. Feed your senses 

A good way both to de-stress and to stave off stress is to revel in your five senses (within reason, of course). Indulge your inner foodie, drink rich coffee, listen to music that moves you, watch the sunset, feel the grass under your feet, or wrestle with your kid in the snow.

It’s another way of living in the present – but instead of focusing your mind on the present, you’re focusing on amazing sensory experiences of being human.

“Successful and happy people feed their senses,” says Serani, “and as such, they enable more relaxation and ease into their lives. This is sometimes called ‘Subjective Well Being.’ Happy people tend to appreciate the simple or positive moments from ‘flow of life experiences.'”

5. Express gratitude

When things go downhill, finding the things that you are grateful for goes a long way in bringing you down to planet earth. Writing down things you’re grateful for has been shown to be helpful for reducing stress and boosting well being. Even going over in your head, or with your spouse, the things you’re grateful for can put things in perspective, and make stressors seem more manageable.

6. Remember that your worse case scenario may not come true

Finally, keep in mind that your mind creates some dizzyingly imaginative outcomes for problems. Most of these don’t come true, of course, but our minds always feel obliged to work out the worst-case scenarios. So when you find yourself in these times, realize what you’re doing – and remember all the times when you’ve created a catastrophe in your head where there really was none.

After the reading of this HBR article, something in your like could be change…

About the list of work-balance, i personally answer YES to every single sentences, and this is message to change something in life, because only if your mind are free you can be more productive

HBR STAFF

Our dysfunctional relationship with work email has become so normal, I’m not sure most of us can even see it anymore.

Typical is this quote from the recent article, “How Successful People Spend Their Weekends”:

“I never go into the office on weekends,” Spencer says, “but I do check e-mail at night. [Emphasis added.] My weekends are an important time to unplug from the day-to-day and get a chance to think more deeply about my company and my industry. Weekends are a great chance to reflect and be more introspective about bigger issues.”

I don’t think he’s getting the “break” he thinks he’s getting. It’s incongruent to say, “My weekends are an important time to unplug,” while admitting he’s still checking email at least twice on the weekends.

And not even vacations are sacrosanct. Here’s another common piece of advicefrom a different article:

“Put away your devices while you’re on vacation. Designate a couple of consistent times per day, so your team knows when you will be checking in.”

So, in short, put away your devices while you’re on vacation, until you take them out again multiple times a day so that you can work, and apparently vacation activities will need to be scheduled around work check-ins!

Am I Working Too Much?

Make no mistake: comments like these show how entrenched always-on work cultures have become. Researchers now call it “telepressure,” and define it as, “an urge to quickly respond to emails, texts and voicemails – regardless of whatever else is happening or whether one is even ‘at work.’” And such always-on cultures actually sabotage productivity. The research has shown that more downtime correlates to more benefits. Overworked, stressed-out, fearful employees will not be a good source of creative ideas. In this summary of studies for Innovation Management, a Swedish consultancy company, Gaia Grant, author of Who Killed Creativity…and How Can We Get it Back?, writes, “Creative thinking requires a relaxed state, the ability to think through options at a slow pace and the openness to explore different alternatives without fear.” And according to Jen Spencer, founder of The Creative Executive, “play” is an important component in creativity, and if all people do is work, they’re crowding out “play times” that are important to generating innovative ideas. “When we balance work with play, it’s like cross-training our minds and our soul. Play is about enjoyment, relaxation, and recreation, which gives our minds the ability to replenish the resources we need to be strategic, make new connections, and innovate.” Put another way, telepressure and innovation cannot coexist.

The way for both leaders and employees to manage this issue is to recognize this, and also realize that we – each of us — have the final say in what is acceptable.

