brunissend.blogspot.com

The thought of travelling with children can turn even the most calm parents into jibbering wrecks. The thought of being stuck on a plane or train with someone else's children when they haven't planned properly in order to keep them quiet is enough to make anyone shudder. So here are the top 20 tips for travelling with children. They're not foolproof but if one of them helps you then my work here is done!

With the travel season is just around the corner, everyone is making plans to escape from their hectic work life and packing their travel bags for their long-awaited vacations. Although going for vacation is the best escape plan ever, many of us are anticipating the travel journey with a quiver of dread because the thought of carrying all the overweight baggage, queuing the endless security lines and squeezing into the small airplane seats are just not the most exciting part of traveling.

Those kinds of experiences make it hard for us not to envy how the rich travel these days. Their getaways such as taking private jet planes to Caribbean Island villas are way above the travel standard of normal tourists.

Recently, on my last night in Thailand, I met up with some friends who had just spent their vacation staying in a five-star hotel on the outskirts of the city. To my amazement, my friends who are luxury travelers quizzed me about my comical but vivid excursions, which had left me both tiring and excited by the end of every single trip.

After the meet up, I began to realize that my friends suffered their own form of travel envy. The sense of control provided by their huge spending power had deadened their travel experience. The experiences with private hosts and staying in 5 star hotels did not create the memories that they could treasure and remember forever.

As the rich is shifting towards the experience-oriented traveling, they are more willing to fork out large amounts of money to acquire the travel experience they are hoping for. As an example, by the early of next year, wealthy travelers will be able to take a commercial space flight on Virgin Galactic, including a whole five minutes of weightlessness for US$200,000. With so many rich people showing interest in the space flight since its announcement, we are certain that the rich is going to great lengths to set themselves apart from others, as traveling is getting more and more common for most people.

Another proof of the shift is that wealthy travelers these days even plan for charity driven excursions to remote villages in countries like Madagascar and take a light aircraft to such villages just to shake hands with the Amazonian shamans.

As a result of the shift from luxury travel to peak life experience travel, travel planners will be creating their travel packages with the ultimate aim of creating a memorable experience for all the travelers. In the near future, I can assure that the most highly sought after vacations by the rich and the middle class will definitely be 5 star vacations that are charity driven or vacations that are able to offer the travelers with peak life experiences.

Is your CEO too boring for words? Is he driving your organization or holding it back? Do you want a CEO that drives innovation or one that keeps your company from it?

Companies are in a constantly changing environment. From changing laws and regulations like Obama Care to new competitors or innovative new technologies that impact the sale of your product. Knowing that companies face constant change, why are some CEO's so afraid of change? Is your CEO too boring and not into change? What I define as a boring CEO is a person unwilling to change, unwilling to embrace the unfamiliar and unwilling to consider that new ways of doing something might be a better way.

I worked with a company that was being run by a CEO that did not like change at all. This aversion permeated into the organization and ultimately into the products as well. The company's image was very old school, almost archaic. The CEO took pride in this. The aversion for change went very deep. The company's website was extremely basic and void of any real information. Some of the sales brochures hadn't been changed decades still using pictures from the 50's! Yes, you're reading that right, the 50's!

This company was selling technological products and had a CEO averse to innovation. Needless to say, the CEO brought the company to the brink of bankruptcy. The owner of the company liked the man so he stayed on until his retirement. "Oh, he only has a few more years to go" was the owners comment. These last years were even more damaging to the company than the previous ones. Then a new CEO was hired. This CEO was very much into technology and it was amazing to see how quickly the company turned around.

It was as if there was pent up hunger for change in the whole organization and with a big sigh of relief did everyone embark on this new course. In a short period of time, new products came out and new technology started to percolate into the newly released products. This change was a life line desperately needed.

For some industries, a boring CEO might be just the ticket. Maybe in an accounting firm or a law firm. Any professional firm where innovation doesn't drive the company. However, any manufacturing firm has to have an innovative CEO. Manufacturing changes all the time as technologies advance. New manufacturing methods, new ways of machining, 3D printing, the list goes on. In manufacturing a boring CEO will be suicide.

