Build (videoblogs) a Better Future by Becoming More Flexible

18Nov

Build (videoblogs) a Better Future by Becoming More Flexible

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By Donald Mitchell

In planning their businesses and careers, many people make the mistake of believing that the future will be almost exactly like the past. Applying 20-20 hindsight, they carefully prepare to avoid repeating mistakes that others have made.

Unfortunately, optimizing a solution to deal with past conditions often leaves them totally vulnerable when new conditions emerge.

Here’s an example of this kind of thinking. In consumer products, very few new offerings succeed in gaining enough consumer acceptance to be profitable.

Not wanting to launch unsuccessful new products, Procter & Gamble (P&G) used 20-20 hindsight to conclude that rigorous market testing by offering new products initially in a medium-sized city was a good way to avoid big failures.

That approach worked well for many decades, allowing P&G to outperform those who didn’t do such rigorous pre-launch evaluations.

Unfortunately, P&G eventually had difficulty in testing its new products. Competitors learned that poor results in such geographically limited test would lead P&G to delay introducing a new offering.

As a result, competitors would hit test markets with huge amounts of advertising, free samples, coupons, trade discounts, and new offerings that would never be used against a full-scale product introduction.

As a result P&G’s tests often failed, even for products that were ready to be successfully launched.

After two decades of slowed progress with new products due to such opposition, Procter & Gamble learned that its test-marketing program needed to be changed.

By making more extensive introductions following good research results without test markets, Procter & Gamble became much more successful in offering its innovations.

In the field of corporate strategy, being more flexible has been taken a step further: The most effective companies set their strategies based on the assumption that future conditions cannot be predicted and are likely to be much different from the past.

As a result, the most effective companies often sketch out a number of very extreme scenarios and identify strategies that will leave the organization much better off under any imaginable circumstance.

Naturally, these organizations still have to be agile in adapting to unanticipated changes when they occur. As an example, I’m sure that few companies considered strategies for dealing with the kind of worldwide credit crisis that emerged in the summer of 2008.

Even as the credit crisis was occurring, its eventual shape was unclear. Being fast on your feet was critical.

This corporate lesson applies to individual careers: The jobs that people prepared for while young may not be around by mid-career . . . or even next year. What will preparation for a flexible, successful career look like?

I recently corresponded with Dr. Dietrich Roeben, a 2004 Ph.D. graduate of Rushmore University, to find out what conclusions he has drawn from his success in moving across different management fields and countries in agile fashion to engage in fascinating new challenges.

Let me tell you a little about Dr. Roeben. He grew up in rural northern Germany where he enjoyed many of the outdoor activities that continue to bring him happiness.

After earning a technical undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering and Management at TU Berlin, he graduated with an MBA degree at the University of Derby in the UK.

He next gained the equivalent of a Master of Science degree at his alma mater, TU Berlin. Four years later, he was admitted as a member of the Chartered Institute of Management (UK).

By building strong technical and management skills, Dr. Roeben ensured that he could fill a much wider variety of roles than people with only technical or management training.

That gave him a major advantage at the beginning of his career, an advantage that has continued to provide benefits.

Many German graduates intend to spend their careers working for export-oriented companies in Germany. Dr. Roeben took a different path: He exported himself and began working for a number of non-German companies in locations outside Germany.

These assignments took him as far afield as Nigeria. Naturally, it didn’t hurt in making these moves that Dr. Roeben is fluent in four languages (German, English, French, and Dutch).

By diversifying his cultural and language skills, he became even more valuable to potential employers.

While succeeding in these initial assignments, Dr. Roeben took as many courses as possible to gain more insights into his field and new industries.

In the process, he tested his learning by writing papers sharing his observations about the subjects that interest him.

These continuing education efforts helped make him aware of new trends and conditions that he and his employers needed to address. The papers also raised his visibility and credibility with potential employers.

The post-graduate learning and writing whet his appetite to write a doctoral dissertation about the strategic aspects of operations management. Unfortunately, he found that prospective employers didn’t want to provide him with any flexibility at work to allow for doctoral studies.