What Leaders Can Do

If you’re a leader in your organization, your actions influence the culture. If you choose to refrain from sending late-night emails, your employees won’t feel pressured to check their devices. Some messages from the recently released Hillary Clinton emails provide a clear example of how leadership sets the pace of work:

Your staying home tomorrow will make lots of parents at higher levels feel ok about staying home with their kids. I may be one of them!  –Staffer to Hillary Clinton

I had gathered that you were thinking possibly of taking off on Dec 21. I would urge you to — for your own sake. The pace is absolutely killing and you deserve it. But it will also mean that a lot of folks who would like to take some time off with their family before Xmas (e.g. moms like me who are necessary to make Xmas happen) would feel much freer to do so. –Staffer to Hillary Clinton Aide Huma Abedin

In addition to keeping their own behaviors in check, another way for leaders to correct this problem is to have a frank discussion about what’s expected of employees. If this discussion leads to the conclusion that constant availability is required to meet the goals of the organization, that’s a corporate issue that needs to be addressed. This may be an acceptable short-term situation, but it’s not sustainable long term.

If the discussion leads to the conclusion that it’s up to employees to set their own boundaries and impose their own limits, then leadership must ensure that the employees have the skills and the tools to do this successfully. Effectively managing all the details of life and work is not a skill taught in schools, and as technology and communication channels proliferate, it’s getting harder and harder. Traditional time management training doesn’t work, so staff development plans need to take these needs into account.

What Employees Can Do

You don’t need to be a leader in your organization to have influence over your downtime. The fact is, your industry shouldn’t dictate your work hours—your goals should. Not everyone aspires to be President of the United States, or even president of the company.

Now, if that type of career path is the one you choose, it’s important to take an honest look at the sacrifices that might be required, and ensure that your personal goals don’t conflict with your professional goals. It may help to realize how you define success: If you work incessantly and meet your professional goals, but you’ve done so at the expense of your personal life, your family, or your mental or physical health…is that the kind of “success” you aspire to?

It may be true that you can’t get to be a Hillary Clinton without working around the clock. But it’s not true that you have to sacrifice your personal life, your health, and your sanity to be successful at a technology consulting company, or a chip manufacturer, or a fashion retailer, or most other industries, despite the pace the job may seem to require.

There are successful entrepreneurs who prove that balance is still possible while growing a business, and others who have proven that while around-the-clock work hours seems necessary in some industries, even there it’s actually only the illusion of working around the clock that’s important.

Question your assumptions about being always available. Naturally, it’s human nature to operate based on assumptions­—sometimes assumptions we don’t even realize we’re holding. For example, if everyone at your organization seems to be keeping long hours, you might find yourself doing the same, based on the vague belief that if everyone is doing it, you must “have to.” But there is certainly no hard evidence to support the idea that those who are the most available or work the longest hours are the most successful. Has anyone ever been fired for not responding to emails at 2am? And even in an environment where that may be possible, you still have a choice.

Most leaders know the work is demanding, but depend on employees to be able to impose their own balance. My CEO clients tell me that they expect their employees to understand that regardless of how many hours they work, there will always be more work to do, and the employee is the only one who can set his or her own boundaries.

To be more productive and efficient is to make the best use of the resources available to you. In your quest toward productivity, for yourself or your company, don’t neglect the most important resources, which are neither time nor money, but body and mind. When your work precludes physical and emotional well-being, your pursuit of productivity will be destined to fail. And if conventional wisdom now says that constant work is necessary for professional success, I can’t think of a more important time to buck convention.

Which the best way to improve your business?

How you develop new contacts?

How you develop your Knowledge?

Several years ago, we have discuss about the matter above and the answer was..create a “place” and a new way to meet persons.

During 2015 we have decide to start to create this “place” and we have create C-level Club;

C-Level Club is not a traditional event or meeting, but is a special end exclusive moment reserved for selected people and upon invitation only.

Knowing and experiencing a joined and cooperative comparison with characters of great culture and both national and international fame, the whole being fulfilled with the exclusive and refined locations, which will host the event, give amusement and fire up interests and passion.

C-Level Club is knowledge.

