Meeting Planning

Not Another Meeting!

That's what many thousands of business people around the world think every day. Time wasting, inefficient interrruptions to your day, with few concrete outcomes - and for many of them, you don't even know why you need to be there, as the things under discussion have little to do with you, or could at least be decided without you having to sit through two hours of boredom.

Meetings Don't Need to be Like That!

Meetings can be efficient, focused, fun(!), and help the business benefit from the full participation of the team as they bounce ideas off each other. It all depends on how the meeting planning is carried out, and how the meeting is run. So here are some key tips on how to plan and run your meetings effectively:

The Meeting Agenda
	Most meeting agendas are a scribbled set of notes that someone throws together just before the meeting, if indeed any agenda is produced at all. This is a primary cause of meandering, boring and inefficient meetings. Creating an effective agenda is one of the most important elements for a productive meeting. The agenda for a well planned meeting communicates important information such as: Objectives or intended outcomes - this is more than just topics for discussion - setting the intention up front really helps get the outcomes you want. Who is leading each discussion topic, or giving the presentation for that section - so that it's not just chit-chat. An allocated time for each objective and topic within that objective. Any supporting information relevant to any objective or topic. An indication of what preparation is required by the participants in order to be ready to fully participate. Any known follow up tasks and responsibilities (you will be adding to this during the meeting). With a well defined agenda like this, you will be able to keep the meeting focused and on track, and ensure that the participants know what is going to be discussed and where they can contribute. When you use mind maps for your meeting agendas, you benefit because: The overall objective of the meeting is at the center of the Mind Map, and therefore in front of you. You literally can't lose sight of the objective of the meeting. The first level branches give a clear indication of the intended outcomes. Again, this allows everyone to keep a clear focus on why they are there and how they can contribute. The second level branches are the topics that need to be covered, with the leader, time allocated, hyperlinks to supporting information, desired outcome for that topic, and any known follow up tasks being standard sub-branches. The participants will soon get used to what is embodied in any topic, and keep to topic and time. You can see how you are going at a glance and manage the time for the remaining topics based on the objectives and topics to be discussed. This is dramatically better than linear notes where you often lose track of time and how much is really left to be covered. Everyone can see where they can contribute, and what they need to prepare for before the meeting. With the hyperlinks on the topics, everything is in one place, and when the agenda is emailed out to the participants, everyone can turn up fully prepared. The Mind Map is used for recording the discussion during the meeting, the decisions and follow up actions, meaning that everyone can have the minutes of the meeting immediately the meeting is over, because there is no "writing up" of the minutes required. Tips for creating a good meeting agenda Meeting planning is easy when you follow these simple steps: Make sure the objectives and topics are identified well ahead of time, and that everyone has confirmed their attendance. Make sure that all the presenters / leaders have an agreed time for their topics. Make it realistic, and only schedule 50 minutes for an hour long meeting. Make sure that only proposals for topics that are relevant to the overall objectives of the meeting are accepted into the agenda. Keep it tight and focused - everyone will thank you in the long term. Produce the Mind Map of the agenda according to the structure shown above. Send the agenda to the attendees again a day before the meeting, reminding them of the date, time and objectives, and what they need to do to prepare for the meeting. Have some way of measuring whether the meeting has met its intended objectives and outcomes. Envision the meeting as you would like it to happen, and prepare everything (including agenda, attendees, venue, information) in order for the meeting to go as you envision it. Make sure you are aware of the needs, desires and agendas of the participants. Of course, the most important part of planning the meeting and creating an effective agenda is to follow it during the meeting!

