Two years ago I addressed the importance of Motivation and how it is important for the health of your team and your organization.  That post is called “Motivation – Motivate yourself by motivating the world“. A comment on “more about me” led me to this post. Now I’ll be addressing specifics and give a couple of tips on how you should get yourself motivated and how to motivate others.

People can be motivated by different factors. Money is certainly one of them, where people must feel that they are payed according to the effort/responsibility they put into their role.

But there are others that in the medium/long term can do more than money to keep an employee motivated. Those other factors can/will even change the perception of the “fairness” of the dichotomy  work/salary.

• Work environment. Hire the right people, do not disregard the  great importance of their social skills. Sometimes, people that go the “extra mile” compensate their “technical perfection”. People that naturally think “what can I do for you?” instead of “what can this person do for me?” create sense of team spirit, coordination and go the extra mile helping each other.

• Challenge orientated work. People need to be challenged, they need to feel useful and encouraged. In my opinion, people like at some point to relax for a bit however, there is not a single person that likes to “relax forever”. People feel the need of doing something more, the need to “think” and “act”, to progress and influence the lives of others. Do not disregard the need of a challenge and purpose on the work people perform (ex: volunteering. People work for free for a higher purpose, to help and improve the life of others!).

• Perks. They can be small things, gestures of appreciation for the person and for it´s job.  This can go from giving someone an unplanned afternoon off during during the holiday season or a free dinner somewhere. It all depends on the culture that you want to implement in your organisation.

Above all. There is nothing more motivating in the long run than just a “Thank you. Great job!” when people deserve it.

Posted by João Rufino under Business | No Comments »

Image source: http://www.tminspiration.co.za

The all time favorite post on my Blog is “Basics of effective communication“. I believe what was said back then still applies. Here are a couple more ideas for you to keep in mind before engaging others, either they are costumers or members of your own team:”First things first”: What is your objective? What is the key message you want to transmit?

• Think of your audience, their expectations, their previous knowledge about the subject, their education background, their business culture etc. Write/speak accordingly. First impression counts if you dont know the people and don´t skip many logical steps just to sound smart!
• If your changing processes internally, use more than one channel of communication. It helps to pass the message across and useful to get people used to the idea you are trying to implement
• To get the message across one must use the right channels, “eg if the staff you are contacting do not have regular access to a computer, do not rely on email as a way of communicating with them. Also consider that different categories of staff prefer to receive information in different ways“.
• A  very common mistake is: the use acronyms without explaining them. Be mindful that not everyone might know what those are.
• Use headlines that explain briefly and accurately what the message is about. Sometimes people don´t have time to read everything at once but it is important that they know what is it about.
• Conduct an internal communications audit after the changes have been communicated for a while. Did people got the message? What can be improved? Use your findings to improve the process
• Remember that good communication is a two-way process. Provide opportunities for others to communicate their views/thoughts.  LISTEN… (I’ll make sure I write a post with my thoughts on effective listening)

Thanks for reading

Posted by João Rufino under Business & Marketing | No Comments »

1000

That is it! I reached 1000 visitors last week (1008 to be precise).  Not surprisingly this happens when re-started to post more often in the blog.

Only last month, and according to Google Analytics, I had visitors from 106 countries or territories. The top countries visiting my blog are:

• United States
• United Kingdom
• Canada
• India
• Portugal
• Followed by Germany,  Philippines, Australia, Ireland and France

I posted about how to improve a website ranking, internet marketing, cloud computing, effective communication, strategy,  user experience I and II, product management, Sales suggestions,  provided a couple of presentation tips, talked about my native country plus other things that you can check out by either searching or visiting the archive.

If you want to know how many visits I had when I start just ask Google for “what is the loneliest number”. The calculator will answer you.

Thanks to everyone that visited me

EDIT: To honor my Indian visitors I added Hindi as one of the languages where you can translate the blog automatically.

EDIT 2:     As of August I have over 2200 visitors a week . I definitely need to post more often. Thanks everyone for visiting my blog

Posted by João Rufino under Business & Internet & Marketing & Misc | 1 Comment »

As a premise to my post I advise you to watch “Up in the air” with George Clooney. The movie itself is good and with a nice script. I’m not going to tell more about the movie…watch it

I fly a lot but never looked into collecting miles. So, I decided analyse the companies I usually fly with and what they are doing to keep me faithful. I usually fly with Virgin Atlantic, Aerlingus and BMI.

- Excellent service and good planes but most importantly they allowed me with not effort to register my previous flights (last 6 months) and collect points for these flights. Still waiting from an answer from their costumer service regarding collecting miles from a partner flight that changed in the last moment and the tool could not detect my reservation. They set the expectations that an answer can take a month… This is not a race so I’m in no hurry if it is solved. I’ll fly with Virgin as often as I can and the lounge is London is the best I’ve seen.

- I usually divide my flights in Europe between BMI and Aerlingus. I think their program can be very good, they are part of Star Aliance, have lots of partners and decent lounges. The program itself is divided in levels. The first level you can reach out fairly easily and as soon as you are there you get free food and that hooks you and makes understand the advantages of the program. However, they will not be my first choice… Why? I had many flights to claim in the last 6 months and their answer was.. “Send us the boarding passes”. I sent them all the reservation numbers, flight numbers etc. Reservations are not enough??? Can´t they find me in the system?? I was really chocked with their answer as I could not claim flights! I will only fly with them in case there are no Virgin Atlantic flights.

- They are the only company that does direct flights from Dublin-Lisbon-Dublin so.. I’ll keep flying with them when I go home. Now their loyalty program: It´s by far the worse! I registered for their loyalty program just after 2 transatlantic trips to the City of Mexico and San Francisco (over 3 years ago).  Back then, they also requested the boarding passes, that obviously I did not have and could not claim anything. I was very upset but registered anyway since I knew I would fly home and to other locations in Europe. Their point system is terrible, very hard to get to the next level and does not hook you at all. The level itself allows you “nothing” apart from lounge access (that they now sell to everyone!). Their range of partners is very limited. I also highlight that the dedicated area in the website is confused and poorly managed

I have to say, their loyalty programs also reflect the opinion I have from the brands themselves:

• Virgin: Young and dynamic. They know their space and are moving fine

• BMI: Re-structuring but still wit many old fashioned mechanisms, They need an update

• Aerlingus: Still old fashioned, with nice people, but needs to be part of an alliance, be more dynamic and step up for the challenges of a new world.

To finalize, I know these companies try to position themselves differently but being low costs or not, a good loyalty program can hook you for good.

Posted by João Rufino under Business & Marketing | 1 Comment »

A few months have passed since I last posted in my blog and I apologize for that.

I’ll come back to this topic later but take this as an introductory post on Cloud Computing.

Cloud Computing is a concept that 10 years ago seemed a dream because of very slow internet connections,  today is a very solid reality.  It is amazing to see productivity gains, amazing collaboration potential etc. With cloud computing and SaaS (Software as a Service) you can take full advantage of a service without having to maintain all the technology behind it. It’s like going to a pub, enjoying a draft beer without having to worry about goes on in the background.

Below, in a glance, the potential that Google Apps can bring to your business…

Did you know that the name “Cloud Computing” is based in the cloud symbol that is used to represent the Internet in flow charts and diagrams

Posted by João Rufino under Business & Internet | 1 Comment »