The Business Skills Collection: 30 Minute Reads

Go Home E-Mail Free; Bags of Energy Now; Give Great Presentations (And Without a Slidedeck); Make Better Presentations More Often; Boost Your Productivity

Nicholas Bate

• Publisher: Capstone
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780857085078
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Small Business
• Index: Business

Introducing the 30 minute reads e-book series! You're half an hour away from a pain free working life! So why not fill your down-time with some up-skilling? The average commute to work is 30 minutes. Why not kick start your New Year good intentions by using your commuting time to skill-up?! And with five books in the series you could have the most productive week of your life! Digitally native content optimized to be read on-screen Each book contains 10 short, sharp and to-the-point chapters, finishing with an 'Action Plan' with clear, super-structured, super-easy steps to no more pain!

• Brand new series of short form e-books

• Each can be read in just 30 minutes!

• Covering core business skills and problems to make your work life more productive, less painful and more successful

What will this book do for you?

Ever been stuck trying to decide what to do? The recruitment guy rang out of the blue to tell you about an amazing job with 20% more salary and a shorter commute and probably more prospects. Only trouble is you love your current job. You need to change your car; but which one? There's only so much money in the marketing budget, so where do you spend it? And – sigh – the nice guy you met on the art course and have been dating ever since. He asked you to get married! But are you ready?

Decisions. We all know what they are. This way or that way. That jumper or the other one. That route or this route. But do we know how to make them? And how to make the best one. Maybe you will be surprised …

Here's the structure of Make Better Decisions More Often

Section 1: The Decision Process. We'll kick off by reviewing the decision making process. How do we do it? Is it as logical as we thought?

Section 2: Tools to Decision Making 1: Data and evidence. How to get the facts, the evidence you need. This clearly has to be the “bedrock” of your decision-making process.

Section 3: Tools to Decision Making 2: Analy­sis. Now we have some facts we need to do some thinking and in particular we need to consider what we have now, what we want and our decision criteria.

Section 4: Tools to Decision Making 3: Brainstorm and incubation. We now move into looking at the possible solutions and how we start to move to THE solution.

Section 5: Tools to Decision Making 4: Boost­ing creativity. How to get more possible solutions upon which to decide.

Section 6: Tools to Decision Making 5: Take action. Making the decision. And making it happen.

Section 7: Decisions at Work 1: Teamwork. There are many challenges with work decisions, but certainly one is the “messiness” of so many people being involved and constantly having to “battle” with others. Here we look at the meetings and the teamwork part.

Section 8: Decisions at Work 2: Persuading, convincing and selling. And here we look at the selling, convincing and persuading part.

Section 9: Decisions at Home. How to make decisions from the smallest to the largest and often alone or with someone important in your life.

Section 10: Your Action Plan. Your personal checklist to success in any decision making, small or large. Work or home.

The majority of the sections will start with the big idea (e.g., gathering robust data) and then explain how to address that challenge in more detail. There will then be a mini case study: those with the same challenges you have, that we all have; this gives us a chance to see how they implement the concepts in a practical way. We'll also make sure your toughest questions are answered before a final summary. Everything in this book is tried and tested: it is both pragmatic and practical. We encourage you to start using the ideas immediately as that's the way this digital version was designed.

Read on …

1

The Decision Process

The Challenge

Most of us never really think about how we make a decision. If we were challenged we might mutter something about looking at “pros” and “cons” and perhaps “thinking about it for a while”. Maybe add something about not rushing “an important decision”. It sounds logical. And yet many of us know that some of the biggest decisions in our lives such as finally buying a flat, deciding who we might spend the rest of our life with or to become a police officer was a “gut” decision. And is that so bad?

Let's understand the decision-making process. Then we can get better at it!

The Detail

Making a decision will generally go through these five stages:

1. The data/evidence stage. This is the stage that kicks off the decision-making process. It might be proactive or reactive. You need facts, you need evidence if you are going to make a decision. How can you choose your next job if you do not know what is important to you and/or you know nothing about the organization? If either of those areas is weak you are likely to make a bad decision. How can you be improving the diet of your children if you know nothing about nutrition and/or little about the content/background of the food you are buying? Some data is proactive, i.e., you go out and get it: data on the best creative writing course or nicest Scottish island for your holiday. This is especially true in business, of course: what data do you have on your competitor's product margins? Some data is reactive and the slow accumulation of that data prompts a decision. No longer can you get into your favourite jeans, your 6-year-old daughter is increasingly disliking school, your franchisees are defecting to a competitor: you need to make some decisions.

2. The analysis stage. Good. Now you have some facts. Your competitor's margins are not as high as you thought. The Isle of Mull seems to be well liked by those with young children, probably overall Spanish is most appreciated by international employers seeking a second language. Once you have your facts you can then begin to do some analysis in preparation for your decision. Which raises the issue of decision criteria. You want a new carpet for your main living room. You can get all the facts you like on prices, quality and colours. But you cannot proceed unless you have some criteria which might be: (1) it must be very hard wearing (2) it must be a dark colour as you have toddlers spilling things all the time (3) it must be from a fair trade supplier. OK, now you are starting to get to serious decision time. You have criteria. And you have facts. Let's see how they match.

3. The incubation stage. Most decisions are better quality if they have a period of reflection or incubation. Of course some decisions can be made now and thousands of every day decisions and the occasional emergency decision do need to be made now. But the power of the brain when allowed to digest the meeting of criteria and data can throw up some interesting possibiliti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Bags of Energy Now
• Boost Your Productivity
• Give Great Presentations
• Go Home Email Free
• Make Better Decisions More Often
• About the Author
• Copyright page
• End User License Agreement