	Plan your Meetings so they Stay on Time
	Very often meetings start late, and finish later. This punishes the people who are on time and rewards those who are tardy. Hardly the message you want to be giving! Start your meetings on time, and do not tolerate tardiness. Set an expectation that all your meetings run to time. This sets a behavioral standard for the group, and social pressure to conform. Here are some things you can do during meeting planning to make sure that this happens: Let people know ahead of time that the meeting will start "sharp at...", and that all participants are expected to be ready to start at that time. Email them half an hour before the meeting is due to start - especially if you are in the process of breaking some bad meeting habits. Start the meetings at unusual times - nothing sticks in people's minds like a meeting scheduled to run from 9:07 until 10:03. You will automatically get them policing the time because it is unusual. It breaks through the idea that 9 o'clock means somewhere between 9 and quarter past. Of course, you need to make sure that you really do start on time. Close the doors when you start the meeting. Again if you are breaking some bad meeting habits, post a note on the outside of the door stating the meeting time. You could even consider a latecomer fine where they have to put a dollar for every minute they are late. At the end of the week, everyone who wasn't late at all gets a treat. Even if for some reason it is impossible to start the meeting on time, you should still finish on time, so that people don't need to be late for other meetings. It was your responsibility to get through the material on time. One critical reason why you need everyone there at the start of the meeting is that you all look at the Mind Map together. Briefly go over the major objective from the Mind Map title, and the intended outcomes from the first level branches. Now of course, you're not always the organizer of the meeting, and you may have someone who doesn't plan their meetings the way you do, and they may turn up late. If this happens consistently, you might like to tactfully ask if it would be better to schedule the meeting for 15 minutes later. If you are an attendee at meetings that go over time at the end, wherever possible excuse yourself at the intended finish time - after all, that is the time that you had been asked for, and you have given that amount of time already. Keep any discussion (both from yourself and others) strictly on topic, whether you are the organizer or an attendee at a meeting.

	How Long Should Your Meeting Be?
	If you have regular meetings like weekly sales meetings or monthly business planning meetings, you probably have a pretty good idea of the amount of information that needs to be covered. Your objective is to make sure that only the things that need to be covered are included in the agenda, and that the minimum amount of time to effectively cover the topics is budgeted for the meeting. You don't want to waste anybody's time. If there is too much to cover in a meeting, or different parts of the meeting require different people present, consider breaking it up into two more focused meetings. For regularly scheduled meetings, make sure you have the agenda defined half way between the last meeting and the next one. Allocate 1/6 of the time for reporting back on follow up items from last meeting, 2/3 of the time for the current agenda items, and the remaining 1/6 of the time on planning for the next meeting. Schedule the items with the easy ones first, and the more controversial it is, the later it goes in the agenda. You need to make sure that there is some significant change in either speaker or method of presentation every 20 minutes at the most apart, and if you are having a longer meeting, you need to have a 15 minute break every 90 minutes. If the meeting starts to go off topic, then it may be that you need a break to re-focus the meeting. If it's supposed to be a short meeting, you could have a standing meeting - people don't tend to dally long when they are on their feet. Make sure that everyone has enough information to get up to speed and to know what the issues and possible alternatives are before the meeting. This will mean that you can get through the decision making process more quickly. Reduce the number of people to only those necessary to accomplish the goal. Reduce the number of issues and tasks to only those necessary to accomplish the goal. If everyone there has a stake in the outcome, they'll be focused.

	Plan Interesting Meetings
	Corporate meetings can be boring. Whenever possible, include hands-on activities, get people involved in extending the Mind Map for the meeting, brainstorming ideas, giving or being involved in live demonstrations, field trips, games, role-playing, etc. Don't be afraid to mix it up - variety is what keeps people interested. Encourage a fun, non judgmental, playful creative environment and you'll get better ideas coming out at the end of it. Remember, laughter stimulates blood flow, strengthens the immune system, reduces levels of stress producing hormones, and reduces pain perception. Organize contests to generate ideas and offer prizes to encourage participation. A little friendly competition can bring great results. If your meetings tend to be dominated by a few people, you could give "talking tokens" to people, and they only have a certain number per meeting, and each one only gives them a certain length of time to make their point. Or you could use a "talking stick" and people are only allowed to talk when they have the stick - and they must pass it on to someone else within a specified time. When preparing your Mind Map during your meeting planning, make sure you make it colorful and where possible put some funny pictures in to spice it up a bit.