A unique and exclusive gathering to get back towards the creation of valuable relationships for developing Business activities, sharing experiences, and enhancing awareness and knowledge.

C-Level Club is sharing.

Every opinion, thought or experience is shared and discussed together in order to grow up and learn at debates. Relationships are established thanks to monthly meetings led by a moderator or a top class annual meeting providing the intervention of high prominence characters.

C-Level Club is also amusement.

Unforgettable stays in hotel structures of excellent level with luxury services at the guest’s complete disposal: golf, shopping, fitness, restaurants, spa&wellness, to be able to taste the delight of passions.

Welcome to C-level Club

http://www.c-level.it

Blue metal compass isolated on white background

I’m glad to share with you an article that make the difference..

Nobody think about how much is important to plan the future with real numbers, real target with a defined approach

TOYOTA KATA AND HOSHIN KANRI

Jeff asked an interesting question in a comment to the post Often Skipped: Understand the Challenge and Direction:

[Hoshin Kanri] seems to suggest I reach long term objectives (vision) through short term initiatives/projects as if I can (should?) know the steps. [Toyota Kata] says I don’t know the way to reach my long term vision, so I limit focus to next target condition and experiment (repeatedly) toward the vision.

Seems contradictory to me. What am I missing?

Let’s start out with digging into what hoshin kanri is supposed to do. I say “supposed to do” because there are a lot of activities that are called “hoshin kanri” that are really just performance objectives or wish lists.

First, hoshin kanri is a Japanese term for a Japanese-developed process. We westerners need to understand that Japanese culture generally places a high value on harmony and harmonious action. Where many Americans (I can’t speak for Europeans as well) may well be comfortable with constant advocacy and debate about what should be worked on, that kind of discussion can be unsettling for a Japanese management team.

Thus, I believe the original purpose of hoshin kanri was to provide a mechanism for reaching consensus and alignment within a large, complex organization.

In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, hoshin kanri concepts emerged out of their Japanese incubator and came to western business. In this process, the DNA combined and merged with western management practices, and in many (never say “all”) western interpretations, the hoshin plan tends to be something patched onto the existing Management By Objectives framework.

That, in and of itself, isn’t a bad thing. Hoshin kanri’s origins are from MBO migrating to Japan where they took MBO and mixed in Japanese cultural DNA.

However, I’m not comfortable that what we have ended up with in the west meets the original concept or intent.

With that as background, let’s get to the core of Jeff’s question.

What is the purpose of hoshin kanri?

Let’s start with chaos. “We want continuous improvement.”

In other words, “go find stuff to improve,” and maybe report back on what you are going to work on. A lot of organizations do something like this. They provide general guidance (if they even do that), and then maybe have the sub-organization come tell and report what they expect to accomplish. I have experienced this first hand.

“I expect my people to be working on continuous improvement,” says the executive from behind his desk in the corner office. Since he has delegated the task, his job is to “support his empowered workforce” to make things better.

Flatly, that doesn’t work unless the culture is extremely well aligned and there is a
continuous conversation and stream of consciousness within the organization. That is very rare. How to achieve that alignment is the problem hoshin kanri is intended to solve. It isn’t the only way to do it, but it is an effective method.*

A Superficial Overview of the Process of Hoshin Kanri

The leadership sees or sets a challenge for the organization – something they must be able to do that, today, they cannot. This is not (in my opinion) the same as “creating a crisis.” A crisis just scares people. Fear is not a good motivator for creative improvement.

Different parts of the organization may get a piece of the challenge, or the leadership team may, as a whole, work to figure out what they need to accomplish. Here is an important distinction: “What must be accomplished” is not the same as a plan to accomplish it. A challenge, by its very nature, means “We don’t know exactly what we will have to do to get there.”

This can take the form of KPI targets, but that is not what you are doing if there is a simple percent improvement expected with no over-arching rationale.

Now comes the catchball.