What business are you in? Do you need a boring CEO that just keeps the status quo or will that ultimately kill your business? Are your competitors innovating faster than you are? Are their products more innovative? Do the customers like them better? If so, you have a boring CEO that avoids change. If you want your company and products to be innovative and advanced, having a CEO that drives the change and embraces new ideas and concepts is paramount. Look at your business and compare your products to those of the competitors. Know that your CEO is the one responsible for this. Is he the right man for your company?

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man" George Bernard Shaw.

If you want to make a difference, shouldn't you hire an unreasonable CEO rather than a boring one?

"You'll See it When You Believe it" is a wonderful book by Wayne Dyer. In business when positioning your products in the market place, the objective is to let your customer see it when they believe it. Look at the brands we buy, we believe they are the best fit for us therefore we see that they are. We believe they will make us happier, stronger or better and we see that they do. Or do we?

Believing is the key. It is the cornerstone of any marketing campaign; how can we make our customers believe something? How can we make them believe our products are the best option for them? This is the battle. Never mind whatever happens after the customer already believes what it is you are promoting, at the point the customer believes, you have won the battle. Everything afterwords is almost automatic. Don't believe me?

Think of yourself in the grocery store, what products are you buying? Why are you buying what you do? You believe that what you're buying is the best options open to you. Once you made that decision, you saw the quality in them which reinforced the decision you made. Look at the car you're driving home in. What made you choose it? Same reason. You thought from all possible options open to you that this one was the best one. You still think so today otherwise you'd have sold it!

Having beliefs in your business is an important part of running it. It is key to selling but it is also key within your organization. Do your people believe that your company will thrive or go out of business? You can imagine the different results these believes will have. Once they set in, it is remarkable how many things will reinforce that belief. I worked in a company where the belief was that the company was out to slight the employees whenever possible. In reality, the company was not doing well because of its fierce loyalty to its employees and the resulting financial burden it carried because of it. The healthcare plan was very generous as was the retirement plan. There were often extra people on the payroll to help them out and salaries were well above the industry standard for the area. So how was it that the employees only saw that the company was out to slight them? They believed it. I don't know when this belief crept in but it was well entrenched when I got there. The more important question is, how do you change it?

What beliefs do people have in your company? Do they believe in it? Do they believe in the CEO? Do they believe in the products? It often takes a very consorted effort to change beliefs but if you have negative beliefs in your company, it might be very much worth while taking the time to confront and change them. Acknowledge them, discuss them and ask for help to change them. What would it take? It often doesn't take much. You'll be amazed at the results.

The job of every IT manager is to find ways to use your IT manager skills to get the most productive work out of your team. However, your team is made up of a group of very diverse individuals - they really don't have a lot to do with each other. What this means is that being an IT manager is much more than just telling people what to do, it's convincing them to work together to accomplish a goal. I don't believe that there is any IT manager training that can teach us how to do this. Before you can make this happen, you're going to have to build a team...

What's Wrong With Today's Team Building

Team building is not something new. However, the ways that it is done today more often than not does not achieve its goals. The reasons for this are many; however, interviews with people who have attended building exercises have revealed some common factors. In a number of cases the building exercises had nothing to do with the company's culture. In other cases the exercise placed staff in situations that they found either embarrassing or uncomfortable.

What a lot of our current building exercises are missing is an understanding of just exactly what we are trying to accomplish. The purpose behind making an investment in a building exercise is that you want to boost both communication within your team and camaraderie within your team.

Any building exercise is only going to last for a brief period of time. When it's over the staff who participated in it will be going back to their offices. These offices may be located anywhere on the globe or everyone may already be part of the same office. As an IT manager, you are going to want to see improvement in how everyone works together once they've participated in the team building exercise.

How To Go About Building Teams The Right Way

So if we can all agree that it is easy to go about trying to do team building the wrong way, then what becomes most important is finding ways to go about doing this type of activity the right way. A lot of this starts with having you understand that within your team, there will always be people who don't want to participate. Whatever exercise you do, you'll need to make sure that it appeals to them and draws them in.

The team building exercises that your team is involved in need to reflect your company's culture. You need to keep in mind that a team building exercise may be one of the few times that the various team members have to work side-by-side with each other. This means that you need to use this opportunity to have the exercise to allow them to discover things about each other such as how they prefer to make decisions. The thinking is that after the team building exercise is over, this information will allow everyone to work together more closely.