Taking a traditional full-time job, he decided to work on his doctorate while commuting and traveling, during the evenings, and on weekends.

During his doctoral program, he sought the career counsel of a friend who worked in recruitment for a large company. She reported that her company was looking for people who would be flexible and freely admit that only the next 12 months can be planned with any certainty.

That advice provided quite a jolt to Dr. Roeben because despite his career flexibility he was used to thinking in terms of continuity in his business planning!

Here are the conclusions he drew:

“Within the last decade the speed of corporate change has increased to levels that only a few employees can cope with. Careers that have been well planned end when once reputable companies can’t pay their bills anymore.

“Once ’safe’ jobs in previously stable industries are not safe anymore. I assume the person who can deal with these changes is the previously mentioned flexible person operating in an organization with a one-year planning horizon.”

If he wanted to work flexibly in locales around the world, it didn’t make sense to enroll in a Ph.D. program that had to be done in a specific location.

As a result, he chose an online program where he could have access to top professors online to advise him without needing to meet with them face-to-face.

Dr. Roeben was happily surprised by increasing his flexibility in ways that he didn’t expect after starting his doctoral studies.

Improved time management was the first new flexibility he gained: He learned that he could engage in his doctoral studies anywhere . . . on a train, on a plane, or sitting in a park near home.

Although sitting at a quiet desk is more productive than mobile studying, he learned that you can still get a lot accomplished wherever you are.

The second lesson was that technology could help him get more done. Loath to drag around a laptop computer during his extensive travels, Dr. Roeben discovered that a handheld PC was extremely helpful for taking notes, organizing his thinking, and writing.

Finding that this method helped his Ph.D. studies also led him to begin using the handheld PC for his business work.

Discovering that a more focused work style felt comfortable, Dr. Roeben began to yearn for opportunities to become an entrepreneur where he could move faster than in his big-company roles.

He also developed a desire to teach and plans to make both activities priorities. Expanding his experience and skills in those dimensions would give him even more career possibilities.

After earning his Ph.D. from Rushmore, Dr. Roeben realized that complacency is an enemy that has to be continually addressed: “We need to question the way we do things more often.”

Keeping his newly found focus, he quickly turned his dissertation into a management book, Planning and Controlling the Outsourcing and Maintenance of Technical Services (Books on Demand, GmbH, 2005).

In addition, he worked at two different jobs, one in Europe and one in the Middle East, that have given him the chance to develop new knowledge and skills. As a result, he has published papers that draw on these new experiences.

He is also looking for an opportunity to gain a teaching university appointment while holding down his day jobs.

What will the future hold for Dr. Roeben? Only time will tell, but his sensitivity to overcoming complacency, anticipating the need to change, focused work style, continual learning, and ability to make good use of technology will serve him well.

I wouldn’t be surprised to find him earning another doctorate in a different discipline.

What are the lessons for you? You prepare for your career differently. In doing so, you should assume:

1. you won’t be working for your current employer a year from now.

2. you won’t be doing your current type of work five years from now.

3. that your best job opportunities are not in the country where you live now.

4. that you need to learn new skills that you haven’t been introduced to yet.

5. that your job prospects will depend on your becoming a world-class authority in some important area that you don’t yet know about.

I wish you well as you begin to increase your flexibility to gain from these new perspectives.

Donald W. Mitchell is a professor at Rushmore University, an online school, where he teaches how to create flexible strategies for businesses and nonprofit organizations. For more information about ways to engage in fruitful lifelong learning at Rushmore to increase your effectiveness and improve your career, visit

http://www.rushmore.edu

Your Guide For Volcano Videos And Podcasts

Useful Tips On Adult Continuing Education
By JackCarlsonpnp

Too many people think that because they have attained a certain age, they are too old to be educated. This is not true; as long as you are alive, there is still a lot that you can achieve. Studying might be tough, but many adult education programs take that into consideration.

