The Blame Game

When things go wrong in a business who is going to be blamed by top management?

• Employees
• Economy
• Software
• Suppliers
• and sometimes even customers

What will be deliberately "overlooked" by top management?

• Failure in hiring good employees and/or keeping them happy.
• Lack of delegation and trust.
• Complexities.

And when a business is making a lot of money and progress, who is going to get the credit for success?

Well, no prizes for the right answer.

Why have a blog?

There are many compelling reasons. One of these is trust.

Internet makes it possible to sell your product, service or idea to millions of people in the world. But why do these millions of people will trust you with whatever you say on your website?

There is an old internet adage which says that "on the internet, nobody knows you are a dog".

It is quite easy to look like the biggest textile manufacture or the "most respected" consultant through a cleverly built website. And everybody knows this.

Your blog makes it possible to start a dialog with people you have not met with and let your would-be customers know your commitment and expertise. It is a free, simple but extremely powerful tool to build the trust. Now every body knows you are not a dog.

Your website address please

An elegant website or a blog is a much better tool to introduce you or your business to me than your business card or 5 minute talk in the hotel lobby. Even if you have nothing to put on your website, start with a single page, putting your resume and contact information there.

There was a time when building a website was difficult. You were supposed to learn about quite a few technical things like html, ftp, web hosting etc. as well as buy and install software to build the website and upload it to the internet. The "easiest" tool was Microsoft Frontpage which allowed non-technical people build a website with broken links and many under-construction pages. These under-contruction pages never got updated because of the hassle involved.

Not any more. There are now a lot of wonderful tools and websites which will get you started building a new website or blog absolutely free in minimal time. A very short list includes blogger.com, google sites and, my personal favorite, wordpress.com.

Wordpress.com gives you a website in matter of seconds. You can write your blog or create a website to sell something using the powerful control panel without learning a whole stack of internet technologies.

Wordpress.com (and other such tools) gives you a web-based control panel to build your website. There is nothing to install on your computer. This makes it easy to incrementally develop your website from your home or office or with the help of your online friends.

Feeling poor

Are you filthy rich? No matter how much money you make, we can still make you feel poor.

Take a look at few pictures of newly opened The Atlantis Palm Hotel and Resort in Dubai.

Forget about starving people.

Doing what you love

I saw them on a London tube station. They were playing music, collecting tip and selling their CD. They were doing what they loved though their 'marketing strategy' could be better.

Sometimes it takes a lot of risk, courage, effort and lateral thinking to do what you love and still be a success.

Shopping Mania

Shopping centers are so much organized and fun here in UK (and every where in the western world) that I ended up with a number of useless things in my hands while visiting few shopping places. Even the people who are crying of hard times are constantly buying more and more junk to fill their homes. All the 'poor' people in London seem to have every luxury imaginable in their homes and still feeling unsatisfied.

Westfield, the third biggest UK shopping center opened two days ago. Enormous crowd was reported by newspapers and other media. London mayor is urging people to spend, spend and spend.

But do we really need to do all this spending?

Annie Leonard of The Story of Stuff has correctly analyzed why we love shopping and why we should not do this. Visit storyofstuff.com and watch this 20-minutes eye-opening story.