Catchball is not Negotiation of the Goal

Catchball is often interpreted as negotiating the goals. That’s not it. The goals are established by a market or competitive or other compelling need. So it isn’t “We need to improve yield by 7%.” followed by “Well, reasonably, I can only give you 5%.” It doesn’t work like that.

Nor is it “You need to improve your yield by 7%, and if you don’t get it then no bonus for you.” That approach is well known to drive some unproductive or ineffective behavior.

And it isn’t “You’re going to improve your yield by 7% and this is what you are going to do to get there.”

Instead, the conversation might sound something like “We need to improve our yield by 7% to enable our expected market growth. Please study your processes as they relate to yield, and come back and let me know what you think you need to work on as the first major step in that direction.”

In other words, please grasp your current condition, and come back with your next target condition.

That sounds a lot like the Coaching Kata to me.

SIDEBAR:

Toyota Kata is not a problem solving method.

Toyota Kata is a set of practice routines designed to help you learn the thinking pattern that enables an organization to do hoshin kanri, and any other type of systematic improvement that is navigating through “We want to get there, but aren’t sure exactly how.”

An executive I am working with mentioned today that Toyota Kata is what isinforming their policy deployment process. Without that foundation of thinking, their policy deployment would have been an exercise in assigning action items and negotiating the goals.

So what is the difference between hoshin kanri and Toyota Kata?

There isn’t a difference. They are two parts of the same thing. Hoshin kanri is a mechanism for aligning the organization’s efforts to focus on a challenge (or a few challenges).

Toyota Kata is a practice routine for learning the thinking pattern that makes hoshin kanri (or policy deployment) function as intended.

In hoshin planning, you are planning the destination, and perhaps breaking down individual efforts to get there, but nothing says you already know how to get there.

It isn’t an “action plan” and it isn’t a list of discrete, known action items. Rather, it is specific about what you must accomplish, and if you accomplish those things, then the results are predicted to add up to what you need.

What to Do vs How to Get It Done

At some point, someone has to figure out how to make the process do what is required. That has to happen down at the interface between people and the work actually being done. It can’t be mandated from above. Hoshin helps to align the efforts of improving the work with the improvements required to meet the organization’s challenge.

From the other side, the Improvement Kata is not about short-term objectives. The first step is “understand the challenge and direction.” Part of the coach’s job is to make sure this understanding takes place, and to ensure that the short-term target condition is moving in the direction of the challenge.

We set shorter term target conditions so we aren’t overwhelmed trying to fix everything at once, and to have a stable anchor for the next step. It enables safer learning by limiting the impact of learning that something didn’t work.

However, in Toyota Kata, while we might not know exactly how to get there, but we are absolutely clear where we have to end up.

The American Football analogy works well here. The challenge is “Score a touchdown.” But if you tried to score a touchdown on every play, you would likely lose the game. The target condition is akin to “get a first down.” You are absolutely clear what direction you have to move the ball, and absolutely clear where you need to end up in order to score. But you aren’t clear about the precise steps that are going to get you there. You have to figure that out as you go.

Hoshin Kanri focuses the effort – “What to work on.”

Toyota Kata teaches the thinking behind “How to work on it.”

*Though hoshin kanri may be effective, getting it to work effectively is a journey of learning that requires perseverance. It is much more than filling out a set of forms.

What’s mean ANALOG?

Means, develop concrete activity, physical activities, or simply do our job, but there’s an easier question  to be answer:

It’s enough to develop our business?

Today we must develop a new kind of communication, a new kind of relationship, then we need to focus on the Digital approach

Everyone can now communicate on the digital Wolrd through Ipad, Iphone or any other Device, but how many have an digital strategy? how many have a clear Target?

Below you find and abstract of Quesenberry’s article that help you to measure your activity.

As we always say, “if you want to improve you must measure”

Whether marketers like it or not, consumers are now generating over 25% of content that appears in web searches for specific brand names, and consumers often trust those social media messages more than advertising or news articles about the brand. Research has shown that this “electronic word-of-mouth” is seen as reliable by consumers and significantly affects a firm’s perceived value.