How can You Benefit From using Mind Mapping in Your Business Planning

Many people just think of business planning as "writing business plans". Sure, business plans are important, and help you understand the direction of the company, but there are many other plans that you need to put together to keep your business on track and growing on a day to day basis. There are a number of problems with "traditional" business plans. They are difficult and boring to write, difficult to understand, and most people don't follow them. Replace them with Mind Maps and the whole scene changes. You now don't need to start at the beginning and work to the end - you can just put in branches for your ideas as you think of them. Your planning efforts are clearly based around your overall goals and objectives, so everything is on topic and focused. When you give the plans to other people (or get them to collaborate on putting them together), they can see why all the different parts fit together and why they are necessary, and how they can contribute. So let's have a look at some key places you can use Mind Mapping to make your business more productive. Mind Mapping Your Vision / Mission Statements Do you remember the vision or mission statement of the last company you worked for? Did you actually understand all the bits that made up the vision, and why they were there? If you're anything like me (and everyone else employed at all the places I worked), then you probably didn't really read or understand the vision statement, and it had no impact on what you did in the job or how you did it. In many businesses, it's like the owner or board of directors had a "planning seizure" one day and produced this document that got pinned to the wall somewhere, and has been steadfastly ignored ever since. Well that whole scene changes when the vision statement is done using Mind Maps. The visual nature of the Mind Maps means that they are noticeable, colorful and easy to understand. The linkages between the overall company goals and the specific things that the company does to implement the things that lead to achieving the goals is clear. You can see at a glance what the company is all about and how they are going to achieve the vision. When a group of people get together and create a shared vision, the first thing is to create an appropriate central image for the Mind Map - sometimes this act alone brings clarity to the vision and purpose. Each person will see how he or she fits into the overall picture and will have a better understanding of the organisational direction. The vision defined in these maps can cover the corporate strategic plan, a one year vision, or a short term project. Too often professionals spend enormous amounts of time working in isolation on their part of a vision statement or project plan while the entire team shares little communication and does not understand the direction, or buy in to it. Taking a short amount of time with the entire group to create this vision will save time, money, and frustration. Now that's something that the staff can buy in to. That's something you can use in your marketing. That's something that becomes part of the company culture. And that's what a vision statement should be! Using Mind Maps for Your Task Lists Whether planning a day, a week, a month, a year or your life, a Mind Mapped task list is a dynamic, interesting and beautiful way to get the use of your time in order. Begin by creating a new Mind Map and placing the time frame for the tasks in the centre. Next, conduct a brainstorming session. In most situations, your work will be goal focused, in which case, create branches for each overall goal for the period and then break the overall goal down into a series of smaller tasks. In the case that your tasks are more time based, you may end up putting the tasks onto a day-based planner such as the one shown here, and then put sub-branches for the tasks. Once you have this, you can create checkboxes on the branches to check off as you complete each item. You can also add priority markers so that you always know what's most important. One thing that I have heard recommended over and over again is keeping a journal of all the things you have learned from the tasks you have done and decisions you have made, so you have a permanent reference to it. I would suggest that a better way of doing your journal is that you create Mind Maps of the things you have learned and the decisions you have made. Using Mind Maps, you can easily refer back to your notes and understand the context, see what the information was, and assimilate it at a glance. And when you create a Mind Map to record the information, you cement it more securely in your brain for easy and quick recall and use in planning future tasks. Planning and Managing Goals using Mind Maps Defining, setting and working towards goals is as important for a company as an entity as it is for individuals. People, be they employers or employees, feel most fulfilled in their work when they feel they are achieving something - using a Mind Map to plot and chart goals, for the company and for individuals within the company, increases staff satisfaction and gives them direction and inspiration. They can see why the goal is necessary, how all the tasks fit together and how they fit in and can contribute. Mind Maps can even be used as an alternative to the traditional performance review documentation - allowing employees to chart their own career progress in a creative and dynamic format. The Mind Map below shows an example of this, where you can see that the major objective areas are identified clearly, and there is room for recording information relating to each of the topics as the conversation progresses. It can also be used for self assessment prior to the interview. This ensures that the review can be brief and to the point and cover all the required aspects without missing anything. Performance reviews can be based on KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that are also written up in Mind Map format. Negotiated KPIs not only give employees a sense of empowerment, they also give managers an interesting insight into the mindset of each staff member. By asking staff to set their own KPIs, you are really asking them to reveal what they think their job is, their confidence level in what they do, how motivated they are and their ambitions within the business. Have employees brainstorm KPI ideas on a Mind Map. Have them do this by placing their job title or name in the centre and then creating a parent branch for each of the responsibilities that they regularly perform. From here, they should look at each responsibility and add branches that relate how they feel they are currently performing, whether they enjoy the activity, improvements they think they could make and finally, what they believe the KPI should be for each of these activities. Your Business Plan How often have you seen business and marketing plans that people have slaved over for hours merely flicked through (if that!) by staff members, investors and sometimes even the business owner themselves? Even investors and venture capitalists who need to understand the business plans in order to make their investment decisions get thoroughly bored looking through boilerplate business