Career Development Articles For Job Seekers,employees,employers & Entrepreneurs.
in this thread,i am going to be publishing self and career development articles for all and sundry on a daily basis. these articles are meant to help you develop yourself for anything in life.try to print them out for a proper consumption.if you need the complete version of any article, please visit www.tools4minds..com
i wish you goodluck in your endeavours!
charles mentor
www.onlinetrades.
Re: Career Development Articles For Job Seekers,employees,employers & Entreprene
Mission Statements & Vision Statements
Unleashing the power of purpose
Vision Statements and Mission Statements are the inspiring words chosen by successful leaders to clearly and concisely convey the direction of the organization. By crafting a clear mission statement and vision statement, you can powerfully communicate your intentions and motivate your team or organization to realize an attractive and inspiring common vision of the future.
“Mission Statements” and “Vision Statements” do two distinctly different jobs.
A Mission Statement defines the organization's purpose and primary objectives. Its prime function is internal – to define the key measure or measures of the organization’s success – and its prime audience is the leadership team and stockholders.
Vision Statements also define the organizations purpose, but this time they do so in terms of the organization’s values rather than bottom line measures (values are guiding beliefs about how things should be done.) The vision statement communicates both the purpose and values of the organization. For employees, it gives direction about how they are expected to behave and inspires them to give their best. Shared with customers, it shapes customers’ understanding of why they should work with the organization.
for a complete arrticle, please go to www.tools4minds..com
DO IT - A Simple Process for Creativity
DO IT is a process for creativity.
Techniques outlined earlier in this section focus on specific aspects of creative thinking. DO IT bundles them together, and introduces formal methods of problem definition and evaluation. These help you to get the best out of the creativity techniques.
DO IT is an acronym that stands for:
D - Define problem
O - Open mind and apply creative techniques
I - Identify best solution
T - Transform
These stages are explained in more detail below.
How to Use the Tool:
1. Define the Problem
This section concentrates on analyzing the problem to ensure that the correct question is being asked. The following steps will help you to do this:
• Check that you are tackling the problem, not the symptoms of the problem. To do this, ask yourself why the problem exists repeatedly until you get to the root of it.
• Lay out the bounds of the problem. Work out the objectives that you must achieve and the constraints that you are operating under.
• Where a problem appears to be very large, break it down into smaller parts. Keep on going until each part is achievable in its own right, or needs a precisely defined area of research to be carried out. See Drill-Down for a detailed description of this process.
• Summarize the problem in as concise a form as possible. Robert W. Olsen suggests that the best way to do this is to write down a number of 2 word problem statements and choose the best one.
for a complete arrticle, please go to www.tools4minds..com
Physical Relaxation Techniques
Deep Breathing, PMR and the Relaxation Response
Physical relaxation techniques are as effective as mental techniques in reducing stress. In fact, the best relaxation is achieved by using physical and mental techniques together.
These three useful physical relaxation techniques can help you reduce muscle tension and manage the effects of the fight-or-flight response on your body. This is particularly important if you need to think clearly and perform precisely when you are under pressure.
The techniques we will look at are Deep Breathing, Progressive Muscular Relaxation and “The Relaxation Response”.
Deep Breathing
Deep breathing is a simple, but very effective, method of relaxation. It is a core component of everything from the "take ten deep breaths" approach to calming someone down, right through to yoga relaxation and Zen meditation. It works well in conjunction with other relaxation techniques such as Progressive Muscular Relaxation, relaxation imagery and meditation to reduce stress.
To use the technique, take a number of deep breaths and relax your body further with each breath. That's all there is to it!
Progressive Muscular Relaxation
Progressive Muscular Relaxation is useful for relaxing your body when your muscles are tense.
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The Planning Cycle-A Planning Process for Middle-Sized Projects
The Planning Cycle brings together all aspects of planning into a coherent, unified process.
By planning within this structure, you will help to ensure that your plans are fully considered, well focused, resilient, practical and cost-effective. You will also ensure that you learn from any mistakes you make, and feed this back into future planning and Decision Making.
Planning using this cycle will help you to plan and manage ongoing projects up to a certain level of complexity - this will depend on the circumstance. For projects involving many people over a long period of time, more formal methodologies and approaches are necessary (see Managing Large Projects and Programs).
How to Use the Tool:
It is best to think of planning as a cycle, not a straight-through process.
Once you have devised a plan you should evaluate whether it is likely to succeed. This evaluation may be cost or number based, or may use other analytical tools. This analysis may show that your plan may cause unwanted consequences, may cost too much, or may simply not work.
In this case you should cycle back to an earlier stage. Alternatively you may have to abandon the plan altogether - the outcome of the planning process may be that it is best to do nothing!
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