But with such a panoply of channels out there, how can social media marketers keep track of what people are saying? And what strategies can be implemented to engage those consumers to influence the conversation? That’s where a careful social media audit can help. It’s a systematic examination of social data to help marketers discover, categorize, and evaluate all the social talk about a brand. This approach captures what consumers are saying about a brand, what competitors are doing on social media, and what the brand itself is doing.

I developed a social media audit template for the book Social Media Strategy: Marketing and Advertising in the Consumer Revolution from the principle of the Five Ws that is taught to journalists: who, where, what, when, and why:

• Who categorizes data according to who is talking, whether that is the company, consumers, or a competitor.
• Where lists content by social media channel and environment. Channels include outlets like YouTube, Facebook, or Pinterest, while environment refers to the look and feel.
• What lists the type of content, such as article, photo, or video, plus the sentiment of the post as positive, negative, or neutral.
• When quantifies the frequency of activity, like number of posts, comments, views, or shares, per day, week, or month.
• Why determines the purpose of the message from awareness and promotion to complaint or praise. If applicable, key performance indicators (KPIs) are included.

Finally, each observation is scored as either a problem or an opportunity to help determine appropriate marketing action in the social strategy.

Conducting a social media audit following this template helps compel companies to figure out each channel’s purpose and key performance indicators. For example, “why does the organization have a Pinterest page and how is success being measured?” Simply because the competitor has a page is not a sound strategic reason.

It also helps marketers to see their brands from the consumer’s perspective and ideally helps marketers shift their mindsets from control to engagement.

Business-to-business marketers can also benefit from this social media audit tool. When HP needed to change their perception of only being for larger corporations, their laptop and desktop business unit turned to social media. Instead of simply advertising small and medium-size services, they took the time to audit their digital presence from the target audiences’ perspective. They found small and medium business influencers were interacting with each other on LinkedIn, and not using their HP website that was filled with useful business guides and advice.

HP developed a new Business Answers LinkedIn group and recruited a focused target audience of users by title, company, and association affiliations. The group included ongoing discussions, links to HP content, polls, podcasts, and industry experts answering questions and soon grew to more than 5,000 members. A survey of the LinkedIn group members found they were twice as likely to rate HP as excellent in listening to its customers and were 20% more likely to recommend HP products to their colleagues. Today, HP runs the LinkedIn group Small Biz Nation that has over 20,000 members and more than 30,000 discussions.

Here’s an example of a social media audit template that’s already been filled out:

In this simplified example, this company currently has a Twitter and Flickr account. They are sharing text with links on Twitter and photos with links on Flickr to drive traffic to their website. Ultimately they want more website traffic, especially unique visits to increase conversions. They currently have little engagement with these brand posts. Consumers are tweeting to the company by asking questions and seeking help, but the brand has not been responsive. Consumers are not discussing the brand on Flickr, however they discovered active photo sharing around the brand on Instagram. The company’s main competitor is on Twitter, but is sharing a lot of photos and videos with their links, using hashtags and tweeting twice as much per day. The competitor is also on Instagram where they are sharing photos, text, and hashtags that are driving a lot of consumer engagement.

In this example, Flickr is identified as a problem because it is not driving traffic to the website and this company may consider shutting the account down. Based on positive consumer brand activity on Instagram and the competitor’s success, the company should consider opening an Instagram account. Their Twitter presence could be improved by delivering more visual content, and by becoming a channel where they actually respond to user complaints. The company may also consider increasing the frequency of their posts based on their consumer’s activity and the success of their competitor.

Once negative customer issues have been resolved, and the brand is creating more valuable content on more appropriate channels for the target market, they should look for opportunities to increase and encourage further brand discussion. The brand could think of hashtags, apps, or contests to motivate additional brand sharing with user-generated content and recommendations from insights gathered in the social media audit.

