“Having good structure is to know” my business friend replied over lunch the other day when I asked what structure means to her. Indeed, that is “tried and true”.
If you have good structure ...
When was the last time you felt victorious? When was the last time you actively felt very pleased with yourself, in a sincere and honest way? When did you last ...
Today, this year ends and tomorrow begins a new.
When my tempo is high in work periods during the year, I like to clarify and define my projects and next steps in detail. When I am on holiday (like right now), I prefer to relax also from that. These days, ...
We are approaching one of the times during the year when most of us take a longer continuous break. It might as well be the summer vacation, but right now it’s the Christmas holiday.?? During these breaks, a ...
This tip is a continuation of last week’s post. In it, just as I will in this, I promote the great structural tool that the “mind-map” is, especially digital versions, that is, those made in one of the mind-map-software available for purchase or downloading free (also referred to as “open source”-software).
A mind-map is especially practical when ...
You spend quite a substantial amount of hours of your life working every week. If everything you do is about the details here and now, you’ll find that everything just keeps on spinning.
??You might have become quite good at ...
A couple of weeks ago I gave a talk at KY-Akademien, a college for advanced vocational education and training here in Gothenburg, Sweden. The audience was the students at the two-year programme for Advertising and Marketing and my topic was “Vision and goals (and how it really works in everyday life),” on how to do to define a long-term vision for yourself or your business and break it down into shorter, more detailed milestones (and in particular on the importance thereof).
At the end of the half day seminar, ...
One of the most valuable components of a structured, effective, personal way of working is the weekly update.
If you in your everyday life complete and add tasks to your to-do-list, creating a continuous in and out flow of tasks, it is in itself a good thing. But it often tends to result in a situation where only the tasks of immediate importance are completed, for example the most recently added tasks or those someone recently reminded you to do.
There may be tasks here and there in the to-do-list that you added a couple of months ago, which are of vital importance for your business, but which you couldn’t do anything about at the time. Now might be the right time to complete such a task and if you do not at regular intervals go through your to-do-list, it can easily get lost in the crowd.
This is where the…
Now, there are just a few days left of this fantastic 2009, and although I enjoy the time off between Christmas and New Year, my thoughts are already far into 2010.
Navid Modiri asked me the other day what my keywords for 2010 are. I love such food for thought.
After a few seconds of afterthought, ...
Do you ever experience from time to time that you are just completing task after task, doing one detailed thing after another, and everything is spinning so fast that you can’t grasp what’s going on, and that you don’t even have the time to reflect on what week it is and what’s coming up next month? Join the club.
It’s one thing to be in a flow, to feel that everything is clicking and falling into place, that you move from clarity to clarity and are getting things done, but that is not the situation I am talking about.
The condition I have in mind can be recognized by that you feel a week has just begun when it suddenly is Friday, you are astonished to realize that a certain meeting was “this week already?!” or that you are always running out of time when you are close to a deadline. To use a worn, but none the less illuminating expression: “You can’t see the woods for all the trees”.
My solution to this situation is ...
This autumn I have again had the opportunity to work with a group of entrepreneurs within a project called “Spira” (in English “spire”) here in Gothenburg. In this project, ten fresh entrepreneurs get help building their business during six intense months.
My assignment was to give a talk and to hold a workshop on how to formulate a long term vision and how to break it down into short term, detailed goals and milestones to guide you on an average workday. A month later, I met with every individual entrepreneur to work on their particular questions and challenges, regarding how to reach your long term goal as easily as possible.
When I sat down with ...
When I hold a strategy workshop with a board or management team, they sometimes disagree on how distinct the vision is allowed to be. Someone may say “Well, in ten years time, we have accomplished this and that.” whereupon someone else objects by saying “No, that’s not a vision! It is far too concrete and measurable! It’s a goal!”
I have thought a lot about this lately. Is it really true that a company’s vision needs to be fuzzy in order to be a vision? Is there an inherent risk in a concrete and distinct vision?
In an earlier post we discussed how valuable it is to have a captivating and engaging vision.
As I see it, the vision describes the envisioned, future situation we want to achieve in the company. The vision should truly involve me as a leader and co-worker; it should make me want to spend at least 40 hours per week for x number of years to arrive at the envisioned situation.
So, the vision should evoke some degree of rapture, an excitement, eagerness, a good gut-feeling. The more senses the vision appeals to, the more efficiently it can inspire us.
So, what form should the vision have then? Here are six ideas on how to formulate and communicate the vision.
We can be very efficient as individuals, but to be successful in making the company evolve into what we want it to become, we need to connect our structured and productive working habits with the overall structure of the company.
This structure can be expressed in terms of ...
The vision, as all the other parts of the management process, is a powerful tool that can play a decisive role for the business, even on an average workday.
But far too often, the vision is not utilized at its full potential. So, to what uses can we put the vision as a tool?
Welcome to the Structure Blog.
I, David Stiernholm, am a ”struktör”, which means that I create good structure and efficient work procedures for organizations and their key people.
But, why structure? What is the point with good structure? Isn’t that a very square, bureaucratic and limiting concept?
As I see it, on the contrary.