Sometimes you meet some very stringent terms when you apply for a job. Because of the educational requirements you cant get it, even though you have all the experience. Well, friend, its time to go get that degree. Even if it takes you a few years more, Id say its worth it if you make it.

Basic educational programs are available for anyone almost anywhere. These programs even take cognizance whether you are a kid or an adult, and if you have other things to attend to or not. I mean, as a regular young person, what else could you possibly be interested in; but as a grownup, who wouldn’t understand?

Being old does not mean you have to let your life go. If you have not gotten all the education you wanted, there is still plenty of time to do so. Enroll for an adult education program at a college not far from where you stay. I tell you, it can be the beginning of your life.

Sometimes it is not the quality or quantity of the degree you hold that counts sometimes it is the fact that you have a degree. Getting a job can be as simple as that. The tough part is for you to decide to still do some schooling at that age when others are settling down to marital life. You can if you want to. I did.

When hiring, a company will always look at what level of education you have or lack. Sometimes, if you are serious enough about getting the job of your dreams, you might want to go back to school just for a bit. At such a time, you wouldn’t mind that you are a bit over age because your future happiness depends on it.

Only with adult education can you hope to get the extra qualifications you need for a better job. A lot of people already do, so why not you? You dont have to give up on the possibility of progress; you dont have to be a loser.

A hiring manager might look to you like the barrier between your success and you, but that is not true. The poor dude is just following orders: he cannot hire anyone who does not have a degree. In that case, you are the person who is standing in your own way. Even adults go to school, why shouldn’t you?

Many things in life are not the way they are meant to be. The fact that you have to school again as an adult is just one evidence of such. But people do it anyway because they dont have a choice; they want better chances in life, and that is simply what it takes.

Institutions all around the world offer education to adults in various packages. Some of such institutions include schools and colleges, even those that are very well known offer adult education programs. The need for adult education programs keep growing every day. Only the ignorant people still dont see any reason for advancing their education. In such cases, their ignorance can become very dire, when the reality dawns on them.

Government agencies many times have staff with limited qualifications. From time to time, then, they make arrangements for professionals from various institutions to come in and provide professional training classes where the staff can learn from. You don’t have to be in school to partake in adult education. Just be willing to learn anything new that you previously didn’t know and soon your life will be richer and better than you ever thought possible.

More people have experienced the benefits of adult education in the United States within the past two decades than perhaps the whole of the last century. The reason was not so much the lack of awareness of interest. Rather, more because the schemes were not available at the time, and also because some people were shy. Good thing that is being changed by this current world.

Libraries sometimes conduct adult programs to teach basics to people who are lacking. As an elderly person who is interested in being schooled in something you may have missed while growing up, you could try out some lecture series. Quite enough of them are crafted with adults in mind these days and you stand to gain a lot. And yes, most of them are either completely free or very affordable.

Have you ever heard of the Chautauqua movement? It was a summer training program for Sunday school teachers at the time that it started out in New York, 1874. Soon it became a traveling lecture series and summer school for adults. Now when you mention Chautauqua, many institutions in the world will remember that that is how their adult education schemes started out based on the Chautauqua program.

A lot of adults can still study in their spare time. Not that they are likely to have a lot of those, in between working and providing for their families, getting pregnant and raising babies. However what must be done must be done, and if pushing it through is what adult education takes, then so be it.

No matter how much you think you know as regards Adult Education information such as resources about Adult Basic Education Training , as well as Leicester Adult Education College , see this website and be entertained with truly important information –> http://www.youradulteducation.com

Online Tutors: Tution Help For Students
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Online lessons has mature immensely in provisos of its popularity. Online lessons has numerous profit both for the scholar as well his/her tutor. The group can be structured to become the scholars march of lessons. Also, while it is a one-on-one assembly, the tutor focuses his/her achieve interest on the scholar. hence, the scholar learns in a fun and interactive style and that too at his/her own march. The professor can use online lessons as a means to earn some release money in his/her release time. For more information about online tutor or online lessons, break tutorbene.com .

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