Social media marketing is not about completely giving up all control of the brand, but changing methods to maintain influence in the new consumer-controlled social media reality. The social media audit tool helps marketers make sense of the many opportunities these platforms offer by allowing marketers to see their brands from the perspective of the consumer.

In una conferenza presso un’Istituto poche settimane fa, è nata una grande discussione intorno al fatto che i carichi di lavoro tendono a flusso e reflusso, ed è importante sapere come alternare tra periodi di sforzo e di recupero.

In poco tempo, qualcuno ha notato l’analogia con lo sport e i suoi alti livello di prestazione richiesti; da qui è nata una frase che ha suscitato la mia curiosità: Atleta Aziendale.

Prendendo spunto da Loehr e Schwartz,ho buttato giù un breve articolo, in modo da condividerlo con voi, (l’argomento è già stato trattato da tanti grandi ma vorrei dire la mia) i quali hanno osservato come i vincitori del mondo dello sport si preparano alle gare e in che modo applicano i concetti di gestione Aziendale/Manageriale.

Gli stessi atleti invitano i dirigenti/Manager/responsabili  “ad allenarsi allo stesso; in modo sistematico multilivello come gli atleti di livello mondiale fanno”.

Questo non significa costringere i dirigenti/Manager/responsabili a eseguire sprint alla velocità del vento (anche se alcuni lo fanno). Piuttosto, essi sono allenati in un programma olistico progettato per aiutarli a raggiungere e sostenere le massime prestazioni nel loro mestiere.

Ciò che mi colpisce di più nella scrittura Loehr e Schwartz  è il loro uso frequente della parola “equilibrio”. In particolare, vedono i grandi atleti e gli “atleti aziendali” che ottengono il giusto equilibrio attraverso tre dimensioni critiche:

1. Mente e Corpo

2. Prestazioni e Sviluppo

3. Sforzo e ripristino

Naturalmente, persone che cercano di avere successo sia al lavoro che a casa stanno costantemente pensando in termini di equilibrio. Ma forse Loehr e Schwartz ci hanno dato un modo più delicato di pensare ciò che deve essere equilibrato.

Utilizzando le loro dimensioni potremmo diventare eccellenti nel bilanciamento? vediamo come..

In primo luogo, pensiamo all’equilibrio mente-corpo. Per gli atleti, il classico errore da evitare è concentrarsi solo sulla preparazione del proprio corpo per la competizione. I Grandi allenatori cercano di guidare e sostenere i loro atleti per vincere la competizione sia a livello mentale che  fisico.

Le persone nell’azienda, al contrario, sono troppo propensi a sviluppare compiti intellettuali e spesso(molto spesso) dimenticano che i loro corpi devono essere in buona salute se si vuole avere l’energia per svolgere bene il proprio lavoro.

Un approccio di successo per sostenere nel tempo elevate prestazioni è “di raccogliere (molti) elementi e considerare la persona nella sua interezza”;

“Si devono affrontare il corpo, le emozioni, la mente e lo spirito”

Per gli atleti ma anche per noi, le parole “lavoro e vita”, “equilibrio mente-corpo” suggeriscono che dovremmo dormire a sufficienza, mangiare abbastanza bene, impegnarsi in qualche esercizio – e fare spazio nella nostra vita per l’interazione sociale; Altri cercano questo “equilibrio” attraverso la riflessione e la meditazione o la preghiera. Non c’è bisogno di essere in perfetta forma per essere bravo nel tuo lavoro o efficace come genitore. Ma se trascuriamo il nostro corpo, o lo spirito, potremmo non avere abbastanza energia per essere efficaci sia nel lavoro che in famiglia.

L’equilibrio prestazioni-sviluppo hanno una particolare importanza per il regno tra lavoro e vita. Gli atleti sanno che la stragrande maggioranza del loro sforzo è speso per lo sviluppo, e per la preparazione in vista dell’esecuzione che dovranno mettere in atto durante la competizione vera e propria.