plans day after day. That is no way to wow them into investing in your company. It is no way to get your staff to buy into the company direction - they can't even understand all the pages of boring text. As any good salesperson knows, you have to know everything you can about your products or services in order to persuade someone to buy them. In this discussion, you are the salesperson and your products represent your business. Your customers are potential investors and employees. Since you want your customers to believe in you, you must be able to convince them that you know what you are talking about when it comes to your business. You must be willing to roll up your sleeves and begin digging through information. Since not all information that you gather will be relevant to the development of your business plan, it will help you to know what you are looking for before you get started. In order to help you with this process, we have developed an outline of the essential elements of a good business plan. What needs to be in the plan? Every successful business plan should include something about each of the following areas, since these are what make up the essentials of a good business plan: Executive Summary Market Analysis Company Description Organization & Management Marketing & Sales Management Service or Product Line Funding Request Financials Appendix Mind Mapping your Business Plan Using Mind Maps for your business plan is an effective way to ensure the business plan actually gets used. The point of a business plan is not to reach a certain number of pages or to display the size of your vocabulary - it's to map out where your business is, where it is heading and how you're going to get there. By Mind Mapping this plan, you are forced to be concise. Mind Mapping doesn't allow for long sentences and big words - you have to think of the shortest, clearest way to express the concepts you want to communicate - try limiting yourself to one word, or dispense with words altogether and represent concepts with meaningful graphics. When setting up a new business it is useful to create a Mind Map to show what your goals and aspirations are and what things you need to think about when setting up your business. Then you need to define your business - where you define your company values, target market, levels of service etc, so you know who you are as far as the market is concerned. You will also want to create a Mind Map of the entire organizational structure for the "finished" business, including job descriptions, so you can plan ahead for the way the business will be when completed. It may well be that you put your name beside every position to start with, but as you grow, you will be able to take a main branch at a time and hand that off to someone else, and progressively move down to the leaf branches as the company grows. How to create a Mind Mapped Business Plan Place the name of your business in the centre and use a picture that you think describes it. This doesn't necessarily have to be the company logo, perhaps it is a picture of what you want to achieve via your business. Now, from the centre the parent branches will be titled: Marketing, Financial Management, Management, Service and Sales. Marketing I recommend that your 'Marketing' branch is a link to an entirely new Mind Map that focuses solely on your Marketing Plan. Financial Management For the Financial Management branch, use sub-branches to ask and answer the following questions: What is our start-up budget? What is our ongoing budget? What type of accounting system will we use? What are our sales and profit goals for the next 12 months? If you are a franchisee, will the franchisor expect you to reach and retain a certain sales level and profit margin? What financial projections will we need to include in our business plan? What kind of stock control system will we use? Management Split the Management branch into two sub-branches: 'Management Team' and 'Staff' (if staff is appropriate) and ask and answer the following questions. Management Team How does my background/ business experience help me in this business? What are my weaknesses and how can I compensate for them? Who will be on the management team and what are their duties? Are their duties clearly defined? What are their strengths / weaknesses? If operating a franchise, what type of assistance can I expect from the franchisor and will this assistance be ongoing? Staff What are our current personnel needs? What are our plans for hiring and training personnel? What salaries and holidays will we offer? If you are a franchise, are these issues covered in the management package the franchisor will provide? What benefits, if any, do we offer? Do this rapid-fire using what we call "branch storming" where you just add branches as quickly as possible and force your brain to come up with a word for each branch, so that you can capture the essence of your thoughts and feelings. Remember, this is a brainstorming exercise, so there are no wrong or silly answers. You'll go back later and expand or delete points and ideas as you need to. Service and Sales There are four keys to excellent customer service: trust, knowledge, efficiency and friendliness. On your Service branch, answer these kinds of questions: Why can our clients trust us, our products and our service? What do we know that makes our clients lives easier? How do we exhibit efficiency in our dealings with our clients? How can we ensure our clients think of us as their trusted friends? On your Sales branch, think about the process that your clients will go through to buy from you - that is from the time they walk in the store (or contact you to enquire about your product or services) to the moment they settle the final bill. How to Use the Business Plan Mind Map Mind Mapped business plans are great for presenting information to investors and franchisees, as they allow logical connections between items to become immediately clear - much better than a 60 page text document that nobody reads or understands. At the same time, the Mind Map is also presenting a one-page overview of the business. This allows people to understand the concepts you are trying to explain to them much quicker, making those funding requests and franchise sales that much easier. Using software makes the Mind Mapping process a breeze. When dealing with the specifics of the business directions, you'll find it easy to brainstorm the ideas, adding them at the appropriate place and rearranging as necessary, all at the click of a mouse. Updating the business and marketing plan becomes less of a chore when these plans are put together using NovaMind. The software makes it easy to move ideas around and add and delete ideas as necessary. You could even turn the Mind Map into a large poster that could be displayed in your offices - one of the many cool things about Mind Maps is that they are appealing to the eye and so become an asset you can be proud of showing to employees, clients and suppliers alike. Best of all - Mind Mapping makes the planning process fun! The brain is naturally attracted to the process of Mind Mapping. The colours, images and process will ensure you'll never be stuck writing boring plans that you know will never be read by (let alone be of use to) anyone else!

