Bosses Hierarchy

Let us start counting:

In big businesses, there is regional manager who supervises the country managers in all countries which fall in his region. Country managers guide the branch managers who in turn make sure that sales and service department managers are doing their jobs perfectly. The department managers, of course, need to have supervisors to manage the teams of salespeople who are doing the actual selling.

And I have not yet mentioned the top management, personal assistants and secretaries.

This is how most of the big (or even medium-sized) businesses operate. And these are the businesses who are in real trouble right now.

And they are really addicted to their way of doing business. That is why the top bosses of auto industry in USA flew to Washington in private jets to ask for the money to avoid bankruptcy.

Small businesses don't have these hierarchies. The business owner is the one who builds the products with the help of his small team, sells and provides support and service when needed and takes lunch on the same table with all his employees.

If you have been planning to start your own small business, now is a good time. To cut costs, a lot of people and companies are looking for cheaper products and services which only small businesses can provide.

Lets us get started.

Lateral Thinking

Floating black balls on water surface; a novel idea to stop sunlight reaching towards a huge open water reservoir. Amazing.

Things-to-do with Gmail

Google has added a really nice 'Tasks' feature to gmail which you can use to manage your things-to-do lists right there in your gmail account. It is still an experimental feature so you will need to enable it by going through the Settings--Lab tab.

You can create tasks by entering a single line description or from within an email. It will even link that task to the email using email subject as the text for the task (you can change it though)

If you are still keeping everything in your head, take a break and off-load your thinking to gmail tasks list.

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.