Nel lavoro,  si sente come le proporzioni sono invertite: ogni giorno i responsabili devono svolgere i loro compiti al massimo, e solo una piccola parte del loro tempo è riservato a se stessi e al proprio sviluppo professionale.

Gli Atleti, nel loro percorso di sviluppo individuale,  si concentrano su singoli elementi della loro competizione e costruiscono le loro capacità nei fondamentali; a seguire nei giorni di gara,raccolgono tutti i pezzi insieme e spingono le prestazioni al massimo.

Allo stesso modo nel mondo del lavoro, ci sono opportunità in cui i manager possono tirare fuori solo quello che stanno cercando di realizzare attingendo a tutte le loro competenze; ma tra i “punti fondamentali”, emerge la capacità di concentrarsi sull’affinare gli elementi necessari per raggiungere l’obiettivo.

Chiunque voglia sostenere un vantaggio di prestazioni ha bisogno di capire come continuare a sviluppare nuove capacità, e non solo continuare attingendo a quelli esistenti. Se tutto ciò non può essere realizzato attraverso attività quotidiane, si richiede del tempo regolarmente programmato, si richiede difermare dei momenti per se stessi; Che si tratti di bloccare 30 minuti ogni giorno a leggere riguardo gli  sviluppi del settore, l’ascolto di un corso di lingua, delle news durante il tragitto della mattina, o provare una nuova ricetta ogni settimana; spegnere la pressione da prestazioni crea una maggiore apertura a nuovi approcci e aumenta le prestazioni nel lungo periodo.

Questo ci porta, infine a comprendere come gli atleti riescano a gestire ottimamente sforzo-equilibrio- recupero.

“Nel laboratorio vivente dello sport, si apprende che il vero nemico non è lo stress, per quanto paradossale possa sembrare, è in realtà lo stimolo per la crescita,  derivante dall’assenza di disciplina”. Per esempio, nel sollevamento peso, uno spinge i muscoli fino al punto in cui le fibre letteralmente iniziano a rompersi. Tuttavia, dopo un adeguato periodo di recupero, il muscolo non solo guarisce, ma cresce più forte, senza riposo, si finisce con un danno acuto e cronico.

Nel lavoro, i progetti con scadenze ravvicinate e gli obiettivi sfidanti, possono risultare fondamentali – ma il ritmo non può essere incessante. Il superlavoro occasionale può essere una necessità, come situazioni particolarmente impegnative nella vita personale, ma il superlavoro cronico ci priva della nostra resistenza. Questo riduce le nostre prestazioni nel tempo, e provoca danni nel nostro lavoro e nella vita personale. Allo stesso modo,molti genitori che lavorano vanno a tutta velocità, non-stop per affrontare tutto quello che devono fare a senza tenere conte del tempo per recuperare, rischiando di perdere efficacia.

Il recupero, non significa saltare da una attività all’altra ma piuttosto prendere delle pause.

Dal punto di vista della gestione, abbiamo bisogno di ripensare l’idea che il tempo non utilizzato è tempo sprecato. Invece, abbiamo bisogno di vedere che il recupero è un componente chiave di un sistema ad alte prestazioni che si deve sostenere nel tempo.

Questo significa che dobbiamo resistere al continuare a chiedere maggiore disponibilità di tempo al nostro team, oppure di interpellarli dopo l’orario di lavoro tenendoli sempre in una situazione di tensione.

Dobbiamo incoraggiare il nostro Team a fermarsi e ragionare, rilassarsi durante il fine settimana, fare in modo che ci siano momenti di stacco; questo significa contribuire a sostenere i giusti equilibri, costruendo nelle persone la giusta resistenza nel tempo nell’affrontare percorsi complessi rappresentati dal mercato in cui operiamo.

Organizzare il proprio tempo è il primo passo per organizzare la propria vita e il proprio lavoro.