Strategic Plans - What's the Point?

	Strategic Plans - What's the Point?
	Some people think that just because they have created a business plan, that they have done everything required to be ready to go out there and take over the world! Not so! There are a number of things that strategic plans achieve which are distinctly different from business and project plans. A strategic plan: Serves as a framework for decision making, Is the basis for accountability to owners, investors and shareholders, Forms a basis for business and project planning, Explains the business to others (both external and internal to the business) in such a way as to involve them in the company direction, motivate them to support it, and let them know what the strategic direction is, Helps with benchmarking and performance monitoring, Is a stimulus for change in the business, and become the building block for future plans. Strategic plans are explicitly not detailed - nothing like a business plan. The strategic plan provides the foundation and framework for a business plan. Strategic plans are visionary documents and not intended in any way to be operational plans. Instead, they are conceptual, directional, and long term. While they are conceptual and visionary, they need to be concrete enough that they can be seen as realistic and attainable, so that you have something solid to hook your business and operational plans in to, and so you can actually tell when you have achieved the stated goals.

	Why use Mind Mapping for Strategic Planning?
	Every business needs a strategic plan to make sure you know where you are going. Strategic planning is all about setting the long term direction of the company - knowing what your goals, intentions and values are. Business owners and managers often get so preoccupied with the immediate issues (thinking tactically rather than strategically), that they lose sight of their ultimate objectives. Having a strategic plan doesn't guarantee your success though. Very often, even when strategic plans are prepared, they are not implemented. Sometimes the employees don't even know of their existence, let alone understand the contents, and "buy in" to the goals and spirit of the company. So what makes the difference between a plan that is useful and one that is ignored? Well, when you create a Mind Mapped plan, it is colorful, interesting, easy to understand, and hooks into the full understanding of everyone in the company, whether they are more inclined to logical linear thinking, or more creative and artistic. Mind Maps are memorable, and make a deep lasting impression - the sort that gets the ideas in your strategic plan implemented throughout the day to day operations of the company. Mind Mapped strategic plans are also the sort of thing that you can make into a poster and put up on the wall so that everyone can see it - including your clients and business associates. This in itself builds the need for you to be consistent with your stated plans. These are some very powerful reasons to use Mind Maps for your strategic plans, and as we will see, there are a lot of ways Mind Mapping helps in the generation of strategic plans too.