When you understand that in order for your team to work together smoothly, they need to understand how each other thinks and feels. The purpose of any team building exercise has to be to place the members of your team into a situation where they can't succeed by themselves. Instead, they need to rely on others to achieve a goal. This may be a new situation for many of them, but developing this kind of skill is critical to showing your team how they can be successful by working together.

What All Of This Means For You

As an individual IT manager there is only so much that you can get done in a given day. If you are able to get the people who work for you to cooperate and work as a team, then you'll be able to accomplish a lot more. It's creating this team that can be the real challenge...

A lot of what passes as IT team building today does not accomplish what it is intended to do: build a team. There are a lot of different reasons for this but the most common ones are that the team building that was done had nothing to do with what the company does or that it made the people participating feel embarrassed. IT managers are finding new ways to engage their team members in team building activities. These new methods tap into pop culture and are more likely to draw all members of the time into the exercise.

As an IT manager you are not going to be effective if you don't have a team to manage. Trying to manage a collection of individuals will be too hard and will consume too much of your time. Instead, you need to take the time to find the right team building exercises that will cause your collection of individuals to fuse into a smoothly working team. Yes, this will take time to do correctly; however, it can be done and the results are well worth it!

The job of every IT manager is to find ways to use your IT manager skills to get the most productive work out of your team. However, your team is made up of a group of very diverse individuals - they really don't have a lot to do with each other. What this means is that being an IT manager is much more than just telling people what to do, it's convincing them to work together to accomplish a goal. I don't believe that there is any IT manager training that can teach us how to do this. Before you can make this happen, you're going to have to build a team...

What's Wrong With Today's Team Building

Team building is not something new. However, the ways that it is done today more often than not does not achieve its goals. The reasons for this are many; however, interviews with people who have attended building exercises have revealed some common factors. In a number of cases the building exercises had nothing to do with the company's culture. In other cases the exercise placed staff in situations that they found either embarrassing or uncomfortable.

What a lot of our current building exercises are missing is an understanding of just exactly what we are trying to accomplish. The purpose behind making an investment in a building exercise is that you want to boost both communication within your team and camaraderie within your team.

Any building exercise is only going to last for a brief period of time. When it's over the staff who participated in it will be going back to their offices. These offices may be located anywhere on the globe or everyone may already be part of the same office. As an IT manager, you are going to want to see improvement in how everyone works together once they've participated in the team building exercise.

How To Go About Building Teams The Right Way

So if we can all agree that it is easy to go about trying to do team building the wrong way, then what becomes most important is finding ways to go about doing this type of activity the right way. A lot of this starts with having you understand that within your team, there will always be people who don't want to participate. Whatever exercise you do, you'll need to make sure that it appeals to them and draws them in.

The team building exercises that your team is involved in need to reflect your company's culture. You need to keep in mind that a team building exercise may be one of the few times that the various team members have to work side-by-side with each other. This means that you need to use this opportunity to have the exercise to allow them to discover things about each other such as how they prefer to make decisions. The thinking is that after the team building exercise is over, this information will allow everyone to work together more closely.

When you understand that in order for your team to work together smoothly, they need to understand how each other thinks and feels. The purpose of any team building exercise has to be to place the members of your team into a situation where they can't succeed by themselves. Instead, they need to rely on others to achieve a goal. This may be a new situation for many of them, but developing this kind of skill is critical to showing your team how they can be successful by working together.

What All Of This Means For You

As an individual IT manager there is only so much that you can get done in a given day. If you are able to get the people who work for you to cooperate and work as a team, then you'll be able to accomplish a lot more. It's creating this team that can be the real challenge...

A lot of what passes as IT team building today does not accomplish what it is intended to do: build a team. There are a lot of different reasons for this but the most common ones are that the team building that was done had nothing to do with what the company does or that it made the people participating feel embarrassed. IT managers are finding new ways to engage their team members in team building activities. These new methods tap into pop culture and are more likely to draw all members of the time into the exercise.

As an IT manager you are not going to be effective if you don't have a team to manage. Trying to manage a collection of individuals will be too hard and will consume too much of your time. Instead, you need to take the time to find the right team building exercises that will cause your collection of individuals to fuse into a smoothly working team. Yes, this will take time to do correctly; however, it can be done and the results are well worth it!

Dr. Jim Anderson