	Developing a Strategic Plan
	It can be very easy to be stuck in the rut of firefighting current issues, and thinking tactically or even in short term planning for immediate business goals and projects. It is therefore a good idea to get out of the office - away from the immediate pressures of tactical things, so you can put together your strategic plan. When thinking about what should go in your strategic plan, you should be thinking about a 2-4 year time period. Any longer than that seems unattainable, and the business and market environment is likely to change so much that the goals would not make sense anyway. Any shorter and you get back into tactical thinking. Here are some key points for putting together your strategic plan: It should be intended for a 2-4 year implementation timescale, It should be created by the owners and/or directors of the company, Focus on things that are important from a strategic perspective - this is not operational, tactical, business, project, or marketing planning, Get out of the office and away somewhere you can concentrate on things of strategic importance, Be realistic about the expectations, but also detached from the current business, and even critical of the way things are being done now. Look at the competition from a strategic perspective and learn from their approach. Before you start developing the strategic plan, make a Mind Map of your current status, objectives and strategies. A large part of this can be covered by a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis Mind Map. Some areas to consider when putting together your SWOT analysis are: Sales - marketing - distribution - promotion - support, Management - systems - expertise - resources, Operations - efficiency - capacity - processes, Products - services - quality - pricing - features - range - competitiveness, Finances - resources - performance, R&D - effort - direction - resources, Costs - productivity - purchasing, Systems - organization - structures. Understanding the Company Vision As a first step to developing the strategic plan, you need to have a clear vision for the company. In the context of a strategic plan, what you are looking for is something that describes the business in 3-5 years. How big will the business be? What products will you be selling? What services will you provide? What will your position be in the market? Understanding the Company Mission The second thing to be clear about is the company mission. This is a statement of what you do. It is very concrete, and states what you will make, sell or provide; whom you will provide it to; who it will affect; what the intended purpose is; what technologies you will use; what sales channels you will use; what makes you unique. Understanding the Company Values Now we get into the softer issues: What are you here for? What are you here to do and accomplish? What is the difference that you will make to your clients, suppliers, employees, shareholders, your community, the world? The Company Objectives With that background, explicitly state the business's objectives in terms of the results it needs/wants to achieve in the medium/long term. Aside from presumably indicating a necessity to achieve regular profits, objectives should relate to the expectations and requirements of all the major stakeholders, including employees, and should reflect the underlying reasons for running the business. These objectives could cover growth, profitability, technology, offerings and markets. The Strategies Well, this is a strategic plan after all, so I guess we need some strategies in here somewhere! These are the rules and guidelines by which the mission, objectives etc. may be achieved. They can cover the business as a whole including such matters as diversification, organic growth, or acquisition plans, or they can relate to primary matters in key functional areas, for example: The company's internal cash flow will fund all future growth. New products will progressively replace existing ones over the next 3 years. All assembly work will be contracted out to lower the company's break-even point. Use SWOTs to help identify possible strategies by building on strengths, resolving weaknesses, exploiting opportunities and avoiding threats. The Goals Next come the Goals. These are specific medium or long term measurable milestones towards the company's objectives, for example, to achieve sales of $3m in three years time. Goals should be quantifiable, consistent, realistic and achievable. They can relate to factors like market (sizes and shares), products, finances, profitability, utilization, efficiency. It goes without saying that the mission, objectives, values, strategies and goals must be inter-linked and consistent with each other. This is much easier said than done because many businesses which are set up with the clear objective of making their owners wealthy often lack strategies, realistic goals or concise missions. Follow Through The strategic plan should be reviewed on a regular basis - at least annually, and must be written down and communicated to everyone it impacts. More: http://namecardmy.com/2011年兔年运程 (from 1 Name Card, 1 Malaysia)

Microsoft: 'over 2 million' Windows Phone 7 licenses sold to manufacturers so far

Microsoft just dropped a few tidbits of knowledge on us regarding Windows Phone 7's performance in the marketplace so far. Here's what we've got:

• 'Early research' says 93 percent of WP7 customers are 'satisfied' and 90 percent would recommend the platform to others. We don't know details about the research, though -- number of customers polled, time frame, so on.
• Average of 100 new apps in the Marketplace per day, and over 6,500 total are available right now.
• Most importantly, "over 2 million" licenses have been sold to OEMs around the world.

What does that tell us? Well, let's get the elephant in the room out of the way: the iPhone 4 sold 3 million units in a little under a month after its launch, so Microsoft clearly has plenty of room to catch up -- but that comes as no surprise to us, analysts, or Microsoft itself. Furthermore, selling a license to an OEM isn't the same as selling a phone to a customer, since many of these manufactured devices are sitting on store shelves; it's unclear exactly how many WP7 devices are actually in users' pockets right now, but the number is certainly less than "over 2 million."

Microsoft's earnings call is tomorrow where we expect to get more detail on the platform's performance, but the company is saying today that it sees plenty of reasons to be "bullish about the foundation for long-term success" here -- and considering that they simply can't afford to fail in the mobile game, we hope they're right.

Would your business survive?

If an earthquake struck right now and flattened your business, knocked out all the power lines, ruptured all the gas lines, and your place of business was wrecked, what would happen? How soon would you be able to get up and running again, if ever?

Most of us tend to be optimists, and believe that these things will never happen to us, but even smaller catastrophes, like the water main bursting and flooding your office, require planning to be able to cope quickly and efficiently and get back up and running with the minimum of disruption of services to your clients.

	Why Your Business Needs Business Continuity Plans
	Given the impact of even a minor disaster happening, there is a growing awareness that businesses urgently need to develop plans that will minimize the impact of disasters should they occur. Most business owners are just thinking about major natural disasters when they think about putting together these types of plans, and therefore think that the likelihood of that happening is so low, that it gets pushed aside in favor of more pressing tasks. But the threats can come from a wide range of sources, such as: Natural disasters, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, floods Fire Cyber attack Utility outage, such as power, internet connectivity, phone etc. Disease Terrorism Other business-specific factors, such as reliance on third party services, government legislation, or business partnerships Sure, you can buy insurance, but that isn't going to get your business running again, and insurance companies have been known to take a long time to pay out on some claims, and there have even been cases where in large natural disasters, the insurance companies have actually gone bankrupt. So you need to have the best contingencies and plans in place yourself. What's Involved In Putting Together Your Business Continuity Plan? You will find that there is a lot of information available if you search the Internet for business continuity planning, emergency planning, or disaster recovery planning. There are companies that specialize in creating and testing disaster recovery plans. When you look at it, it seems like a complex (and therefore expensive) undertaking, involving a serious examination of risks and the impact of these risks given different scenarios. Unfortunately for many businesses, this is true - especially as they get larger. It is also complex in that creating a comprehensive plan involves all sorts of contingencies, and lots of dependencies on what is happening in the business at the time, so it all has to be maintained as the business grows and changes, and generates more data. These changes need to be tested and audited to ensure they are still going to be effective. Many business owners just want to try not to think about it. But like all projects, this one can be managed meaningfully if planners simply have the right tools for the task. The secret then is to plan, and to plan using tools that can show both an overview position as well as the details in a way many people can absorb quickly. Mind maps make particularly good sense given these sorts of needs. Let's look at why. Why Mind Maps Are Good For Business Continuity Planning The best-run businesses have business plans, vision statements, and/or mission statements. So they have a definition of their business. This involves defining things like the company values, target market, level of service, etc. This level of business planning is essential to create successful businesses anyway, but has the additional benefit of identifying what is most important to protect in your business continuity planning. In effect, what we are seeing are the main driving factors behind the business, and specific decisions about the direction and nature of the company, then details about what is important in making sure that the required service levels or outcomes are achieved. Anyone looking at such a visual summary will be able to determine immediately what it is that makes the company unique, and what the most important things are to keep running in the event of a disaster. So you have the benefit of the clarity of the Mind Map in helping staff, clients and investors to understand and buy into the company vision, but as a side effect, you have the starting point for your disaster recovery planning efforts. What Needs To Go In To Your Emergency Plans? For the overall company perspective, you can identify the threats / risks, impact and mitigation strategies, as well as responses should that risk come to pass. After this, you can identify the main activities and assets that need to be protected and operational, and for each one, create a Mind Map of the threats / risks, mitigation strategies and response plans. Your Risk Mitigation Mind Map Different people have vastly different approaches when it comes to risk, but even the most conservative people have some level of risk in their lives, and all business owners have a level of risk in their businesses. Some people try to avoid risk, but often that means missing out on opportunities you could benefit from, which is in itself risky. It's sort of like the saying "even if you choose not to decide, you've still made a choice". You can work on reducing the risk that the threat would impact your business by things such as contingency strategies, backup plans, alternate providers, etc. There are two main aspects of this - reducing the risk of the issue occurring, and reducing the impact if it does. For example, if flooding was a risk, you might locate your premises on high ground (reducing risk), or if a particular payment processing system was a critical factor, you may have duplicate payment processing systems in place with different providers (reducing impact). And you can transfer the risk to other people through insurance (with the caveats mentioned above about large scale disasters and slow payouts), spreading the risk over a whole business or multiple businesses, or contracting disaster recovery companies to be prepared in the case of an emergency. So for each risk, you identify the risk, note the assessment of the likelihood of it occurring, the severity if it does, and the options for mitigating the risk. The mitigation options normally fall into the categories of: avoidance, impact reduction, and transfer of risk or impact. Your Response And Recovery Mind Map Your response and recovery plan must include all aspects of the recovery processes such as: The command structure for crisis management, along with full contact details and capability profiles Roles and responsibilities during disaster recovery, along with full contact details and capability profiles Details of services and equipment available to be utilized during recovery Details of all the steps in the recovery process, both to get an initial basic operation up and running, and for full restoration of business Plans for training the staff who would be involved in the process Plans for testing the systems that are involved in the recovery Plans for maintaining and updating the recovery system, including maintaining all machinery and computers in a fully operational state. The plans that you make should be set out in your Mind Map, and if it is a complex business operation, you would probably export it to either Merlin project manager (Mac) or MS Project (Windows) to do full task and resource Gantt charts and detailed plans. What To Do With Your Plan Once You Have Completed It Disasters and special contingencies often occur in a climate that demands fast response. If the plan itself is not one that organizational staff are likely to be very familiar with, all the more reason why you need the overview that a mind map provides. Here are some more tips of important things, some of which may seem so blatantly obvious that you'd wonder why they need stating, but let me assure you that there have been many cases where these simple things have not been followed: Make sure the plans are where people can get them (not in a safe or locked filing cabinet) Keep a backup of the plan offsite - preferably a copy at the house of each of the key personnel of the company Make sure that all supporting data, documents and any equipment required to get up and running again is stored in a safe and accessible place Make sure that the staff are aware of who is in charge of the implementation of the disaster recovery plans I sincerely hope that your plans never need to be put to the test in real life, but if they are, I hope you are well prepared and able to recover with the minimum of disruption. More: http://namecardmy.com/2011年兔年运程 (from 1 Name Card, 1 Malaysia)

What Do TMZ And The Daily Have In Common? Both Are Published On Crowd Fusion

A couple weeks ago at the debut of The Daily, besides the press and bloggers a few tech CEOs associated with the project were also milling about. One of them was Brian Alvey, the founder of Crowd Fusion, a content management system (CMS) that launched at TechCrunch 50 in 2009 but has been pretty quiet since.

Alvey’s been busy signing up customers at large media sites. Both The Daily and celebrity gossip site TMZ, I’ve learned, are published on Crowd Fusion. For The Daily, News Corp needed a publishing platform that could support its digital newsroom. Crowd Fusion publishes all of the pages in the iPad app (as well as the corresponding Web pages), and powers the social sharing features and voice-commenting. It pulls in photos, videos, articles, and other information from dozens of sources and feeds, which then get assembled into the publication every day. And of course, it also was the first app to work with Apple’s new subscription billing service right out of the gate.

Crowd Fusion had to essentially rebuild the CMS three times for the Daily, as the iPad newspaper hired more people and refined the workflows that would be required to put it out every day. Crowd Fusion was flexible enough to handle that. Plus, it treats content like a structured database, making it easier to surface related stories, videos, photos, and so on.

More: http://namecardmy.com/2011年兔年运程
(from 1 Name Card, 1 Malaysia)

Esui Contest

For further information, log on to the contest:
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Testimonial

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Miss Lim, Kindergarden Teacher - Endorsed Esui as the most creditable feminine hygiene products in the market. - She said that Esui is the only product that yield cleansing effects in the shortest time.

Dong Li , Radio Programs Regular Guest - After delivery, I'm troubled by acute vaginal discharge, and it is so embarrassing and uncomfortable. But after my fist use of "ESUI", I almost felt refreshed and cleansed immediately. And after a week, my unpleasant discharge is noticebly reduced. Now I will use it daily to maintain my presonal hygiene.

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For further information, log on to the contest:

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Android 3.0 Honeycomb SDK preview goes live

It's still going to be a little bit before you can get your hands on a Xoom, but if you'd like to start playing with the Honeycomb SDK right now -- and hey, developers, we'd encourage you to do just that -- Google's now made it possible. A version of the Android 3.0 SDK billed as a "preview" is now available for download, featuring "non-final" APIs and system images that will help would-be Android tablet devs get their feet wet as they prepare for an inevitable onslaught of these things over the next few months. So go on, get it while the gettin's good.

Among the more delicious promises from Google are tablet-specific UI elements like "richer" widgets and notifications, a built-in GL renderer that permits GPU acceleration of both 2D and 3D visuals, and support for multicore processor architectures. Yay for making the most out of the available hardware.

Microsoft's first Windows Phone 7 update coming this month?

It's no secret that Microsoft is anxious to get copy / paste functionality rolled out to Windows Phone 7 users on the double. In his CES keynote last night, Steve Ballmer himself said that it'd be coming soon -- but a little hint on Microsoft's site indicates that it might be coming as soon as this month: the URL Microsoft is using for the update's details page includes "january-update.aspx" in it, which we'd say is pretty telling. Of course, launch dates inevitably slip, and perennial Microsoft guru Paul Thurrott thinks it's tracking for early February before it'll actually reach users' devices... so we wouldn't go canceling vacations you've got scheduled this month just so you can be around to score the update as soon as it's available.